Southeast Asia

Dai Mochinaga is a senior researcher at the Keio Research Institute at SFC. China has expanded its influence over Southeast Asia's technological development through its Digital Silk Road (DSR) initiative, a newer part of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This paper shows that China utilizes the DSR in Southeast Asia for several reasons. First, the DSR helps implement Beijing's cyberspace principles and norms in other countries. Second, it promotes Chinese investment in certain industries in Southeast Asia, and helps convince other countries to use technology standards common to Chinese firms. Finally, Beijing exerts its influence over Southeast Asia, via the DSR, to help promote its models for data privacy and security on the internet. Despite efforts via the DSR and other avenues to exert influence over Southeast Asian cyberspace, China has not been fully successful in its aims in the region, in part due to local resistance, and in part because Japan, the United States and other actors have responded to Beijing’s efforts with their own proposals for cyberspace, conceived as part of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy. For the full paper about the Digital Silk Road and China’s influence in Southeast Asia, see here.

Benjamin Zawacki is a senior program specialist with the Asia Foundation’s office in Thailand, focused on regional security and cooperation, and the author of Thailand: Shifting Ground between the US and a Rising China. The Council on Foreign Relations acknowledges the Ford Foundation for its generous support of this project. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) means many things to many people—including to the Chinese. Introduced by President Xi Jinping in 2013, just a year into his term, it was most precisely translated into English as “One Belt, One Road.” With the intended meaning lost in translation, however, it was reprised as the BRI and explained as an overland “belt” and a maritime “road.” Both would run from eastern China and converge, eventually and circuitously, in Venice, Italy. While the belt generally runs west by northwest, with its route on a map appearing as a long lower-case “z,” the maritime road is literally all over that map: It runs southwest down China’s coast and through the South China Sea, west by series of zigs and zags across the Indian Ocean, then north by northwest via the Red and Mediterranean Seas. And those are just the main streams of the project; the tributaries spread out, double back, and link up like circuitry. At any given time, the number of countries said to be participating in the BRI varies—but almost always grows—and with them does the number of projects that constitute, connect, and expand the initiative. The breadth of BRI is further complicated by Beijing’s having empowered Chinese provinces (such as southern Guangxi and Yunnan provinces bordering Vietnam, Laos, and/or Myanmar), as well as state-owned enterprises, to negotiate and designate BRI projects with other countries on their own. In rare cases, such as in Australia’s Victoria province, this empowerment is reciprocal. Yet, what constitutes the projects themselves has also been an ever-evolving matter, and with it—crucially—the very nature and purpose of the BRI. In other words, what is it? By most accounts, the Belt and Road Initiative was introduced to advance “connectivity” between China and its neighbors, and via its neighbors with places further afield, primarily through traditional infrastructure like roads and railways, seaports and airports, bridges and tunnels, and pipelines and canals. Underlying the concept was the promotion of economic growth, whereby investment in transportation would lead to increases in trade, tourism, and other income-generating activity for all involved. China’s own meteoric economic growth over previous decades, partly the result of having done domestically what it aimed to do abroad, added credibility to its idea that BRI would spark growth in other countries. Analysts were quick to point out, however, that a lot of infrastructure is “dual use;” that it might have military as well as commercial uses. China’s denial of such intentions, particularly vis-à-vis Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port and more recently Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, have not quieted foreign states’ concerns about the potential dual use of BRI projects. To the contrary, they have led to increased challenges on geopolitical grounds, whereby China is seen as extending not only its patronage abroad but its presence in strategically sensitive areas as well. The case of Hambantota, of which China took possession in 2017 after Sri Lanka failed in its loan obligations, gave rise to accusations of the BRI’s “debt trap diplomacy.” While this idea that China’s BRI projects trap recipient countries in debt has been challenged by researchers at a wide range of institutions, it is still a dominant narrative in Washington and elsewhere. Moreover, at least as early as 2015, when it established