Myanmar

As the military junta continues to suppress internet access across the country, the people of Myanmar are discovering new techniques of digital resistance.

A recent arrest of a U.S. journalist in Myanmar shows the junta is digging in.

The situation on the ground in Myanmar has continued to deteriorate since the military coup on February 1. Violent clashes have broken out through the country, and the Myanmar military and security forces have killed hundreds of people and jailed thousands. Despite the recent Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit, Myanmar is spiraling into becoming something like a failed state, with potentially massive humanitarian ramifications for the people of the country itself and for neighboring states in the region as well. Even before the February 1 military coup, Myanmar suffered massive humanitarian challenges. Nearly a million Rohingya had fled violence in Rakhine State, mostly heading into crowded and unsanitary conditions in Bangladesh. Other Myanmar citizens had fled into Thailand and other countries, even before the coup, because of fighting between the military and ethnic armed organizations, as well as a poor economy, hunger, and the spread of COVID-19. But Myanmar’s humanitarian crisis now has reached a desperate state. The economy has collapsed, and the banking system is on life support; the state is ceasing to function due to the rising violence and civil servants walking off the job to support the anti-junta civil disobedience movement. Cash is increasingly difficult for many people in Myanmar to obtain, and many industries and companies are near collapse. For more on the scope of Myanmar’s widening humanitarian crisis, see my new Japan Times article.

This past weekend, the ten member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), including Myanmar, held an emergency summit to address the ongoing crisis in Myanmar since the February 1 coup by the military. Since then, the death toll has risen above seven hundred, thousands of people have been arrested, and the country has disintegrated in civil conflict, with the armed forces regularly attacking civilians across Myanmar. The emergency summit produced five key points released by ASEAN. One, that the parties involved in Myanmar should immediately cease violence. Two, that the parties in Myanmar should seek a peaceful solution to the crisis via “constructive dialogue.” Three, that the ASEAN Chair will appoint a special envoy to mediate in the Myanmar crisis, and that envoy also will be assisted by the ASEAN Secretary-General. Fourth, that ASEAN will provide humanitarian assistance to the country. Finally, that the special envoy and a delegation shall travel to Myanmar to meet with all parties in the crisis. Although the results of the emergency summit are more interventionist than ASEAN usually is regarding member-states’ politics, the summit and its declaration still have huge flaws. As Frontier Myanmar noted, “the regional bloc ultimately reached a five-point consensus that Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said [junta leader] Min Aung Hlaing ‘considered helpful’, which sounds ominous.” It is true that an envoy, particularly one with significant clout, could potentially have some impact on the ground in Myanmar, and try to bring forth a cessation of violence, which certainly would be positive. But the five-point statement fails to address multiple issues. First, while a special envoy and a commitment to humanitarian assistance could pave the way for greater aid, it was already possible to provide humanitarian aid, as Myanmar specialist Kim Jolliffe has noted—the problem has been the challenges thrown up by the military and the chaos. Second, the statement does not call for the release of the many political prisoners who have been taken, which should be a precursor for steps toward resolution of the crisis, and it also, by invoking “all parties,” makes it sound like both the opposition and the military are responsible for the violence, when in reality the military is the aggressor and was the one that launched a coup. Frontier Myanmar has reported that the statement was supposed to include a call for releasing political prisoners, but that part of the document was scrapped before the statement was formalized. (And, the military reportedly continues to attack and arrest civilians, as recently as yesterday Myanmar time, so it hardly seems they are committed to stopping the violence.) Third, how does ASEAN intend to include the parallel government in talks in a way that treats both sides as equals, when the focus has primarily been on placating the junta—or to come up with some “compromise,” when the majority of the Myanmar public just wants the junta gone, and the junta violated a prior kind of civilian-military power-sharing deal? The parallel government demands a return to a democratically elected government. Finally, by allowing for what will inevitably be a fairly slow process of attempted mediation, with no clear timetable and no clear enforcement measures in place in the junta basically ignores or stalls the process, the summit statement gives more time for the situation in Myanmar to continue on. And, time often favors the aggressor, which in this case is the Myanmar military. Parts of this blog post were adapted from a series of tweets I did over the weekend on the ASEAN Summit.  

