Asia Regional Consultation on Social Cohesion and Conflict Prevention, March 16-17, 2000; Manila. David I. Steinberg, Georgetown University. Table of Contents: I Introduction: The Contextuality of Social Cleavages. II Cohesion and National Unity: Cleavages, Tensions, and Confrontations: 1. Nationalism and Ethnicity: The Unity of the Union of Burma/Myanmar; 2. The Military-Civil Nexus; 3. Globalization and Nationalism; 4. Centralism and Pluralism; 5. On Orthodoxy; 6. Religious Tension; 7. Geo-Political Issues. III State-Sponsored Attempts at Cohesion: 1. Nationalism; 2. Burman Control; 3. Buddhism; 4. Socialism; 5. The Military. IV The Tatmadaw: Cohesion and Division? V Past Approaches to, and Perceptions of, the Myanmar Miasma. VI Possibilities for Change. VII Lessons Learned. VIII Possibilities for Future Action. IX Coda. Appendices. "Myanmar is an ?imagined community? - state that is not yet a cohesive nation, an entity created sequentially through three 19th century wars evolving out of colonial economic and geo-political interests. The internal bonds that seemed to cement that country before independence in 1948 were based on the exercise of colonial power, serving both to force an artificial internal cohesion while simultaneously creating detached and separate ethnic groups, some of which were governed under a different British administration. Governments since independence in 1948 have, sometimes unintentionally, exacerbated existing cleavages and created new ones, thus reducing national cohesiveness even as it was titularly strengthened under a unitary state and creating divisive forces that will be difficult to re-meld. The rhetoric of national cohesion must be analytically examined in the light of the reality of its attempted enforcement..."