Myanmar After the Coup
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Welcome to the Asia Chessboard, the podcast that examines geopolitical dynamics in Asia and takes an inside look at the making of grand strategy. I'm Andrew Schwartz at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Welcome back to the Asia Chessboard. I'm Mike Green. I'm in Sydney, joined as always by Jude Blanchett in Washington and our guest, Aaron Connolly, who's in Singapore. Aaron is diplomatic editor and senior Asia correspondent with The Economist.

He has had a long and impactful career already, CSIS, II, SS. And just before moving to The Economist, Aaron put out with Shona Leung an Adelphi series book on one of the hottest problems in Southeast Asia, titled New Answers to Old Questions, Myanmar Before and After the 2021 Coup. We're going to really dive into that.

where we are and where we're heading in that incredibly tragic and geopolitically important country of over 50 million people right at the crossroads of Asian trade and geopolitics. But first, Aaron, welcome. And we always start with how you got here. I've known you since you were, I think, a Georgetown student. But what's your secret? How does somebody get into Southeast Asia the way you did? It's not a natural track.

Most people go to university and they're quickly given opportunities on Japan, Korea, China. You did the Southeast Asia route. What happened? Yeah, well, you know, I was on the Japan route. In fact, my first internship in Washington was in the Japan chair at CSIS under Bill Breer. And I like to tell people that I was succeeded in that role by Kunihiro Koizumi. So I haven't been quite as successful as Koizumi-san has been. But I did an internship the summer after that at the U.S. Embassy in Singapore.

I just found Southeast Asia so fascinating. Japan was difficult to understand in a particular way, the factions within the LDP, but Southeast Asian politics offered just another level of opacity. I really wanted to delve into that and try and understand Southeast Asian politics. I thought it might also be important for US interests in the region. At the time, I was aspiring to have a career quite like yours, Mike, going from government to think tanks.

And I was lucky to have a supervisor at the U.S. Embassy in Singapore who pulled me aside at the end of the internship and said, you know, look, if you want to be an American working on Southeast Asia, you have to do Indonesia. You can also do Vietnam or Thailand, but Indonesia is too big, too important.

And so go to Indonesia, learn Indonesian, get to know the country, and then come back and you'll be more useful to us. And so that was my point of departure and the reasons that I pursued a Fulbright in Indonesia and went to Indonesia to take intensive language lessons. I really fell in love with the mystery of Indonesian politics. As I said, it's it's

It's more opaque even than in some of the other places in Southeast Asia, trying to understand the patronage networks that make the place work. And I just thought that that would be a fascinating way to at least start my career. When you were at CSIS earlier, shortly, I guess, after your Fulbright, you, I remember, started this group of rising Southeast Asianists.

I can't remember the name. There was the Sushi Club in Washington for rising Japan hands, the Baozhe Club for China scholars, the Korea Club. And they sort of waxed and waned. But you were the one, as I recall, who started the Southeast Asia Watchers Group. And tell me about that. That was 15 years ago, maybe, something like that? How do you look at the state of Southeast Asian studies in the U.S. and more broadly?

Yeah, you know, at the time, it really felt in Washington as though Southeast Asia was about to have a moment and that that moment might last longer than it seems to have, where there would be real focus on Southeast Asia. President Obama had grown up partly in Indonesia, and you had a focus with Kurt Campbell at State, where it felt as though the United States was going to re-engage with Southeast Asia in a big way.

And I think a number of young people working in Washington at the time were excited by this, had perhaps spent a year in Southeast Asia like I had as grad students and wanted to pursue it further. And so we formed this group to hold regular discussions on U.S. policy in Southeast Asia and on Southeast Asian politics. And I understand there's some various incarnations of that still going on. But I have to say, it feels like that moment has passed in Washington these days. The focus has really shifted.

from Southeast Asia. And we could talk about why that is, but I think one of the really big reasons is that those people who worked in that first term of the Obama administration really feel as though it wasn't energy well spent, that Southeast Asia wasn't prepared to align itself with the United States in most cases. And as a result, they would focus on other countries in the periphery of Asia forming the Quad. - And I can see what you're talking about. It is hard to get a gold star when you're a rising official in the State Department, Pentagon or Commerce.