This weekend, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will hold an emergency summit in Jakarta, focused on the dire situation in Myanmar, where the country continues to spiral toward widespread civil conflict and humanitarian crisis, and the Myanmar junta shows no sign of relenting in its iron-fisted control of the country. As a recent piece by longtime Myanmar observer Bertil Lintner noted, there is little reason to believe the Myanmar army will crack from within. The summit, in theory, could allow ASEAN to play a regional mediating role, and to demonstrate that it has some ability to influence events in Myanmar, where the deteriorating situation is already turning into a regional crisis, with refugees flowing across borders, hunger rising in Myanmar, and the possibility of conflict spilling over borders. But initial signs regarding the ASEAN emergency summit do not suggest much hope for optimism that the summit will produce results that change the situation on the ground in Myanmar. The fact that junta leader Min Aung Hlaing plans to attend the summit suggests that he feels somewhat comfortable that the other ASEAN states are not going to take any harsh approach toward Myanmar; given ASEAN’s consensus style, other authoritarian states in the region area likely to block any tough approach. Meanwhile, Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, the key actor who could potentially exert some leverage on the Myanmar junta—the two are personal friends and Myanmar is heavily dependent on economic ties with Thailand—is reportedly not attending the summit, a sign that, despite Prayuth’s mild expressions of concern about the situation in Myanmar, he is planning to sit back and do little while Myanmar continues to disintegrate. Without Prayuth and other Thai leaders playing a central role with the Myanmar junta, and even being willing to twist arms a bit, there are few other external actors with a line right to the top junta leaders, except perhaps China. Other major ASEAN leaders, like Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, also seem like they are not going to attend the summit, further undermining the unity of ASEAN at the summit and making the summit ultimately less important and effective. As a result, the summit is not likely to have a major impact on the junta. ASEAN might convince the junta to allow some ASEAN observers into the country, an idea pushed by Malaysia. But beyond that, expectations cannot possibly be high for the ASEAN emergency summit.

