Journal of International Studies

How Myanmar is working to wriggle itself free from the "empire next door."

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...

Before the era of nation-states, Shakespeare had it easy. While  humanists may agree labels matter little, geographers in the 21st century must keep up with country name changes, and the accompanying politics. Readers these days come across Myanmar (Burma), or Burma (Myanmar), depending on the writer’s point of view. Burma is the original name of the second-largest country in southeast Asia, known in recent years for a thawing autocracy and human rights luminary Aung San Suu Kyi. The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Conflict and Stability Operations (CSO) in September put out a press release  recounting its activities in “Burma.” Yet the U.N., Japan, France, Russia, and most other nations have relations with Myanmar, to which its name was changed after a 1989 military coup. The two are essentially the same, with Burma the more colloquial in the native tongue. That new rulers instituted “Myanmar,” the more traditional, literary name, hinted at establishing a new identit...

When China opened its doors to foreign investment in the early 1990s, companies around the world could not contain their excitement at the possibility of entering the world’s largest market. With a population north of 1 billion people, China seemed to present endless opportunities in almost every sector imaginable. Boardrooms across the globe became fixated on entering the market. Companies hastily started looking for office space and set out to find local partners so that they could somehow start doing business in the Middle Kingdom. In all this haste and excitement, however, many companies failed to consider carefully whether their businesses really were suitable candidates for market entry. That same sort of hysteria is happening again,  this time in Myanmar , a country opening after years of military dictatorship and isolation. Myanmar is considered one of the world’s last economic frontiers and companies are clamoring to get their products and ...