Because Southeast Asian countries famously don't align. You don't get the quads and the trilaterals and the squad. So Filipinas would be the exception, I guess, maybe Singapore. But I also think, frankly, that the academy needed to do a better job preparing people for policy-oriented work and strategic thinking about Southeast Asia. I think Southeast Asian studies has been, as a reflection of the complexity of the region, not grounded in geopolitics and strategy.

That may be changing, by the way. As you know, SAIS has a big initiative on Indonesia. Georgetown's opening a campus in Jakarta. So fingers crossed, you know, the next Aaron Connolly could be right around the corner. Let's talk about Myanmar, about your important report. I spent time in Naypyidaw, Rangoon, about 10 years ago when we thought there was change and I was skeptical. You explain all the reasons in this report why we should have been skeptical, but also what it might do about it. But first,

Bring our audience up to date. Where are we with the Civil War? Who's winning? What are the trends? Is there any hope for peace and reconciliation or is this a stalemate? What's the state of the conflict?

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Mike. And thanks for shining a light on Myanmar. I know you've had a few other guests on to talk Myanmar in the past couple of years, but it's rare. You know, if you go back to February 2021, February 1st, 2021, a new legislature was about to be sworn in that had been elected the previous November. It was dominated by the National League for Democracy. And

The military had been raising increasingly vocal objections about the legitimacy of the election. There was a real kind of parallel to what we were seeing in the United States at the time. But in this case, the Myanmar military, which has a history of coups d'etat and also had only recently relinquished power, partly relinquished power, they staged a coup d'etat on February 1st. In the couple of days after the coup, we didn't really see very many protests.

It was only really on the Wednesday after the Monday that the coup d'etat took place that we saw people begin to come out in the streets in small numbers and then bigger numbers. And by the weekend, hundreds of thousands of people were demonstrating against the coup across Myanmar. And this was a sign something big was really happening, something along the lines of the 1988 revolution, which brought down the BSPP government, the Ne Win government that had ruled for 25 years.

As this happened, I think many in Washington and European capitals assumed that these protests would be put down quite violently. But the military hesitated and they really snowballed and turned into a movement.

We saw a great deal of discussion amongst the protesters as to what that movement should represent. And it really began to shift Myanmar politics in a more liberal direction. The military did begin to crack down in late February and early March of 2021. And by April, there was quite a bit of violence. There had been a number of massacres that had taken place against demonstrators.

And that's when a number of these demonstrators decided that nonviolent action was no longer the best way to secure the changes that they wanted to see. And they began to take up arms. A lot of times, initially, they were just using elephant guns, things that were used to scare off wildlife in the countryside. And then increasingly, they looked to ethnic armed groups that had been operating in the country's periphery for a number of decades for arms and training. And what

What began in September 2021 with the National Unity Government formed after the coup to be a kind of democratic parallel government called the People's Defensive War has really turned into initially a low intensity conflict and now a quite high intensity conflict in which you're seeing battles for cities of 100,000 take place and changing hands. And so it's really quite a violent struggle and quite a big one and one that has real big implications for geopolitics in the region and of course for the 50 million people of Myanmar. You said the coup d'etat, but

The 2008 constitution made it constitutional to have a coup d'etat, right? I mean, it was written in that the National Security Council, that the military, that the Tamadaw could assert themselves at any time. And when we had a CSIS delegation there in 2012, we saw Sun Tzu Chi and she was alive to this reality. It's why she spent so much time cultivating uniformed military leaders. But were you surprised because it was written into the constitution that this could happen legally, that the military could assert authority because of national security reasons?

You know, I was surprised. The 2008 constitution was protecting their interests. It was protecting their economic interests, their political interests. It gave them a veto over any changes to the constitution. I think it's not quite right to say that the constitution gave them the right to stage a coup d'etat. There was a legal fiction at work on February 1st, 2021, in which the new junta arrested Aung San Suu Kyi and the president.

and then declared the office of the president vacant, which allowed the first vice president, who was a military general and the runner up in the last presidential election, to succeed him in the military's fiction and to then declare a state of emergency and hand over civil power to the army.

But they never really offered a legitimate reason for arresting the president and declaring the office of the president vacant. The president's approval actually is required to do that. And so even under the 2008 Constitution, which was quite illiberal, they still had to bend the rules in order to give legal effect to the coup d'etat that they wanted to stage. A lot of people ask, why did the military stage this coup if it was actually serving their interests?