In the days after Myanmar’s military staged a coup on Feb. 1, it likely hoped to consolidate power with minimal bloodshed. Having overthrown the elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi, the Tatmadaw, as the armed forces are known in Myanmar, set out to create a managed democracy like neighboring Thailand’s, with an electoral system that guarantees victory for military-aligned parties and their allies. The coup leader, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, probably hoped that neighboring states and possibly even the world’s leading democracies would eventually recognize Myanmar’s new government. Indeed, as protests erupted across the country in the coup’s immediate aftermath, security forces responded at first with crowd control efforts rather than the widespread use of lethal force. The junta even tried to gain the support of some of Myanmar’s ethnic armed groups, many of which had signed cease-fire agreements with Suu Kyi’s government. But over the past two months, the growing anger and resilience of the protesters have made clear that the demonstrations are not going to stop. In response, the Tatmadaw has stepped up its repression, killing at least 700 people, including dozens of children. Some 2,700 people have reportedly been arrested. While the anti-coup resistance movement remains largely peaceful, the military’s brutality has caused some demonstrators to shift tactics, trading in their slogans and placards for makeshift weapons like slingshots, air guns and even Molotov cocktails. As for the armed ethnic groups that the junta had hoped to woo, many of them have declared past cease-fires null and void because of the coup, and some are launching new offensives. There appears to be no clear endpoint or offramp to the violence, which is causing public services and other state functions to collapse in parts of the country. Much of Myanmar, particularly its ethnic minority-dominated borderlands, was already difficult to govern due to decades of civil strife. As I wrote in an article for the journal Current History in 2011, Myanmar had the potential to become a failed state even then. Ten years later, that prospect could easily become reality, even in major cities like Yangon and Mandalay. A civil war across the country also seems increasingly likely, one that could spark a massive humanitarian emergency and a new refugee crisis. If not contained, such a conflict could destabilize other parts of mainland Southeast Asia and even neighboring India and China. The Tatmadaw apparently failed to anticipate the resilience of the anti-coup protesters, the resistance of ethnic armies, or the fact that it would get little cover from other countries, save China and Russia. Yet for all its weaknesses, the Tatmadaw enjoys high levels of unity and institutional cohesion. Soldiers are indoctrinated from an early age through an intense propaganda effort, and internal incentives prevent large-scale defections. At this point, the junta is unlikely to yield to protesters’ demands that Suu Kyi’s government be reinstated; apparently, it would rather preside over a failed state than give way to a solution that allows for better governance but dilutes the military’s power. One Western diplomat told The Irrawaddy, an independent news outlet based in Thailand, that the situation resembles the civil war in Syria. Like that country’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, Min Aung Hlaing and his fellow generals are “open to destroying the country to protect themselves,” the diplomat said. There are troubling signs of escalating conflict in Myanmar’s outer-lying provinces. Two of the most powerful armed groups, the Kachin Independence Army and the Karen National Union, have attacked military outposts in recent weeks. And the Arakan Army, a hard-line Buddhist militia that is active in western Rakhine state, condemned the coup in a statement last month, adding that “the oppressed ethnic people as a whole will continue to fight for their freedom from oppression.” By some estimates, the ethnic armies have a total of 75,000 soldiers under their command—fewer than the Tatmadaw’s roughly 350,000, but still a sizable number. The volatile situation could also spark renewed fighting between rival armed groups, causing even greater chaos in the countryside. For example, the biggest ethnic army, the 30,000-strong United Wa State Army—which controls territory in the northeast and is also allegedly one of the biggest drug trafficking organizations in the world—might use the power vacuum to try and consolidate or expand the territory it controls. As some protesters in cities and towns begin to adopt more violent tactics, there is also the prospect of urban armed resistance or even guerilla warfare. Some protesters have met with members of the ethnic militias to learn their tactics. This is likely to prompt an even more heavy-handed response from the military, which recently conducted airstrikes against the Karen National Union. And in some residential areas, security forces are carrying out nighttime raids, going door-to-door to round up suspected demonstrators and subjecting them to beatings, detentions or, in some cases, summary executions. With a steady supply of weaponry and materiel from Russia and its own factories, the Tatmadaw is in no danger of running out of supplies. For now, though, neither the military nor the protesters nor the ethnic militias seem capable of gaining a major advantage. Instead, Myanmar seems poised for an increasingly bloody stalemate, though with fighting stretching across the country. The junta has largely shut down the internet, but reports of urban battles are emerging. Frontier Myanmar, one of the last remaining independent news outlets in the country, recently reported that one police officer who had apparently joined the resistance used hand grenades to kill five other members of the security forces. In another incident, a protester detonated a landmine in an apparent effort to harm a group of soldiers, who then shot at protesters in retaliation. Frontier Myanmar reported that these were just some of the multiple violent encounters that are increasingly common between security forces and protesters across the country. A prolonged period of civil unrest in Myanmar will certainly affect its neighbors. With the economy devastated, the financial system collapsing and food prices rising, an untold number of people will fall into poverty and hunger; COVID-19 is likely spreading as well. As the violence persists, refugees are going to pour across Myanmar’s borders in larger numbers, causing significant challenges for receiving states like Thailand, Bangladesh, India and parts of China. Bangladesh, in particular, already hosts hundreds of thousands of ethnic Rohingya refugees who have fled persecution. Many of these countries have no desire to take people in from Myanmar, but they will likely have little choice. If not carefully managed, new camps for refugees and displaced people could breed anger and despair, providing new recruits to trafficking organizations and armed groups. So far, the international community has responded to the situation mainly by trying to pressure Myanmar’s military leaders through economic sanctions. But these measures have apparently not had an impact thus far. Instead, the lack of foreign investment means the junta will likely turn to illicit revenue-generating activities, like narcotics and human trafficking. It remains unlikely that nearby states will intervene directly to prop up one actor or another, turning Myanmar into a proxy war like the ones that were common in mainland Southeast Asia during the Cold War. Still, if instability rises in Myanmar, regional powers may feel the need to intervene more assertively. All of this means that the situation in Myanmar could easily get much worse before it gets better.

