Southeast Asia

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.

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.

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.

Over the past decade, illiberal populist leaders from across the political spectrum have won elections and taken power in many of the world’s biggest democracies, from the United States to India, the Philippines, Turkey and Brazil. Once in office, they have often undermined democratic norms and institutions, including the media, the judiciary, the civil service, and, in many cases, free and fair elections themselves. The rise of illiberal populism is a major reason why the annual “Freedom in the World” reports, published by the global watchdog organization Freedom House, have charted fourteen straight years of global democratic regression. (I serve as a consultant for several chapters on Southeast Asia in these reports.) The Economist Intelligence Unit’s most recent Democracy Index found that global freedom was at its lowest point since the index was started in 2006. The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in further harm to democracy worldwide, as many illiberal leaders, particularly in developing countries, have taken advantage of the crisis to crush political opposition and grab more power. Donald Trump is among the first, and most prominent, of this recent wave of populist leaders to lose an election and leave office—albeit not without putting up a fight. Other populist leaders, like Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, still appear to be gaining power and popularity. But Trump’s defeat in last November’s presidential election offered some hope to proponents of democracy and the rule of law. Now that he is out of power, can the United States restore the democratic norms and institutions that Trump badly undermined during his presidency? The histories of other countries that ejected their illiberal populist leaders do not give great cause for optimism, but their examples also suggest that American democracy is not doomed. The United States retains stronger democratic institutions than some other countries where populist strongmen rule today, like the Philippines, Brazil, Hungary, Mexico or Poland. Still, damage has been done. In an earlier study of populists leaders’ impacts on democracies, I found that many countries once ruled by illiberal populists, like Italy after Silvio Berlusconi, struggled mightily to put their political systems back together. Instead, they often wound up with permanently shattered norms that gave rise to a new wave of populists. In the case of Italy, an aging Berlusconi no longer wields much influence, but he has been succeeded by two powerful populist parties: the left-leaning Five Star Movement, which currently governs as part of a coalition, and the right-wing League, the largest opposition party. Indeed, populist leaders often play upon the idea that their country’s government is so broken that only a strongman can solve its problems. Even after they are ousted, the resulting lack of trust in government often lingers in many citizens’ minds. As New York Times columnist Ezra Klein has argued, a more mainstream leader who comes to power after a period of populist rule often becomes a kind of placeholder, unable to govern effectively because of obstreperous opposition and deep polarization. Quoting the political scientists William Howell and Terry Moe, Klein observes that “populists don’t just feed on socioeconomic discontent. They feed on ineffective government—and their great appeal is that they claim to replace it with a government that is effective through their own autocratic power.” This is why traditional politicians who replace populist leaders are often unable to govern effectively, which creates opportunities for populists to feed on that ineffectiveness and return to power. It is a timely lesson for President Joe Biden. But there are some reasons to be optimistic, as well. As I noted in a World Politics Review article in 2019, one factor that determines whether countries can rebuild after a period of illiberal rule is whether citizens took steps to reinforce checks on executive power during the illiberal leader’s time in office. In the United States, for instance, municipal and state-level governments served as powerful bulwarks against Trump’s overreach, as did the media and the country’s independent judiciary, despite its conservative leanings. The limits these institutions placed on Trump during his time in office will make it a bit easier for the Biden administration and