Myanmar

Over the weekend, and into Monday Myanmar time, the situation in the country continues to disintegrate. Although the civil disobedience movement continues to show its strength, with large demonstrations over the weekend and on Monday, the armed forces have begun to crack down with deadly force in Mandalay and other parts of the country; police killed two protestors in Mandalay on Saturday, and injured at least twenty others. This decision almost surely presages a coming crackdown with deadly force in Yangon. There, in the largest city, the protests have been massive, and the junta may have been wary of confronting such large groups, and especially in a place that is also the home of most embassies, reporters, and other foreigners working in Myanmar. But in other places, like Mandalay and other parts of the country, where there is less media coverage and few if any foreign observers, the authorities are already shooting at protestors. This escalation has not, so far, deterred demonstrators; there were large turnouts, in the thousands of people on Sunday and Monday Myanmar time. The situation is particularly ominous, however, for several reasons. One, as the independent analyst David Scot Mathieson notes in a detailed piece on the Tatmadaw, the Myanmar military has consistently shown both high levels of brutality and an ability to keep itself from splintering, even in the face of protests and other pressures that have forced militaries in other countries to splinter. “The Tatmadaw has been remarkably successful at ensuring institutional cohesion,” he notes. Second, the Myanmar armed forces appear to be deploying military units that already have become notorious for brutality and crimes in other parts of the country, like the 33rd Light Infantry that operated in Rakhine State, to major cities such as Mandalay. This is a sign that the Tatmadaw leadership may be preparing for much greater violence, and it has parallels with crackdowns after prior coups in Myanmar like the one in 1988, when military units were unleashed in major cities, after being fed vitriolic propaganda about the protestors whom they then killed in large numbers. Arrests are rising as well—nearly six hundred people have been arrested or charged or sentenced in recent weeks, according to the Financial Times. Third, as veteran Myanmar analyst Bertil Lintner notes, this coup appears to have been long prepared, given that the junta government has put together such a large cabinet and advisory council, which probably was planned well in advance of the actual putsch. Such planning and coordination suggest an armed forces leadership prepared to dig in for the long run. On Monday, Myanmar protestors staged probably the largest demonstrations since the coup, in the face of junta warnings that the protests could be met with significant force. The civil disobedience movement, and much of the country is essentially shut down. Some Southeast Asian states have even slowly begun to respond, with Indonesia calling on other Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) states to develop a plan to push the junta to hold elections. For now, however, the prospect of a severe crackdown remains.

The coup in Myanmar in early February, the country’s first in more than three decades, has reshaped Myanmar’s political landscape. The country had been on a shaky path toward some kind of democracy, following the 2015 election landslide for Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), and its repeat victory in the November 2020 national elections. Now, the coup has taken Myanmar back to some of its darkest days. Military units block roads, NLD members, civil society leaders and other activists have been jailed, multiple types of communications have been cut off, and Suu Kyi is back under house arrest on typically bizarre charges—this time, of having illegally imported walkie-talkies. In the past, when Suu Kyi was held under house arrest, she was often detained on similarly bizarre and spurious charges. The junta leader and now head of government, Min Aung Hlaing, has announced martial law in portions of the country, a curfew from 8:00 p.m. until 4:00 a.m., and a ban on gatherings of more than five people and on processions of cars or motorcycles—a response to days of pro-democracy demonstrations that have been building in Myanmar’s towns and cities following the coup. Although protests have been springing up across the country, the military has issued ominous warnings about how it might respond to them and called for an end to protests. Moreover, the armed forces’ takeover will likely do further damage to the country’s already suffering economy. Junta rule will discourage any new foreign investment, and leading multinationals that already invested in Myanmar may reconsider, fearing for their corporate reputations. Already, for instance, Japanese giant Kirin has ended its deal with a leading Myanmar conglomerate linked to the military, after the coup. Other investors also are pulling out. The armed forces will not shy away from enforcing these rules with brutal force. Already, the military stands accused of perpetrating crimes against humanity and genocide in recent years in the western Myanmar state of Rakhine. During prior eras of junta rule—Myanmar was essentially run by the military from 1962 until the early 2010s—the army beat and murdered protestors who demonstrated in 1988, in 2007, and on multiple other occasions. In 2007, the military even brutalized protesters led by monks, normally revered in Myanmar society. Besides impacting foreign investment in Myanmar, and setting back Myanmar’s political progress, the coup also will have regional implications. While the United States, Canada and the European Union are likely to impose some penalties on the junta for its coup, Southeast Asian states, Japan, China and India will probably do nothing in response, other than issue some statements encouraging Myanmar to return to political negotiations and a democratic path. Western democracies are unlikely to impose the type of broad-based economic sanctions utilized against Myanmar (then called Burma by many countries) in the 1990s and 2000s. There is little appetite in Washington, or anywhere else, for such broad sanctions, which have wide effects on the economy, and would likely hurt poor Myanmar citizens, at a time when the coup, the global economic downturn, and the pandemic all have already damaged the country’s economy. After all, one study found about 70% of people in Myanmar had stopped working due to the pandemic, and hunger is widespread. Broad sanctions would impose more misery and might actually lead more Myanmar citizens to flee the country (mostly to Thailand and possibly China), potentially spreading COVID-19 and causing more challenges for Myanmar’s neighbors. Instead, the Biden administration, and the governments of Canada and European states will likely try to impose targeted sanctions on more top Myanmar military leaders and on Myanmar’s large military conglomerates, such as Myanma Economic Holdings Limited. They will also possibly put back into place sanctions on some exports of gems, like jade, from Myanmar. The United States and other democracies may also try to push a resolution at the United Nations Security Council that freezes the assets of top military leaders and imposes travel bans on them, although any measure is unlikely to pass, given that permanent members China and Russia