One does not need to go to Burma to know that it ranks second only to North Korea as Asia's most misgoverned country. Its blend of military oppression, paranoia, corruption and incompetence has turned what was once one of the most prosperous parts of Asia into one of its most dejected.
It has been natural for outsiders to shun it, following the appeal of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi for boycotts, travel bans and economic sanctions. Even those like Singapore, which idiotically supported its entry to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 1997, have had second thoughts, with Lee Kuan Yew describing dealing with its leaders as 'like talking to dead people'.
Once Asia's leading rice exporter, malnutrition is now widespread and credit cards do not work even in the best hotels. The street exchange rate is 180 times the official one, a gap which provides vast potential for profiteering by insiders who also gorge on the smuggling of drugs, gems and timber. Rangoon provides stunning contrasts between the pillared mansions of the generals' families and their proxies sprouting in the leafier suburbs, and the decay of overcrowded, impoverished downtown, a decay accelerated by the move of the capital to Naypyidaw, built by Senior General Than Shwe as a monument to himself.
But, having just been to this benighted country for the first time since the 1970s, thanks to the chink in the junta's visa armour opened up by the recent, largely rigged, elections, it is clear that sanctions are making things worse for most Burmese.
Suu Kyi is doubtless a brave and principled woman who has endured house arrest for most of the time since her party won the 1990 election, only to have it annulled by the military. She would almost certainly win a free and fair election today.
But support for her as a symbol of opposition to the generals does not mean support for her tactics - her refusal to allow the National League for Democracy to take part in the elections, and continued support of sanctions. There is a widespread belief among critics of the regime that her stubbornness has made Than Shwe more intransigent than ever, and that sanctions and her links to Burmese exiles reinforce the generals' anti-Western sentiments.