its supporters to restore democratic norms and institutions. In addition, by limiting Trump to only one term, American voters laid a critical piece of the foundation for restoring democracy. In many cases, illiberal leaders compete in a relatively level playing field when they first seek reelection, but then move to co-opt electoral institutions, making it harder for voters to enact change at the ballot box. For instance, when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban won his second term in office, in 2010—he had earlier served in the top job from 1998 to 2002—he did so in a relatively free and fair election. But each subsequent round of polls after 2010 proved more slanted in his favor, as Orban used extensive gerrymandering and many other tools to make it virtually impossible to defeat his Fidesz party. Finally, in 2020, with the pandemic raging, Orban seized emergency powers to become all but an outright dictator, assuming near-total control of the government. Russia, a more extreme case of illiberalism, is another example. When President Vladimir Putin first ran for reelection in 2004—he won his first full term in 2000 after serving in an acting capacity for several months—the election process, though not truly democratic, was somewhat contested. At the least, it was more contested and vibrant than later Putin-era elections, which were complete shams. Other historical examples show that it is possible to rebuild democratic norms and institutions after a period of illiberal rule, even if it is a steep road back. South Korea, for instance, witnessed abuses of power, intimidation of political opponents and a wave of high-level corruption scandals under the conservative President Park Geun-hye, who took office in 2013. She was impeached in 2017 and forced from office amid vibrant and peaceful street protests that helped encourage a democratic restoration. Park was subsequently sentenced to thirty years in prison on charges that included bribery, extortion and abuse of power, though the sentence was reduced on appeal to twenty years. In the immediate aftermath of her impeachment, South Korean activists and civil society groups mobilized to advocate for anti-corruption measures and transparency in government. Park’s successor, the more progressive President Moon Jae-In, won the 2017 election vowing to fight corruption, make government accountable and level the economic playing field. He has faced criticism from some commentators for politicizing the judiciary, limiting the speech of some conservative organizations and commentators, and trying to govern autocratically, using his Democratic Party’s majority in the legislature to hastily pass consequential laws. But the South Korean electorate has remained energized, keeping the pressure on Moon to follow through on his promised reforms. South Africa is another instructive example. After the disgraced President Jacob Zuma stepped down before the end of his term in 2018, amid massive corruption allegations, a revival of democratic norms and institutions has come from the top as much as from civil society and the public. Zuma’s successor, Cyril Ramaphosa, has made restoring South African democracy a central theme of his presidency, although he has struggled to deliver on that promise given the scale of South Africa’s problems following Zuma’s tenure. Still, Ramaphosa has attacked corruption within the ruling African National Congress, reduced politicization of the police and judiciary, and promoted ways to build national consensus and reduce polarization. There are lessons to be drawn from all of these examples as the United States repairs the damage from Trump, and as other democracies face their own potential breaks with populists. In the Philippines, where presidents are limited to a single six-year term in office, the historically popular Duterte’s rule will end in 2022. But his illiberal brand of leadership and his record of flouting democratic norms may live on if he is succeeded by his daughter, Sara Duterte, or another illiberal populist who gains his stamp of approval. For now, Sara Duterte claims she has no desire to run in the 2022 elections, and her father has said he does not want her to, as the presidency is “not for a woman.” Similarly, Brazil’s president, the far-right former army captain Jair Bolsonaro, will be up for reelection in 2022. In all of these countries, the next election may be critical for any hope of maintaining democracy. But even if illiberal populism is defeated once at the ballot box, history suggests it is buried in a shallow grave.

