Thant Myint-U is the author most recently of The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century.
With their recent coup d’état the Burmese army hoped for a surgical shift in power that would leave everything else more or less untouched. Instead, the coup has sent the economy into freefall, raised the possibility of international intervention and triggered a political earthquake. The fight is no longer over elections and constitutional amendments. One path leads to dictatorship without end. The other to a revolution whose exact shape is difficult to see.
On 2 May 2008 Cyclone Nargis slammed into the Irrawaddy delta in Burma, killing 140,000 people overnight. Three million more were made homeless. Worse may be around the corner. Rising sea levels and shifting rainfall patterns threaten the livelihoods of the country’s poorest. Much of the coastline is at risk, including Rangoon, home to five million people. And the country’s arid...
There is an enduring myth that in 1948, when it achieved independence from Britain, Burma was a rich country with every reason to expect a bright future and that the policies and practices of the military government are alone to blame for today’s miseries. It is beyond dispute that many of these policies and practices have been disastrous. But there is a deeper history of misfortune which needs to be understood.
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