West must engage with evil for the ultimate good of Burmese people

Optimistic analysts hope the appalling suffering in Burma will inevitably lead to the collapse of the junta and its replacement by a government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. It’s a forlorn hope: the Burmese army is willing to kill civilians in large numbers. So long as the army stays united, nothing will change

THE news that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest is to be extended came as no surprise. How gracious of the Burmese regime to reduce the sentence from three years of hard labour! Micheál Martin issued a suitably withering response.

But before the west cranks up the sanctions another notch, isn’t it time to take a step back and ask ourselves how far the policy of isolating Burma has got us? That Burma is a rogue state, and an intensely paranoid one at that, is pretty universally accepted in Europe and North America. It is also increasingly dangerous.