The recent announcement in Bali, Indonesia, along with accounts in the Star-Advertiser that President Barack Obama is planning to send Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Myanmar next month, is a welcome change in U.S. policy that finally promises to undo more than 22 years of, essentially, a non-policy.

Without wishing to douse this good news, the recent history of this event must be made clear. Most of the world reports on this new policy have implied that it was nearly all the result of our foresight and planning, largely the goals and accomplishments of government and people external to Myanmar — a perspective that places the country not in the foreground, as agent and actor, but in the background, as beneficiary and passive recipient.

It is true that the new U.S. policy is related to some degree to a broader shift from Europe to Asia in political and economic terms, publicly celebrated with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation convention in Honolulu this month and subsequently confirmed by President Obama’s trip to Australia where a token Marine "base" is to be established in Darwin. This, together with the location of other U.S. allies already in East and Southeast Asia, and Hawaii’s presence in the middle of the Pacific "protecting" the sea lanes to and from the U.S. West Coast, is obviously part of an attempt to contain China’s growing influence in the Asia-Pacific region.

The new U.S.-Myanmar policy is a piece of that larger U.S. strategy that attempts to counter-balance China’s overwhelming influence in the country, giving it easy access not only to the huge gas, oil reserves and other natural resources abundant in Myanmar, but also to the Bay of Bengal and points westward to India and the Middle East via the country’s maritime regions.

What is less obvious in this scenario, however, is the role Myanmar itself played as actor rather than passive recipient. When the history of the past 20-odd years is more carefully scrutinized, it is clear — at least to Myanmar scholars — that the country had a huge hand in making the present situation come to fruition. Heretofore, U.S. policy was anything but accommodating toward Myanmar; in fact, we — both government and "private" corporations such as the SOROS Foundation and National Endowment for Democracy — have been one of the harshest critics of the regime and have spent millions of dollars each year to undermine it. So, lest we become a bit too smug about how we affected this change, consider what Myanmar has done.

It is mainly Myanmar’s resolve to steadfastly — some say stubbornly — "stay the course" that has allowed the current warming of relations to take place. It began in 1987 with the official re-instatement of a multiparty political system (even if delayed by outside interference such as sanctions and internal dissent and crises); continued through the 1990s to end the half-century of civil war that no Myanmar government, democratic or authoritarian, had theretofore managed to accomplish (a prerequisite for peaceful transfer of power), resulting in Myanmar’s own seven-step "road map to democracy" by 2004; produced a new constitution by 2008; held multiparty elections in November 2010; seated members of Parliament by the first three months of 2011; and officially dissolved military rule by March 2011.

Now, the party of Myanmar activist Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy, has finally forsaken its "spoiler" position and will run in the upcoming by-elections and participate in this reform. Thus, it is the internal changes that Myanmar itself initiated and implemented over these past two decades that opened the door that allowed the present U.S. policy to even be considered.

Perhaps most important, Myanmar has shown the world that political change of a genuine and substantive nature can be realized without going through the violence and trauma of an "Arab Spring." And one of the most effective ways that this new U.S. policy can start out on the right foot is to finally address the country by its early 12th century indigenous name: Myanmar, not its colonial one, "Burma."

Professor Michael Aung-Thwin is chairman of the Asian Studies Program at the University of Hawaii-Manoa.