can veto. Already, the Biden administration has frozen some Myanmar military assets in the United States and put targeted sanctions on a wider range of military leaders; Britain and European countries are considering measures. Even those limited sanctions may not gain support from democracies in Asia like Japan and India, which believe Myanmar is important to their strategic interests, and do not want to run the risk of China making further strategic gains in the country. Therefore, any sanctions that are passed, even limited ones, will probably be backed only by Western governments, even though Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a call with Biden, said that the democratic process and the rule of law must be upheld in Myanmar. The Japanese government has called for a restoration of democracy as well, but it is unlikely to sign onto any tough measures that might pressure Naypyidaw. And while some Southeast Asian countries, such as Singapore, have issued relatively strong statements about Myanmar’s political situation, the regional organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), adheres to a policy of noninterference in member states’ affairs. Indonesia and Malaysia have called for ASEAN to hold a special session dealing with the Myanmar coup, but even such a session is unlikely to yield much more than some statements. Meanwhile, Southeast Asian countries like Thailand, themselves essentially run by militaries, are loath to criticize the Myanmar armed forces. Ultimately, Myanmar’s coup is likely to have multiple regional impacts. It will further push the region toward democratic regression, at a time when other Southeast Asian states like the Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand are suffering democratic backsliding as well. It will add to regional instability: beside outward migration flows, armed ethnic insurgencies in Myanmar might take advantage of the putsch to step up their military campaigns and end ceasefire deals. The coup might also push Myanmar closer to China, by necessity, if many democracies downgrade links to the country and apply more pressure. Even so, Beijing is not necessarily thrilled by the military takeover. Chinese leaders had built close links with Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD government, and China prefers stability in neighboring states, which the military coup—and possible protests, bloodshed, and renewed insurgencies—hardly guarantees. What is more, the Myanmar military’s top brass is notoriously anti-China, working with Beijing only when they have to—but with no love for close ties.

The coup last week in Myanmar, the country’s first in over three decades, has reshaped Myanmar’s political landscape. The country had seemed on a shaky path toward some kind of democracy, following the 2015 election landslide for Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), and the NLD’s repeat victory in the November 2020 national elections. Now, the coup has taken Myanmar back to some of its darkest old days. And the coup will have wide-ranging regional implications. For more on these regional implications, see my new article in Aspenia Online.

SolarWinds software breached again in separate Chinese hack; Internet temporarily disabled in Myanmar after military coup; Ongoing protests around New Delhi result in internet and social media crackdown; Canadian government denounces Clearview AI; and Biden addresses election interference, SolarWinds intrusion in foreign policy speech.

Myanmar’s coup is a disaster for Myanmar, but it also is a signifier of the continuing regression of democracy region-wide in Southeast Asia. The region, which once had made significant progress toward democratization, has backslid badly in recent years, with regression in former bright spots including Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, as well as Cambodia and now Myanmar. This backsliding affects not only domestic politics in Southeast Asian states but also has an effect on other countries in the region—a kind of diffusion effect in reverse, in contrast to the diffusion effect that can occur during waves of democratization. For example, the Philippines used to be one of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) states that often vocally stood up for democratic rights in other countries, a fairly unique stance in ASEAN. Now led by Rodrigo Duterte, however, who is undermining the Philippines’ own democratic norms and institutions, Manila is much quieter on the Myanmar coup. Duterte himself has grabbed more power during the pandemic, with a new antiterrorism law giving the government extraordinary powers, amidst the ongoing extrajudicial drug “war” as well. The Philippine government, like many other regional governments, has called the coup simply Myanmar’s internal affair. Thailand, for all its challenges, in the past did sometimes have groups of politicians and civil society activists who were highly engaged in Myanmar politics and advocated for reform there. During the long period of junta rule in the 1990s and 2000s, many Myanmar activists sought safe haven in Thailand as well. Now, Thailand is cracking down on civil society, students, activists, opposition politicians, and the Thai government, dominated by military men, is not going to push for any change in Myanmar. If anything, the Myanmar generals may try to steal a march from the Thai generals who have used a wide range of judicial and election chicanery to cement their power, as Bertil Lintner argued a recent Asia Times article. The Myanmar generals may eventually, as he notes, allow an election, but with a system that, like the Thai electoral system, uses machinations to reduce the power of the most powerful parties—the National League for Democracy (NLD) in this case—and to promote the military’s favored parties and its allies. In some ways, such a system might seem fairer than Myanmar’s current first-past-the-post system, which allowed the NLD to take more seats in parliament than its actual share of the vote, and hurt the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) and several ethnic parties. But the Myanmar military would not really be changing the electoral system to promote more fairness—rather it would be to try to permanently defang the NLD. Meanwhile, other countries that had led on Myanmar in the past, like Indonesia and Malaysia, have been relatively quiet, consumed by their own domestic politics, and by COVID-19; they also have suffered their own democratic regression. In the past, the Indonesian government had seen itself as playing a central role in helping the Myanmar military supposedly move toward civilian government, and give up its role as directly involved in politics. But Indonesia itself has seen a return to greater military involvement in politics and domestic policymaking under the Jokowi government, and Jokowi has been muted in response to the coup as well. And, powerful actors in Southeast Asia, like Japan, also have said little; Japanese companies have invested heavily in Myanmar in recent years, pushed in part by the Japanese government. Japan sees itself in intense competition for strategic influence with China in Myanmar, and is unlikely to prod the Myanmar military much. So, the regional democratic regression emboldens the Myanmar military, and, alas, also makes it easier for them to keep power. This post is adapted from my recent Twitter thread on the same topic.

