KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Conversations about Myanmar these days tend to unfold predictably. They begin with agreement that the country’s military junta is a vile institution — illegitimate, hated by virtually the entire population, and responsible for widespread suffering and heinous crimes including genocide.
Then the conversation turns to the military balance of power. There is more disagreement here, but most acknowledge that Myanmar’s military is at its weakest point in decades and unlikely to ever consolidate control of the country. Things get murkier as the focus turns to the diverse resistance movement and whether it offers a pathway to stability or more chaos. The complexity of the resistance movement can indeed be overwhelming, especially for those new to Myanmar, which includes almost anyone not native to the country. At this point in the conversation, a sense of fatalism and intractability starts to set in.
The complexity of the resistance movement can indeed be overwhelming, especially for those new to Myanmar ... Complexity, however, is not the problem.
Complexity, however, is not the problem. The fatalism stems from too many policymakers and analysts conflating complexity with intractability. Pairing the two leads to myopic decision-making and ineffective interventions. Even at their best these interventions often center around organizing elite dialogues or pushing cease-fires or power-sharing agreements that in the end only sustain the violence. In the worst cases, they involve weapons sales, military training and lending the junta political legitimacy that prolong its war against the people.
The irony in Myanmar is that the resistance movement, not the junta, offers the most credible path to stability, and the junta is unlikely to survive unless the international community keeps propping it up.
The conflict in Myanmar is not, in fact, intractable. The international community can contribute to achieving sustainable peace by supporting the movement that represents the will of the people.
Analysts and policymakers often despair about the complexity of the conflict in Myanmar. The dozens of armed and political groups with their disparate interests and overlapping relationships (not to mention the acronyms) can indeed seem overwhelming, especially when tied to fatalistic perspectives of Myanmar. Two such narratives are that the country is irreconcilably ethnically fractious and, looking to history as precedent, will always be dominated by the Myanmar military. Neither is true.
The conclusion, then, is often that the conflict is intractable, which is to say unsolvable. Once that label is affixed to a conflict — particularly an internal one in a country of limited geopolitical consequence — policymakers tend to revert to short-term and low-risk interventions that ignore the conflict’s underlying drivers. This is the vicious cycle that has led to repeated failures in Myanmar – now the country with the longest-running violent conflict in the world.
In Myanmar, short-term and low-risk interventions typically involve elite dialogues with armed leaders, special envoys, or eminent persons. Such dialogues often exclude legitimate representatives of the public like the opposition National Unity Government (NUG) or ethnic resistance organizations because they are seen as either too weak to end the fighting, or because they are labeled non-state actors, rebels, or insurgents — the types of groups that risk-averse internationals prefer to avoid. In some cases, these myopic interventions involve arming or otherwise propping up the Myanmar military under the misguided perception that this support offers a path to stability or at least avoids complete chaos. Such simplistic options are not only morally bankrupt but they will not end Myanmar’s 75 years of war.
The pernicious effects of these approaches are often obscure to their proponents given the difficulty of attributing a specific impact to any particular action. That, no doubt, is one reason they persist. Another is the ruling generals’ skill at manipulating this approach to their advantage, leveraging international norms (i.e., favoring state actors) and processes to achieve their objective, which is to survive by weakening public support for resistance through control, atrocity, and displacement.
The military rulers do this in two principal ways. First, they seek dialogues that shift power to them in a way that democratic processes do not, and because they experience virtually no costs for reneging on their agreements — the Five Point Consensus is one example among many. This is particularly the case in dialogues involving internationals who identify the Myanmar armed forces as a state actor and its adversaries (ethnic armed organizations during the pre-coup period, and the NUG and ethnic resistance organizations in the post-coup period) as non-state actors. Relying on these labels, internationals tend to lean strongly toward the military, which is especially perverse given that Myanmar army is an illegal occupying force without a shred of public legitimacy. Many ethnic armed groups and the NUG, by contrast, have broad public support, some having been popularly elected.
Although cease-fires are regularly celebrated by the international community, they often just signal that atrocities will pause in one part of the country and escalate in another.
Second, they treat cease-fire negotiations as a war strategy, enabling them to reduce the number of fronts on which they have to fight. Although cease-fires are regularly celebrated by the international community, they often just signal that atrocities will pause in one part of the country and escalate in another.
The good news is that the conflict in Myanmar is not intractable. The international community can contribute to achieving sustainable peace if it abandons its fatalistic narratives and engages with Myanmar’s complex landscape. That will require acknowledging six key premises supported by USIP research that includes public opinion polls, interviews with military deserters, focus groups with resistance-aligned educators and health providers, and analysis of internal military documents, among other sources. Links to this work appear below:
Even ignoring the normative and legal concerns about engaging a genocidal dictatorship, stability will not be achieved through talks with the Myanmar military unless they are led by stakeholders who are legitimate in the eyes of the public and yield an outcome in which the military is no longer in power.
The junta is unwilling to accept these conditions (for now) in part because the international community gives it a false sense of hope by engaging, arming, and legitimizing it. Furthermore, the Myanmar military is no longer the center of power in Myanmar – despite many who still treat it that way. Even if the military had the political will to stabilize the country, it lacks the control or manpower to consolidate power.
Even if the military had the political will to stabilize the country, it lacks the control or manpower to consolidate power.
The most powerful stakeholder is the Myanmar public, and its interests must guide international engagement in Myanmar. This is not a sentimental perspective. It is a pragmatic one. The people of Myanmar have shown no sign that they can be pacified. They are resilient and have demonstrated an abiding commitment to resist the military — continuing to fund and feed the resistance, protest dictatorship and support one another. Myopic international efforts like those outlined above, which ignore the will of the people, are bound to fail.
The public’s interests are diverse and infinitely complex, but they are neither incomprehensible nor unreasonable. We should not let the complexity of the multifaceted resistance movement push us to fatalistic modes of engagement that yield outcomes that no one other than the junta wants.
In an uncommon convergence, the normative and strategic considerations align in Myanmar. It is ethical and effective to support the pro-democracy movement and stop propping up the junta. Nonetheless, many in the international community continue to engage and support the corrupt, illegal and crumbling military dictatorship because they mistakenly equate complexity with intractability.