With the situation in Myanmar disintegrating into chaos, and Myanmar possibly becoming a potential failed state, some regional powers, including the United States and Australia, have taken significant actions against the junta government. Australia has suspended military cooperation with the Myanmar military, and the Joe Biden administration has implemented a broad range of targeted sanctions against the junta and many of its businesses. Taiwan, which has significant investments in the country, has passed a parliamentary motion condemning the situation in Myanmar and calling on the junta to restore democracy. (Japan, historically reticent to take a tough approach toward Naypyidaw, has taken a more passive approach, calling on the Myanmar junta to restore democracy and having its defense head join a call rejecting the coup but so far not taking stronger moves.) But Southeast Asian states, which have some of the greatest leverage over Naypyidaw—and certainly among the most to lose if Myanmar becomes totally unstable, with refugees flowing out of the country and conflicts possibly spanning borders—have done little about the crisis. Many regional states have remained silent on the coup and the atrocities, or have expressed mild concern. Indonesia has been an important exception, with President Joko Widodo condemning the violence and pushing for an emergency Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, which seems in the works, but with no fixed date yet even as Myanmar unravels. Regional states claim they want to keep communication lines to Myanmar open, which is reasonable, but they have taken few other measures to address the crisis. As in many other crises, ASEAN remains torn, and with so many of its states now run by outright authoritarians or illiberal leaders who came to power in democratic elections, most of the region does not want to take a tough approach to the crisis. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations could suspend Myanmar, as some analysts like Elina Noor have suggested, because of the coup—the African Union has suspended countries like Mali after coups—but ASEAN is highly unlikely to take such a step, and is unwilling to abandon its principle of noninterference. If ASEAN does not suspend Myanmar, many leading democracies may decline to join meetings with ASEAN, like the East Asia Summit, where Myanmar junta representatives attend. The organization will seem powerless to affect events in its region, a further sign of ASEAN’s diminishment—even though, as others have noted, many countries outside Southeast Asia have looked to ASEAN to mediate in the crisis and help come up with solutions. There are virtually no signs the situation in Myanmar is going to improve any time soon. The junta recently refused to allow the UN special envoy for Myanmar to visit the country, the civilian death toll is spiraling, and a new criminal charge has been laid against Aung San Suu Kyi. The prospect of a national civil war, much broader than the existing conflicts in Myanmar, seems high. This is now almost surely ASEAN’s greatest crisis since the war in then-East Timor in the late 1990s and the financial crisis that rocked Southeast Asia at around the time. Since then, ASEAN has had triumphs, like building the ASEAN Economic Community. If individual ASEAN member-states, and the organization, continue to do virtually nothing as Myanmar becomes a failed state, what credibility will the organization have left?

In the initial days after the Myanmar armed forces launched a coup on February 1, deposing an elected government, the military may have hoped it would be able to pull off the putsch with minimal bloodshed. It would create a faux transition to democracy, and retain its power by eventually creating an election in which military parties and their allies would win—and then neighboring states and possibly even leading democracies would recognize that government. Indeed, in the first few days after the coup, as protest movements began to break out in the streets of many Myanmar cities and towns, the military responded with crowd control efforts, but did not immediately turn to widespread deadly force. The junta also tried to woo armed ethnic groups, many of whom had signed ceasefire agreements. But over the past two months, the resiliency and growing anger of the protest movement has made clear that the demonstrations are not going to stop. In response, the Myanmar military has stepped up its patterns of violence, shooting protestors and bystanders with live ammunition, arresting scores of people, killing children, and committing a wide range of other atrocities. In response, demonstrators, who had started by primarily yelling slogans, trying to pressure the military, and using civil disobedience to cripple the functioning of the state, have begun in some places to fight back, albeit mostly with makeshift weapons that are no match the for the military’s arms. Meanwhile, rather than aligning with the military, nearly all the armed ethnic organizations, some of which possess considerable numbers of men under arms, have united against the coup, and are beginning themselves to launch attacks against the armed forces. Two of the most powerful armed organizations, the Kachin Independence Army and the Karen National Union, have attacked military posts. The violence, and the continuing disintegration of state functioning, seems to have no clear endpoint, raising the possibility that all of Myanmar will become a failed state. For more on Myanmar’s potential disintegration into widespread civil strife, and a possible failed state, see my new World Politics Review article.

