Indonesia has the fourth largest total population and the largest Muslim population of any nation on earth. Indonesia's transition to democracy, thus, is critically important at a time when the West's relationship with much of the Muslim world is problematic and the push for greater democracy worldwide is a U.S. priority. A major impediment to democracy in Indonesia and several other nations is a military establishment that is not financially accountable to civilian leaders and thus nearly impossible to control. This new study examines what is necessary to bring the Indonesian military...

Burma had the brightest prospects of any Southeast Asian nation after World War II. In the years since, however, it has dropped to the bottom of the world's socioeconomic ladder. The grossly misruled nationofficially known as Myanmaris in the midst of a political transition based on a new constitution and its first multiparty elections in twenty years. That transition, together with a recent change in U.S. policy, prompted this book.

Two military dictators have ruled Myanmar with an iron fist for nearly fifty years. A popular uprising in 1988 was brutally suppressed, but it forced the...