Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs To Know - Plot & Excerpts
that produced the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) was designed to continue military control by alternative means. As war, according to Carl von Clausewitz, is nothing but the continuation of state policy by other means, this coup may be considered governance by other methods. The previous military government that had become civilianized through the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) had economically failed. Politically it was disintegrating; it had to be resuscitated in some manner. Otherwise, military control would have ended, and the “chaos” (in the tatmadaw’s view) would fragment the Union of Burma. To the tatmadaw, chaos was descending on the society, and the military considered itself the only savior of the integrity of the state. To many civilians, however, this was the Rangoon spring, when censorship and control were effectively absent as government control broke down. This was part of a pattern of popular protests that profoundly affected East Asia—People Power in the Philippines in 1986, mass demonstrations leading to political liberalization in South Korea in 1987, Burma in 1988, and Tiananmen Square in China in 1989.
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