Podcast: Big ASEAN Flashpoint Stakes on Myanmar in 2025

Shifting major power balances and evolving Myanmar civil war dynamics in focus amid crowded regional Southeast Asia agenda for 2025.

INTRODUCTION

ASEAN Wonk: Welcome to the ASEAN Wonk Podcast, where we bring you expert insights and regional perspectives on Southeast Asia and Indo-Pacific geopolitics and geoeconomics. I'm your host, Dr. Prashanth Parameswaran. And if you haven't already, do subscribe to the ASEAN Wonk platform at www.aseanwonk.com so you don't miss all our posts. Our guest today is Moe Thuzar, who spent a decade at the ASEAN Secretariat and previously was a diplomat as well. Now, she serves as coordinator of the Myanmar Studies Program and senior fellow at the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, which is one of Southeast Asia's leading think tanks, and she previously helped head up the ASEAN studies program there as well.

We will start our conversation talking about the ongoing civil war in Myanmar in the context of wider regional and global dynamics. Make sure you watch, listen, or read the full episode as we go through a range of other subjects, including the stakes for major powers, future scenarios for Myanmar and how the country is likely to factor into the ASEAN agenda in 2025.

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PUTTING GLOBAL AND REGIONAL STAKES IN PERSPECTIVE

ASEAN Wonk: So welcome to the ASEAN Wonk Podcast, Moe. Thank you for joining us. 

Moe Thuzar: Thank you for having me, Prashanth. 

ASEAN Wonk: We continue to see a pretty tragic situation play out in Myanmar amid the ongoing civil war. And just so that we're not being euphemistic or very general about what's happening, just for the benefit of listeners, watchers, and readers. The UN estimates from just a few weeks ago show over 5,300 civilians killed, more than 3.3 million displaced since the military seized power on February 1st, 2021. Coupled with the casualties after Typhoon Yagi as well, the economy has contracted by about a fifth. Since the coup, according to the World Bank, about a third of the country is in poverty. The junta is estimated to control around just about a half of the country. And there's also been worries about growing apathy on the situation in Myanmar. One of the reasons why we wanted to have you on the podcast, Moe, is that ISEAS has been one of the few institutions who has actually done measurement around this and how this factors into other regional issues in Southeast Asia. The ISEAS State of Southeast Asia survey showed, for example, this year that the Myanmar crisis was ranked below the top five in terms of issues in Southeast Asia and, obviously, you know, lots of issues there, Israel-Hamas war, South China Sea, global scam operations, and and so on and so forth.

But I'm wondering if you could just help us set the stage about how Myanmar factors into this very diversified regional landscape in Southeast Asia. What are your thoughts about as someone who watches the Myanmar situation on its own terms, but also someone who's watched the regional context as well. How do we think about Myanmar's place within the regional context in Southeast Asia and also the global context that we have there? How would you assess that? 

Moe Thuzar: Right. Thank you, Prashanth. That's a very broad range of questions and issues to address when we think about the ongoing, very tragic situation in Myanmar. Maybe we could start first by just getting to look at that overall situation of what is happening in Myanmar or what's going on in the context of the civil war that you just mentioned. As an aspiring historian, I think it would be remiss of me to not point out here that Burma in the past, Myanmar today, has never really been free from a civil war type of situation. There's a decades-long type of conflict that's been going on in the past, mostly in the periphery areas of the country where, you know, different ethnic armed organizations have for their various objectives been pushing back or resisting the Myanmar military. And so this type of, I guess, civil war armed conflict in the periphery areas situation started almost almost simultaneously or within the first year or so of Burma gaining independence in 1948. So I think we also need to look at that when we, you know, refer to the ongoing civil war or the current civil war.

