Editorial丨Myanmar earthquake tells partners apart

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While "humanitarian assistance and disaster relief" is a key part of its partnership framework with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations that the United States has vowed to strengthen, little has been forthcoming for Myanmar after the ASEAN member was hit by a magnitude 7.9 earthquake on Friday. "We're gonna be helping. We've already alerted the people, yeah, it's terrible what's happened." That was the US president's throwaway reply to a question about the US' response to the earthquake, whose epicenter was Mandalay, Myanmar's second-largest city and home to about 1.2 million people. Despite the US administration's deep cuts in its foreign assistance through the US Agency for International Development, with dozens of major military bases in the Asia-Pacific, the US is in a good position to provide emergency disaster-relief for Myanmar. Not to mention that, as State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce admitted, despite the USAID cuts, "there has been no impact on our ability to p ………………………………