the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation (LMC) forum, China has broadened BRI projects beyond physical infrastructure. The LMC’s earliest public statements expressly placed its very founding, meetings, agreements, and initiatives under the rubric of the BRI. This in turn has brought to the fore questions concerning Chinese influence, in addition to its more concrete economic, security, or geopolitical interests. Beijing doubled down on broadening BRI beyond physical infrastructure, introducing in 2016 a “Digital Silk Road” (DSR) in addition to the original BRI. This Digital Silk Road would promote fifth generation (5G) mobile internet capacity, particularly in countries behind or lacking in such critical twenty-first century technology, as well as other new technologies including smart cities, fintech systems, and others. At the same time, the inception of the DSR raised fears that it could enable the mining and utilization of data belonging or relating to foreign citizens, and that China would export its cybersecurity laws and other internet controls to foreign countries. Influence of perhaps a more welcome nature appeared in 2019, when in response to foreign criticism regarding environmental impacts, President Xi introduced the “Green BRI.” According to Beijing, BRI projects would henceforth account for environmental and ecological concerns, and in some cases be expressly designed to respond to them. Optimists welcomed this as imperative amidst growing alarm at climate change; pessimists judged it a rhetorical device that would not be followed by action. This past year, in the midst of a pandemic that originated in China, Beijing’s leadership further began promoting a new “Health Silk Road” to promote its “mask diplomacy” and make available its COVID-19 vaccine beyond its borders. The BRI in Thailand The BRI’s evolution, and the ambiguity of the overall project, are critical to understanding how BRI operates in Thailand. To a greater degree than in most other Southeast Asian countries, the BRI’s evolution and ambiguity are reflective of the project’s relationship with Thailand and with Thai civil society. This paper presents five main points concerning the ways in which Thai civil society has both challenged and been challenged by the BRI, resulting in a kind of split verdict as to the initiative’s present and future standing in the kingdom. First is that civil society in Thailand cannot interact with what it cannot identify. There is no single understanding of the BRI in Thailand and certainly no prevailing narrative concerning the BRI’s nature, purpose, and effects. This is symbolized by confusion as to when Thailand officially became a participating country and as to which projects count as part of BRI. Thais agree that the high-speed rail project, running from the Thai-Lao border to Bangkok and continuing south to its border with Malaysia, is a BRI project—in no small part because the rail actually starts in China and ends in Singapore. Yet on the one hand, the Thai section was agreed in concept and principle as far back as 2010, three years before the BRI was announced; on the other hand, Thailand did not appear on most BRI maps for several years after that 2013 announcement. And for a brief temporary period in 2016, Thai Prime Minister General Prayuth Chan-ocha actually canceled the project. Furthermore, the rail line is one of the few projects in the kingdom that Beijing and Bangkok agree is actually part of the BRI. A list from inside China in early 2019 contained seven BRI projects in Thailand, although most had not been notably publicized as part of the initiative, and several hardly publicized at all. Conversely, the high-profile Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) and the rail network linking Bangkok’s two airports with U-Tapao Airport, were not listed. Nor was a potential canal across Thailand’s southern isthmus, despite press reports in Thailand going back to 2017 that it was being discussed as a possible BRI project. Of course, a project need not be considered part of the BRI for Thai civil society to promote or oppose it, or to seek more information or provide its points of view. But given the various conceptions of the BRI discussed above, as well as its close association with a larger but equally complex and contested “Brand China,” it stands to reason that the BRI label makes a difference in how Thai civil society views a project. Whether this ambiguity concerning projects’ BRI status is intentional or incidental is related to a second main point: Thai policymakers and business partners cannot help but be influenced by the approach of their Chinese counterparts, and China’s approach simply does not include an express role for civil society. While protests and petitions in China concerning infrastructure projects, particularly at a local level, are far more numerous than is generally reported, neither China’s various levels of government nor its state-backed banks and business are encouraged—much less required—to consult or consider views on the ground.