Giving Up the Burma Fantasy

The U.S. announcement that it would reopen direct contacts with Burma/Myanmar's military government promises a welcome change from a failed policy of twenty years of isolation and sanctions. Burma/Myanmar has a singularly Manichean politics, as indicated by its dual name: the government and opposition cannot even agree about what to call the place. Foreign activists and governments have been drawn willingly into this conflict, imagining themselves champions of a democratic opposition against a military junta. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations imposed successively tighter sanctions on the country, in the hope of punishing its military rulers and stimulating democratic reform.