And in the book, Shona and I argue that the military expected to win elections much more frequently than it had. And after the 2020 election, which it lost in another landslide, even greater landslide than in 2015, it began to rethink that assumption and realize that under the 2008 constitution, it had given the opposition a little bit too much room and that they wanted to redesign that system to really make sure that there wouldn't be a kind of alternation in power even occasionally.

Aung San Suu Kyi really fell from her heights of international credibility over the Rohingya. And that's what most people talk about. But say a bit about how you assess her management of the military. Do you think she could have played it differently and survived in the NLD? Survived or was she structurally doomed? What's your take?

now on how she handled the Rohingya? We know she's received a lot of condemnation, but just managing this constitution and the powers of the military, did she just play it wrong? Or what do you think? It's hard to say. It's not as though she was in an easy spot with the military. But one of the myths that Shona and I try and bust in the book is this idea that the military and Aung San Suu Kyi were deeply divided over policy. Really, what they were deeply divided over was who should hold power in Myanmar.

And on the three relationships that we go into in the book, we outline just how aligned Aung San Suu Kyi and the military were on each of these relationships, whether it was the nature of democracy in Myanmar, where the military was actually quite happy with some procedural democracy, and Aung San Suu Kyi was actually much more authoritarian than the name of her party would suggest, the National League for Democracy. And then on relationships between

Bamar majority in the center of the country and ethnic minorities in the periphery of the country. They were also closely aligned, as you see on the Rohingya, but not just on the Rohingya, also on things like the Arakan armies revolt that started in 2019, in which the military committed a number of atrocities.

and where Aung San Suu Kyi was very supportive of that crackdown. Even on small things where ethnic groups wanted to be able to elect their own chief ministers if they achieved a majority in the state legislature, Aung San Suu Kyi and the military both were opposed to allowing ethnic minority parties to be able to do that. They wanted to appoint those ministers directly. So on this issue, they were also very aligned. And then

On the relationship between Myanmar and the world, the third relationship we go into in the book, this is another area where Aung San Suu Kyi and the military were more closely aligned. Aung San Suu Kyi leaned a little bit more towards China than the military had under Deng Zin, who was president from 2010 to 2015. But both of them were wary of a deep engagement with the outside world, wary of liberal international institutions.

And so it wasn't really a division over policy. It's not as though, as some argue, Aung San Suu Kyi pushed democracy too far or was pushing a liberal agenda. She really didn't do that. It was really a division over who should hold power in Myanmar. And on this, you know, it was a zero-sum equation.

I think Jude's going to really want to probe more on that geopolitical question and the role of China. But first, let me just get your quick prediction. Where does this conflict go? It seems from your report like the most likely scenario is stalemate and more violence and suffering. But are there other pathways you could see? Sounds like you're skeptical about a peaceful settlement. Could the national unity government actually win? Predictions. Aaron Connolly.

Yeah, thanks, Mike. I mean, I think those are the three basic possibilities. One is a hunt to victory, that it just slogs this out. And while analogies are treacherous, you know, you can imagine the way that Assad has slogged it out in Syria, eventually recapturing most of the country and now being increasingly accepted back into the international community. Another possibility is an opposition victory.

That probably doesn't look like the NUG, a national unity government with its PDFs, the People's Defense Forces, marching into Naypyidaw and seizing the legislative buildings. But it might look like a sort of slow rolling opposition victory in which a number of opposition groups conquer various areas. And the junta is really reduced as it was in 1949 to governing just the suburbs of Yangon. And Shona and I argue in the book that the far more likely outcome

outcome in the medium term, at least, is a kind of stalemate, where you'll continue to see pitched battles in each of the six theaters of the war that we talk about on the IISS-MIMA conflict map, where we kind of break up the conflict into pieces that are a little bit more digestible for the analyst.

But in each of those theaters, you might see at various times kind of cold peace break out between the military and some of the opposition groups, and then really intense fighting in other areas. And indeed, that's been the military's pattern over decades is to strike ceasefires as a tactical device with some groups while fighting others quite vigorously. But the junta is weakening. And we've seen this in recent months. Really, we're speaking on October 22nd. And about a year ago, on October 27th,

A coalition of opposition groups known as the Three Brotherhood Alliance started an offensive that has taken more territory off the military than at any point since the 1960s. And the junta really is on the back foot in the two areas where the Three Brotherhood Alliance is fighting.

in Rakhine State and Shan State. And that has had the effect of putting them under pressure in other areas as well, in the center of the country in particular, where those PDFs aligned with national unity government are beginning to make real progress under the tutelage of ethnic armed groups like the Kachin Independence Army that have decades of experience doing this.

