United States Institute of Peace

The traditional sources of institutional loyalty rest on the social status and the financial privileges enjoyed by soldiers. Senior officers can amass wealth from areas they control through corruption, exploitation and extraction. Their loyalty is further reinforced through a nationalist, religious and ethnicity-based ideology.

That said, loyalty within the Myanmar military today is highly degraded. Its ideological roots are rotting; its patronage networks are undergoing an uncertain transformation; the economic benefits for officers are increasingly centralized and difficult to access; and military service has become a liability rather than a source of social respect.

As a result, the generals are turning more to coercion to maintain allegiance to the regime. Officers — shuffled through assignments to prevent any dissident factions from forming — risk draconian punishment for any signs of disloyalty.

But the junta’s attempts to maintain internal cohesion are undermining its combat effectiveness. Battlefield losses, rather than internal subversion, may now pose a more significant threat to the institution.

In recent months, the military has seen officers surrender to resistance forces rather than fight, and has sustained desertion and defection, impelled in part by the promise of support from anti-regime elements. While the pace of those moves has picked up, the resistance has inadequate resources to spur broad demobilization of the junta’s mid-level and senior officers.

Still, the State Administration Council (SAC), as the military regime calls itself, remains in place — a “state within a state” as it moves toward an increasingly dim future.

An Army That Wields Power Over the Public

The Myanmar military has long maintained a privileged status in politics and the economy through its monopoly over violence and ubiquitous apparatus of control over the public. It has consistently suppressed political rivals, internal resistance and public uprisings through coercion. The junta conducted an illegal military coup because of its faith that brutality would prevail if it came to that.

The Myanmar military is not a professional army. It is a militarized and autocratic state within a state. It was designed by General Ne Win, Burma’s dictator from 1962 to 1988, as a feudal system. This structure largely remains in place. Regional commanders are granted dominion over certain areas, but ultimate power lies with the commander-in-chief. No individual within the system can challenge his authority. Despite calls from military supporters for him to do so, Soe Win, the deputy commander-in-chief, is not capable of threatening the position of the military’s top figure, Min Aung Hlaing.

To sustain its power over the public and feed its patronage network, military leaders built the institution into a self-sufficient and tightly inter-connected state within a state that leverages resources extracted from its ill-gotten power to further entrench its position. It operates in virtually every segment of the economy to ensure it can survive independent of the world around it. Even if the public starves, the military will eat.

A Fraying Institutional Ideology

To justify its conduct, the Myanmar military declared itself guardian of the state, identifying its core missions as national unity, national sovereignty and preventing disintegration of the nation. It also claims the mantel of protector of the Bamar ethnic group and of Buddhism.

Many officers no longer believe these “causes” are the institution’s guiding purpose. Their rationale has been deeply undermined by the military’s 2021 coup. National unity may be at an all-time high, but it is in opposition to the military. The purported protector of the Bamar people has burned 101,463 civilian homes and committed horrendous atrocities — mostly in the Bamar-dominated Anyar region. Its claim to protect Buddhism remains somewhat viable given the rise of crony monks, but it is diminished after airstrikes on monasteries, the killing of a senior monk and growing discontent among Buddhist monks and nuns.

Although motivational force of ideology and mission has degraded significantly, it is only moderately important to the SAC’s institutional viability. More critical is its structure and patronage networks.

A New Patronage System

Many soldiers join the Myanmar military to attain social status and economic security, not to fight. Historically, the military has been one of the few institutions that allows Burmese to accomplish both goals.

These privileges are no longer accessible through participation in the military.

Some within the armed forces are still able to use their status to circumvent government bureaucracies and to protect families from instability. They can help people in their network avoid forced conscription or access increasingly scarce basic commodities. But affiliation with the SAC or the Myanmar military now places individuals at risk of shaming, alienation, and physical attacks. Relatedly, economic privileges are fewer as the military attempts to extract from a rapidly shrinking economic pie and the size of the officer corps swells.

In an attempt to centralize power further, Min Aun Hlaing has begun to restructure the patronage networks that dictate these economic benefits. Under the network constructed by Ne Win and sustained by Than Shwe, the military dictator who ruled the country from 1992 until 2010, local commanders built wealth through business activities in areas under their command. This included extractive industries, land expropriation or criminal enterprises in which negative externalities were dumped on local populations (arguably the most ubiquitous driver of public hatred for the Myanmar military before the coup). Appointment as a senior commander was tacit permission to undertake corrupt and monopolistic business activities.

Min Aung Hlaing is now restructuring this system, attempting to centralize patronage networks around himself and his family. In a bold effort to achieve this goal, he has arrested at least 15 senior commanders, including two lieutenant generals, for “crimes” related to their business operations, signaling that he will not permit any business activity that he does not personally approve. Purging senior commanders under the pretext of corruption is not new, but the scale, unpredictability and extreme punitive measures, including imprisonment and asset seizure, is unprecedented. This has created widespread frustration and insecurity among senior commanders and may undermine internal loyalty.

