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Small-Power Success. Burma is still a land of violence, compounded now by some of the inevitable parasites of Socialism: graft, bureaucratic confusion, the arrogance of petty officials. Yet by its own measurable standards and in its own context, Burma is doing well. U Nu has dropped the prewar title, "Thakin." considering that the Burmese are now masters in their house (U means roughly "Respected Sir," or "Uncle").
Burma's army, now grown to 60,000 men, appears to have the civil war in hand: the Trotskyites are through; the Communists, down to half-strength, have scattered into bands not 400 strong, and their leader. Than Tun, is in flight; 22,000 rebels in all have surrendered. U Nu's Benevolent State is so popular that enterprising Burmese salesmen name good things after it (a cool, refreshing glass of "Benevolent" milk) and Rangoon buses proclaim their "Benevolent" destination. U Nu is starting slowly to redistribute 10 million acres of land, and he is paying the landlords dusty but democratic compensation—one year's rent. Another Burmese item of note: a contract has been let for a steel rolling mill. The future looks so bright to them from Rangoon that the country's young Socialists tell Westerners they are more worried about the sagging world price of rice—Burma's principal source of revenue—than about the civil war. But in the context of a small power like Burma, U Nu's achievements can be delusive. Red China has been occupied elsewhere.
Through the 11th and 12th centuries, Burma's great empire at Pagan shone glamorously in its own context; in the 13th century, Tartary's Kublai Khan casually ordered it snuffed out. As casually as Kublai Khan, Red China's Liu Shao-chi recently marked counterrevolutionary Burma for conquest by renewed infiltration. Red China is already pulling Burma's Communist remnants back toward its border, to a "Yenan" redoubt where they can be reinforced and rearmed. Chou En-lai is pressing U Nu to sign a non-aggression pact that will help sanctify Red China's "Asia for the Asians" doc trine. Chou has invited U Nu to visit Peking, and last week U Nu accepted—without saying when he could be free.
Big Power Concern. In the Pentagon's "big picture," Burma is an area of denial, something to be kept from the Communists if possible, but far from the fundamental strategic centers of power, e.g., the Urals, Manchuria; the Pentagon does not want to get bogged down there. The State Department would like to wheedle U Nu into an anti-Communist bloc-but U Nu shies instinctively from blocs. Like India's Nehru, he believes that blocs encourage war. Last year, U Nu cut off U.S. Point Four aid in token of his "non-alignment." During the Geneva Conference, U Nu learned further grounds for caution: 12 million neighboring Vietnamese were handed over to Communism; U.S. oratory did not save them. "It is criminal, unforgivable," complained Burma's U Kyaw Nyein, "that the super-power upon whom so much depends should be the amateur . . . the Soviet Union the professional."