But what we've seen since the coup by the Myanmar military on the 1st of February 2021, of course, is a more nationwide situation across the country, not just in the periphery areas. And actually, I think for the first time in the country's history, also really spreading into what have been formally viewed as the heartland areas, areas in the center of the country where traditionally they've been kind of recruitment grounds for the Myanmar military. So it's really become this kind of nationwide situation. And the broad objective that people are coalescing around is to reject the military's dominant role in politics and, of course, try to call for a more federal system of democracy. So in that state, how do we then assess the overall situation, particularly in these past couple of years where I think the conflict in Myanmar has of course been in the news, I think in the regional news more than, say, globally, although it does pop up time and again. And you mentioned situating Myanmar in the global context. Of course, globally, we have what's going on in the Middle East, what's been going on in Ukraine since 2022. And I think all of these also affect how people here in this region view the situation in Myanmar, where I think most of us know about Myanmar as having been under a military regime of some sort. And even with the brief decade of opening and the efforts to transition to democracy from 2011 right up to the coup in 2021, of course, I think now Myanmar being under a military regime again, the frame of reference always tends to be: “oh, that's the situation.” And, of course, that's the frame of lens that most of us see it.

But for those of us who are trying to follow the situation, monitor developments that have been happening, there's this term that has now entered the lexicon of any conflict discussions about Myanmar, and it's called Operation 1027. Now that's a kind of a military offensive that was launched by ethnic armed organizations in Myanmar's northern Shan state. That's in the northern part of the country in areas that are close to Myanmar's border with China. And it had progressed quite rapidly, taking several strategic outposts and recently even an important regional command. So because of that, Operation 1027 has shifted, I think, the conflict dynamics and seized imaginations on the ongoing civil war in Myanmar. And the forces spearheading this offensive have also been brought more into focus. As I mentioned, these are ethnic armed organizations that have formed alliances of their own. They have operated mostly in the northern part of the country, but one of the members of that alliance also is the Arakan Army, which is the ethnic armed organization that emerged rather recently in Myanmar's conflict civil war history. It emerged in 2009, and it's in the western part of Myanmar in Rakhine State, where it has also been pushing back rather successfully against the Myanmar military, more so in recent months. And, of course, there's the consideration of resistance groups, including what are called PDFs, People's Defense Forces. Some of them come under the broad framework of the parallel National Unity Government that formed after the coup with elected lawmakers from the 2020 elections.

Why Operation 1027 has seemed rather consequential in conflict discussions about Myanmar is because there are several realities that we now see in Myanmar. Firstly, the Myanmar military is losing more administrative control in several areas, including towns and regional commands. And, of course, this has both strategic and psychological impacts. And, we also need to look at then the situation of people in these towns and areas over which the ethnic armed organizations — the different forces — the areas that they have taken control over. And that requires also consideration of the administrative services delivery. Or in the case of important trade routes, mind you, these are locations that are along the border trade route between Myanmar and China. So if we look at that in that context, there's also that connectivity consideration. Then not least, of course, the locations in which Operation 1027 and its aftermath have unfolded inevitably raised questions about the implications from Myanmar's bilateral relations and neighbors' concerns. And so I think it's in that kind of a context. So if we look at the receding administrative control of the State Administration Council military regime in Myanmar currently, the losses of strategic regional commands and border posts, trading points. We also see, of course, the increasing assertion of administrative and other services in the areas from which the military regime's control has receded, but there are different administrators in different areas.

So, for example, in Rakhine state, it could be the Arakan army. In the Sagaing region, more in the central part of the country, it might be the NUG, the National Unity Government, and its coalition or allied partners. In the southeast, it might be different ethnic armed organizations like the Karenni National Union or or the the Karenni Armed Forces. So I think this is how we can also view this landscape. Recently, the Myanmar military has offered peace talks. But in that offer, it still uses language that invokes the resistant forces as terrorists. And, of course, the military's public statements still continue expressing the vows or the commitments to crush all opponents. So there's that language and rhetoric that continues even as the military now probably sees itself in a position that it needs to start offering or talking about this “peace talks.”

And the resistance, of course, if we look at it whether different parts of groups have differing objectives, the resistance still broadly shares a common goal of rejecting military rule or dominance. And let's not forget also, if we look at the current situation and context, the enforcement of the conscription law. Now that started earlier this year in April 2024, and sources tell me it is now in the seventh recruitment round of conscripts. So this has been going on. Recruitment and training of conscripts seems to occur roughly monthly, and one can only conjecture where these conscripts are being deployed or have been deployed and what has been their fate, for which there will have to be much, I think, more efforts done to collect and collate the numbers and the impacts. I'm sorry I took a bit long, but that's the broad overall context that we need to be aware about when we check the pulse, shall we say, about the overall state of the current situation in Myanmar. 

