US ambiguity over Myanmar reflected in coverage – 11/02/2021 – Worldwide

About a week ago, the US government decided to label Myanmar’s military coup as a “coup”. And Facebook deleted the country’s armed forces page.

As a result, the military government shut down Facebook completely. And he shrugged his shoulders to the United States.

Last week, in the New York Times appeal, “Biden imposes sanctions on generals who staged the coup” in his first “concrete action.”

However, from the ban on the social network to threatening statements in the press, nothing was new: the current president general had already lost his Facebook profile, almost three years ago; and military leaders had already been sanctioned by Donald Trump.

Joe Biden does not publicly admit this, but his advisers, the NYT reported, “recognize that they must organize the lobbying campaign in a way that does not bring the generals further into the arms of China.”

Washington’s ambiguity is reflected in the American and Western coverage.

In the days following the coup, the same NYT was divided between questioning generals or the under house arrest civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

The other Asian giant invested in the country, Japan, already under pressure from the United States to act, followed events with the same hesitation.

Financier Nikkei reported last weekend that “Japanese factories have returned to normal” in Myanmar and that “Japan is seeking dialogue with the military after the coup.”

Today, a newspaper controlled by the same Nikkei, the Financial Times explained in an editorial that Japan, “a big investor in Myanmar, with companies like Toyota and Mitsubishi”, should not leave.

The result would be that the military government “is simply looking to invest elsewhere.”

Writing in the South China Morning Post and featured on the NYT, Kishore Mahbubani, a Singaporean analyst and former diplomat, suggests the move to Myanmar could be part of a first collaboration between Biden and Xi Jiping – who doesn’t want any confusion in the neighborhood.

Mahbubani recalls that it was the rejection and isolation of Aung San Suu Kyi by Western countries, including the press, which encouraged the generals to overthrow her.

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