So what should pro-democracy leaders in Burma do when the army shows signs of wanting to make a deal and withdraw from direct control over the country? On the other hand, it still wants a veto over the decisions of a democratically elected government. Do you hold out for more, or do you co-operate with the generals in the hope that they can be persuaded to go further later on?
That is the dilemma Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Prize-winning leader of the National League for Democracy, faced when the military staged the first elections Burma had seen for 20 years last November. Back then, she decided to boycott the elections, but last week she actually took the leap of faith and registered the NLD as a legal political party.
She had good reason to be wary last year, because 23 generals resigned and founded the Union Solidarity and Development Party just before the elections. They wouldn't have done that unless the new party was going to "win", and in the end it got a highly implausible 80% of the votes. Moreover, the new military-designed constitution gave a quarter of the seats to serving military officers, who didn't have to run for election at all.
Aung San Suu Kyi and most other leaders of the National League for Democracy were banned from running anyway, on the grounds that most of them were in jail and she herself was under house arrest (as she had been for 15 of the past 22 years). So she decided the NLD should boycott this stage-managed "democracy", and the regime promptly banned the party on the pretext that it had failed to register for the elections.
Once again the irresistible force of the army had collided with the immovable obstacle of The Lady (as Burmese people call her), and the outcome seemed certain to be more years of deadlock. But then Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest a few days after the election, and after some months the regime began to offer more concessions.
Thein Sein, the former general who had been put in charge of the new pro-regime party, became the president of Burma last March, and soon put out feelers to see if the NLD leader could be coaxed into participating in the new political arrangements. He was seeking her help in giving his Government more legitimacy, and she realised that she could probably gain some major concessions in return.
She saw Thein Sein in private in August, and in retrospect it seems likely that they made the deal there and then. Six weeks later, a Human Rights Commission was created, and the media suddenly became much freer. In mid-October 200, political prisoners were freed (although 500 more remain in jail for the time being).
These changes were undoubtedly part of the price that the regime had agreed to pay for Aung San Suu Kyi's agreement to participate in a political system still dominated by the army. Later in October, it paid another installment, passing a law that legalised trade unions. And then it was time for Suu Kyi to fulfil her side of the bargain.
She did it last week, declaring that she would register the National League for Democracy as a political party under the new constitution. There is even talk of her running for Parliament herself in the December by-elections.
There is nothing illegitimate about making deals in politics. Deals are often the only way for honest politicians to get from where they are to where they want to be and should be. The question is whether this deal is wise - or is Aung San Suu Kyi just being taken for a ride?
When Nelson Mandela was released from prison by the last apartheid government of South Africa, he made a deal with President F.W. de Klerk on a peaceful and gradual transition to democracy, and it worked. Three and a-half years later, in 1994, South Africa held its first multiracial elections, and Mr Mandela became the country's first black president.
Similar deals in other places have ended in tears, because eventually they require powerful people to give up their power (though they are generally allowed to keep their ill-gotten wealth and given an amnesty for their crimes). But sometimes the transition to democracy works, and you cannot know in advance which it will be.
Aung San Suu Kyi has probably been told a great deal more in private about the army's ultimate intentions, but even if they have promised to give up power eventually, she cannot know if they will keep their promises. Probably the generals themselves don't know yet. But she has decided to take the risk, and her supporters just have to trust her judgement.
• Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist.