In responding to the Monday coup in Myanmar, which has clearly put the military in power for an indefinite period of time, the United States and many other outside actors do not have a wide range of tools to respond. To be sure, the Biden administration, European states, Canada, Australia, and some other democracies have condemned the coup and called for the generals to accept the November election result and put Myanmar back on the path of (shaky) democracy. But regional powers, including China, Japan, and Thailand have either refused to denounce the coup, calling it Myanmar’s internal affair, or have been very slow to voice any denunciation. Japan, for instance, has been slow to criticize, because it views Myanmar as a vital strategic partner and a place where Japan is directly in competition for influence with China. Thailand, run essentially by a military-installed government and in the midst of cracking down on its own critics and democratic politicians, is not going to say or do anything about the Myanmar military, which also has had a close relationship with some senior Thai military leaders. The Philippines, once a regional leader in promoting democracy, is now run by Rodrigo Duterte. And Indonesia, which styled itself as playing a significant role in pushing the Myanmar military toward embracing civilian rule, released a moderate statement just pushing all parties in Myanmar to move toward some peaceful outcome. None of these regional neighbors is going to apply much, if any, pressure on the Myanmar generals to step away from what looks like a path toward indefinite military rule. Meanwhile, the United States, Australia, Canada, and the European Union still have limited strategic and economic links with Myanmar, compared to regional countries like China, India, Japan, Singapore, and Thailand. Overall, U.S. influence is limited, but that does not mean the United States and partners should do nothing. Some argue that, because Europe, the United States, and other partners have limited options, because they are dealing with their own massive domestic problems, and because Myanmar could respond by turning closer to China, leading democracies should respond modestly to the coup. But China is going to pursue its policies in Myanmar regardless or what measures are taken by the United States and other democracies, and U.S. policy should not be determined by how China is going to respond in Myanmar. In addition, Myanmar’s usually xenophobic military leaders and other elites do not really want to move even closer to China; one of the factors that initially spurred the move toward civilian rule and shaky quasi-democracy was the army’s concern that the country was becoming so isolated and highly dependent on China. The military has come to rely on China, but the army maintains a still-prickly relationship with Beijing, and does not want to be isolated again and totally dependent on Beijing. Given limited options, the United States and its partners could pursue several approaches. For one, the United States and partners should apply sanctions on Myanmar’s major military holding companies, Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd and Myanmar Economic Corporation. These are sizable conglomerates in Myanmar that contribute massively to the armed forces’ coffers, and hitting them would impose a fairly severe economic pinch on the armed forces. The United States and partners also should use rhetorical pressure to push all major multinationals not to do business with Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd and Myanmar Economic Corporation; reports from Amnesty International and others in recent years have shown several multinationals working with these two military conglomerates. The U.S. government should be able to develop and push forward a proposal sanctioning the two major military companies quickly and have it circulated to partners this week. The Biden administration also should go well beyond the targeted sanctions applied in 2019 on a handful of top military leaders, using the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to greatly expand the targeted sanctions to a broader level of top commanders, regional commanders, and senior leaders of the military’s holding companies, for a start. This targeting should include behind-the-scenes pressure on U.S. partners in Asia, principally Singapore, to also cut off access to Singapore’s financial institutions for anyone on the list of those faced with targeted sanctions. The White House also should call an immediate, emergency session of the UN Security Council regarding the coup, and also consider imposing other measures to limit the military’s earning power, like restoring the JADE Act.

