Two weeks after the worst cyclone in fifty years to hit Asia, the ruling generals in battered Myanmar may be cracking open their door to international aid.

For two weeks — with more than 130,000 dead or missing and millions more clinging to life — the country’s ruling junta has let in only a trickle of desperately-needed relief. Which has raised the question: If a government is willing to let its own people suffer and die in disaster, should the world force in relief?

This hour, On Point: Myanmar and the world’s responsibility to protect the desperate.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Chris Johnson, correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor.

Ivo Daalder, senior fellow for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution and former director for European affairs on the National Security Council.

Roger Cohen, editor-at-large and columnist for the International Herald Tribune and author of “Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo.”

David Mathieson, Burma consultant for Human Rights Watch.

The images out of Burma — out of “Myanmar” — last week were stunning, exotic, inspiring, all over the Internet … and then they were gone.

Red-robed Buddhist monks first padded in single file, cordoned by hand-holding young civilians. Then they marched in the thousands, chanting “democracy,” surrounded by Burmese crowds. Then came beatings and barbed wire and the crackdown by Myanmar’s military regime. And empty streets, again.

What just happened here? And will the big powers that matter — China, India — do anything about it?

This hour, On Point: the monks’ revolt in Myanmar.

-Tom Ashbrook

Extra: A photo gallery of the Myanmar protests, from the AP and blogs

Guests:

Khin Ohmar, joining us from Mae Sod, Thailand, on the border with Myanmar, she is coordinator for the pro-democracy group “Asia-Pacific People’s Partnership on Burma,” and is gathering photos and reports from inside Myanmar.

Simon Montlake, correspondent in Bangkok for the Christian Science Monitor.

David Steinberg, joining us from Singapore, he is director of Asian Studies at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and author of ” Turmoil in Burma: Contested Legitimacies in Myanmar.”

Robert Templer, joining us from New York, he is Asia Program Director for the International Crisis Group.

Guests:

Simon Montlake, East Asia correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor