A stable US-China relationship is not a bad thing. No one in Southeast Asia wants war between the two great powers. But “constructive strategic stability” built on the abandonment of smaller nations is not realism – it is US strategic retreat. In Myanmar, leaving the resistance to great-power bargaining would reduce its people to the condition described by an old Burmese proverb: “the cow survives only if the tiger shows mercy.” The Trump-Xi language of strategic stability may sound calm in Beijing and Washington. In Myanmar, it raises a harder question: If great powers agree not to cross each other’s red lines, who will protect the people trapped inside them? submitted by /u/Good-Emu-1808 [link] [comments]