On Monday morning Myanmar time, the Myanmar military staged a coup, its first coup since 1988, but hardly unique in Myanmar’s modern history. This coup bore all the hallmarks of previous military takeovers, even in an era in which telecommunications technology is far different from 1988, and information about Myanmar cannot be hermetically sealed off from the world. The armed forces detained most senior civilian politicians, and went beyond just detaining political figures to detain a wide range of critics of the armed forces. The army also instituted many roadblocks, throttled internet traffic, cut phone lines and other types of communication, closed banks, and took control of regional governments and the central government, with power now clearly residing with the army’s top commander, Min Aung Hlaing. Although the army has declared a state of emergency for a year, past history in Myanmar with such declarations could easily suggest that the state of emergency could go on for many years. After all, the Myanmar military still see themselves as the protectors of the country, despite several years of shaky democracy, and they wrote the current constitution, which has a clause that essentially allows for a coup and still gave the military significant powers. The army may have become afraid that Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (NLD) would be able to consolidate more power after last November’s elections and cut back the army’s power, that if the army commander retired he could become vulnerable to international prosecution for the army’s actions and might not be able to protect his family’s positions and wealth, and that at some point in the future Suu Kyi and the NLD might be able to change the constitution and diminish the power of the armed forces. Since November, the armed forces have been disputing the election results and claiming they were fraudulent. They also may have believed—possibly correctly—that the global pandemic, Myanmar’s close relationship with China, the democratic regression in other states in South and Southeast Asia, and the general U.S. disinterest in democracy issues in recent years would make it easier for them to launch a coup with little international pushback. And indeed, most South and Southeast Asian states said little about the coup, or simply referred to it as Myanmar’s internal problem. (Singapore did push back and called for Suu Kyi’s release and India expressed significant concern about the coup.) Aung San Suu Kyi had, as de facto civilian leader of Myanmar, done little to marginalize the military or push forward real democratic reform. Instead, she had created a party in which she wielded enormous power, disdained important institutions like a free media, and continually defended the military’s often brutal actions, minimizing the armed forces’ massive abuses against the Rohingya. So, she failed to strengthen democracy in recent years and create democratic bulwarks. Still, her party won victory in last year’s national elections—the fraud that the military claims occurred as a reason for stepping in has not been proven, and observers said that the election had minor irregularities but was relatively free and fair. Now, the coup has numerous potentially dangerous aftershocks. For one, the shift in governance could create even worse management of the COVID-19 crisis, as people may try to flee the country or migrate to other parts of the country, as they did after prior coups, potentially spreading the virus. The army’s closure of banks and the uncertainty could cause even more damage to an already-suffering economy, in the midst of the pandemic. Second, the coup could lead to an unwinding of deals with ethnic minority insurgencies, who could go back to war, further splintering Myanmar and leading to a massive spike in violence in what is already a conflict-ridden country. The insurgencies may now have the incentive to step up their battles, end cease-fire deals, and try to stake more gains in territory. There is also the prospect that, as the NLD and its allies try to rally Myanmar citizens, who now have lived through a decade of some degree of freedom—Suu Kyi has released a statement calling on Myanmar people to oppose the coup—that the army could crack down harder if the NLD, or other groups of Myanmar citizens, try to hold protests or rallies. In the past, during periods of absolute military rule—which has now returned—the military regularly used brutal force against any peaceful protests. Some leading democracies have made strong statements in response to the coup. Australia, Canada, countries in Europe, and the United States condemned the coup and now are considering further actions, despite the weakening of the United States’ image on democracy issues globally, after the United States’ 2020 election. According to NBC News: President Joe Biden said Monday that the military’s actions were a “direct assault” on the country’s transition to democracy and rule of law and said the U.S. would work with its partners to hold to account those responsible for overturning the country’s democratic transition. “For almost a decade, the people of Burma have been steadily working to establish elections, civilian governance, and the peaceful transfer of power,” he said in a statement, using the country's name until it was changed by the ruling military junta in 1989. “That progress should be respected.” But the Biden administration’s policy cupboard, though not bare, is fairly limited, given modest U.S. leverage over Myanmar and the fact that Myanmar’s neighbors mostly seem willing to live with the coup. Still, the United States and its partners do have some options, and I will go into these in the next post.

On Sunday, Myanmar held its first national elections since 2015, when Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won a smashing victory in the first free and fair national elections in the country in decades. This time around, there were multiple questions about the election, which I raised in a recent piece for World Politics Review. For one, the run-up to the election was not truly fair, as a huge number of Rohingya and people from other ethnic minorities were disenfranchised, and the election was held in an environment in which the Suu Kyi government has cracked down on the free press, and the media environment clearly favored the NLD. Second, there were concerns about whether Myanmar could pull off a safe and relatively high-turnout national election at a time when COVID-19 cases are rising in the country, and Myanmar does not have the resources to effectively protect many voters from the virus. Third, there were questions about whether the NLD would win as decisively as it had in 2015, given that its policies toward Myanmar’s peace process, and other approaches to ethnic minorities, had generally gone over poorly with some ethnic minority groups, who seemed prepared to vote for more locally-based parties. The NLD also was challenged by some new parties started by former longtime NLD stalwarts who had tired of the party’s inability to push toward democracy. Several of these questions seem to have been answered by Sunday’s election; results are coming in, although we do not have anywhere near the full results at this point, and the country’s election commission has not made any formal announcements. The election was held in a relatively unfair environment. Despite international criticism, Suu Kyi’s government did not bend in the days before Election Day. Rohingya remained disenfranchised, as did people from some other ethnic minorities, the NLD continued to allow censorship of rival parties’ websites, the press was primarily for the government, and other distortions remained. However, Myanmar appeared to be able to hold a safer and high turnout election that many people, including myself, had anticipated. (A caveat: We cannot know how much the election spread coronavirus for several days.) Still, election officials said that voter turnout was high, perhaps higher than expected, suggesting that Myanmar citizens were both eager to vote and potentially satisfied enough that they could safely vote. Turnout may well match the high turnout of the 2015 election, despite the pandemic. Third, despite concerns that the NLD’s approach toward the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities—which led to challenges to the NLD by ethnic minority parties in many regions—it appears highly possible that the party will actually win more seats than in its 2015 landslide. Although official results are not in, a NLD spokesperson told reporters that not only would the NLD gain a majority of seats in the upper and lower house to form a government, but it would surpass its numbers of seats from 2015. Political analyst Yan Myo Thein told Reuters that “early results showed ethnic parties had won some seats in Kayah, Mon, and Shan states, where many people harbor grievances against the central government but the overall picture was of another NLD landslide.” (Some ethnic parties had merged with each other and will pick up seats in parliament and perhaps do even better in state legislatures, but the NLD still appears to have won a huge majority in ethnic minority areas.) Apparently, the appeal of Suu Kyi and the NLD—as a historic opposition, as a bulwark against military rule, as the only real national party with grassroots outreach across Myanmar—may have been enough for many ethnic minority voters to choose the NLD, despite the failures of the peace process and the rising anger toward the party in some ethnic minority regions. In addition, the NLD seems to have won nearly every seat in areas with majorities of ethnic Burmans, the country’s majority. If the NLD does indeed win by an even larger margin than in 2015, and the military-aligned Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) does worse—it looks like it is getting crushed and the NLD is taking seats from areas the USDP previously held—the NLD would potentially have the opportunity to follow through on promised reforms that would reduce the power of the armed forces, the dominant institution in Myanmar. This indeed would be a major battle in Myanmar politics after the election, and one that could determine the country’s future.

