The Beeb “posts an overview”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7018285.stm of the major Western and Asian players’ views and approaches to the junta in Myanmar. It includes ASEAN, China, EU, India, Russia, UK and USA. I think they have mistakenly left out Japan, an important force for development in southeast Asia for the past few decades. Not to mention one of their “reporters was killed”:http://www.mutantfrog.com/2007/09/28/video-of-journalist-murder-in-burma/ at one of the demonstrations this week. I wonder how the Burmese feel about Japan’s history in Burma?
Also, check out MutantFrog flexing his “colonial studies” muscles with the post “Is it Burma or Myanmar?”:http://www.mutantfrog.com/2007/09/26/is-it-burma-or-myanmar/.
About Younghusband
Sir Francis Edward Younghusband (1863-1942) was a British explorer, army officer, military-political officer, and foreign correspondent born in India who led expeditions into Manchuria, Kashgar, and
Tibet. He three times tried and failed to scale Mt. Everest and journeyed from China to India, crossing the Gobi desert and the Mustagh Pass (alt. c.19,000 ft/5,791 m) of the Karakoram mountain range in modern day Pakistan. Convinced of Russian designs on British interests in India, Younghusband proactively engaged in the nineteenth century spying and conflict over Central Asia between the British and the Russians known as the Great Game.
"Younghusband" is a Canadian who has spent a number of years bouncing back and forth between his home country and Japan. Fluent in Japanese and English with experience in numerous other languages from Spanish to Georgian, Younghusband has travelled throughout Asia. He graduated with an MA from the War Studies Department at the
Royal Military College of Canada, where he focussed on the Japanese oil industry and energy security issues. He has recently returned to Canada from Japan, and is working in the technology sector.
The BBC study shows the international community is divided. Some in the West are asking China, India and ASEAN to persuade Burma/Myanmar to change its politics – but change to what, and how forcefully it’s to be encouraged, isn’t clear exactly. Not that this matters – the response seems to be that governments in the East will do no more than give mild cautions unless they see a spread of instability to surrounding countries.
It is clear that the West are losing their influence.
Anyway the whole thing will be examined when the rules for the global economy (IMF) are comprehensively rethought.
Witnessing the latest round of oppression in Myanmar, formerly Burma, the US and world community has appropriately denounced the cabal of generals running the country, the Orwellian named State Peace and Development Council. However, the recourse to speeches demanding action and new economic sanctions is misguided. These words and penalties will do little to dissuade the military junta. The appropriate target is the PRC leadership; the time for this leadership to demonstrate its rise in indeed peaceful and that its role will be a responsible one is now. The PRC leadership is main backer of the Myanmar junta and is they who possess the leverage to end these deplorable acts. However, restraining its clients in Myanmar will not be enough.
In the past six months, other challenges the US has taken upon itself in other regions of the world can be best addressed by the PRC and pressure should be applied. The US and world have lamented the genocide occurring in Darfur, Sudan, while the PRC has bolstered the regime with commercial ties and military forces. Recently, North Korea arbitrarily canceled the most recent round of nuclear disarmament talks. And now, the PRC is silent as its client undertakes a brutal crackdown on Buddhist monks proceeds in Myanmar.
US diplomacy should link all three matters and demand PRC action, but the path does not lie the halls of the United Nations, but the conference rooms of the International Olympics Committee (IOC). The PRC has shown little appetite for empowering the UN beyond a forum for deliberation, but it would respond immediately to any hint the IOC would spoil Beijing’s meticulously planned hosting of the Games in 2008; the last thing it wants is a labeling of its long sought prize as the Genocide Games. Where the UN resolutions and sanctions would fail against the Myanmar junta, decisions and declarations by the IOC would spur PRC action on all these issues ”“ anything to preserve the shine of the Beijing Olympics. It is time the PRC learns being a responsible stakeholder is more than cleaning the air over Beijing and enforcing manufacturing standards; rectifying the intransigence of North Korea, Sudan, and Myanmar are within its power. The question is whether the United States can recognize the opportunity in front of them.
May be old news/OT but-
http://www.hillerphoto.com/burma ; err, I don’t think I did that correctly…so sorry.
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