Joint SASC, SEAS & CEAS Colloquium – Changes in Burma/Myanmar Seen in a Geopolitical Context

Joint SASC, SEAS & CEAS Colloquium -- Changes in Burma/Myanmar Seen in a Geopolitical Context

Bertil Lintner - Journalist, Author, and Strategic Consultant

Thursday, April 18, 2013 - 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Room 202, Henry R. Luce Hall See map
34 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 6511

The United States and the West did not change their policy of isolating Burma because of concerns about democracy and human rights. It was “the China factor”. Burma was becoming a vassal of China which was seen as a threat to the status quo and regional stability. At the same time, Burma’s military was also concerned about China’s growing influence and realized that it has to reach out to the West to avoid being absorbed by Chinese political, economic and strategic interests. But in order to “woo the West” they also realized that they had to liberalize the country’s rigid political system - but not in a way that would jeopardize their hold on power. Bertil Lintner was born in Sweden in 1953 and left for Asia in 1975. He spent 1975-79 traveling in the Asia-Pacific region (the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Japan, Australia and New Zealand). He has been living permanently in Thailand since December 1979, working as a journalist and author. Mr. Linter was a freelance journalist until March 1988, when he was employed by the Far Eastern Economic Review of Hong Kong (for which he began writing on a free-lance basis in 1982) as its Burma correspondent. Later, he also covered a wide range of issues for the Review such as organized crime, ethnic and political insurgencies, and regional security. After the Review was closed down in November 2004, he began working as a senior analyst for Jane’s Information Group in the US and the UK. Since 1995 he has also been the East Asia correspondent for the Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet. He has written twelve books on Asian politics, among them Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency Since 1948, Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s Struggle for Democracy, Bloodbrothers: The Criminal Underworld of Asia, Great Leader, Dear Leader: Demystifying North Korea Under the Kim Clan, and Great Game East: India, China and the Struggle for Asia’s Most Volatile Frontier. His work can be viewed at www.asiapacificms.com

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Sponsored by the South Asian Studies Council, Council on Southeast Asia Studies and Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University
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Region: 
China, Transregional, Southeast Asia