Burma will be a test of whether the heat of world attention can burn through the shield around a country which its leaders have gone to such lengths to isolate.

The call for more sanctions from Gordon Brown and George Bush means little. Britain and the US long ago imposed what they could on arms and trade. The effect of sanctions on a regime that does not care about its people’s wellbeing, let alone their happiness, is very slim.

Yet the symbolic effect is important. It will add to the worldwide clamour provoked by the crackdown, which must give the generals pause for thought. It is to be hoped, for a start, that it will put them off any thought of harming Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the pro-democracy movement. Any attempt to repeat their forceful crushing of the 1988 protest, in which they fired into peaceful crowds, will carry a much greater cost than it did then.

More practically, the outrage may also encourage China and India to put pressure directly on the regime. They are by far in the best place to do so, as neighbours and trading partners. Even if only out of self-interest, they would have good reason to try: they want access to its gas reserves, do not want turmoil, and would greatly prefer Burma’s peaceful economic development.

The worldwide protest has arisen because, for the first time, we have been able to see what is happening, in detail. The internet and mobile phones have made it possible for images to get out – and to be relayed back to the Burmese themselves – where they would have been suppressed in the past.

That may prove to be the outside world’s most powerful tool in forcing a compromise by the generals or in provoking their overthrow. Burmese people’s growing awareness of the extraordinary development of their neighbours, not least Vietnam, and the freedom enjoyed by citizens in those countries, means that the pressure on the generals will not fade.

Brown, at the Labour Party conference, called yesterday for an immediate meeting of the United Nations Security Council to send a UN envoy to Burma and to agree on a reaction to human rights violations. The European Union was also going to look at “a whole range of sanctions that could be imposed”, the Prime Minister said. President Bush, at the UN, also announced tighter sanctions, including visa restrictions, on top of those imposed in 1997, to target key individuals of the regime for the first time.

It is hard to see how the direct effect of these would change the generals’ minds. The proposed measures can only be pinpricks. But the immediacy of the response can still send a powerful message. It will send it to China as well as Burma and, in the end, any real pressure will come from China, as a member of the UN Security Council and as Burma’s giant neighbour and customer for its gas. It has not only invested in developing those fields, but in the ports and roads to carry trade.

It not only does not want disruption to those plans, but does not want to be seen to be supporting a regime whose only response to protest is force. That also applies to India, China’s rival for Burma’s energy exports, which has tended to keep quiet when Burmese repression comes up for discussion.

This week’s uproar will do two useful things: remind the generals that the world is watching and tell Burma’s neighbours that it thinks they have a responsibility to persuade it to change.

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