YOSHIHIRO NAKANISHI. Strong Soldiers, Failed Revolution: The State and Military in Burma, 1962–88. Singapore and Kyoto: NUS Press in association with Kyoto University Press, 2013, xxi+358 p.

Abstract

Strong Soldiers, Failed Revolution: The State and Military in Burma, 1962-88 YOSHIHIRO NAKANISHI Singapore and Kyoto: NUS Press in association with Kyoto University Press, 2013, xxi+358 p.Millions of words have been written about politics in Myanmar since the collapse of General Ne Win's socialist revolution in 1988. However, works of genuine scholarship on the structure and underlying nature of Myanmar politics are as rare as snow in summer. Strong Soldiers, Failed Revolution is a welcome exception. Yoshihiro Nakanishi has made a significant addition to the meagre literature on the politics of modern Myanmar. My criticisms which follow, and there are several, in no one way detract from the fundamental contribution that this book makes in confirming how the political and administrative core structure of the post-1962 state in Myanmar, the army, was constructed and survived unto today. The stability, and continuity, of army rule in Myanmar since 1962 is, as Dr. Nakanishi makes clear, unusual and requires explanation. The central chapters of this volume provide an explanation of that stability and grounds it in detailed, empirical, and highly original research.Chapters four through seven are the most important parts of the argument of Strong Soldiers, Failed Revolution, but the earlier and later chapters are also important contributions to our understanding of modern Burmese politics, although at places one can take issue with some of the points the author advances. Chapter one provides an overview of the volume and takes the reader through some of the relevant, and sometimes irrelevant, largely American, political science literature on comparative politics. If words mean anything, some of this is just jargon, such as dictatorship democracies, which some seem to favor. However, this chapter is important in setting the scene, particularly as the author does not make the mistake of many commentators on Myanmar politics and dismiss General Ne Win's commitment to his socialist revolution. He was willing to deny his army resources for the sake of that revolution, and that sacrifice became part of its strength and the reason the army could continue to rule after the revolution had failed.The second chapter provides the historical background to the Ne Win revolution. The author's grasp of this material is rather weaker than of the more recent history, though perhaps some of the problems stem from the fact that the language he is using has been translated at least three times-from English into Japanese and back into English again. For example, colonial Burma never had a governor-general (p. 33). It was the British Government of Burma Act of 1935 which separated Burma from India in 1937, not 1936 (also p. 33), though later this author gives the dates accurately (p. 38). These are petty criticisms, though it is important to note that the so-called British divide and rule policy was an accusation made by Burmese nationalists, and perhaps a consequence of British rule. Whether it was intentional is highly debatable. Aung San did not go to London to negotiate independence with the colonial governor, Sir Hubert Rance, but with the British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee (p. 50), the Panrong agreement is presumably the Panglong agreement, though whether it is a document proposing federalism is debateable (also p. 50), and the Mujahids wanted to merge northern Arakan with East Pakistan, not form a separate Islamic state (p. 51). However, as no one will read this book for the sake of this background chapter, this criticism is by-the-by.Chapter three on how the ideology of the Burma Socialist Programme Party came to be written is informative, though the author's lack of reference to a third ideological tract, the Specific Characteristics, which was the last published as a corrective to earlier texts, is surprising, given how thorough is his research. The author's attempt to draw a distinction between ideology and philosophy, at least in terms of political practice, I find unconvincing. …