Myanmar is set to hold general elections next month, for the second time since the end of military rule in 2011. The last election, in 2015, ushered Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy into power with a landslide victory. Since then, the NLD has had a mixed economic record, and Suu Kyi, now the country’s de facto leader, has gone from human rights icon to international pariah for defending the army’s brutal persecution of the Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim ethnic minority concentrated in western Myanmar. More recently, the government has mismanaged its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Myanmar now has more cases and deaths than any other mainland Southeast Asian country. Still, the NLD remains popular among the mostly Buddhist ethnic majority group, the Bamar, and will almost certainly retain control of both houses of the legislature, as well as many state assemblies. Predictable top-line results aside, the elections still raise several important questions: Can Myanmar even hold a safe vote amid the pandemic, with the government imposing lockdowns in major cities like Yangon, its largest population center, and some other areas? Will the NLD lose some ground among ethnic minority voters, many of whom are increasingly dissatisfied with the party? Perhaps most importantly, will the NLD’s victory bring progress or retrenchment in Myanmar’s democracy? After all, the government is creating a climate of repression that, according to Human Rights Watch, makes the Nov. 8 election “fundamentally flawed.” Problems include discrimination against minority voters like the Rohingya, stepped-up prosecutions of government opponents and media favoritism for the ruling party. The coronavirus isn’t helping matters. For months, Myanmar avoided a direct hit from the pandemic, even though the government did little initially to prepare the country. Myanmar seemed to be lucky, and some researchers even speculated that countries in the Mekong River basin enjoyed a natural immunity to the virus, given initial low numbers in Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. Yet in recent weeks, Myanmar has faced a rising wave of COVID-19 cases, posting a record 2,000 cases during a single day in October. Opposition parties, and some public health experts, say that the government cannot hold a safe and fair election in this environment. But Suu Kyi and the NLD, knowing they hold a commanding advantage with most of the population, have vowed to press forward with the vote. Some Myanmar citizens have already started voting from abroad. Even if Myanmar gets its outbreak under control by early November—a big if—it suffers from a shortage of hospital beds, and has some of the worst public health infrastructure in the world. Without the ability to expand absentee balloting or effectively enforce social distancing at polling places, the way South Korea did in its parliamentary elections earlier this year, Myanmar’s polls could further spread the virus. The government’s management of the recent spike in cases does not inspire confidence; for instance, it has failed to mitigate the lockdown’s impact on food insecurity in the country’s biggest city, Yangon. Despite the criticism over its handling of COVID-19, the NLD-led government remains genuinely popular among the Bamar, mainly due to the party’s history as Myanmar’s main pro-democracy opposition, and also because many voters see it as the only bulwark against the still-powerful military. Global condemnation of Myanmar’s government for its human rights abuses against the Rohingya, which the United Nations’ human rights chief called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing,” has hardly dented Suu Kyi’s support among the ethnic majority. In fact, the Nobel Peace Prize recipient may have actually rallied Bamar support with her nationalistic defense of the army’s actions against charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice last year. Simply put, there is no other national party with a grassroots organization and countrywide appeal to match the NLD. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party has only modest national backing, and the roughly 90 other smaller parties in the country have mostly regional bases of support, or none at all. With rallies and other traditional campaign activities curtailed due to the pandemic, and parties left to campaign mostly online, the NLD’s universal name recognition and massive social media presence gives it a leg up on its opponents. Unsurprisingly, the NLD has also ramped up pork barrel promises as Election Day approaches. The NLD’s main message for the election—that it needs another landslide victory, like its win in 2015, to push forward reforms that could limit the military’s power—appeals to many voters. Indeed, the next few years—while the 75-year-old Suu Kyi remains healthy and in charge of the party—are probably its best shot to follow through on that promise. If it wins big, the NLD is also likely to put renewed effort into peace talks with the many insurgent groups that are fighting for autonomy for their ethnic groups. A handful of ethnic militias signed a nationwide cease-fire in 2015, but there have been widespread clashes in Rakhine state and other regions during Suu Kyi’s time in office. The major peace conferences she has been trying to regularly organize with some of the insurgents have become increasingly stilted and unproductive. Still, the NLD will likely try to use its mandate from a big election win to seek a breakthrough in the peace process. Even with all of its built-in advantages, the NLD has allowed the election to be held in an unfair climate, even when one takes the danger of COVID-19 out of the equation. Last month, a U.N. human rights investigator slammed the Myanmar government at the Human Rights Council for making no effort to ensure that ethnic Rohingya, of whom roughly a million are internally displaced in Myanmar or living in refugee