A ruler's concession can fuel revolt
When a dictator facing growing street protests openly floats reform, the hint of weakness can energize the movement rather than calm it. Crowds of tens of thousands then swell into hundreds of thousands.
A sweeping history of Burma—from pirates and Mughal exiles to the British conquest of 1885, through world war and decades of civil conflict—woven with the author's own family story, descended from royal courtiers and UN Secretary-General U Thant.
Self-isolation compounds military rule
A takeover can do lasting damage twice over: once by replacing elected government with permanent army rule, and again by nationalizing business, expelling aid and sealing the country off from foreign trade and investment. The second wound keeps the first one in place long after the coup itself.
Isolation feeds the regime it targets
Cutting off trade and contact with an already closed dictatorship does not weaken it; isolation is the condition such a regime grew up in and thrives on. Sanctions meant to topple it mostly shut out the light and air that trade, engagement and visitors might let in.
Short memory distorts political judgment
Debates about a troubled country often judge its dictatorship and its chances for democracy only by the last ten or twenty years. That flattens away the wars, colonial rule, foreign occupation and decades of civil conflict that actually shaped the present. Policies built on that short view lack the nuance the situation demands.
Losing sovereignty seeds lasting turmoil
A country's present troubles can trace back to the moment its own ruling order was dismantled and it was absorbed as a province into a foreign empire. The breaks that follow, colonial rule, invasion and then a civil war lasting some sixty years, grow from that root.