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.

Over the past decade, illiberal populist leaders from across the political spectrum have won elections and taken power in many of the world’s biggest democracies. Once in office, they have often undermined democratic norms and institutions, including the media, the judiciary, the civil service, and, in many cases, free and fair elections themselves. The rise of illiberal populism is a major reason why the annual “Freedom in the World” reports, published by the global watchdog organization Freedom House, have charted fourteen straight years of global democratic regression, and why the Economist Intelligence Unit’s most recent Democracy Index found that global freedom was at its lowest point since the index was started. (I serve as a consultant for several Freedom House chapters on Southeast Asia in these reports.) If illiberal populists lose elections, can democratic norms and institutions be restored? Populist leaders often play upon the idea that their country’s government is so broken that only a strongman can solve its problems. Even after they are ousted, the resulting lack of trust in government often lingers in many citizens’ minds. For more on what happens after illiberal populists lose, see my new World Politics Review column.

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.

Charles Dunst is a visiting scholar at the East-West Center in Washington, an associate at LSE IDEAS, and a contributing editor of American Purpose. In January 2017 at Davos, the small alpine town that hosts the annual World Economic Forum, Chinese President and Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping made the case for Chinese global leadership, promising that while the soon-to-be Trump-led United States was promising to close its doors, China would keep them “wide open.” Corporate and political elites may have been somewhat skeptical, but many praised Xi’s speech, seeing it as a step in the right direction. This was only the most recent triumph for China, whose leadership successfully capitalized on the 2008 financial collapse—for which many faulted the United States—to win global goodwill for its authoritarian capitalist model. As the Forum’s founder Klaus Schwab put it while introducing Xi: “In a world marked by great uncertainty and volatility, the international community is looking to China.” Yet as Luke Patey of the Danish Institute for International Studies shows in his clear-eyed new book How China Loses: The Pushback Against Chinese Global Ambitions, much of the world has not liked what it has seen. China, he writes, “seeks to challenge the core values of the world’s liberal democracies: individual liberty, freedom of speech, and rule of law.” This challenge has frustrated countries from Germany to Malaysia and beyond. Indeed, China’s “predatory economic agenda, headstrong diplomacy, and military expansion,” as Patey writes, are undermining rather than advancing its standing in the world, so much so that Beijing, according to him, will fall short of attaining the mantle to global leadership it claims. Ultimately, though, Patey overstates his case: How China Loses does not so much show that China is losing everywhere in the world, but rather only that Beijing is not achieving its goals among developed democracies—a grouping whose collective importance is rapidly declining. Patey’s eye is well-trained both journalistically and analytically. For this book, he traveled to countries including South Sudan, Pakistan, and Germany, deftly presenting these and others as case studies that illustrate his thesis of China failing to reach its goals. In South Sudan, readers learn that Chinese officials do not yet understand how their investments in the country are inherently linked to Sudanese and South Sudanese politics, even when they have fostered war in those countries and actually undermined Beijing’s strategic objectives there. In Pakistan, we see how oft-mismanaged Chinese investment is pulling Beijing into bloody local conflicts, namely the Balochistan insurgency, that it so long tried to avoid. In Germany, we see how China’s nonreciprocal approach to its economy and investment—namely China’s refusal to truly open its markets to many foreign firms and Beijing’s boosting of state-owned enterprises that compete with German industry—antagonizes partner countries. But Patey’s case selection is curious. It is odd, for instance, that he did not travel to Southeast Asia, China’s historical backyard and the gateway for its global expansion. He writes extensively only about one country there, Malaysia. His characterization of this country is similarly peculiar. He portrays the former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad as a leader who “left his mark” by pushing back against and changing Malaysian opinions of China—even though some 60 percent of Malaysian elites still say that if forced to choose