camps across the border in Bangladesh, will be able participate. The government also has cut off 3G and 4G internet services in Rakhine, making it even harder for people there to learn about the election and vote. Conflict in Rakhine and other states home to insurgent groups will also complicate voting, preventing people in many parts of these regions from casting a ballot. Indeed, the government has canceled the election in parts of Rakhine, Kachin, Mon and Shan states, among other areas. The government also has blocked several Rohingya candidates from running, and has made it difficult for many Rohingya to prove they are Myanmar citizens and eligible to vote. Beyond disenfranchisement of the Rohingya, the country’s election commission has censored some parties’ speeches, and even banned the country’s largest election monitoring group, the People’s Alliance for Credible Elections, from observing the vote—reportedly for “receiving assistance from international organizations without being officially registered.” The organization had monitored the last three elections in Myanmar. International election observers will also have a hard time due to restrictions on travel to Myanmar and other public health measures. Moreover, the government has effectively limited journalists’ ability to report on any irregularities by classifying them as nonessential workers. State-backed newspapers have stayed in operation, while many independent media outlets have not, as Human Rights Watch notes—another advantage for the ruling party. Why has the NLD, once a standard-bearer for democracy, allowed the election to move forward in such a restrictive environment? The party’s leadership clearly is less committed to robust democracy than it seemed when it was an opposition movement. And the NLD may know that, while it is not challenged as a national party, it probably would perform relatively poorly in Rakhine and other areas home to ethnic minorities—the same places where voters are being disenfranchised, and where the government has made little headway toward peace. While she publicly claims that election integrity is paramount to her, Suu Kyi appears willing to tolerate a voting process in which the deck is stacked in her favor.

Myanmar is set to hold general elections next month, for the second time since the end of military rule in 2011. The last election, in 2015, ushered Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) into power with a landslide victory. Since then, the NLD has had a mixed economic record, and Aung San Suu Kyi has gone from human rights icon to international pariah for defending the army’s brutal persecution of the Rohingya ethnic minority. More recently, the government has mismanaged its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and Myanmar now has more cases and deaths than any other mainland Southeast Asian country. Still, the NLD remains popular among Myanmar’s ethnic Burman majority, and will almost certainly retain control of both houses of the legislature, as well as many state assemblies. Predictable top-line results aside, the elections still raise several important questions: Can Myanmar even hold a safe vote amid the pandemic, with the government imposing lockdowns in major cities like Yangon, its largest population center, and some other areas? Will the NLD lose some ground among ethnic minority voters, many of whom are increasingly dissatisfied with the party? Perhaps most importantly, will the NLD’s victory bring progress or retrenchment in Myanmar’s democracy? After all, the government is creating a climate of repression that, according to Human Rights Watch, makes the November 8 election “fundamentally flawed.” For more on the prospects for the election, see my new World Politics Review article.

Hunter Marston is a PhD candidate at the Australian National University. His research focuses on great power competition in Southeast Asia. According to recent surveys of Southeast Asia, China is now the most influential strategic and political power in the region. Yet China’s rise has been so rapid and consequential that few book-length studies have captured the complexity of Beijing’s expanding regional influence. The new book by Murray Hiebert of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and Bower Group Asia, Under Beijing’s Shadow: Southeast Asia's China Challenge, fills this gap and shows in significant detail how Southeast Asian states are responding to China’s rise. Given his decades working in the region as a foreign correspondent and political analyst, Hiebert is well-suited for this challenge, and the result offers valuable insights on issues related to Southeast Asia, China, and broader rivalries in the region. The book portrays a region riven by a diversity of views toward China; this diversity prevents any unified response to China’s growing influence over Southeast Asia. As Hiebert shows, Southeast Asian states are of two minds regarding China: on the one hand, they are deeply dependent on China’s rise for their own economic growth and keen to continue trade with Beijing. On the other hand, they are increasingly nervous about China’s growing economic, diplomatic, and military power, its more assertive diplomacy, and its willingness to use its might unilaterally to get its way in the South China Sea—and potentially other parts of the region as well. Hiebert punctures several myths about the China-Southeast Asia relationship. For one, although media reports often portray mainland Southeast Asian states as close to China, or even as satellite states of Beijing, Hiebert offers a different view. He suggests, with considerably detailed country case studies, that mainland Southeast Asian states are not so easy to pigeonhole. China has constructed innumerable dams upstream on the Mekong, choking off much-needed water as countries down river face droughts as a result of climate change. At the same time, Chinese companies—in joint ventures with Southeast Asian corporations in