Burma's oil-rich generals can afford to ignore Obama on Suu Kyi

President Barack Obama is trumpeting the stern criticism he gave the military generals who hold dominion over Burma, the resource-rich South Asian nation now known as Myanmar, at a meeting of Asian leaders on Sunday.

The Burmese junta is one of the most loathed regimes in the world -- a posse of paranoid, megalomaniacal cadres who kill, torture and repress their people with impunity. A throwback to the 20th century's failed Marxist revolutionary movements, the junta relies on Burma's vast resource wealth to maintain its grip on power.

And it is precisely that wealth -- which the generals capitalize on through bustling trade with China and India -- that allows them to ignore Obama's entreaties for reform.