between the United States and China, they would go with the latter. Mahathir may have campaigned on an anti-China platform in 2018, but by 2019 he had almost entirely reversed course, saying that if forced to choose between Beijing and Washington, he would ally with the “rich” former rather than the “unpredictable” latter, and that there was no point confronting China, so Malaysia should simply defer to the Asian giant as it had done “for the past 2,000 years.” This is hardly the voice of a leader whose country China has lost. Moreover, Patey mentions Cambodia and Laos, perhaps the Southeast Asian countries most like Chinese client-states, only in passing, noting that there is “a tendency for China to avoid blowback to Belt and Road projects”—those funded by China’s massive global development project—“in authoritarian regimes and weak democracies, particularly smaller economies such as Laos and Cambodia.” Therein lies the most serious flaw in Patey’s argument: His examples of countries that China has lost—Denmark and Japan, for instance—are functional democracies responsive to public opinion and discontent. In contrast, countries like Cambodia and Zimbabwe that continue to support Chinese interests can do so precisely because they are not as responsive to public opinion, which is increasingly marked by anti-Chinese sentiment in these states. The qualities of China’s foreign policy may have repelled other states in the democratic world, but many autocrats are happy to fit themselves neatly within Beijing’s hierarchical worldview—which one former Japanese diplomat tells Patey is China’s “most fundamental problem”—if doing so keeps these autocrats rich and in power. Still, Patey argues that China could lose “not because it lacks global power, or that others should work in concert against all its ambitions, but because the actions and visions of its leaders elicit cautious reception and pushback across the world that undermines its potential as a global superpower.” But again, this “reception” matters only in countries where people can vote out leaders perceived as doing China’s bidding. Increasingly widespread anti-Chinese sentiment has not and will not soon force autocratic regimes to fundamentally reorient their approaches to Beijing. Throughout the book, though, Patey seems to assume that leaders act in their countries’ best interests—that well-intentioned presidents and prime ministers the world over will band together and uphold the liberal international order. He writes, for instance, that because “Chinese economic power can bend the will of new political leaders, but not wider society,” many countries will have no choice but to stand up to Beijing. But he does not interrogate how much society’s opinions matter in countries ruled by autocrats. He instead takes it as fact that even illiberal leaders will put their respective national interests first. This assumption is evident in his conclusion, in which he recommends that countries diversify trading and investment partners and privilege multilateral relations with China, rather than engage the Asian giant bilaterally. But leaders, particularly undemocratic leaders, often do not act in their nation’s interest. Developing countries, which include many authoritarian states, remain home to an overwhelming majority of the world’s population, and are in many ways the backbone of China’s “community of shared future”: its Sino-centric alternative to the liberal democratic order. With the world’s political and economic power shifting towards Asia as the continent’s wealth grows, China is arguably better served, at least strategically, by courting Cambodia and Laos than by pursuing deeper ties with Germany and Denmark. And if the United States remains unfocused on Asia and other developing regions, leaving China-countering efforts there to middle powers like Japan and Germany, Beijing will find its construction of an illiberal order all the easier. Nonetheless, Patey’s book is chock full of keen observations, meaningful interviews, and remarkable data, all of which smartly illustrate the flaws manifest in China’s authoritarian capitalist foreign policy. But the grandiosity of both his title and thesis betrays him. Indeed, upon putting down How China Loses, one is left wondering how, if China is so likely to lose, has Beijing made so many countries so pliant to its interests, and why is President Joe Biden’s diplomatic team so forcefully promising to beat back Chinese influence? Beijing’s belligerence certainly has lost it friends, as Patey suggests, but China’s failure to construct a global or at least regional Sino-centric order is far from foreordained. The upshot from this more pessimistic outlook is that proponents of the liberal democratic order must not rest but instead rise in a coordinated manner to meet today’s China challenge. For leaders the world over, taking into account Patey’s prescriptions would be a good start.

