There is a new cold war in Asia

Burma is strategically too important to China to let it go and become a US ally. It’s China’s outlet to the Indian Ocean, and oil- and gas-lines have been built from [Arakan] State to China’s Yunnan province.

We have to bear in mind that human rights and democracy are not the two most important issues that determine US foreign policy.

There is a new Cold War in Asia with an increasingly assertive China on one side and a loose alliance of the US, India and Japan on the other.

– Bertil Lintner, Swedish journalist, author and Burma expert, The Irrawaddy.