Journal of International Studies

The following is a review of a so-far notional work,  The Dictator's Guide: How to Keep Power and Gain the World's Respect , as it might have been written by Thein Sein, a former general and the present president of Myanmar.  The Dictator's Guide: How to Keep Power and Gain the World's Respect  recounts Thein Sein's biggest challenge to date in establishing a flourishing, modern, developed democratic Myanmar in which all the official 135 national races live together in peace and harmony. The removal of thousands of Muslim "Bengalis", people whose claims for decades to be ethnic Rohingya citizens of Myanmar are rejected by the government, has proven especially difficult, though not insurmountable, in keeping the international community on-board with his country's supposed liberal transition.  Thein Sein shares his personal perspectives on how to overcome this problem and many others in the volume. Most importantly, he details how to succes...

White House press secretary Jay Carney offered a sharp rebuttal of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s op-ed in The New York Times  recently by saying, “unlike Russia, the United States stands up for democratic values and human rights around the world.” History paints a somewhat different story. In contrast to President Barack Obama’s contention that the past 70 years of global security have been anchored by America’s “exceptionalism,” the United States has in fact never had a problem overthrowing democratically elected leaders or supporting the type of murderous thugs who valued human rights the same way people value real estate in Damascus these days. This time frame was, as legendary journalist John Pilger  recently put it , “decades of militarism camouflaged as democracy.” In Southeast Asia, the most notorious American supported thug of the Cold War was Suharto, the  iron-fisted tyrant  of Indonesia. Suharto, flush with U.S. financial aid, rampaged against...