"Robert H Taylor is a consultant on Myanmar and Southeast Asian Affairs and recently was a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. He has taught in the US, UK, and Australia and has written and edited several books and articles on Burma?s politics and history. He spoke with The Irrawaddy about Burma under military rule and the government?s road map proposal for the country?s future. Question: Why are many Burmese and foreign observers and diplomats skeptical about the seven-point road map plan? Answer: Well, it?s a question of whether you see the cup half full or half empty. And whether your interim goal is immediate full democratization and the withdrawal of the Army from politics or some sort of transitional, interim step. If you take the view of the US State Department and people of that ilk that the Army has to give up power instantly and hand it over to the NLD, that?s definitely not going to happen. If you take the view that the compromise deal which allowed a greater degree of political space in Myanmar [Burma] society, the development of political institutions in conjunction with the Army, that the Army has a role for a while in the management of the state, perhaps in conjunction with groups in civil society and ceasefire groups and political parties, then you can see it as an optimistic possibility. I?ve always taken the view that things don?t leap overnight from black to white. There?s a lot of processes in the middle, provisional steps, evolutionary processes and go forward in that way..."