Laos, Myanmar, and Cambodia—are building massive hydropower projects on the lower Mekong, leading to increased salt water flooding and environmental degradation. These dams have badly damaged the Mekong’s flow and often stopped the seasonal flow of rich nutrients essential to the cultivation of rice and other crops, and the fish which feed the populations of Southeast Asia. In so doing, they have angered many residents of mainland Southeast Asian states, even though governments like Cambodia and Laos and Myanmar remain highly dependent on Chinese aid, investment, and diplomatic support. Hiebert also gives ample coverage to the depth of nationalism within modern Myanmar, and how it is facile to say that Myanmar also has become some kind of satellite state of China. There is enormous resistance within Myanmar toward China’s proposed Myitsone Dam in Kachin State, which the previous government of President Thein Sein suspended in 2011 due to popular pressures. At the same time, China has covertly supported ethnic insurgents on Myanmar’s northern periphery, sometimes providing arms and munitions, a reality that has not gone unnoticed by Myanmar’s military, which views dependency on China as a “national emergency.” In addition, Hiebert shows that Southeast Asian hedging strategies, playing for time and keeping their options open, provides some grounds for believing that the region will not be totally dominated by Beijing. The ambiguity of Southeast Asian loyalties means that Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) states have not made up their minds to side with Beijing. Hiebert argues that many of these states—even Cambodia and Laos, which seem to have less leverage to resist China’s influence and cash—will continue to avoid making stark choices. Malaysia also likely will continue to hedge. It has generally failed to respond to China’s provocations in the South China Sea or has done so quietly, believing that its “special relationship” would protect it from the bullying tactics to which China has subjected Vietnam and the Philippines. However, Hiebert notes Kuala Lumpur’s missile tests in July 2019, after China deployed a Coast Guard vessel near Luconia Shoal on Malaysia’s continental shelf. Later that year, Kuala Lumpur submitted claims to an extended continental shelf in that area to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf. In fact, Hiebert’s account leaves open the possibility that Malaysia is standing up to China more often than it appears to outsiders. Indonesian President Joko Widodo, or Jokowi, visited China four times during his first five years in office and has solicited major Chinese investment, even as Jakarta has pushed back against Beijing’s increased assertiveness in the North Natuna Sea. Indonesia’s economic dependence on China imposes limits to Jokowi’s willingness to stand up to China, but even he has often pursued a hedging strategy. The book also provides an even-keeled examination of Washington’s regional treaty allies Thailand and the Philippines, frequently described as tilting toward Beijing. Hiebert makes a compelling case that Thailand is still hedging against China, despite prevailing counterarguments regarding Thai foreign policy. Of the Philippines, he notes, “It is far from certain that Duterte’s sharp pivot toward China marks a long-term Philippine trend.” Interestingly, Hiebert predicts that Manila will swing back to an anti-China foreign policy after Duterte’s term ends in 2022 and a future administration in Manila seeks to rebalance relations with the regional powers. Second, Hiebert makes a compelling case that ASEAN should stop competing amongst itself and enhance cooperation, especially by strengthening dialogue on how to deal with China. As Hiebert points out, the main obstacle to deeper cooperation is the fact that Southeast Asian states often have varying levels of threat perceptions toward China and also often have different needs from the United States, the other major regional power along with Japan. Vietnam, for instance, has in recent years deepened its security cooperation with the United States, allowing a U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, to dock at Danang for a week in 2018, for the first time since the end of the Vietnam War. There also has been speculation that Hanoi may file legal arbitration against Beijing’s maritime claims, and Hanoi has fostered military-to-military cooperation with Washington in other ways as well. Cambodia, on the other hand, has been all too willing to support Beijing’s interests. Under the increasingly authoritarian leadership of Prime Minister Hun Sen, Beijing has often facilitated China’s goals in Southeast Asia, dividing ASEAN. As Hiebert makes clear, Beijing knows how to cater its aid to Phnom Penh’s needs based on Western actions such as sanctions in response to unfair elections. Still, many Cambodians remain wary of China’s expanding influence in their country. Numerous Cambodians resent Hun Sen’s reliance on Chinese investment, which has transformed Sihanoukville into a Chinese outpost and may grant Beijing a naval base in the country. Sophal Ear, a political scientist at Occidental College, also warns about the risks of taking on unsustainable levels of Chinese debt: in 2018 roughly 48 percent of Cambodia’s $7.6 billion foreign debt was owed to China. Finally, Hiebert turns to the question of what all this regional complexity means for Washington, which has displayed a mixture of heavy-handed demands for regional fealty and ambivalence toward Southeast Asia. The Trump administration’s reduced interaction with the region has fed a perception in Southeast Asia of Washington’s declining influence. Hiebert provides a strong case for why and how the United States should restore its attention to the region and refocus its strategy toward Southeast Asia., including by regularly attending regional summits and increasing funding for much-needed physical infrastructure, including in the Mekong basin countries.

