Defusing Myanmar Requires More Than Western Sanctions
The junta’s violence has killed hundreds of protesters and put insurgent groups on a war footing. Time is running out to avert a cataclysm.
Protesters prepare Molotov cocktails.
Source: Getty Images
Myanmar has long been a textbook example of sanctions failure. Years of isolation battered the population but didn’t loosen the grip of the Tatmadaw, as the armed forces are known. When they ceded ground a decade ago, they did so on their own terms — and even that, as February’s coup proved, was all too easily reversed.
Today, Southeast Asia’s poorest nation is again proving an example of the limits of outsiders’ ability to influence autocratic leaders willing to shoulder a substantial economic burden — or impose it on their own people — and remain indifferent to international ignominy. The army held a dinner and drone display last weekend, on the same day soldiers killed dozens of civilians and burned one man alive.