[1] This is not to suggest that, while U.S. companies might expressly condition certain projects on social, human rights, or environmental impact assessments, Chinese liaisons would expressly prohibit them. Rather, the fact that China’s civil society does not generally see itself as a monitor or watchdog of the government, means that it is simply not factored into the equation on the Chinese side of the table. Civil society participation would need to be proactively introduced by the Thai side on any BRI project. This would invariably infuse the prospect of delays into a project’s timing and even doubts as to its viability, which generally disadvantages a negotiation. Add to this that Thailand has had either a military or military-backed government since 2014, just a year after the BRI’s introduction. The Thai governments’ own efforts to silence critical voices, centralize policy and power, and privilege big businesses and mega-projects in growing Thailand’s economy, have only signaled a stronger receptiveness to China’s state-driven approach. Indeed, in a recent book, Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia, the authors note that the Thai government’s prioritization of the Eastern Economic Corridor over the high-speed rail, may be partly on account of the rail’s location in the stronghold of the military’s electoral, civil society, and grassroots opponents.[2] China’s high growth rates at home also are attractive to Thailand. After long periods of high growth in the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s, Thailand’s own yearly growth has ranged from just 1 percent to 4.2 percent since 2014.[3] Yet at times Thai policymakers, even under military governments, have pushed back against aspects of BRI projects. Regarding the high-speed rail at least, the Thai government has arguably achieved much of what might otherwise be expected of civil society. The State Railway of Thailand took the lead in summarily denying China’s request for development rights along the rail’s right-of-way and on the land on either side of its route. Controversy over whether Chinese engineers would be permitted to work in Thailand was also largely driven by officialdom, seriously delaying progress on the rail and resulting in Prime Minister Prayuth being excluded from China’s first Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in 2017. While a compromise on the engineers was reached, Thailand managed to secure considerable technology transfer from Beijing in the process. In January 2021, only the third of fourteen contracts concerning the rail’s initial section was signed, the result of extended and intensive negotiation by Thailand. Critically, the Thais have also assumed the lion’s share of financing for the project; in effect refusing to engage in “debt trap diplomacy” in favor of a more empowered—if initially expensive—approach. A third main point is similar: Alongside the influence of China’s negotiators vis-à-vis Thai officials, a more constant and persistent presence of other Chinese actors in Thailand has undeniably influenced Thai civil society. Spread throughout the kingdom, Thailand hosts the most Confucius Institutes of any country in Asia and more than in the rest of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) combined. They are designed to promote official versions of Chinese history, society, and politics. In 2019 in Bangkok’s prestigious Thammasat University, a new Pridi Phanamyong Learning Centre was opened, devoted exclusively to China and featuring an initial collection of over two thousand books. Alongside the thousands of Thais who study in these institutions were, in 2018, some 8,400 students from China—double the number from the previous year. Enabling the Chinese’ studies has been an explosion in recent years of Mandarin language courses throughout Thailand at all levels, as well as a rise in non-language courses taught in Mandarin itself. The rising number of Chinese students and classes in Thailand has been further enabled by three additional factors: For one, significantly more Thais have studied in Chinese universities than nationals from any other ASEAN country.[4] Two, a long and deep relationship exists between China’s leadership and Thailand’s popular Princess Sirindhorn, who studied in China, speaks and writes Mandarin fluently, and in 2019 was awarded China’s Friendship Medal, the highest honor given to foreigners. And three, there has been a proliferation of Chinese-language newspapers and media outlets across Thailand; previously such news outlets were limited primarily to Bangkok’s Chinatown. In addition, China’s state media outlets are producing copy in Thai for the kingdom’s audience. At least twelve of Thailand’s most popular news outlets are provided free articles from China’s Xinhua News, translated into Thai, while the Thai-language “China Xinhua News” Facebook page has millions of followers.