In the last two weeks, the United States and much of the world have been frustrated – and angered – by the manner in which Burma’s military regime has reacted to the devastation caused by cyclone Nargis. All around the world, people are wondering why the regime has been extremely slow and reluctant to accept international aid workers.

We are seeing a lot of people talking about Burma, especially here in the U.S., with some asking for more serious actions against the regime. A Time article’s title written a few days after the cyclone hit read, “Is it Time to Invade Burma?” But with so much of the debate on Burma going on, how many people involved truly understand the problem with this little-known Asian country?

The story of cyclone Nargis serves to illustrate the much bigger underlying issue: the military regime’s suspicion of the outside world. For decades, Burma has isolated itself, as much as has been isolated, from the outside world. Trade sanctions and condemnation imposed on Burma by Western countries have continued, but so has the repression imposed on the Burmese population by the military regime.

The violent crackdown on the monks and protesters last year, which was virtually a repetition of the 1988 bloody crackdown, was another sign of the lack of positive political change in Burma. Economically, people’s standards of living have been stagnant in the country rich in resources, and the presence of natural gas worth billions of dollars does not seem to offer a sign of improvement in economic well-being of the general population.

Why has the efforts made by the international community been very disappointing in fostering political change, let alone democracy, in Burma? The apparent failure of past strategy points to the need to seriously rethink the “Burma problem” in order to formulate a new, more effective strategy.

First and foremost, the Burma problem needs to be considered in the context of the country’s past. As much as people are talking about Burma currently, very few seem to be aware of how Burma has come to what it is today. They are criticizing the military regime and demanding more serious actions against it with little, if at all, discussion on Burma’s long history. Thant Myint-U puts it very well in The River of Lost Footsteps:

“The most striking aspect of the Burma debate today is its absence of nuance and its singularly ahistorical nature. Dictatorship and the prospects for democracy are seen within the prism of the past ten or twenty years, as if three Anglo-Burmese wars, a century of colonial rule, an immensely destructive Japanese invasion and occupation, and five decades of civil war, foreign intervention, and Communist insurgency had never happened.”

Burma is a country rich in culture and history. The gigantic statues of three Burmese kings built by the military leaders clearly suggest that Burma today is in some way caught in its past. The world needs to seek first to understand Burma, before being understood. This article does not aim at explaining Burma’s history per se, but rather to point to the importance of understanding it.

(to be continued)