And then in other areas where we see more democratic groups, ethnic armed groups, sometimes known as the K3C, the Kachin, the Kaya, and the Karen and the Chin in Southeast Myanmar and Northwest Myanmar, there's really kind of a mixed picture where they've had some successes, especially in Chin state, but they've also had some reversals, particularly in Kaya state. And so that kind of mixed picture, I think, and Shona and I argued the book is likely to persevere for a while. Some people call this a kind of Balkanization of Myanmar.

We're not sure that's the right metaphor, because a lot of these areas have been governed by ethnic armed groups for decades, and this is kind of status quo for them. It's not particularly unusual. And so to the extent that perhaps you'll see Chin state governed by a Chin government, autonomous Chin government for a number of years, that's not a huge departure from the kind of reality that existed in other places in Myanmar for a long time. And the international community needs to adjust to the likelihood that that stalemate and that

fractionalization is likely to continue. I wanted to ask you a bit about regional reaction. I want to ask you about a few individual countries, but let me first start with ASEAN, which recently had a leader summit in Laos. This has obviously been an issue front and center for ASEAN since 2021 with little apparent progress. What's your understanding of any of the discussions that happened at the summit a few weeks ago, or I guess 11 days ago?

And is it the case that there are divisions within ASEAN about how best to handle this? Or is it just we're seeing the limits of ASEAN as a regional organization and its ability to reach down into member states to drive, for example, a peace process? Yeah, sure. There's definitely divisions in ASEAN about Myanmar. But if we could take a step back and go back to 2021, I

In the immediate aftermath of the coup, I think the consensus prediction was that ASEAN wouldn't do anything about it. It had worked with junta governments in Myanmar before. It had brought junta into ASEAN in the late 90s, and it had kind of stood behind the junta despite Western pressure throughout most of the 2000s. It did take away

Myanmar's chairmanship of ASEAN in 2006 because of US and European pressure. But for the most part, it had good relations with that junta of that era. But something very different happened. I think this goes to different views about what ASEAN centrality means. But one of the really important things for Southeast Asian countries is their ability to continue to play this convening role. For instance, as you said, hosting the East Asia Summit in Laos.

And they knew that Western countries would not show up to the East Asia summit or to ASEAN plus US summits, ASEAN plus EU summits, if the junta, which was massacring people in the streets, was going to be there. And so they took the extraordinary step of saying to Menang Lai, who they had almost accepted as the leader of Myanmar by that point, that you can't attend our summits and that actually Myanmar can't block consensus decisions of ASEAN anymore.

This is really a kind of de facto suspension of a member of ASEAN. They'll never call it that. But when a leader can't attend the summits, when the foreign minister can't attend the foreign ministers meetings where a lot of the big decisions take place, where the defense minister can't attend the ADMM or the ADMM plus, those are big steps for a group like ASEAN to take, which isn't based upon shared values, but does really value and prize that convening power. It also goes to a point about U.S. policy on ASEAN.

where to the extent that the United States and other Western powers invest in engagement with ASEAN, it does give those powers influence over ASEAN's decisions, even on something as contentious as Myanmar. But maybe I could just pause there on ASEAN. I think there are a few other diplomatic tracks that are going on outside of ASEAN. There's a kind of neighbor's track

There's a China track, and then there's a Western track. And they're all kind of operating in parallel. But we can talk about those. Yeah, just a final question maybe on ASEAN then is, what role, if any, do you expect to see it play moving forward? Malaysia, I think, takes over the chairmanship next year. Indonesia had it last year, which seemed to free up a little bit of space for some creative thinking on this, if ultimately ineffectual. Do you expect or is there the prospect of...

under Malaysia's chairmanship, seeing ASEAN, even if it's not a fundamental central role, nonetheless playing a buttressing or stabilizing role if, for example, we have elections next year. So should we look to ASEAN for anything on this, I guess, is another way of asking the question. I actually think that Indonesia's initiative during its chairmanship last year was a lot more promising than people give it credit for. It's basically the format that needs to exist if a peace negotiation in the future is to be held. The problem is that we're

No party in Myanmar right now, none of the warring factions are ready to engage in peace negotiations. But this was modeled after successful Indonesian diplomacy in the 1980s around the Cambodia crisis. At the time, the Indonesians called it the Jakarta Informal Meeting, the JIM.

