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So now Burma is going nuclear. It has purchased a 10-megawatt "research reactor" from Russia. Groundbreaking is scheduled for this month at "a secret location near the town of Magwe," reports the Far East Economic Review. The news coincides with reports that two Pakistani nuclear scientists, wanted for questioning in their own country for reported connections to Islamic extremists, found refuge in Burma. None of this means, necessarily, that the thuggish generals who run Burma have aspirations for a nuclear arsenal. Maybe, like dictators throughout the atomic age, they see nuclear power as a glorification of their otherwise unsung rule.
More interesting perhaps is the seller's motivation. Put differently, is there nothing the Russian Atomic Ministry won't stoop to? Most civilized governments shun the Burmese regime. Democratic leaders who had to fight their own dictatorships, such as South Korea's Kim Dae Jung and the Czech Republic's Vaclav Havel, tend to be the most supportive of Burma's beleaguered democrats. But even governments less inclined to act on the basis of morals or ethics find the odiousness of Burma's dictators too pungent to ignore - which leaves the "engagers" in a kind of isolation of their own.
Leader of those engagers and arms suppliers, not surprisingly, is China. The Burmese junta's corruption and its history of massacring peaceful pro-democracy students must be comforting to President Jiang Zemin, who recently toured Burma. He said the nation "must be allowed to choose its own development path suited to its own conditions" - the usual words of dictators who do not allow their own people to choose anything.
Then we have Japan, ever eager for commercial advantage, and some U.S. and European clothing importers and energy companies, such as Unocal. These, at least, show occasional signs of embarrassment at the assistance they render the world's leading practitioner of forced labor.
And then there is Russia, selling MiG-29 fighters as well as nuclear technology, and demonstrating yet again its less than full embrace of the democratic values it claims now to cherish.
By aligning themselves with the junta, the governments of Russia and China may gain commercially in the short term, but they are unlikely to reap long-term strategic advantage. Burma's economy is imploding. The regime is so fearful of its own people that it recently banned a Norwegian postal stamp honoring Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the rightful leader of Burma who remains under house arrest a decade after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. The junta puts people in jail for owning fax or copying machines. That is a leadership without much prospect, and when it falls, and the nuclear reactor is rusting, most Burmese people are likely to remember who stood with them and who sided with their oppressors.
More interesting perhaps is the seller's motivation. Put differently, is there nothing the Russian Atomic Ministry won't stoop to? Most civilized governments shun the Burmese regime. Democratic leaders who had to fight their own dictatorships, such as South Korea's Kim Dae Jung and the Czech Republic's Vaclav Havel, tend to be the most supportive of Burma's beleaguered democrats. But even governments less inclined to act on the basis of morals or ethics find the odiousness of Burma's dictators too pungent to ignore - which leaves the "engagers" in a kind of isolation of their own.
Leader of those engagers and arms suppliers, not surprisingly, is China. The Burmese junta's corruption and its history of massacring peaceful pro-democracy students must be comforting to President Jiang Zemin, who recently toured Burma. He said the nation "must be allowed to choose its own development path suited to its own conditions" - the usual words of dictators who do not allow their own people to choose anything.
Then we have Japan, ever eager for commercial advantage, and some U.S. and European clothing importers and energy companies, such as Unocal. These, at least, show occasional signs of embarrassment at the assistance they render the world's leading practitioner of forced labor.
And then there is Russia, selling MiG-29 fighters as well as nuclear technology, and demonstrating yet again its less than full embrace of the democratic values it claims now to cherish.
By aligning themselves with the junta, the governments of Russia and China may gain commercially in the short term, but they are unlikely to reap long-term strategic advantage. Burma's economy is imploding. The regime is so fearful of its own people that it recently banned a Norwegian postal stamp honoring Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the rightful leader of Burma who remains under house arrest a decade after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. The junta puts people in jail for owning fax or copying machines. That is a leadership without much prospect, and when it falls, and the nuclear reactor is rusting, most Burmese people are likely to remember who stood with them and who sided with their oppressors.