A bloated officer corps has also diluted the benefits of military service. These privileges are typically enjoyed once an officer reaches the rank of major. Beneath that level, soldiers and their families live comparatively modest lives in service of their superiors. Recent changes in promotion policy, aimed at broadening loyalty among mid-level officers, now distribute those benefits across a wider pool of recipients. Whereas majors previously oversaw 100 to 150 soldiers, most now command fewer than 50. As with senior commanders who face a more demanding and punitive Nay Pyi Daw, mid-level officers are seeing benefits of military service diminish. This approach could achieve Min Aung Hlaing’s goal of centralizing authority, or it could become a source of instability.

Variance of Institutional Loyalty

As the economic, social and ideological motivations for remaining in the military have frayed, morale and institutional loyalty have followed suit, although these trends vary considerably across the “three layers” of the Myanmar military.

1. Rank and file soldiers are significantly demoralized. Many are isolated in rural encampments, encircled by resistance forces and lack adequate rations or basic supplies. They are largely unwilling to sacrifice for Min Aung Hlaing or the junta regime — and certainly did not join the military to commit atrocities against fellow Bamar Buddhists. This has led to a high rate of defection, desertion and surrender on the frontline and has deeply affected the junta’s fighting ability.
2. Mid-Level officers were highly loyal and demonstrated moderate levels of morale before Operation 1027, when the resistance began to capture large swaths of territory. Losses since Operation 1027 prompted arrests of numerous Light Infantry Division, Regional Operations Command and Military Operations Command commanders; it motivated the surrender, often with minimal resistance, of numerous battalions; and it led to the fall of Lashio city and the Northeast Regional Command — the first such loss in the military’s history.
   
   These dynamics sent a shockwave through this layer of the military. Yet few acts of overt disloyalty have emerged. It is exceedingly difficult and costly for commanders to act on their frustration. Commanders fear punishment by the resistance if they desert and retribution against their families by the junta. To prevent disloyalty at this level, Min Aung Hlaing has rotated, removed or arrested dozens of experienced commanders and replaced them with others untested in combat. These changes have weakened fighting effectiveness of the Sit-Tat, as the military is known, but limited disloyalty. Ultimately, acts of disloyalty within this layer are necessary to spur broader institutional collapse.
3. Senior leaders, most of whom are based in Nay Pyi Daw, maintained a sense of security until the fall of Lashio and initiation of resistance operations into Mandalay. The fall of Lashio has enflamed internal frustration. As with the mid-level officers, Min Aung Hlaing has attempted to maintain internal loyalty by rotating, arresting or removing senior leaders, shuffling over 100 senior officers and removing or arresting 50 senior officers since the coup. If Pyin Oo Lwin or other major symbolic locations fall to the resistance, this could grow to unsustainable levels.

Rising and Future Acts of Disloyalty

To date, we have witnessed unprecedented levels of defection (a conservative estimate is 5,800), desertion (a conservative estimate is 15,000) and surrender without a fight. But such acts will have to become more common among commanders and senior leaders before the Myanmar military will be unable to sustain its war against the Myanmar public.

Two of the most impactful forms of disloyalty — defection and desertion — require alignment of motivation and opportunity. The factors affecting the decision to defect or desert vary by an individual soldiers’ risk tolerance, but often include a combination of the following:

• The perception that the resistance could capture or kill them in battle (local threat) or that the SAC will not “win” (national threat)
• Moral outrage toward SAC and/or loss of ideological alignment
• The economic and social status benefits no longer outweigh costs
• The ability to safely communicate with resistance forces
• The ability to safely move to resistance-held territory
• The perception that they would be accepted by resistance actors and the public in any area of relocation
• The presence of acceptable living conditions in resistance-held areas

These conditions are not yet in place for commander-level defection or desertion.

With respect to the resistance, considerable resources are expended on hosting defectors, deserters and POWs, but their numbers are growing and resources to assist them are shrinking. There are no international efforts that provide direct assistance to defectors, deserters and POWs to help them meet their material needs. This is a significant constraint.

In addition to economic, social and ideological “carrots,” SAC has powerful “sticks” to maintain itself. Three of the most powerful are: (1) regular and unpredictable personnel rotation between posts; (2) holding the families of front-line soldiers hostage in barracks, punishing families for defections, and issuing salaries to the families rather than those front-line soldiers; and (3) sophisticated surveillance of soldiers coupled with extreme punishment for attempting to desert or defect.

Institutional Resilience

Institutional collapse of the Myanmar military is unlikely in the near-term. Nonetheless, the regime is highly fragile and will continue to lose ground militarily against an increasingly emboldened and effective resistance movement. Eventually, military losses will change the calculus of key commanders, precipitating a collapse or major transformation of the junta. It is difficult to predict when it will occur, but once the ideological, social, and economic benefits for soldiers disappear, and the threat of dying or being maimed on the battlefield becomes more likely, they may be left with no choice but to act.