Everyone else called it the cocktail party, which was perhaps not the most diplomatic way to refer to a meeting in Jakarta. But, you know, that's really what it was. It was a meeting with all parties present without an agenda. And that's what the Indonesians have tried to organize and have just tried to organize again earlier this month in Jakarta, despite no longer being chair. I think the hope that has been expressed on some sides for Malaysia's chairmanship, it's

based upon the idea that Malaysia is a slightly more liberal member of ASEAN and has taken a harder line on Myanmar in the past. I think that's probably the wrong way to look at Malaysia's chairmanship. Based on what I've heard so far, it actually doesn't appear as though they're likely to be very hard on Myanmar. Part of this is because Anwar hasn't turned out to be the liberal leader that many thought he might be during his imprisonment in the 2000s and 2010s. But

I think we also generally make a mistake in assuming that ASEAN chairs will shift the group in one particular direction or another. Oftentimes, ASEAN chairs move toward the center of the block because they want to have good offices to coordinate a consensus amongst members. I would expect Malaysia to do the same. But again, I think that setup that the Indonesians pioneered last year actually is the format that needs to exist for peace negotiations in the future. And so I wouldn't set it aside entirely.

It's important, even if it's not particularly useful right now. If we could shift our gaze to the north, I wanted to talk about China. And you write in the introduction of your book that China looms large over some of the dynamics occurring in Myanmar. Maybe we could just start with a short contextual history lesson for us, especially thinking about, let's say, around 2021 to today.

Beijing's got relationships with or had relationships with lots of actors. It had decent and warming relationships under the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi. It has been sort of backing the junta since 2021, but at the same time has relationships with some of the armed groups that are on the border of China. How did China approach Myanmar just from a strategic point of view? It seemed that they weren't too bothered with

They'd work with really anyone in the country and are sort of happy to change horses as need be. But I'm curious just how have they managed this period from the coup until today? And then I had a few sort of present and future questions about Beijing's strategy here.

What's clear from Beijing's strategy over the last 20 years or so is that they will work with whoever they think is most likely to advance their interest in Myanmar. And some of their interests in Myanmar in the current conflict are in conflict with each other. And so their strategy for managing the conflict in Myanmar over the last three years has been to pursue discrete interests in Myanmar in discrete ways. And so when it comes to

protecting the China-Myanmar economic corridors, oil and gas pipelines. They've worked with ethnic armed groups and with PDFs to try and ensure that there are no attacks on the pipelines. And despite the real hostility to China that has existed after the coup, because many Myanmar people, I think, mistakenly believe that China supported the coup d'etat or authorized it or signed off on it in advance, there haven't been any attacks on Chinese infrastructure in Myanmar. And that's because they've very...

adroitly have managed to protect those interests by working with various groups in the country. At the same time, they don't want the junta to fall. And we've seen this, especially in recent weeks. Yunsun at Stimson has been very good in sort of describing what's going on between China and Myanmar. But they've worked to try and back in the junta following its really serious defeats at Lashio in particular, and along the China border last year at the hands of the Three Brotherhood Alliance.

And so those may seem to be kind of competing goals. And I've seen some analysts say this is evidence that China really doesn't know how to manage a tough conflict like Myanmar. I think it's actually the opposite. They're managing a difficult situation for them the best that they can. I would just add one last thing, and I'd be interested in your thoughts on this, Jude, given your experience from the northern side of the border. But we constantly hear in Singapore that one of their top goals is to prevent Western influence in Myanmar.

And China has been going around Southeast Asia in track two dialogues and in track one discussions and saying, you know, the United States wants a proxy war in Myanmar. And this is really extraordinary because actually the only great power that is arming ethnic groups, arming factions in Myanmar's war is China.

And so the United States really hasn't done any of this. And Shona and I argue in our book that the United States could be doing a lot more to support democratic resistance in Myanmar, but actually it's not really doing very much right now. So there's no proxy conflict, but China has succeeded in convincing much of Southeast Asia that there is. I think that speaks to their really deep-seated fears that a democratic example might emerge on their southern border. And they seek to sort of plant those fears in Southeast Asia as well.