The past weekend was extremely bloody in Myanmar, where the Civil Disobedience Movement faces off against the military, and has so, for roughly two months now. On Armed Forces day last Saturday, military forces killed over one hundred people, including children, bringing the total death toll to over four hundred. Meanwhile, conflict seems to be ramping up in some ethnic minority areas, like the Kachin and Karen regions, where some of the ethnic armed organizations also have vowed to take on the junta—and this presages a potentially broader conflict in the country. The growing chaos also could spread the coronavirus, since there is massive movement of people, large street protests, and the country’s health infrastructure is mostly shut down. The violence occurred while junta leader Min Aung Hlaing hosted massive military parades in Naypyidaw, and a smattering of foreign dignitaries willing to meet with and essentially condone the regime—most notably, Russia, which sent a fairly high-ranking defense official to the Armed Forces Day gathering in Naypyidaw. Other countries including Bangladesh, China, India, Laos, Pakistan, and Thailand also sent representatives to the Armed Forces Day event in Naypyidaw, but these countries sent low-level people and have not recognized the junta government. The Russian representative met with Min Aung Hlaing and professed Russia’s close relations with Naypyidaw. As the Myanmar conflict has gained global attention from news outlets and policymakers, some policymakers have wondered why the demonstrations, and the failure of the armed forces to quickly consolidate the coup, have not led to splits in the Myanmar military. Such splits—think of the splits in the Philippine military in the 1980s that helped usher dictator Ferdinand Marcos out the door, or even splits that happened regularly in the past within the Thai military, sometimes leading coups to fail—are often the way that coup attempts falter and authoritarian regimes crumble. The New York Times and the Washington Post recently had two excellent articles showing, in part, why such a split in the is unlikely within the Myanmar military—a point understood by many Myanmar experts, but now being revealed to the world. Both the pieces show how the Myanmar military operates as a state within a state, with its own network of schools, housing, medical care and other types of social welfare, and other institutions. In addition, they show how the military inculcates officers and enlisted men with an intense amount of propaganda and almost brain-washing, while cutting them off from the rest of the country and from many sources of information. The New York Times article notes: From the moment they enter boot camp, Tatmadaw troops are taught that they are guardians of a country—and a religion—that will crumble without them … They occupy a privileged state within a state, in which soldiers live, work and socialize apart from the rest of society, imbibing an ideology that puts them far above the civilian population. The officers described being constantly monitored by their superiors, in barracks and on Facebook. A steady diet of propaganda feeds them notions of enemies at every corner, even on city streets. This approach serves to convince even rank-and-file soldiers, who still live in spartan conditions, that the military is the central institution in the country and of Buddhism in Myanmar, and one worth defending at any cost, even if that means murdering Myanmar civilians. This indoctrination—and the parallel social welfare net—also may cushion the sting of the fact that Myanmar soldiers are often treated poorly by superiors, live in the field in rudimentary conditions, and currently are often going unpaid. And at higher levels, top officers and top commanders are able to live lavishly, because the military has plundered the country to create a web of businesses in nearly every industry in Myanmar. To give in to the protestors, these top officers and commanders would risk not only punishment for their brutality but also probably would have to give up assets and these parallel business relationships. This combination of paranoid indoctrination and a web of business interests at the top of the Myanmar military suggests that it may be nearly impossible for a major split in the armed forces to occur.

After seizing power in a coup in early February, the Myanmar military has increasingly cracked down on civil society, the media, and opposition politicians. In recent weeks it has shuttered most independent media outlets, arrested many members of the National League for Democracy, and unleashed security forces on demonstrators in many parts of the country. But the Myanmar junta ultimately seems to seek to legitimize its rule, both by gaining recognition from leading regional powers and other countries around the world, and creating a supposed process that will lead to an election in the future. In this strategy of building a democratic facade, it clearly looks to the neighboring Thai armed forces as an example. For more on the links between the Thai and Myanmar militaries, and how the Myanmar army is likely to fail in its attempts, see my new World Politics Review article.

