For the past year, intelligence agencies in the U.S. and Asia have been watching as equipment and machines capable of being used to build nuclear weapons have been flowing into Burma, raising the specter that the isolated and secretive Southeast Asian nation may become the world’s second rogue nuclear power.

Because of the nature of Burma’s paranoid and repressive ruling military junta, there is tremendous fear that, if it acquires a nuclear capability, it will set off an arms race that could change the political dynamics of Southeast Asia.