One of the other interesting moves by China has been inviting members of the junta ministers into some of the multilateral institutions that China has either helped create or running. And I'm thinking of like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. I'm curious the rationale behind that or what the effect of that is, because on the one hand, it seems to me that

And this is the question, if this is the underlying thrust of it, it is really legitimizing the junta and I think giving more permission to them to be more aggressive in the domestic fight.

Because they're continually rewarded by Beijing, there may be other calculations as well. And part of that is just Beijing continuing to enlarge the club of nation states who are joining this architecture that it is building out to rival or parallel the West. But what is your sense of what are some of the tactical considerations as China tries to fold the junta in the middle of a civil war situation?

into some of its governing institutions. The example of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is really interesting. From the Myanmar perspective, analysts like me who focus on Myanmar and try and get information out of the junta and its foreign ministry, what we understand is that Myanmar wanted to join the SCO as an observer, as a way of indicating to ASEAN that it had other options.

that ASEAN could effectively suspend it, but it could look in different directions. And that would trigger anxieties in Singapore and elsewhere that they might sort of lose their influence with Myanmar.

Final question, Aaron, for me before turning it over to Mike is your sense of what role symbolically or substantively that Beijing can and wants to play in a peace process. China has announced that it has peace platforms for other conflicts, including Ukraine, that when you start approaching it and getting closer to it, you see it's a bit of a sham.

I don't know this area enough. I don't want to immediately project that onto this. So I'll ask you, is this a good faith effort by Beijing to try to mediate and find a joint settlement? Is this simply Beijing trying to, without doing anything, signal to the external world that yet again, we Beijing are here to try to mediate conflicts like we did between the Saudis and the Iranians, which we're trying to do in Ukraine? What is driving it? And it all sort of sizzled no sauce.

Well, you know, just go back to share with listeners what's happened over the past year. In late October last year, China greenlit an offensive against the junta by the Three Brotherhood Alliance. It was mostly concerned about scam centers that were operating on its border and targeting Chinese citizens, and in many cases, trafficking Chinese citizens to work in slave-like conditions in these scam centers.

It had become a big political issue in China. The junta hadn't done very much about it. These scam centers were in areas that were controlled by the junta's proxies known as border guard forces, basically militias that had come over and been loyal to the junta over the last 15 years. And it had been reluctant to crack down on these border guard forces. So China greenlit this offensive by the border guard forces' arch enemies, many of whom are of a shared ethnicity and fighting over sort of the same patch of territory on different sides.

And this offensive was incredibly successful, probably more successful than China expected it to be. The scam centers were cleared out. So China achieved its limited objectives in that offensive. And then it organized a peace negotiation. And so I'm not sure, you know, sham might not be the right word, but this was a peace negotiation that was designed to cement the achievement of those interests in that offensive.

Sometimes when China does represent itself to the region as being a potential broker for peace, it is a broker for peace to the extent that it serves China's interests at any given moment in time. And now China is trying to limit the Three Brotherhood Alliance's ability to go further to attack Mandalay, where it's now on the outskirts of.

But, you know, it has had some success in billing itself as a peacemaker in Myanmar. And it's done this previously as well in the Rohingya conflict, trying to sort of arbitrate an agreement between Bangladesh and Myanmar. But I think most people in this region see it for what it is. The difficult reality, though, is China...

because the West hasn't been very engaged in Myanmar since the coup, really is the most powerful actor in Myanmar today. And if you want a peace agreement in Myanmar, you do have to work with China. And so China is an inescapable part of that equation. But there's really no pressure that I can detect from Southeast Asia or from the West, at least no pressure that seems to be working to bring China into a process in which it would play a constructive role in a peace negotiation.

