Guest Column
Members of Myanmar's ethnic community take part in an anti-regime protest in Yangon in February 2021. / The Irrawaddy
The conflict in Myanmar rages on as the coup leaders struggle to maintain territorial control and establish their regime as the country’s legitimate governing authority. The pro-democracy resistance’s National Unity Government (NUG) continues an uphill battle as well, with repeated calls for its de jure recognition and complete isolation of the junta falling on deaf ears, especially in Myanmar’s home region.
On the foreign policy front, the military junta and pro-democracy resistance are now locked in a diplomatic stalemate. Under international law, the junta cannot be the legitimate ruling authority of Myanmar as long as pro-democracy Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun continues to occupy Myanmar’s seat the United Nations. Likewise, the NUG cannot win de jure status as the country’s government until it sits in the junta-occupied capital Naypyitaw. For the resistance, the only way out is through—a complete military victory against the junta’s troops, with the capitulation of Naypyitaw.
Resistance foreign policy should ideally be distilled down to one simple goal: to direct all diplomatic effort towards acquiring every form of assistance possible for winning the revolutionary war.
The key to resistance military victory lies with Myanmar’s neighbors. All vital components for defeating the junta—logistics for arms and munitions, funding for resistance troops, and humanitarian aid for civilians displaced by fighting—depend heavily on the policies of Myanmar’s neighbors. Their policies depend in turn on developments in border areas that are home to ethnic revolutionary organizations (EROs).
Yet, the NUG’s foreign policymaking process thus far seems to indicate low levels of coordination and consultation with the EROs.
Of the nine Myanmar states and regions that are located along the country’s borders, seven are ERO territories. The majority of official border trade posts are located in ethnic states. Unofficial border crossings through ERO territories are also critical routes for arms and supplies for all resistance troops, including the NUG-led People’s Defense Force (PDF). Moreover, EROs’ decades-old relationships with neighboring authorities across the borders have enabled pro-democracy leaders to seek refuge and operate with relative freedom in some neighboring countries. And the latter’s key interests—border security, bilateral trade and investment, cross-border relations—which depend on EROs, are all determinants of their policies towards Myanmar.
Why then, is there a distinct lack of foreign policy coordination between the NUG and EROs and even among EROs themselves? The answer lies in the centralized foreign policymaking culture inherited from six decades of authoritarian rule.
Under successive military regimes, Myanmar’s foreign policymaking became centralized and focused almost solely on state-level diplomatic relations, with all defense and security related decision-making conducted exclusively by the military. Inter-ministerial and inter-agency cooperation on diplomacy was also rare, leaving relevant issues such as foreign investment, trade and commerce, energy, technology, and civil society concerns out of the foreign policy calculus.
Through no fault of its own, the NUG has inherited this centralized and siloed foreign policymaking culture, devoid of inclusive stakeholder participation and consideration of the diverse instruments of state power applied in diplomacy. This has been a stumbling block to further progress in diplomacy for the pro-democracy movement, especially where it concerns the indispensable role of EROs in engaging neighboring countries.
To fix it, resistance leaders from the NUG and EROs will need to collaborate and recalibrate their current foreign policy direction. The NUG will need to forego resource consuming attempts at de jure recognition of the NUG and total isolation of the junta—both are next to impossible. All efforts in diplomacy should instead be directed at winning the war against the junta. This requires either covert or open support from Myanmar’s neighbors in terms of humanitarian aid, transportation routes for weapons and equipment, and both military and diplomatic intelligence on the junta.
The formation of an informal but efficient federal international relations team led by EROs, unencumbered by formalities and procedures, would be a good start. The EROs are better positioned to lead the team, given their pivotal roles in respective bilateral relations and the armed resistance in general. It will also free up scarce human resources for the NUG’s foreign policy team, an efficient division of labor, as long as strong levels of coordination are maintained between the NUG’s team and the federal international relations team. While the ethnically diverse National Unity Consultative Council already has a commendable Joint Coordination Committee on Foreign Affairs, it is a mechanism requiring broad-based consensus that can take time, especially where it concerns urgency in implementation.
The primary task of the federal international relations team will be to push, through any channel available, for the establishment of effective lines of communication between the resistance leadership and key foreign policy decisionmakers in neighboring countries. Seeking out participation in existing spaces for informal diplomacy such as the Track 1.5 and 2 fora, civil society engagement platforms, humanitarian aid networks, and the sidelines of both global and regional multilateral meetings, would be the first step. To do so, the international relations team will need to mobilize the human resources and communication networks necessary for productive participation in such spaces. This will include the mobilization of ethnic minority and Bamar-majority teams with diverse technical skills and resource networks, grouped accordingly for bilateral relations or specific issues to be worked on.
