My buddy Ian Holliday, Dean of Social Sciences at Hong Kong University, assesses the situation in Burma after the cyclone and the prospects for political change:
[A] scenario in which the military regime collapses and the country embarks on an inclusive transition to democracy embracing political parties and ethnic groups long excluded from power remains improbable. For half a century, the military has been so pervasive in national politics, and competing institutions have been so weak, that such a sequence of events is a distant dream. By contrast, the possibility that the junta, for many years prickly, stubborn and isolated, will be forced to reach out across ideological and ethnic divides to stabilize and reconstruct the country is distinct and real.It is to this possibility that the outside world should direct its efforts. The task now is not to berate the junta for its manifold failings past and present. Rather, it is to use the opening afforded by national tragedy to build bridges into and out of the army that has for so long ruled the land. Through new links, the generals can be bound to key stakeholders within the country and without. Through fresh contacts, top leaders can be persuaded that the primary responsibility of all parties is to work collectively for the benefit of Burma as a whole, and not for any particular group or faction. In varied ways, confidence in joining hands with others can grow on all sides so that the country first emerges from national disaster, and then starts to chart a new course.
In spearheading such efforts the United Nations, much maligned for its inability to force change on a junta that responded with brutal repression to monk-led popular protests last September, remains the essential institution. The U.N. can and should coordinate relief efforts, at least attempt to bring different sectors of Burmese society together (the military, opposition groups, ethnic groups) and build an external coalition of support for this sort of collaborative strategy.