Burma or Myanmar (same place, take your pick) has experienced another military coup, one of several since World War II. The military recently arrested and detained elected President Aung San Suu Kyi and other members of her government, declaring a one-year emergency.
You may wonder how it is the country allows a powerful military to take over the government whenever it chooses. In some ways the nation is like the former Yugoslavia or Soviet Union, two countries whose various regions were populated by members of different tribes. In Burma, several of these don’t like being ruled by the dominant Burman ethnic group and to varying degrees support separatist movements.
Burma tolerates a powerful military because, in its absence, the country would likely fall apart much like Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union did, and for the same reasons. The fragility of those held-together-by-force nations teaches a lesson that isn’t lost on the Burmese majority. It makes their commitment to democracy somewhat ambivalent.