The secondary task of the team will be to convince neighboring governments (especially China, India and Thailand) of two things: (1) that complete removal of the junta is the only way to bring stability to Myanmar; and (2) that to protect the countries’ long-term interests in Myanmar, supporting the resistance now is a more rational move than continuing engagement with the failing junta.
The first, concerning stability in a post-junta Myanmar, is a major concern for countries in the region. Myanmar’s neighbors are especially fearful of the worst-case scenario of a full-blown civil war breaking out among various armed groups after the fall of the junta. Cruel as it may sound, for neighboring countries their security (the safety and prosperity of their citizens) come before the tragic suffering of the Myanmar people. By this cold, pragmatic calculation, they will prefer dealing with what has been a familiar entity to them for decades—the military—than the less familiar forces that will fill the vacuum of state security and authority after the junta is defeated.
However, the same neighbors and regional powers are also discerning enough to realize that the military junta will eventually fall. This provides an in-road for the federal international relations team. The work of the team of NUG and ERO leaders will be to collectively convince neighboring countries, with concrete evidence, that the power vacuum left by the junta will be filled by a relatively much more stable (and capable) interim government. A full federal democracy charter implementation is not necessary and is, at this stage, impossible. Allaying fears of a nationwide civil war, and the intensification in spill-over of the conflict, can start by addressing pragmatic concerns such as troop deployments and tentative territorial division post-junta. Broadly speaking, the EROs and Bamar-majority leaders need to sell their vision of federal democracy, communicate the level of progress on federal affairs, and convince external parties that there will be a relatively much more stable federal system than what currently exists under junta rule.
The second case to make to neighboring governments, that supporting the pro-democracy resistance now is the more rational strategic choice to protect long-term interests in Myanmar, is a task that will require extensive discussions, negotiations and a great deal of compromise between neighboring governments and the EROs. Pertinent issues will include border security, migration, transportation infrastructure, resource extraction, trade, and foreign investment policies for a post-junta Myanmar. Decision-making on these issues is beyond the purview of the NUG and fall under the remit of the EROs located in border regions. The respective EROs are now de facto regional authorities and, under the federal system envisioned in the Federal Democracy Charter, will either transition into de jure regional governments or occupy leadership positions in said governments.
The recent statement on Myanmar by Pita Limjaroenrat, leader of Thailand’s election-winning Move Forward Party (MFP), further proves that the aforementioned issues on bilateral relations take precedence over human rights concerns. The closing paragraph of the statement acknowledged the “multi-dimensional challenges” of the “Myanmar dilemma” and cited very pragmatic concerns for Thailand arising from it such as the burden of refugees and migrants, energy security, arms trafficking, human trafficking, health hazards, and drug smuggling—all of which create problems for Thailand.
To his credit, the prime ministerial candidate has stood apart from political leaders in neighboring countries with his vocal support for the plight of the Myanmar people. All of the above is not to argue that the MFP will not stand on its principles of democracy and human rights. They are merely to stress the necessity for resistance leaders—NUG and EROs—to present a united front and have some very pragmatic discussion points ready for what will hopefully be a new MFP-led coalition government in Thailand. Resistance leaders, especially those from the National League for Democracy (NLD), will recall that the NLD itself had to make hard choices and compromise many of its principles in the name of pragmatism, in both domestic and foreign policy, once it came to power in 2016. Such is the nature of power, politics and diplomacy.
Lastly, the case can also be made to neighboring governments that it will be mutually beneficial for them to start strengthening their respective relationships with the EROs. A cursory glance at the Federal Democracy Charter shows that ERO-led state governments and legislatures will exercise a high degree of autonomy in decision-making on foreign investment, resource extraction, taxation, and state security—all of which have direct impact on bilateral trade, investment, and transboundary security with neighboring countries. The formation of a federal international relations team, its work on bilateral relations and regional diplomacy during the Spring Revolution can be the beginning of an inclusive federal foreign policymaking in Myanmar. Foreign policymaking in a post-junta Myanmar, whether in the transitional period or under a federal democratic system, will be an entirely different, multi-dimensional, and complex process.
Déwi Myint is a Myanmar foreign policy analyst based in the Asia-Pacific.