IN THE bonfire of liberal certainties, Myanmar makes for an especially painful case. Only two years ago the world celebrated as a land long covered by darkness emerged from brutal army rule. In a jubilant election the National League for Democracy (NLD) swept nearly all before it. The party’s revered leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, took over from the same generals who had imprisoned her or kept her under house arrest for nearly two decades.
Hers had been painted as a contest between good and evil, in which not just the people of Myanmar but much of the democratic world felt they had a stake. Ms Suu Kyi’s moral authority on the global stage was matched only by the Dalai Lama’s. Yet unlike Tibet, Myanmar enjoyed a fairy-tale ending with its first proper election—one in which, moreover, it was possible for outsiders to feel they had played a part. They included Western governments that had kept up the pressure on the generals, campaigning dons from the Oxford high tables at which Ms Suu Kyi...Continue reading
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