Since the military took power in September 1988, Myanmar has been under sustained domestic and international pressure to carry out sweeping political changes which would result in the establishment of an elected civilian government. This has been the price for any substantial foreign economic co-operation and assistance. As no substantial moves have been made in that direction by the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) government, known previously as the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), Western governments, led by the United States, have seen fit progressively to increase the levels of economic sanctions applied to the country in the apparent belief that this will result in international isolation, economic collapse, and eventual fall of the regime. This strategy for creating political change in Myanmar has been strongly encouraged by the Myanmar exile community which fled the country in the late 1980s and early 1990s following the bankruptcy of the previous Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) regime. Now largely residing in the United States, Europe, and Australia, this small but vocal band of advocates for change, along with their supporters in the media of their new lands of residence, have often argued that just one more turn of the sanctions screw and the military regime in Yangon would collapse and then power and authority would quickly flow to National League for Democracy (NLD) under its secretary general, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and perhaps some of them.

This strategy, now pursued for more than a decade and a half, failed once more in 2003. Given the level of U.S. sanctions now applied, with a complete ban on trade, new investments, and all commercial transactions since the end of July 2003, and similar though slightly less draconian sanctions brought forward by the member states of the European Union, as well as a longstanding ban on assistance to Myanmar from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and Asian Development Bank (ADB), there seems little more the Western governments can do to force political change in Myanmar short of violating the civil liberties of their own citizens by barring travel by individual tourists to Myanmar.