FOREIGN PARTNERSHIP MIX AND EVOLVING REGIONAL DYNAMICS

ASEAN Wonk: That was terrific. And especially the granularity with which you presented the various actors in Myanmar. Often there's this caricature of the junta and everybody else. But as you pointed out, even within the junta, there are some issues there with the amount of control they have, the border trade, their relationship with other groups. And then there's the NUG, there's the PDFs, there's the various ethnic groups. So it's a very complex context. So thank you for walking us through that.

I'm wondering if I could just ask, before we go a little bit deeper into some of these aspects, you gave a good overview of the internal situation in Myanmar and you mentioned a couple of key relationships there, including with China. There's been a little bit of focus as to Myanmar's narrowing list of partners and increasingly intensified ties with China and Russia, with a focus on some of the individual data points like the number of junta visits to China and Russia, the Myanmar's admission as a dialogue partner of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, for example. At the same time, we do know that there are other key partners as well that are exerting influence — India, Thailand, European states, the United States. And we've seen some of the developments spotlight that — Thailand's humanitarian corridor initiative, for example, different equities as well within Southeast Asia, right? So Thailand and it's border role, Singapore and and finance, Malaysia and the Rohingya population there. I'm wondering if you could just walk us through what's the kind of state of play in terms of Myanmar's balance of partners. We should remember that although we started out talking about the conflict, this is a country, not a war or a conflict or an issue. As someone who has looked at this country closely, what is your sense of how we should think about Myanmar's balance of partners in this context? 

Moe Thuzar: Another very interesting and also very broad-ranging, question,  Prashanth. This really brings us to the point that you've very eloquently highlighted about Myanmar's location in this region, positionality when it comes to regional and also broader geopolitical dynamics. And, of course, in this day and age, no country is really isolated or can stay isolated even if they wish to pursue their own agenda or interest in that sense. So if we look at it, of course, we've got the ASEAN context. And then from that ASEAN context, we could see the links or the connections to how the current military regime in Myanmar is trying to leverage or maneuver the very narrow diplomatic space that it has by seeking other kind of regional forums and so on where it feels that it may not receive as much diplomatic pressure or even whisperings in the corridors, shall we say.

So let's just backtrack a bit and look at it first in that regional setting of ASEAN. Because since 1997, of course, Myanmar has been an ASEAN member. It joined ASEAN under a previous military regime, but with the commitment at least by the technocrats — the civilian career diplomats in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Myanmar at that time — to to really try to engage ASEAN's policy of constructive engagement and see how by participating in ASEAN, there could be that — through that exposure, education, if you will — open up through ASEAN, maybe looking a bit at the Vietnam example from Vietnam's membership in 1995. And of course, fast forward more than quarter of a century later, we do see Vietnam as that success story of having opened up through ASEAN. Vietnam has graduated from that new member status.

And I just referred back to that membership trajectory because, in that former existence as a member of the Myanmar foreign service, I was part of the team preparing for Myanmar's admission to ASEAN. So I do see and understand how the policy of constructive engagement within an intergovernmental process was meant to really assist, I think, intentions or sentiments that were willing to open up through membership obligations and responsibilities. So as a member in any association or organization, yes, they are rights, but they are also obligations. And I think this is also something very pertinent to now. I think the assertion of what is a member state's rights versus what is required as a member state's obligations to the association. So, with that broad context again, I would say Myanmar has come a long way from the ASEAN response to developments in Myanmar under the previous military regime of the State Peace and Development Council.

And, I remember the first time that an internal situation or an internal development in Myanmar was really brought to ASEAN's regional attention as a point of concern was in 2003. The Depayin incident as it is referred to where supporters of the State Peace and Development Council military regime set upon and brutally attacked the supporters and the members of the National League for Democracy, the main opposition party at that time, the convoy, which was also headed by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League for Democracy, outside a town in Central Myanmar called Depayin, causing deaths, casualties, and, of course, physical harm to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. So that became a point that ASEAN wanted to know what's going on. And since then, the situation in Myanmar became a regular agenda item to be discussed at foreign ministers' meetings and summits. And whoever represented Myanmar was in for a lot of questioning. It may have happened behind closed doors, but nevertheless, it was there on the agenda.

