“I believe in America.” That opening line from the classic mafia epic The Godfather could also have been the guiding principle of the exiled Myanmar revolutionary forces for over 30 years. No longer. The multi-faceted support from the United States towards democracy and rights in Myanmar since the early 1990s has been immeasurably impactful on millions of people in and outside the country, but this has come to a standstill. Far from being a potential savior for Myanmar, Donald Trump’s administration is only bad news for Myanmar: those still living under State Administration Council (SAC) rule and those in America.
In places with large diaspora communities like Indianapolis, with its estimated 30,000 Myanmar migrants, predominantly Chin, Trump’s economic policies are starting to burden many people. Imposed on April 10, the 45 percent tariffs on all goods coming from Myanmar, while delayed until July 9, plus shipping costs and other factors, have already increased prices of basic goods for restaurants and grocery stores by 40 percent. The June 4 travel ban on Myanmar passport holders will also affect family reunions and students for Myanmar communities across the United States. Economic hardships in America also directly relate to economic conditions in Myanmar, as remittances remain an important source of funds for some families, although not on the scale of worker remittances coming from neighboring Thailand with its estimated 4 million migrant workers.
The disorder of the Trump administration has caused immense hardship around the world, and has badly damaged America’s standing in the world. The decision to go to war with Iran will have damaged it further. According to the 2025 Democracy Perception Index, which surveyed over 110,000 people in 100 countries, the popularity of the United States dramatically declined over the last year, falling well below China. The comparative popularity of China over the US increased: even New Zealand, Canada and Mexico thought more positively of China than America. Given the widespread distrust of China in Myanmar, if surveyed, many people would in all likelihood still prefer the US. But after Trump’s destruction of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), tariffs, travel bans, gutting scholarships, and America’s lackluster, some would say absent, support for the Myanmar revolution, positive perceptions towards the United States can no longer be assumed.
The legacy of American support
It is important to memorialize a long-term relationship with the United States that has benefited millions of people in Myanmar. USAID and the State Department over many years distributed billions of dollars in aid for Karen and Rohingya refugees, and displaced people in Kachin, granted hundreds of scholarships, supported the Myanmar independent media, aided southern Shan State avocado growers, governance and elections programs and women’s groups, resettled thousands of people from camps along the Thailand border to the United States, and helped promote democracy and human rights. In the early days of the Thein Sein administration, Washington appointed Derek Mitchell as ambassador, with his replacement Scot Marciel coming in 2026. Both were highly respected and skillful diplomats with an enduring compassion for Myanmar. Under immense pressure from Congressional oversight, media scrutiny and the gamble of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barak Obama to embrace the “transition”, the US got the balance of engagement largely right, after decades of pressure on previous military regimes, and avoided the unseemly scramble for influence and market access so many other Western states engaged in.
Hundreds of American diplomats and aid workers, such as the first USAID Country Director Chris Milligan and his successor Teresa McGhie, plus educators, scholars, contractors, technical advisors, engineers and many other experts, have served in Myanmar since 2012 and remain engaged in various ways. It’s important to remember the savagery is coming from Trump and his MAGA Stormtroopers, not the many Americans who continue to care for Myanmar. But this doesn’t mean the United States is coming to save Myanmar. This was as clear in 2022 as it should be today. But the drift really started during the Biden Administration, with the State Department unsure of its approach beyond symbolism and sanctions. American diplomatic approaches were also distorted by shonky analysis on the post-coup conflict, lamentably funded by USAID through one of the loathsome “Beltway Bandit” contractors, which claimed the Myanmar military was on the verge of collapse and the National Unity Government (NUG) more legitimate and influential than it was.
This shouldn’t spell an end to advocacy on Myanmar in Washington. Important issues such as extending the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of Myanmar asylum seekers, pursuing bipartisan support for bills such as the Burma Act, promoting religious freedoms, and keeping the State Department and Congress appraised of complex events inside Myanmar are crucial pursuits. Yet talk of appealing to the Trump White House that Myanmar is a critical crossroad of Chinese containment will likely receive little purchase.
