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Burmese Haze: U.S. Policy and Myanmar’s Opening and Closing
Erin Murphy
Association for Asian Studies: 2021
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Myanmar has had a long and strange grip on the imagination of American elites. In Washington, knowledge of Myanmar is often in inverse proportion to emotion exerted: the loudest bleeding-heart activist, lobbyist or politician often has never visited the country, doesn’t know anyone from there, but is certain they care the most.

Debates on Myanmar have been emotional, unedifying and unhelpful, and often have the intellectual timbre of a particularly rambunctious episode of the Jerry Springer show. In years of conducting human rights advocacy in Washington, I had a fair share of strange encounters, including when a National Security Council staffer informed me he had prepared for our meeting by watching the movie Rambo 4, set along the Thailand-Myanmar border.

• Tags: David Scott Mathieson, Erin Murphy, Issue 28, Myanmar