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If relief and military actions are combined there is risk of combining a military conflict and a post-disaster situation and thus increasing human suffering.”

Kyaw Zaw, a Burmese graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science, said if western forces became involved in any military move to topple the Burmese’s regime it would result in “a nightmare scenario.” Western democracies, anyway, had no strategy for regime change in Burma.

Burma lacked material assets that might attract potential western invaders, Kyaw Zaw said.
“What are the most attractive assets we have left?  The only attractive asset is natural gas and that’s been ear-marked already by the Chinese and Thais. This isn’t Iraq or Iran.” 

Some Burmese commentators say the very presence of US warships off the Burmese coast might have brought some pressure on the regime. They point to junta leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe’s assurance to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that international aid workers would be allowed access to cyclone survivors, although the general appears to be retreating from that promise.

Discussion in the west was anyway moving away from the cyclone crisis to Burma’s longer term problems, such as the sham referendum and constitution, the worst since the Japanese-imposed one of 1943, said Michael Charney.