Word: paranoid
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...been particularly strained after March's bloody demonstrations in Tibet and the chaotic protests that dogged the Olympic Torch relay. But the quake, coming just 10 days after Cyclone Nargis ripped into Burma, has cast the Chinese government in a different light. By blocking foreign aid, Burma's paranoid military junta demonstrated just how impotent and callous to the suffering of its citizens a repressive autocracy can be. But even Beijing's critics expressed admiration for China's swift response to the quake. Some 120,000 soldiers and paramilitary troops were deployed along with thousands of vehicles and aircraft...
...square miles of land carved out of scrubland on the orders of the ruling junta. Naypyidaw doesn't even exist in the Lonely Planet's latest Burma travel guide; there's not much tourist charm in a dusty bunker town that is little more than the wish fulfillment of paranoid generals...
...Before Nargis struck Burma, also known as Myanmar, no one outside the paranoid clique of Burmese generals imagined that foreign agents would be attacking anytime soon. But as the junta blocked foreign aid for cyclone victims and provided little relief of its own, some outside Burma considered a radical solution: a unilateral intervention to save Burma's beleaguered citizens. "I want to register my deep concern and immense frustration at the unacceptably slow response to this grave humanitarian crisis," said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner referred to the U.N.'s "responsibility to protect...
...planes landing in Rangoon failed to quell the frustration. The U.S.'s top commander in the Pacific offered to "put Burmese officials on our planes and ships" if they allowed U.S. forces to bring relief supplies into the country. But there's little chance a regime this insular and paranoid will let that happen. The trouble is, the Burmese lack the kinds of assets needed to deal with a calamity of this scale--and the longer Burma resists offers of help, the more likely it is that the disaster will degenerate beyond anyone's control. "A lot is at stake...
...1980s the U.S. had another paranoid, apoplectic fit about a rising Asian power. Twenty years ago, the bad guy wasn't China but an ascendant Japan, which was out to destroy the U.S. with its unfairly well built sedans, VCRs and microchips. The ballooning trade deficit with Japan was the hot-button political issue of the day, just as the yawning deficit with China is today. Japan was using "unfair" trade practices to disadvantage U.S. industry, many Americans believed. The Japanese were "manipulating" their currency, the yen, to make their exports extra cheap in the U.S. market, in the same...