The political crisis in Burma is reaching a crescendo as troops fired on demonstrating monks and civilians yesterday and the United Nations Security Council heard demands for sanctions against the military regime last night.
The two largest institutions in the country, the military and the Buddhist monks, are pitted against each other in a battle for power. It is a dramatic moment which demands international engagement and solidarity if the crisis is to be peacefully resolved and violence on the awful scale of 1988 when at least 3,000 people died is to be avoided. Burma's powerful neighbours China and India and its fellow members of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) have a crucial role to play.
Burma is now more deeply involved with all of them because of its natural wealth and strategic position. Its military regime has brought this crisis on itself by profligacy in exploiting and trading these resources and arrogant disregard for the growing impoverishment of the Burmese people. The last straw came when fuel prices were doubled or quintupled overnight on August 15th, leaving millions unable to afford public transport. An inspiring drama of civilian and religious protest has built up since then, combining economic and political demands for fundamental change and showing extraordinary courage and remarkably innovative use of mobile phones, internet and blogs to organise and sustain itself.
The military leaders have been left floundering by these developments, uncertain how to respond and aware that whatever they do to protect their position leaves them vulnerable to further eruptions of protest and international condemnation. Despite their social and political isolation they are also aware that China, their most important neighbour and mentor, cannot give them a blank cheque to suppress this movement with brute force. That would raise the spectre of another Tiananmen Square, as happened when parallel protest movements in the two countries were put down in 1988 and 1989. It is unthinkable that Beijing would endorse such an approach after developing so colossally since then and just one year ahead of hosting the Olympic Games.
China has instead been quietly urging the junta to engage Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese democratic leader whose party won a landslide in the 1990 elections but who has been detained since then, in a political dialogue to broaden the regime and prepare for a political transition. The crisis has catapulted this demand on to the political agenda. It should be the central focus of international efforts to steer these events towards a constructive outcome. UN sanctions, as demanded yesterday by the European Union and the United States, can be used to engineer such a change. But they need to be applied so as to minimise damaging effects on ordinary Burmese and to convince neighbouring states they should encourage a change in the military regime.