And so the world watches on as the thugs who have ruled Myanmar Burma for the past 45 years do what they do best - put down an uppity populace.
You know what amazes me about all of this? When I worked in China in 1991 - 1992, Ne Win was still in charge behind the scenes, making sure his up and coming tyrant in training Saw Maung was keeping Burma safe for dictatorial rule under the dreadfully sounding SLORC. Ne Win is gone now, but Than Shwe has been busy making sure his family lives a splendid life while the people starve. Shwe is supposed to be the primary person who is holding back any progress towards opening up to the outside world or in making steps towards democracy or national reconciliation.
I am busy looking at my beaten copy of Freedom From Fear which I brought while I lived in China. The book's author, Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while I was over there. The book is one of the most inspiring books I've ever read and there was once upon a time when I was younger that I actually entertained grandiose ambitions that I would actually be like her and do something great in the world. Alas, it was not to be.
Gun control advocates take note: As inspiring as leaders like Ms. Suu Kyi (her husband died some years ago) are, as nice as it is to have cell phones and satellite images of oppression carried out by the Burmese generals, and as inspiring as it is to see monks out in rebellion against tyranny, I know deep down in my heart that the real problem is that - as I just heard on a CNN video - the people do not have weapons with which to defend themselves. One of the first orders of business that all the great dictatorial regimes of the 20th century took care of making sure that the populace was disarmed as fast as possible. Lenin and Stalin did this. So did the Nazis, as did the Chinese Communists, and so did Pol Pot. The Burmese generals were no slouches either at disarming their people as they would have been put back in the barracks decades ago if they hadn't done otherwise.
Even the populace having some guns might not be enough. Churchill once said that uprisings have a habit of coming out of nowhere and this one did just that. This one, much like the Chinese uprisings of 1989, was at least partly economic in nature. Part of the Chinese complaint in 1989 was over a wave of inflation which had hit the economy. This one was lit by increasing fuel prices.
However, my reading of history is that successful rebellions against tyranny usually have to involve at least a good sized minority of the population in order to have a chance of being successful. The American Revolution pitted a deeply divided colonial population where some were loyalists, others sat on the fence, while others fought for American independence. The breakdown of the Soviet bloc involved a failure of will, a kind of crisis of confidence amongst the Soviet leadership which eventually led to Moscow relaxing its grip over its Eastern bloc satellite countries. As 1989 rolled on, hundreds of thousands of people in all of the Soviet bloc countries eventually rebelled. However, the 1989 Chinese Spring uprisings largely were confined to students, factory workers, and intellectuals. The army was divided, but the hundreds of millions of Chinese farmers and peasants did not get very involved.
Ms. Suu Kyi wrote in Freedom From Fear that dictatorships rarely last more than 2-3 generations as the original rebels who seize power die off and the next 1 or 2 generations are seen as not having any legitimacy. In theory this is probably true, but one scary way around this dilemma is for leaders in dictatorships to set up orderly transitions of handing over power. If they can do this, then the new regime can perpetuate itself. This is what Deng Xiaoping did when he was paramount leader in China.
Ne Win seized power in 1962, so Burma has been in the grip of military rule for 45 years now. I am thinking that Burma will have to wait until the 74 year old Shwe passes on before the country can really start over again. Ms. Suu Kyi herself has now been under house arrest for nearly 20 years now and is now 62 years old. It is quite conceivable that Ms. Suu Kyi will not live to claim her right to rule which was taken from her when the military junta nullified the elections of 1990. Even then, it is going to take a change of heart amongst today's younger army leaders, together with the passing of Shwe, before progress can go forward.
Meanwhile, quite a large expatriate population of Burmese live in Thailand. My car mechanic and his wife are Thai and I have met both of their families while in Thailand in 2004. His oldest brother runs a shrimp boat and a food processing business in Surat Thani. His brother's family employs a family of five Burmese nationals as servants and they shut up about it because the legality of such people being in the country is - ahem - questionable. Quite a few Burmese find employment in Thailand this way. Some Burmese in Thailand are of the Karen ethnic group who, as rebels against the junta, have been driven out of the country. What will be their fate?
Sigh... What a sad thing to happen to a potentially great country with such a wonderful people. Maybe the neo-conservative armchair generals like Charles Krauthammer, William Kristol, Richard Perle, and their ilk who have been promoting the exporting of democracy abroad should fess up to their ideals and tell the American public that America should go in and restore democracy to Burma via an American military invasion. Just a thought.
On second thought, some other nation states might not like that too much.
Wizard