Vicious Junta Cycle

It's very ironic. The average American can't find Burma on a map. Hell, President Job likely can't find Burma on a map. Yet the paranoid military leaders of the poor country are so suspicious that allowing international aid to the millions of displaced, starving villagers will open the door to potential regime change that they've more or less shut and locked the door. Now here's the irony: Burmese regime change is no doubt toward the bottom of the U.S.'s long regime change to-do list (which, at this point, includes America as well). And yet, I can't imagine any more surefire way to drum up support around the world for so-called regime change than to deny the influx of basic aid following a natural disaster with a climbing death toll already possibly around 100,000 and likely higher in the near future once you factor in the imminent effects of disease and famine.

Of course, support for regime change only goes so far. North Korea and Zimbabwe, for example, are run by two of the most insidious, cut-throat, callous despots in the world, and they've stuck around for decades despite international condemnation. Indeed, everyone knows the surest way toward regime change, American-style, is not failure to accept what we have to give but failure to give us what we want.