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 […]
Given Myanmar’s strategic location, violent turmoil there could destabilize the entire region. Already, the crisis caused by the military coup is shaking a key pillar of regional order, with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations split over how to respond. Read Here | Project Syndicate
When the National League for Democracy closed its first term in government last year, peacebuilding in Myanmar was already at a crossroads. Now, following the military coup, observers are asking what approach the generals might take to secure the “eternal peace” prescribed in the declaration justifying the emergency state. Read Here | The Diplomat
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