The situation on the ground in Myanmar continues to deteriorate. In the initial days after the February 1 military coup, the junta seemed somewhat reluctant to use brutal force to disperse demonstrations and curtail online and mobile communications. But in recent weeks, as the civil disobedience movement in Myanmar has grown in strength and size, and has convinced many civil servants and other workers to walk off the job, the junta has reacted with brutal fury. It has declared martial law in several parts of the country, including areas of Yangon, and has stepped up the pace of detentions, assaults, and killings of protestors and other civilians. Just this past week, some fifty people last Sunday were killed as authorities opened fire on demonstrators in Yangon and other areas, and the military also has increased Internet blackouts and other communications shutdowns in many parts of the country. (Some two hundred people have been killed since the coup, according to an estimate released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.) With communications increasingly shut down, it seems likely the military will step up arrests and killings, in areas where it is becoming increasingly difficult for people to get information out. The junta also has cracked down on independent media, forcing many outlets to close or move into exile, and further limiting coverage of potential atrocities. Some demonstrators have fought back with makeshift weapons, and some have attacked Chinese factories in the country. Foreign countries have multiple options for increasing the pressure on the Myanmar junta and supporting the civil disobedience movement—boosting targeting sanctions on military leaders and military holding companies, for instance—but they also must prepare for massive refugee outflows from Myanmar. In prior eras of protests and/or military crackdowns, like in the late 1980s, in 2007, and in 2017–18 in Rakhine State, many Myanmar nationals streamed across borders to Bangladesh, India, and Thailand, and also sought refuge further on in places like Indonesia, Malaysia, the United States, and other developed countries. Besides applying pressure, indeed, countries in the region and globally should make it easier for Myanmar nationals who manage to leave the country to get temporary asylum in other countries, and possibly permanent asylum as well. Unfortunately, some Southeast Asian neighbors appear to be taking the opposite approach: Malaysia deported some one thousand Myanmar nationals in February, despite the coup and the deteriorating security situation in Myanmar, and the Thai authorities reportedly have been pushing back Myanmar nationals fleeing the country into Thailand. Thai officials have told Reuters that they anticipate a surge of Myanmar nationals fleeing to the kingdom, and said they had set aside an area in the border region of Mae Sot for fleeing Myanmar nationals, but their history of pushing back migrants does not bode well. The Biden administration admirably has granted Temporary Protected Status to Myanmar nationals in the United States, so that they do not have to immediately return to Myanmar. But this status only affects a small number of people already in the United States—around 1,600, by some estimates, who will get eighteen months of Temporary Protected Status. The administration should consider applying pressure on Thailand not to push back Myanmar nationals and to allow the UN High Commissioner for Refugees access to people fleeing Myanmar, and pushing for an emergency conference of major powers who could provide aid for countries, like India and Thailand, receiving incoming Myanmar nationals and possibly could also agree to take in certain amounts of people fleeing Myanmar. The Biden administration also should make good on its promises to significantly raise the limit on the number of refugees admitted to the United States for the next fiscal year. This might not immediately help people fleeing Myanmar. But the State Department’s report on Biden’s plan for refugee admissions notes that the coup and instability in Myanmar likely will cause a “renewed flow of people fleeing Burma. Raising the refugee cap significantly would provide many more opportunities for Myanmar nationals who had already made it out of the country to neighboring states to come to the United States as refugees.

Hacktivist targets far-right platform Gab; China to suspend bitcoin mining in Inner Mongolia; Virginia adopts data privacy legislation; Moscow metro to adopt facial recognition payment system; and YouTube bans Myanmar military channels.

Early this month, Myanmar’s armed forces took control of the country. Moving overnight, they detained most leading politicians and many civil-society activists, barricaded roads, cut off internet access, arrested people in the darkness, and made an announcement of the coup on state television. In the weeks since, the generals have declared a curfew, blocked foreign social media platforms, put Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest, and this past weekend the authorities killed at least eighteen people on Sunday. Military dictatorships are nowhere near as common as they were during the Cold War, and leaders trying to roll back democracy today usually do so in creeping ways, by altering legal systems, voting rules and other institutions to give themselves greater power. This has been the path of illiberal bosses like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte. They have whittled away at norms and institutions to centralize their authority—and Orban and Erdogan have become outright autocrats. They had the patience to undermine democracy by slowly suffocating it. And yet coups have not only lingered; they’ve become more effective in the past decade. Egypt’s military overthrew its government in 2013, Thailand’s in 2014, Zimbabwe’s in 2017, Sudan’s and Algeria’s in 2019, and Mali’s in 2020. In some countries that seemed to have moved beyond putsches, military meddling has returned—such as in Bolivia, even if the generals didn’t complete an outright takeover in that country’s 2019 political crisis. Successful coups have increased from lows in the early 2000s to higher numbers in the 2010s. Now, in 2021, Myanmar’s military also has staged a successful coup. Although there were forty-seven coups and attempted coups in the 2010s compared with seventy-six in the 2000s, according to a database created by the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois, “coups over the last decade or so have a far higher success rate than in previous periods,” according to an analysis by Clayton Thyne and Jonathan Powell, two leading scholars. Their calculations did not include 2020 and 2021, but there have already been two takeovers in that period. For more on the persistence of coups, and their success, see my new Washington Post Outlook article.