In 1994 a visionary American appeared on the Thai-Burmese border, preaching non-violence to students from Burma who more than five years before had fled a crackdown on a pro-democracy uprising and were committed to armed struggle against their country’s military rulers.

Gene Sharp, the Oxford-educated, Harvard-affiliated theoretician on peaceful resistance to repression, urged the rebels to embrace non-violent means to fight the junta. His acolyte, retired colonel Robert Helvey, a US military attaché in Rangoon in the 1980s, expounded on how to use military-style planning and strategising for peaceful dissent.