I want to get further into this connection between the conflict inside Myanmar's borders and the geopolitical spillover effect. And just listening to your exchange with Jude, I'm remembering that 20 years ago, a bit like North Korea, the US and China were actually able to talk about this. The Chinese brokered talks with Kim Yoon, the intel officer, intel chief under Tan Shui,

And it was an area where in strategic dialogues, the US and China actually found some common ground because of all of the spillover effects for China. And the biggest disarmament exercise the PLA and People's Armed Police have ever done was the Koukong ethnic forces that 50,000 or more that crossed into China a decade or so ago. So it seems like the conflict for China is

I don't want to overdo the analogy, but it's a bit more like the border issue for the US. And it's not an intense focus of geopolitical competition with the US that the higher priority for China seems to be protecting itself from the spillover effects, drugs, trafficking, armed insurgents, and all the rest. Is that just picking up on Jude's conversation? Is that a fair assessment? Or do you think there's a real intensity to China's geopolitical competition for control? I think that was the case. That was the case for many years.

And during the Aung San Suu Kyi period, when China enjoyed really close relations with Aung San Suu Kyi and the West enjoyed declining relations with Aung San Suu Kyi and with the NLD government, it appeared as though perhaps the interests were meeting in the middle and that that might be a constructive place for the United States and China to be. But since the coup d'etat and since the formation of national unity government as an explicitly democratic opposition to the junta, and then the

the People's Defense Forces, which are loyal to the National Unity Government. Since the coup d'etat, it really does seem as though geopolitical competition has come to dominate how China sees the conflict in Myanmar. And so we know there have been discussions at the National Security Advisor level between Jake Sullivan and Wang Yi in Beijing recently, and also in Bangkok earlier this year. As far as I'm aware, that was the first discussion between the US and China. For a long time, China has refused to discuss the situation in Myanmar with the United States at any level.

And its special envoy, Myanmar, who is doing all this very adroit diplomacy to protect its interests in the country, has refused to meet with his American opposite. And they are going around in Southeast Asia saying that their number one goal is to prevent America from establishing a democratic beachhead in Myanmar.

Myanmar. It really does seem as though this has now come to dominate how they see the situation there. Which makes the prospect of any return to the kind of dialogue we have with Beijing 15, 20 years ago in Myanmar pretty unlikely, just as it is in the Middle East and North Korea, a lot of areas, unfortunately for everyone involved. So geopolitics is the push. Is there a scenario, Aaron, where, you mentioned Syria earlier in terms of a complicated violence of a war where eventually the Fuggish regime just prevailed.

Syria prevailed because it had Russian support. And in Ukraine right now, you see North Korea, the Chinese are economically and technologically and diplomatically abetting the Russian effort, Iranian drones. As part of the larger geopolitical constellation

authoritarian revisionist powers, if you will, China, Russia, North Korea, Iran coming together. We saw it in Syria. We're seeing it in Ukraine. Could we see that in Myanmar someday where the junta is getting material support from a similar coalition and therefore the national government is getting more support from U.S. allies and partners? Or is it more complicated? Because you mentioned earlier that Beijing greenlighted an attack on the junta because of specific border issues they had.

What do you think? Is that sort of the Spanish civil war scenario for Myanmar? Is that possible? I think it's possible. It's something that should probably be avoided. Although Shona and I do argue that in our book that the United States should offer a lot more humanitarian and development assistance to democratic opposition in Myanmar, that would likely trigger some concerns on China's side. But as I said earlier, China is already engaging in a proxy conflict in Myanmar. It's just that the West hasn't joined its side of that conflict. You

It's already arming both sides of the conflict in Myanmar. Analogies are always somewhat treacherous, and the Syria analogy is maybe helpful in helping all of us understand just how bad things in Myanmar have gotten and how they could develop. As you said earlier, Mike, the geopolitics here are really important. And another analogy that we can use is the Cambodia conflict in the late 1980s. As I said earlier, you had the format set up for a good peace negotiation by the Indonesians by 1986.

But it wasn't until the geopolitics fell into place that the Cambodia conflict came to an end, as the Cold War came to an end and the Sino-Soviet split ended, and that created the conditions for a peace negotiation. So I think probably something does have to shift in the geopolitics for there to be a resolution of the conflict in Myanmar. I would just say to your point of authoritarian countries arming friends in, say, Russia, Russia has been

a really important partner of the junta that doesn't always get the attention it deserves. As we speak, there are three Russian ships as part of its Pacific fleet that are docked in Tillawah port in Yangon.

And it has been providing maintenance support to the Myanmar Air Force. So Russian personnel have been in Myanmar helping it to fly its planes. And this is really important because if you'll remember, Mike, it used to be that the Myanmar military didn't fly that many sorties against ethnic armed groups. But since the coup in 2021, it has managed to find a way to fly sorties almost every day against ethnic armed groups.