And so whoever was going to be sitting in the Myanmar seat knew that they would have to have an answer to a lot of questions coming thick and fast. So you see that. And that was 2003, as I mentioned. Of course we cannot not mention the 2007 Saffron Revolution and the military's brutal repression of unarmed civilian protesters at that time, that led to the first enunciation of ASEAN's strongest language up to that point. ASEAN used the word revulsed. So that to me was rather strong compared to previous language. Then the following close on the heels of the 2007 Saffron Revolution, which was in September of that year, then in May of 2008, we had Cyclone Nargis. Then the response to Cyclone Nargis was also seen as ASEAN's breakthrough because that was the first time the Myanmar regime accepted external assistance — external intervention, I should say — in the form of humanitarian assistance situated in the context of the cyclone response. Then, of course, ASEAN also tried to call for free and fair elections, 2010. Free and fair elections didn't happen in 2010. But then ASEAN also had a cautious welcoming of the unexpected changes instituted by the government of the Union Solidarity Development Party, a military backed political party headed by president Thein Sein. And, of course ASEAN also has viewed with interest the future political role of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy when they became the legal opposition via by elections in 2012.

So with all that history of ASEAN closely following developments in Myanmar in its regional diplomacy setting, I think now we can really see the main difference of ASEAN dealing with the post-2021 coup Myanmar is a more rules-based entity. ASEAN is a more rules based entity after adopting the ASEAN charter in 2007 and the charter's entry into force in 2008. So if we look at that then, ASEAN's response, the 2021 ASEAN chair, that was Brunei. The ASEAN chair had to issue a statement about the coup, and that statement was issued on the 2nd of February 2021. That statement referred to the ASEAN charter's principles on democracy, on democracy, good governance, and respect for human rights. So that's a subtle statement they're already warning, if you will, that there are these obligations and these requirements and upholding the principles of which member states have signed on to. And, of course, there is what we are more familiar with in diplomatic circles is this unprecedented decision by ASEAN to limit Myanmar's attendance at ASEAN summits. And that also happened during Brunei's term as the 2021 ASEAN chair. Under Cambodia's turn as ASEAN chair, that nonpolitical representative criterion was actually expanded even to foreign ministers' meetings. So Myanmar's attendance at ASEAN summits and foreign ministers' meetings have been limited to a nonpolitical representative. Even as ASEAN continues to practice regional diplomacy as a means of communication, trying to get the message across to the regime in Naypyidaw.

So that's the difference from the past. In the past, from 2003 up to 2012, this kind of communication would have been made at the ASEAN table with a recurring portion on developments in Myanmar, in the joint communiques and summit chairman statements. And now we have this differentiation. As long as there is no progress in implementing what ASEAN had actually negotiated and discussed and agreed upon in good faith with the coup leader, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, in April 2021 — in the form of the broad five point consensus agreement document —Myanmar's attendance at these important high level political meetings is now limited to just a senior official, a nonpolitical representative attending and representing Myanmar. So the seat is not empty. It's just how it's been limited. And of course, the Myanmar military regime responded to that initially by choosing not to send a representative, which gave the impression that there's an empty seat syndrome.

But starting this year, I also noticed a bit of a change. I think Myanmar's State Administration Council regime has started adhering to that nonpolitical representative criterion by sending a permanent secretary from the Myanmar Ministry of Foreign Affairs to such meetings. So I think here, it's also important to note that the nonpolitical representative criterion, as I mentioned, it is linked to the State Administration Council's noncompliance with the Five Point Consensus, but the nonpolitical representative criterion itself is not part of the Five Point Consensus. It came about as ASEAN's response to the State Administration Council's conflation of its own internal five point roadmap with ASEAN's broad Five Point Consensus that they nevertheless tried to negotiate with the Senior General. In the past, ASEAN actually went along with the previous military regimes — for example, the State Peace and Development Council's seven point roadmap to democracy. That was the kind of thing that the regime in Myanmar at that time presented to ASEAN after the Dapeyin incident in 2003 to say they were trying to move towards democracy. So in the past, ASEAN went along with Myanmar's internal domestic road map and monitored its progress, so to speak, via the briefings that the Myanmar political principals would deliver at high-level ASEAN meetings. Now we are seeing ASEAN standing firm that ASEAN's Five Point Consensus is something that ASEAN has negotiated to help — as you know — bring about cessation of violence and facilitate humanitarian assistance as well as help to mediate among different political stakeholders in the country towards an eventual dialogue type of situation.

