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U Thant exaggerates when he says not a single American dollar has been spent on military assistance to Burma. In 1958, under a subtly termed 40-year, 3.5% loan, Washington agreed to sell Burma $8.8 million worth of equipment, ranging from Jeeps to patrol boats. Burma is potentially so rich a land that Ne Win has managed to increase foreign-exchange reserves from $170 million in 1962 to $240 million last year, largely because Burma is the world's largest exporter of rice.
Nevertheless, Ne Win's "instant socialism" is an unholy economic mess. He has nationalized everything from banks (including two Red Chinese ones) to tiny shops selling betel nuts and needles. Since the dispossessed shopkeepers were mostly Indians and Overseas Chinese, the Burmese people took the crackdown philosophically, but suffer because the new government-owned shops are so inefficiently run. Yet even as they queue up for onions and chili peppers in the drab city of Rangoon, which is filled with patched-up pagodas and sidewalks broken by the roots of banyan trees, the Burmese say, "Let's hope nothing happens to Ne Win."
Still, that public loyalty reflects Burma's earlier experience with parliamentary democracy, which was even more bungling and far more corrupt than the present government-by-army-officers.
Diplomats in Rangoon concede that, compared to the rest of Southeast Asia —with the notable exception of sturdy and prosperous little Thailand—Burma is not too badly off. In other words, it has just managed to avoid disaster. But that still leaves it far from being a pilot plant for Western policy in Asia.