With the exception of Thailand, the five countries of mainland Southeast Asia are some of the poorest in the Asia-Pacific region. According to the World Bank, Cambodia has a per capita GDP of around $1,600, while Myanmar’s is roughly $1,400. Laos and Vietnam fare only marginally better, each at around $2,500. Their political systems run the gamut from semi-democracies to authoritarian one-party states. Yet despite some initial missteps, they have all largely suppressed COVID-19, proving far more effective in addressing the pandemic than most developed countries, including the United States. Vietnam, a country of roughly 95 million people, has reported a handful of deaths and only 784 total cases, as of Sunday. It has seen a recent surge, centered on the coastal city of Da Nang, but even that outbreak remains small by global comparison. Its neighbors have done nearly as well. Thailand, which has a population of just under 70 million, has not had locally transmitted cases in weeks, and only around 3,300 cases in total. Many aspects of life are returning to normal in the capital, Bangkok, and in other parts of the kingdom. By comparison, Florida, with a population of around 21 million people, has recently been averaging about 6,600 new cases per day. Cambodia, meanwhile, has had only around 200 confirmed cases, and is even allowing in Americans, a risk few countries are willing to take right now. Laos and Myanmar have had only 20 and 358 confirmed cases, respectively. While the real number of cases is likely higher in all of these countries, their performance still stands out as a bright spot in the global fight against the coronavirus. Many of their maritime Southeast Asian neighbors, particularly the Philippines and Indonesia, are struggling with high caseloads. Few observers predicted mainland Southeast Asia’s success against COVID-19. Back in February, I criticized the region’s initial response to the pandemic; even several months later, I did not imagine how effective these countries would be in containing the virus. While Vietnam quickly responded to COVID-19 with border closures, lockdowns and a major public health campaign, Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia were slow to stop all travel to and from China, the initial source of the epidemic, and some of their officials shared misinformation about the virus. Thailand, however, soon righted its approach. It imposed a state of emergency in late March, and launched a national task force to combat COVID-19. While the Thai government has used the state of emergency to suppress dissent—authorities arrested multiple opposition activists last week—it also appears to have helped slow the virus’s spread. Moreover, early lockdowns in Vietnam and Thailand probably helped smaller countries in the region like Cambodia, which did not impose restrictions quickly but may have benefited from having fewer travelers from its neighbors. More recently, mainland Southeast Asian countries have been world leaders in getting near-universal compliance with mask wearing, in many cases very early in the pandemic. At least 95 percent of Thais and 94 percent of Vietnamese wear masks in public. In some cases, like Vietnam, this is because the government imposes tough fines on anyone not wearing a mask in public. Other states have relied more on longstanding social norms promoting the use of face masks when sick. Countries in the region, even the repressive ones, have also displayed impressive levels of transparency about COVID-19 and the government response—even while they stifle dissent and limit the flow of information about topics other than the virus. In Vietnam, where the ruling Communist Party controls all aspects of political life, the Ministry of Health is putting case information online. Laos has embarked on a national public information campaign that is extremely transparent by the standards of one of the most autocratic one-party states in the world. To be sure, Vietnam’s response has built on years of “efforts to improve governance and central-local government policy coordination,” as Edmund Malesky and Trang Nguyen note in a recent report for the Brookings Institution. Many governments in mainland Southeast Asia have also worked to ensure that their coronavirus response measures impose minimal financial costs on their populations—critical moves to getting broad public buy-in. As Nguyen and Malesky note, Vietnam’s policy is to cover most costs for citizens related to the response to COVID-19, including quarantines, coronavirus tests and hospitalizations. Cambodia, in turn, has relied on aid from the World Bank and other overseas entities to help ensure that people are not opting out of COVID-19 restrictions due to an inability to bear the cost. Some of these strategies should be replicable in other developing countries, given enough political will. Masks are cheap and effective, and many other states could copy the combination of pressure and skillful public campaigns to get as many people to wear masks. Other hybrid or authoritarian states would do well to heed Vietnam’s example, which has shown that transparency about COVID-19 doesn’t necessarily endanger the state’s dominance over politics. In other words, if they come clean with their publics about the spread of COVID-19 and their responses to it, they are not necessarily setting themselves up for a broader political backlash. Likewise, other developing countries may be able to copy efforts from mainland Southeast Asia to ensure that COVID-19 quarantines and treatment remain free or highly inexpensive, which is the best way to get people to take tests, isolate and go for treatment. Beyond these clear strategies, some residents of the region, including several medical researchers, have suggested that mainland Southeast Asia may have benefited from unique cultural practices that make contagion less likely. For instance, many people in mainland Southeast Asia do not greet each other with handshakes or hugs, but instead with a palms-pressed-together gesture, while standing apart from the other person. Taweesin Visanuyothin, the COVID-19 spokesperson for Thailand’s Ministry of Public Health, told the New York Times that Thailand’s success “has to do with culture. Thai people do not have body contact when we greet each other.” However, in large, packed cities like Bangkok, Yangon and Ho Chi Minh City, people walk close together, jam into buses and other public transportation, and generally come quite close to each other. They may greet each other without body contact, but the sheer size of these places makes it hard to practice real social distancing. Thus, the true reasons for these countries’ success in containing the virus likely have more to do with their policy responses. Other researchers speculate that some people in mainland Southeast Asia may have some natural immunity to COVID-19. In one study from southern Thailand, more than 90 percent of people who tested positive for COVID-19 remained asymptomatic, a much higher share than normal. The reasons for this finding, however, remain unclear. One thing that is certain is that Thailand and its neighbors, which have had experience fighting other infectious diseases like SARS and dengue fever, have collectively emerged as a rare pocket of resilience in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. As similarly low-to-middle-income countries in Latin America are hit hard by the coronavirus, and nations across Africa brace for a surge in cases, their governments could benefit from looking eastward and taking lessons from mainland Southeast Asia’s response.

With the exception of Thailand, the five countries of mainland Southeast Asia are some of the poorest in the Asia-Pacific region. According to the World Bank, Cambodia has a per capita GDP of around $1,500, while Myanmar’s is roughly $1,300. Laos and Vietnam fare only marginally better, each at just over $2,500. Their political systems run the gamut from semi-democracies to authoritarian one-party states. Yet they effectively suppressed COVID-19, proving far more effective in addressing the pandemic than most developed countries, including the United States. For more on why mainland Southeast Asia has had such success, see my new World Politics Review article.