Of equal importance than finding ways to weather the storm of Trump’s cruel intentions, is how to promote the idea of a future free Myanmar. The multiple constituent members of the anti-SAC forces must find ways to reconstruct foreign policy approaches tailored for an authoritarian Trump world, where financial support, empathy, human rights accountability and justice will be under savage assault. Recognize also that the rest of the West is changing, as not just Trump’s tyrannical America, but so many in the international system are rewiring the rules-based international order. The shift from foreign aid to increased defense spending globally is inexorable, and will have deep and uncertain impacts on Myanmar.
The retreat of the rest of the West
It is not just Trump’s attack on USAID that should be concerning for the many beneficiaries of international assistance around the world. Aid is also being dramatically culled by other major donors. The United Kingdom has announced a dramatic reduction in its aid budget, from 0.5 percent of Gross National Income (GNI) to 0.3 percent, or £15.2 billion (US$20.2 billion) to around £9 billion. The reduction will take effect in 2027, and it’s not clear yet how Myanmar will be affected. Development Minister Jenny Chapman told parliament recently that the UK was no longer a “global charity.” Trade Minister Douglas Alexander said in a BBC interview that public support for foreign aid has dropped: “(P)ublic consent has been withdrawn. And truthfully on aid, it’s not just fiscally challenged, its culturally challenged as well.”
Similar cuts have been announced from France, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden, which have all announced reductions to their Overseas Development Assistance (ODA). These cuts are due to a number of factors, including increased aid to Ukraine, increasing defense spending as global security uncertainty builds, and ideological reasons: foreign aid simply isn’t popular in many Western states. This is partly fear-mongering over immigration, but also reflective of increasing economic difficulties in main donor states.
The United Nations (UN) is facing growing demands for reform. Already, the World Food Program (WFP) has announced its workforce will be reduced by up to 30 percent: the US provided nearly half its global budget. The refugee agency, UNHCR, will cut 30 percent of total costs. The Office Coordinating Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) announced in April it will cut 20 percent of staff, and this month the agency head, Tom Fletcher, appealed for emergency assistance for 180 million people in 70 countries, claiming just 13 percent of their project cost of $44 billion had been pledged. Fletcher remarked that “(b)rutal funding cuts leave us with brutal choices.” One positive recent development was the Asian Development Bank (ADB) approving a $100-million humanitarian aid package to Myanmar. The funding will go to three UN agencies: it is not clear how much will go to non-SAC controlled parts of the country.
How all these cuts and a reorientation to defense spending from major powers will impact war and violence around the world is impossible to predict, but major cuts to global health, food aid, and humanitarian emergencies and disaster relief will have lasting effects. In Myanmar, already hyper vulnerable after more than four years of war, further international neglect will be catastrophic.
How is the NUG foreign policy establishment responding?
How adept will the NUG be in responding to a dramatically changing global system? Without a dramatic refocus and personnel change, the prospects do not look positive. Foreign Minister Zin Mar Aung has failed to elicit much international support—the same goes for Minister for International Cooperation Dr. Sasa and Minister for Human Rights Aung Myo Min. But the entire foreign policy approach is less strategic messaging than soliloquy. It’s possible to respect all of these individuals and recognize their undoubted commitment, but also to contend they are unsuitable emissaries for a country at war in a world order that is dramatically transforming. Many in the foreign policy team spend more time on diaspora events than diplomacy. This is undoubtedly important, for inclusion of Myanmar communities around the world, fund raising, and morale boosting, but it has not translated into effective international support beyond symbolism.
Lurching agendas—from the Federal Democracy Charter (FDC) for three years, and now the current trend of “bottom up federalism” design, the unconvincing claims that the NUG had “effective territorial control” to justify the transfer of UN credentials, and appeals for human rights protection—have all languished. The post-earthquake calls for all international assistance to flow through the NUG and not the SAC may have had moral merit, but was simply not practical, especially as most of the hardest hit areas were not under NUG administration. The shadow government has gone from being purportedly, and in highly contested fashion, the primary stakeholder to being just one of many stakeholders.
