It was great television. But it was shocking to watch Friday’s shouting match in the Oval Office between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with US Vice President JD Vance, Trump’s attack dog, also present. Many have asked whether it was spontaneous or an ambush. Analysts underscored after the fiasco that the White House was now largely siding with the Kremlin.
The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman wrote that what happened at the White House on Friday “was something that had never happened in the nearly 250-year history of this country: In a major war in Europe, our president clearly sided with the aggressor, the dictator and the invader against the democrat, the freedom fighter and the invaded.” It felt like a public execution of Zelensky. But he fought back, earning support from allies in Europe and elsewhere.
But who started the war in Ukraine? Zelensky or Russian President Vladimir Putin?
Who is the aggressor, the dictator? Zelensky or Putin?
We naively believed we lived in a rules-based world, but in fact the international system is broken. The post-Cold War international order no longer holds, and the transatlantic alliance that underpinned it is crumbling.
The acrimonious shouting match was a gift to Moscow. Putin was no doubt delighted by the whole episode.
Russia reacted with glee to the bitter clash between Trump and Zelensky, saying the Ukrainian leader got what he deserved. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, now deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, called Zelensky an “insolent pig” who had received “a proper slap down in the Oval Office”. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said it was a miracle that Trump and Vance restrained themselves from hitting Zelensky during the argument, adding that the Ukrainian leader was “biting the hand that fed him”.
Putin will be delighted by this chaos and the inevitable fallout. Beijing, which provided an economic lifeline to Russia after it was hit with Western sanctions, and whose partnership with Moscow is intended to counter the powerful West, is watching from the sidelines. It appears likely Ukraine will eventually enter talks with Russia with the blessing of the Trump administration. But China may not be so comfortable with this new US-Russia dynamic. Likewise, the European Union, not wanting to be left alone, won’t be happy with this disruption of the status quo.
Trump scolded Zelensky, saying he was “gambling with World War III” and insisting “Either you make a deal, or we are out.” EU leaders later met Zelensky and rallied around him. But the point is how to develop a plan for ending Ukraine’s war with Russia. Europe still needs the US.
‘No cards’ to play
Myanmar junta leader and war criminal Senior General Min Aung Hlaing on Monday left for Russia, where he will meet Putin and sign several business contracts.
In this rapidly changing international order and geopolitical alignment, Myanmar’s criminal regime has two important friends in Russia and China. Both are major arms sellers to the illegitimate junta.
Russia has sold helicopter gunships, jet fighters, armored vehicles, artillery and other military equipment to Myanmar, and thousands of Myanmar cadets have undergone training in the country. Right after the coup in 2021, Russian military dignitaries in full uniform attended the March 27 Armed Forces Day celebrations in Naypyitaw. Since then, the regime has continued to commit heinous crimes against anyone deemed an opponent, including civilians.
Faced with massive anti-China protests in 2021 during the uprising against the coup, China initially applied strategic ambiguity in Myanmar. However, in August 2024, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Naypyitaw and said: “China opposes chaos and conflict in Myanmar, interference in Myanmar’s internal affairs by outside forces, and any words and deeds that attempt to drive a wedge between China and Myanmar and smear China.”
There is no more strategic ambiguity. China openly said it supports a plan by Myanmar’s junta to hold fresh elections and return the conflict-torn country to a “democratic transition”, Beijing’s foreign minister said.
In November, Min Aung Hlaing visited Kunming to attend the summits of the Greater Mekong Subregion leaders and the Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy forum, and to attend a meeting with the leaders of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam.
China, as a major investor whose Belt and Road Initiative projects have been stalled due to the civil war, naturally feels compelled to secure its interests in Myanmar, including a deep seaport, a gas pipeline crisscrossing the country up to Yunnan province, and access to the Indian Ocean. Beijing has leverage over Myanmar, sufficient that it has even been able to broker “ceasefires” between the regime and ethnic armed organizations (EAOs). Like Trump, China has a condescending way of dealing with friends and foes alike; it has forced several armed ethnic groups along the border to enter ceasefire talks with the regime in Naypyitaw. But aside from heated exchanges and shouting matches during the series of so-called “peace talks”, nothing really happened.
The Oval Office fracas could spell bad news for Myanmar’s democratic opposition, which has been hoping for more US assistance. The Burma Act adopted under the Biden Administration appears dead in the water. Sanctions targeting the regime’s arms dealers and cronies are low-impact. Even Biden’s Myanmar policy was seen as inadequate by anti-regime forces, who would prefer to have stinger missiles to shoot down jet fighters.
In 1988, the military’s brutal crushing of that year’s nationwide democratic uprising caught the attention of Washington, which imposed sanctions and proclaimed its support for the democracy movement and its leader Aung San Suu Kyi. President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush campaigned for the release of political prisoners in Myanmar and supported the cause.
President Barack Obama, who introduced the “Pivot to Asia” and visited Myanmar twice, in 2012 and 2014, prematurely lifted those sanctions, but in truth, the Myanmar issue has never been a top priority in the US administration’s foreign policy, at the UN, or anywhere else for that matter.
Obviously, Trump is not interested in Myanmar, except perhaps for its rare earth minerals. Other than that, in his eyes the country doesn’t “hold any cards”, to use the phrase with which he admonished Zelensky. (In northern Myanmar, both Kachin insurgents and militia groups control rare earth mining areas. A report by Global Witness last year showed that the world’s dependence on heavy rare earths from Myanmar’s conflict-affected Kachin State has rapidly increased and is having a devastating impact on communities and the environment.)
Nonetheless, resistance leaders and ethnic armed groups—who now control half of the country’s territory—along with activists and all those who oppose the regime and support the oppressed people of Myanmar, can learn a lesson from this ongoing breakup of traditional alliances amid a shifting world order. It proves that you can’t solely rely on America for support, as was the case in the past.
The EAOs now largely dominate Myanmar’s borderland states of Chin, Kachin, Shan, Karenni, Karen, Rakhine and Mon. It is widely estimated that the State Administration Council, as the junta calls itself, now controls less than half of the country’s territory.
Sadly, democracy is becoming a dirty word these days. Critics predicted that Trump would bring with him an even more nakedly transactional approach than before upon his return to the White House. They were right, and global stakeholders are scrambling to find the appropriate response.
Since the coup, Min Aung Hlaing has intensified and cemented his alliance with, and reliance upon, Russia. But with Trump in the White House, Moscow and Washington appear to be drawing closer. No doubt China is following Ming Aung Hlaing’s visit to Moscow with interest.
Myanmar’s anti-regime forces will certainly need to recalibrate.