So ASEAN's very clear that the Five Point Consensus is not the five point road map of the state administration council regime, and they are trying to differentiate that as well. So that's the other kind of differentiated nuance that I see. I could go on about parallels that we see in the revisiting of past breakthroughs. And here I refer to the 2008 Cyclone Nargis response. The then government of Myanmar accepted ASEAN's bridging role between Myanmar and the international humanitarian community to address what happened after the devastating cyclone and the humanitarian crisis looming in those days. But those references to that humanitarian assistance as the first step, you know, the first entry point, so to speak, is revisited by both sides, I would say. We've had the Rohingya crisis erupt after the military's disproportionate crackdown on Rohingya communities in northern Rakhine state in 2017. And that happened under the National League for Democracy's watch at the helm of government in Myanmar. The NLD brought that issue to Myanmar and therefore asked and sought ASEAN's assistance in that. So they had that Nargis parallel as in, as long as we go through ASEAN, we'll have a breathing space. And, of course, the State Administration Council also has that institutional knowledge and capacity across its civil service, particularly in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, from those experiences and and therefore has that additional, I guess, leveraging capacity to know how to maneuver the ASEAN space as we have seen.

I mentioned the 2017 Rohingya crisis, but, of course, we have seen that in the context of ASEAN's effort to introduce a humanitarian pause after the 2021 coup. So those are the broad regional dynamics that are going on. But when it comes to Myanmar's foreign policy, external relations, I've observed that there's also this tendency to go bilateral, to seek out who might be more sympathetic among the different ASEAN members and the other external actors in the regional and international communities. So that's something that we're also seeing in addition to, I think, the State Administration Council military regime seeking to leverage the narrow diplomatic space that it has with several of the countries that you've mentioned and and seeking membership or observer status, associate status in other regional organizations. I guess we could go on about Myanmar's ties with its key neighbors, but I'll wait for how you would like to see the conversation go on. 

PREPARING FOR 2025 SCENARIOS AND IMPLICATIONS

ASEAN Wonk: That was great. Thanks a lot, Moe. And I think it's really useful that you set this in historical perspective. Whenever we're talking about ASEAN, I think everybody's familiar with its challenges, but any multilateral organization is only going to be as effective as its member states and only as effective as — if it's addressing one particular country, only as effective as that country allows it to be if it's a particular situation. So it's great that you situated that in historical perspective. So building off of what you said, I think the last round of ASEAN summitry in Laos, as you're aware, ASEAN concluded unsurprisingly that the Five Point Consensus was “substantially inadequate” after a review. You mentioned a series of measures that ASEAN's been taking, such as suspending Myanmar as well from chairing the grouping on a rotational basis for an interim period of time.

But at the same time, there are several other steps that have been called for repeatedly. Strengthening the office of the ASEAN special envoy has not been followed through yet, and there have been worries of slippage of earlier measures potentially in terms of level of representation and so on and so forth. But I guess the question is, moving forward, we've got the 2025 chairmanship by Malaysia. And before we get into what we think might happen or potential expectations, I guess there is a little bit of nervousness about this sort of repeatedly-delayed elections being held in Myanmar. Now it's being said that it's gonna be held sometime in 2025. If it's held, how might this reinforce divisions within ASEAN? Who might send observers, who might not? What are the individual responses? What are the collective responses? Given all this, what's your sense of how likely this scenario is of an election actually happening in 2025? And, if it happens, what should we be preparing for? What are the likely responses? And how are you thinking about how this could play out in the context of Malaysia's chairmanship? 

Moe Thuzar: Thank you, Prashanth. Again, a lot of different points to consider there…

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