Quote Originally Posted by Dayuhan View Post
I can't see how they could be harnessed against the above in any sort of offensive capacity, as the subject of the offense would have to be rather far away, and they aren't folks that like to travel, or fight, outside their own domain.
I don't think it's reasonable to consider harnessing anyone in any of the nations bordering China for any purpose affecting China in a negative way. Objectively, things are such a mess in Burma it's entirely possible that resolution of any sort would result in anything other than a lessing of containment. Right now, abject failure is acting as containment. I'd dispute the idea that they need containment too. What I think they need is the sort of successes that teach them that totalitarian brutality is a strategy that only creates failure.

The sort of idea of containment of China isn't an invalid notion, they've got a really dysfunctional streak of hyper-nationalist imperialism going on in some quarters that does need containing. However they have to do that themselves, and have a higher need to do it than anyone else too. It's not something that's going to get accomplished through some ludicrous bankrupt notion of proxy warfare. One of the lessons that come from Iraq as well as other conflicts is just how pompous and silly that idea is. Containment through the use of force really only applies during armed conflict, outside of that I think a lot of containment stems from the strength of peace and success. By way of example, the maritime conflicts nationalist elements in China have been provoking have been contained by neighbor states perceptions of their own successes & the sentiment that they share a stake in keeping those. They don't perceive themselves as weak, or having nations built that are lacking in comparative value, so they are more invested with motivations to stand up to unreasonable international bullying.

Burma has a pile of internal ugly going on that none of it's neighbors like. The conflict there is growing worse, and it's more likely that things will get worse than they will get better. I'm not even so sure that the draft they just instituted won't end up training the army that will end up shooting them.