[5] Chinese state media also provide the English-language China Daily to many sites in Thailand. Last year at a bookshop in Bangkok known as a gathering spot for civil society, a young, genial Chinese man introduced himself and kindly asked whether he might send something to this author’s address. The next day a copy of the China Daily arrived, whose stories and ads on the BRI absolutely dominated coverage. When this author politely asked for a reprieve several months later, he was assured that dozens of other coffee shops, college cafes, and NGO co-working spaces were receiving daily copies free of charge. Religion is another area of Chinese influence in the kingdom concerning the BRI. In late 2020, the Australian scholar Gregory Raymond published “Religion as a Tool of Influence: Buddhism and China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Mainland Southeast Asia.” In Raymond’s words, “It presents early evidence that the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is evolving to incorporate people-to-people links as one of its five official goals.”[6] Indeed, in 2015, the visiting Communist Party secretary of Hainan province told Thailand’s foreign and cultural ministers that his province had just established a college to promote “Buddhist cooperation between China and Southeast Asia consistent with the framework of the One Belt One Road initiative.” Thailand’s Sangha Supreme Council sent a delegation to the opening two years later. Since then, Buddhist abbots and associations in Yunnan, Guangdong, and Hainan provinces have both sent and received delegations of their counterparts and fellow believers in Thailand, explicitly to discuss the BRI. Thailand’s Mahachula Buddhist University also sent monks to participate in a 2017 conference in Hong Kong, focused on “Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism along the ‘One Belt, One Road’.” Again, however, the extent and effects of this Chinese influence on Thai civil society are debatable. In late December 2020, the Bangkok Post reported that the State Railway of Thailand and a provincial governor had just presided over a public hearing on the rail’s second phase, to “provide information to the local community so they could comment and help the developers improve the project.” The story made reference to past and future hearings as well, concluding that “[s]ome 800 million baht (roughly $25 million) will be spent on a study and environmental impact assessment.”[7] Whether these consultations have preempted or addressed any local concerns is not clear. But aside from the role played by the State Railway Workers Union in the government’s rejection of China’s land-use requests, neither this author’s observations nor queries to Thai civil society contacts has revealed strong negative views on the high-speed rail. At the same time, Thai civil society has clearly resisted any implicit or explicit attempts at influence with respect to another project placed under the BRI umbrella: the blasting of a final inlet of rapids on the Mekong River to allow for larger vessels traveling to and from southern China. Already linking southern China to the “Maritime Silk Road” via its delta on the Gulf of Thailand, the Mekong River is also being connected to the Andaman Sea via an east-west railway across Thailand’s narrow peninsula. All of this “connectivity” has been subsumed under China’s 2015 Lancang-Mekong Cooperation forum, which in turn is officially part of the BRI. Three years after Thailand agreed to China’s 2016 request to blast the final rapids in northern Thailand, it reversed course in 2019 after sustained protest by civil society organizations and local community groups, and as the Mekong itself was experiencing its lowest levels ever recorded. Both Thai and foreign officials informed this author that the main reason for the cancelation concerned the river’s “thalweg,” defined as the middle of the primary navigable channel defining the boundary between two countries—in this case Thailand-Laos. The blasting, in other words, could cause Thailand to lose a sliver of territory to Laos. That said, publicly both the Thai and Chinese governments cited civil society’s concerns—the environment, ecology, culture, livelihoods, food security—as the main reason for the cancellation. Whatever the case, and public relations and face-saving concerns aside, Thai civil society clearly identified the blasting project as being driven by China; and activity, openly, and successfully opposed it. A fourth point is related to the involvement of Thais at the local level. Besides the ambiguities of the BRI itself, how we define and conceive of civil society in Thailand also affects our assessment of its impact on the BRI in the kingdom. Consider a potential canal across Thailand’s Isthmus of Kra, which has often—but not always—been discussed under the BRI since 2017, including by China’s ambassador to Thailand. The idea of a canal across the narrow isthmus has been raised and tested intermittently for literally three and a half centuries. A modern canal’s main proponent has been one Thai Canal Association, whose name has all the trappings of a civil society organization and whose membership overlaps considerably with the Thai-Chinese Economic and Cultural Association. At the same time, the Thai Canal Association’s chair is a former army chief and the secretary-general of a foundation named after a late prime minister and chair of the Thai king’s Privy Council, his group of close advisors. Other retired senior military and political figures, including another former prime minister, are also members. Their advocacy for a canal is focused on projections of economic growth and claims that it will bolster national security. Further muddying the waters, the association claims to have several hundred thousand signatures in support of a canal, from villagers and other Thais living in the relevant peninsular provinces but not formally organized as a civil society organization.