1 Burma’s four decades of struggle within Nick Cheesman Australian National University Original version of a chapter translated as “Las cuatro décadas de lucha interna en Birmania” for Pedro Iacobelli and Robert Cribb, editors, Asia and the Pacific During the Years of the Cold War Forthcoming [Textbook, in Spanish] April 2016 Viewed from the outside, Burma had a minor part in the Cold War. Dogged neutralism in the 1950s and xenophobic isolationism from the 1960s kept the country out of the proxy wars that buffeted mainland Indochina and Malaya, and archipelagic Southeast Asia. Nevertheless, the politics of the Cold War significantly affected Burma, contributing to four decades of struggles within. Calls for the emancipation and solidarity of the oppressed worldwide, coupled with postcolonial nationalism across Asia inspired the Burmese. Their struggles from independence in 1948 to the collapse of military-established one-party government in 1988 were throughout directed inwards but referred outwards. Burma’s struggles within took two general forms: political and social unrest in the cities, and revolutionary and secessionist civil war fought from the countryside. Early