On my first visit to Burma in the early 1990s, I met an elderly man who had fought with the British in the second world war – and who rolled up his sleeve to show the scars left by a Japanese machine gun. The old man was scathing in his contempt for his country’s military government. But when I asked him if he wanted tougher sanctions against Burma, he looked alarmed: “No,” he protested, “we are far too isolated already.”