And these are bombing pagodas, temples, churches, schools, where the opposition is taking shelter or where civilians are taking shelter from the fighting. And that has all been enabled by Russia assisting Myanmar. It seems as though Myanmar has also been assisting Russia in helping it to import some goods that it can't otherwise easily get because of some of the restrictions in place since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. So that's a real partnership. But I would just say, you know, the more important partnership is not really Russia or China. It's Myanmar's neighbors.

which of course China has won. But really Thailand, India, and Bangladesh all have interests in Myanmar that they think are best served by the junta ultimately winning this fight because they think that's the best and quickest way to achieve peace in Myanmar. And so that coalition of neighbors...

which has occasionally been undermining ASEAN diplomacy on this issue, they are really important to this picture too. And India, for instance, has been offering assistance for the junta to hold an election, which would of course not be free and fair. I think hoping that that election would help to legitimize the junta and put it back on a path toward international acceptance. So it's not just the big authoritarian countries, it's also Thailand, American ally, and India emerging American partner that have played an important role in the conflict and also in legitimizing the junta.

And I'm waiting for the headline about North Korea because when Tonshui was desperate, his regime was trading food for weapons, including some pretty dangerous weapons potentially.

what, 20 years ago or so. So if the treaty allies, basically we're talking US, Japan, Australia and others, Europe, followed your recommendation in your report and began providing more significant humanitarian, economic and other assistance to the national energy government, would that put us at odds with India and Thailand and some of our other allies and partners on the front line? Or is it possible to do what you're saying and hold together a coalition diplomatically?

These would be difficult conversations. Just to sort of set the scene, a year ago, or two years ago, I can't recall the exact date, Greg Poling at CSIS wrote an analysis basically saying that the United States should arm the resistance forces. And there was a real debate about whether or not that was the right approach.

At this point, you don't need to arm the resistance forces. They have guns. They've figured that part out. They now have ammunition. There was a big shortage last year. That's not the need on the side of the resistance. The need on the side of the resistance is really cash, humanitarian assistance. Some would argue these are kind of dual use goods, right? Because if you're feeding soldiers, that's also helping the war effort.

And Thailand has sought to restrict the movement of that humanitarian assistance. And India has sought to close the border, although I think it now realizes that that's not really possible. They have a kind of free movement regime that's always existed between Chin state and Manipur that it's concerned about. So those would be difficult conversations. But ultimately, I think their interests are best served by a Myanmar that is more peaceful. We just have a disagreement, you know, the US, the West and India and Thailand over what the best way to achieve that is.

Shona and I argue in the book that while Thai military officers and the BJP in India might not share our goals for a more democratic Myanmar, they certainly share our goals for a peaceful, stable Myanmar. And the best way to achieve a peaceful, stable Myanmar, as Shona and I argue in the book, is to have a democratic, pluralistic society. Really, that's the only way to achieve a stable, democratic Myanmar.

because the war that the junta is currently fighting in Myanmar is not just against ethnic groups along the periphery of the country as it had been for many decades prior to the coup. It is also against its own people, the Burma majority in the center of the country. And that conflict is not going to end absent major political changes in Myanmar.

The predilection for US administrations and some of our friends is to look at how hard this problem is and say, thank you very much. Next question, please. Especially after the frankly false optimism from the Obama years about the NLD, which you describe in your report. But you laid out a pretty clear case that there are significant consequences for inaction, humanitarian, of course, but also geopolitical. Because if we're going to get to a place where Myanmar gets out of this

And the U.S. and our closest allies have agency and purchase on that. We've got to find ways to engage and begin putting in place some stability. And it's going to be awkward, as you point out, with India. It's going to be awkward with Thailand. My guess is the U.S.-India alignment, the Quad, can survive that.

US-Thai alliance can survive that. Time for some difficult conversations for the next administration. You've definitely started them. So thanks, Aaron. Everybody can follow Aaron covering the whole region in The Economist. Looking forward to that. Thanks so much for joining us. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Jude. It's been a real pleasure. I'm a longtime listener, so it's great to come on the podcast. For more on strategy and the Asia program's work, visit the CSIS website at csis.org and click on the Asia program page.

And for more on the U.S. Studies Center in Sydney, please visit ussc.edu.au.