[8] Or consider as civil society businesses, which are sometimes but not always thought of as civil society. Thai businesses range from small- and medium-sized enterprises to multinationals and are organized in an array of associations. Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand (CP) Group was founded by a Chinese immigrant to the kingdom in 1921, and eventually became the first foreign investor in Communist China. Today CP is a rich and powerful conglomerate present in every Chinese province. It is a giant in Thailand as well, employing several hundred thousand Thais, and is a key domestic player in the BRI’s Eastern Economic Corridor. In 2019, a CP-led consortium was awarded the concession to build a railway linking three Thai airports, another BRI project. CP had never ventured into transportation before, but a revolving door between the company and Thailand’s Foreign and Commerce ministries has existed for decades. In Thailand and elsewhere, civil society is commonly thought of as the domain of a younger demographic with progressive agendas; and frankly not of people with powerful alternative sources of leverage and legitimacy. Yet this denies civil society membership to older generations based simply on age or agenda, and denies people their right to trade one community for another (or to be part of multiple communities simultaneously). It also speaks to the fact that in Thailand, many of the new, vibrant, and progressive civil society organizations formed during the 1990s, were coopted, marginalized, and/or discredited by Thailand’s color-coded and reactionary interest groups during the 2000s. Finally, it is important to ask whether the distinction between civil society and civil society organizations, or CSOs, is a meaningful one. For instance, must southern Thai villagers even confer with one another on an issue, much less organize themselves around it, to count as Thai civil society? Indeed, the Kra canal may seem like only a sub-issue of the BRI in Thailand, but it exposes a much larger challenge confronting the country and its citizens. A fifth and final point is that, regarding the BRI’s programs beyond physical infrastructure, Thai civil society is plainly conflicted. China’s Digital Silk Road, according to CFR’s Joshua Kurlantzick, “goes toward improving recipients’ telecommunications networks, artificial intelligence capabilities, cloud computing, e-commerce and mobile payment systems, surveillance technology, smart cities, and other high-tech areas.”[9] Fifth generation (5G) mobile internet technology, able to carry enormous caches of data at almost instant speed, is a major aspect of the DSR. Not only is China’s Huawei Technologies already a global leader in 5G’s development and application, but in 2019 Thailand indicated that Huawei was leading the race for building out 5G across the kingdom. Some of Huawei’s investment runs through CP, which operates the leading telecommunications firm in Thailand and which was invited to participate in Huawei’s 5G test networks in the Eastern Economic Corridor. Thai civil society has not notably opposed the government’s favorable view of Huawei—and it is not difficult to see why. In 2018, 74 percent of Thai citizens had regular access to the internet, and Thailand led the world in time spent online each day with a jaw-dropping 9.4 hours. Nearly half of that time—4.6 hours daily—was spent on mobile internet, also a world-leading figure. Bangkok had (and likely still has) the largest number of active Facebook accounts among cities globally, and Instagram was not far behind.[10] Thailand also ranked number one in the world in 2019 in mobile banking penetration.