It was America’s abandonment of a failed sanctions policy in favor of calibrated engagement that helped bring about the formal end of Myanmar’s military dictatorship in 2015. Today, US President Joe Biden’s administration must adopt a similar strategy – or risk allowing Myanmar to become a failed state. Read More Here
While the fog of war demands analytical caution, the latest surprise assault on government forces by the Three Brotherhood Alliance of the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army carries important implications for the future of Myanmar. Read More Here
Iranian planes landing in Myanmar have raised speculation of secretive military-to-military cooperation, including possible sensitive Iranian weapons sales amid rising international calls to impose an arms embargo on the rights-abusing junta. Read More Here
As a loose organisation without a clear strategic vision of its own, ASEAN is floundering as individual members break ranks and realign in the new U.S.-China rivalry. Read More Here
As a policy pronouncement marking six months since the February 1 coup d’etat, Myanmar’s military chief and head of the State Administration Council (SAC) Senior General Min Aung Hlaing exhibited the same strained relationship with the real world since he seized power. Read More Here
By virtue of its highly formalized institutional structure, ASEAN is designed to make radical change hard to come by, and is thus ill-equipped to implement it in Myanmar, let alone articulate a vision for what the country’s future might look like. Read More Here
Myanmar is at a point of no return. The army’s February coup, meant to surgically shift power within the existing constitutional framework, has instead unleashed a revolutionary energy that will be nearly impossible to contain. Over the past four months, protests and strikes have continued despite the killing of more than 800 people and the […]
Thousands of people fleeing a military crackdown in Myanmar have crossed into India’s northeastern states, leading to worries among officials there that the region could become a staging post for pro-democracy activists and stoke instability. Read More Here
The fate of Myanmar, though, will not be determined around a table where the people of Myanmar are not represented. Myanmar’s protestors remain resolute in rejecting the military’s attempted coup. Meanwhile, the military has stated that it will only recognize ASEAN’s mediation role once the “situation returns to stability.” Read Here | The National Interest
Across Asia, in places such as Myanmar, India, and Hong Kong, leaders that espouse nationalist rhetoric and bemoan their former colonial overlords see no issue with deploying laws designed by those foreign masters against their own people. These lasting vestiges of the British empire are draconian, overly broad, and vaguely worded, but they persist very […]
looking beyond borders 