mercredi, avril 04, 2007 Sticks and stones: but what does it all mean? Myanmar and Singapore construction trade negotiation This is horribly geeky of me (yes rie, you may gloat but you may not SAY anything...) but I am rather excited about Myanmar's offer to sell granite, granite chips and sand to Singapore. The political implications of what a long-standing trade deal between both our countries could do for the peculiar polity of ASEAN are rather far-reaching. I don't mean to say that everything's going to change overnight - ASSC is already over 60 years of age, and still under house arrest, and the country's been in a state of international dishonour for yonks. (If she dies under house arrest - and I think she will - it might just anger enough people in D.C. to organise a smackdown, a là Iraq and Afghanistan.) And just last year, the 1997-minted ASEAN member caused a furor when it was slated to chair the ASEAN ministerial meeting. But but but! Selling Stuff to Singapore (check out the amazing alliteration) might open the way for Singapore to be an effective middleman between Naypyidaw and the rest of the world. To me, the dichtomy between political ideologies (almost always invariably set up by the west) is one which takes no prisoners - sort of like the way Cuba, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are viewed: it's our way, or the highway. Can Singapore function as polemic to the Western view of Myanmar/Burma? "Stand in the gap", so to speak, between the West and the East? Libellés : current affairs, issues [Sticks and stones: but what does it all mean? Myanmar and Singapore construction trade negotiation] |
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