[11] As for mobile devices, sales of Huawei brand phones have taken off in recent years, cutting into the traditionally popular iPhone and Samsung markets. Yet in mid-2020, as Beijing threatened the use of force against Taiwan and substantially tightened control over Hong Kong, a collection of Thai netizens criticized China’s moves on social media. This sparked a backlash from Chinese social media users, which in turn led to netizens in Taiwan and Hong Kong reciprocating their support from Thailand and the formation of a so-called “Milk Tea Alliance,” after the trendy drink popular in all three locations. Illustrated by a new #MilkTeaAlliance hashtag, this social media activity created a kind of de facto online community. Moreover, when Chinese users pointed out free speech violations in Thailand itself, Thais undermined the critics by readily agreeing with them about the suppression of speech in the kingdom. Indeed, Thai civil society has long opposed Thailand’s Computer Crimes Act, which the government has used to censor or chill free speech. While the law predates the DSR by nearly a decade, its 2017 amendments were passed less than a year after the DSR’s announcement. Thai civil society has accused these amendments of having been inspired and informed—if not enabled—by China’s “Great Firewall” and other domestic digital policies and practices. They allow Thai authorities nearly unfettered authority to censor speech, engage in surveillance, conduct warrantless searches of personal data, and curtail the utilization of encryption and anonymity online. Analogous to this dynamic has been the mixed reaction in Thailand to China’s new Health Silk Road: like all Thais, leaders of Thai civil society want access to a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as possible, and China’s Sinopharm and Sinovac have impressed with the speed at which they have produced one. Yet as early as April 2020, Sophie Boisseau de Rocher of the French Institute of International Relations noted “angry voices emanating from civil society” toward a Thai government that “failed to take strong action to fight the virus (in a bid not to offend China),” while Thai netizens were questioning the efficacy of China’s vaccine even before recent tests have cast further doubt.[12] In conclusion, just as China’s Belt and Road Initiative is many things to many countries, and to the many and diverse people within those countries; so is its relationship with Thai civil society a varied, nuanced, and evolving picture. As Thailand itself presents a unique situation to the BRI as a U.S. treaty ally, the world’s twenty-second largest economy (2019), an authoritarian democracy, and a superlative social media consumer; its civil society alternately ignores, accepts, welcomes, and opposes its numerous elements. This has been the case in Thailand for the past eight years, and can be expected to hold for the foreseeable future.  Endnotes ^ See, among others, Megan L. McCulloch, “Environmental Protest and Civil Society in China,” Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, September 2015, http://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/47303. ^ See David M. Lampton, Selina Ho, and Cheng Chwee Kuik, Rivers of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in Southeast Asia, (Oakland: University of California Press, 2020). ^ See the World Bank, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=TH, accessed on February 1, 2021. ^ See David Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet: America & China in Southeast Asia, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 158. ^ See Kerry K. Gershaneck, Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China’s Plan to “Win Without Fighting,” (Quantico: Marine Corps University Press, 2020), 91. ^ Gregory V. Raymond, “Religion as a Tool of Influence: Buddhism and China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Mainland Southeast Asia,” Contemporary Southeast Asia, 42, 3 (2020), 347. ^ “Hearing Held on High-Speed Rail Project,” Bangkok Post, December 23, 2020. ^ See Benjamin Zawacki, “America’s Biggest Southeast Asian Ally is Drifting Toward China,” Foreign Policy, September 29, 2017, http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/09/29/its-on-trump-to-stop-bangkoks-drift-to-beijing/. ^ Joshua Kurlantzick, “China’s Digital Silk Road Initiative: A Boon for Developing Countries or a Danger to Freedom?,” Diplomat, December 17, 2020, http://thediplomat.com/2020/12/chinas-digital-silk-road-initiative-a-boon-for-developing-countries-or-a-danger-to-freedom/. ^ See “Thailand Tops Internet Usage Charts,” Bangkok Post, February 6, 2018, http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/1408158/thailand-tops-internet-usage-charts. ^ See Murray Hiebert Under Beijing’s Shadow: Southeast Asia’s China Challenge, (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2020), 305. ^ See Gershaneck, Political Warfare: Strategies for Combating China’s Plan to “Win Without Fighting,” 88.

Over the past half decade, China has poured billions in investment into Southeast Asia via Beijing’s flagship infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In the latest episode of our podcast series, Selina Ho, assistant professor in international affairs at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, discusses with Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia at CFR, the effectiveness of BRI to date in Southeast Asia, the likelihood of its future success in the region, the ways in which Southeast Asian states themselves shape BRI, and the potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on China’s relations with Southeast Asia. You can access the podcast here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.