This article was first published in the Japan Times.  Over the past 15 years, democracy across Asia has regressed. Although the region still has strong democracies like South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, many other leading Asian democracies and countries with democratic potential have slid backwards, turning into near-autocracies or outright authoritarian states. While Thailand had been one of the freest states in Asia in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it has suffered two military coups in the past decade and now is run by a parliamentary government that took power after a seriously flawed election in 2019. Bangladesh had built itself into a shaky but increasingly vibrant democracy by the early 2010s, but in the past decade has deteriorated into a de facto one-party regime, with opposition activists, civil society leaders and journalists jailed and murdered. The Philippines, which had become a solid democracy in the decades following after the Marcos regime, elected President Rodrigo Duterte in 2016 and then witnessed mass extrajudicial killings, crackdowns on media outlets and violent targeting of Duterte’s political opponents. And in India, the most populous democracy in the world, recent years have included the Narendra Modi government undermining the independence of the judiciary and cowing independent media. Asia’s democratic regression was part of a global wave. Since the mid-2000s, democracy has regressed on nearly every continent, including in strongholds like North America and Europe. Outright authoritarian regimes have come to power in places that once were promising democracies like Turkey, while even some of the oldest democracies, like the United States, have witnessed significant democratic erosion. Indeed, in its 2020 report “Freedom in the World,” Freedom House noted that the world had seen 14 straight years of democratic decline. The novel coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated this democratic breakdown. In a study of the impact of the virus on democracy, “Democracy Under Lockdown,” Freedom House found that “the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened a crisis for democracy around the world, providing cover for governments to disrupt elections, silence critics and the press, and undermine the accountability needed to protect human rights as well as public health.” The survey showed that since the beginning of the pandemic, the state of rights and democracy has worsened in 80 countries. (I was one of many analysts who contributed to the Freedom House survey.) In Asia in particular, democratic or quasi-democratic governments from India to the Philippines to Malaysia to Cambodia have taken advantage of the pandemic to strengthen their grips on power and subdue opposition. Several governments have utilized the pandemic to give leaders massive new powers, many of which seem to have little to do with protecting public health. In Cambodia, for instance, new laws give Prime Minister Hun Sen, already one of the most authoritarian leaders in Southeast Asia, vast powers: to effect unlimited surveillance of citizens’ telecommunications networks, and to curtail the press, civil society and monitor social media. In recent months, Hun Sen’s government has ramped up repression and overseen mass trials of civil society activists. Other Asian states and territories have used the threat of the pandemic to impose strict controls on public assembly, media coverage, attendance at legislative sessions and elections that it becomes difficult for political opposition to function. To be sure, the dangerous coronavirus requires some limitations on public gatherings. But activists in Thailand, for instance, have shown that it is possible to demonstrate in health-safe ways, and legislatures can use masks, social distancing or online gatherings to meet as well. Yet, the Thai government has argued that protests advocating greater democracy and questioning the monarchy could spread the virus, and has arrested activists and tried to curb demonstrations. Hong Kong, meanwhile, delayed legislative elections scheduled for last September, supposedly because of COVID-19. It took this step even though the Special Administrative Region has enjoyed significant success in containing the virus, and though other parts of Asia, like South Korea and Singapore, have held safe elections during the pandemic. The delay in Hong Kong’s elections has provided time for the city, and China, to arrest many potential candidates from the pro-democracy camp—and possibly to ensure the eventual elections result in a legislature dominated by lawmakers sympathetic to Beijing. Still, other Asian states have scapegoated minorities, or simply the ruling party’s opponents, for spreading COVID-19—usually without any basis in fact. This stigmatization further corrodes political discourse and often leads to violent attacks on minority groups. In India, for instance, leading members of the ruling party have blamed COVID-19 on the Muslim minority, and there has been a string of violent mob attacks on Indian Muslims this year. Asian leaders have been able to use the pandemic to tighten their grip on power for several reasons. For one, there are legitimate public health reasons for some constraints on freedom—although leaders often take steps well beyond what is needed to protect public health and make no promises of relinquishing control when the virus is curbed. In addition, the fact that democracy was deteriorating in much of Asia before COVID-19 left opposition movements enfeebled and unprepared to battle a new wave of crackdowns. Meanwhile, many leading democracies that might have tried to halt regional autocrats, such as Japan, the United States and the European Union, have been distracted by their own public health crises, or—in the case of the United States—their own democratic breakdown. These developed democracies, struggling to contain the pandemic and with their own political weaknesses on show, have mostly remained silent as Asia’s strongmen grab more power. In Myanmar, for instance, the government and the military have stepped up violent crackdowns in ethnic minority regions (including Rakhine State) in recent months, but these abuses have received little international attention as foreign governments and foreign media focus on the pandemic and on political problems in the United States. While leading democracies turn inward, the region’s most powerful authoritarian state, China, has controlled the pandemic domestically and returned to high growth, bolstering its legitimacy. Beijing has used the regional power vacuum, and its domestic strength, to wield greater influence across Asia. In the next year, many Asian states will win the battle against the virus. Some, like Singapore, South Korea and China, already had developed effective anti-COVID-19 strategies. The ramp-up of production and distribution of multiple vaccines will help further curb the virus’s spread, and probably allow normal life to return in much of the region. But even if COVID-19 is controlled, the damage to Asian democracy has already been done.

Over the past fifteen years, democracy across Asia has regressed. Although the region still has strong democracies like South Korea, Japan and Taiwan, many other leading Asian democracies and countries with democratic potential have slid backwards, turning into near-autocracies or outright authoritarian states. While Thailand had been one of the freest states in Asia in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it has suffered two military coups in the past decade and now is run by a parliamentary government that took power after a seriously flawed election in 2019. The novel coronavirus pandemic has only exacerbated this democratic breakdown. In a study of the impact of the virus on democracy, “Democracy Under Lockdown,” Freedom House found that “the COVID-19 pandemic has deepened a crisis for democracy around the world, providing cover for governments to disrupt elections, silence critics and the press, and undermine the accountability needed to protect human rights as well as public health.” For more on how COVID-19 has sparked democratic backsliding in Asia, see my new Japan Times article.