To revisit the Godfather metaphor, the NUG’s lackluster foreign policy is partly a reflection of the fact that they lack any “wartime consigliere” (a trusted counsellor of the “Don”) to improve their strategic messaging. They have been getting dud advice. All the NUG’s creepy foreign advisors are milquetoasts. Courtiers, not revolutionaries. Fawners not hard thinkers. The constellation of feel good activism solidarity around the world may warm the hearts of visiting NUG leaders when they visit, but it’s simply performative, a comfort blanket. They have all been an abject failure, and as the NUG’s foreign policy credibility further declines, their reliance on ineffective advice should end.
One of the more public examples of this phenomenon was the secretive appointment of American businessman John Todoroki by the NUG as an advisor back in April, according to filings with the US Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, 1938. Todoroki was arrested in Myanmar in 2019 for his involvement in a hemp farm in Mandalay that Myanmar counter-narcotics officials claim was an illegal marijuana plantation. Released on bail after several months in prison, Todoroki absconded to Thailand and eventually back to the US. His appointment as an apparently unpaid advisor was uncovered in early May.
This came as a surprise to many in the NUG, including the foreign minister. The appointment was allegedly orchestrated by U Kyaw Zaw, spokesperson for the Office of the President. On June 10, he was “permitted to retire” by acting President Duwa Lashi La, although the statement claimed he would continue to serve “focusing on strategic engagement and coordination.” Permitted to retire is the same euphemism employed to dismiss military regime officials. As evidence of the haphazard amateur-hour efforts of the NUG, the Todoroki debacle is almost tantamount to a self-inflicted coup de grâce. To stretch the Godfather reference to breaking point, the NUG needed a Michael Corleone, but with Kyaw Zaw they got Fredo. His sacking is probably the best foreign policy decision the parallel government has made.
The quiet Asia pivot
While the NUG continues to look at a retreating West for succor, different forms of diplomacy are being pursued in the region. Malaysia as chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has taken a number of admirable steps to include key players, including representatives of ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) and Myanmar civil society, and the appointment of the well-respected Othman Hashim as Special Envoy, but time is running out to achieve anything meaningful. This has not been aided by Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim’s delusional calls for a SAC-announced post-earthquake ceasefire to hold. Yet the bigger dilemma is the Five Point Consensus (5PC) is simply dead, and all diplomatic efforts, from ASEAN or the West to UN Special Envoy Julie Bishop, will continue to fail.
There is multi-sided quiet diplomacy playing out with neighboring states often led not by the NUG but various armed revolutionary groups. Many of the EAOs are engaged in multiple forms of diplomacy that they, usually, refuse to publically discuss, but are shaping the lives of millions of people inside Myanmar. The Arakan Army (AA) is engaging with three neighboring states, Bangladesh, India and China, on a range of security and trade issues since its dramatic conquest of the borders in 2024. Bangladesh’s National Security Advisor Khalilur Rahman recently said ties with the AA were a “practical necessity.” The AA is a guarantor of so much of China’s strategic economic investments, and has wisely chosen to render much of its negotiations necessarily quiet.
The northern Myanmar groups all must look towards China for a form of lopsided and coercive diplomacy to retain their protectorates. The decision of the Kokang armed group to relinquish the city of Lashio, what the Institute for Strategy and Policy (ISP) calls the “Lashio Model”, underscores the key role Beijing is performing in managing violence and markets in Myanmar: in ways ASEAN and the West simply cannot replicate. China is also antagonistic towards the NUG, which is sees as a hapless Western-backed outfit.
India is another harsh reality to contend with, as is its hysterical media spreading all manner of conspiracy theories regarding Myanmar. India’s despicable dumping of Rohingya asylum seekers from New Delhi in the sea off Tanintharyi is but one indication of their unpredictability. Yet the AA, Chin EAOs, and the Kachin Independence Organization have to deal with India for trade, humanitarian supplies and security discussions.
Thailand is also a crucial source of quiet EAO diplomacy on a range of fronts, not just for the Karen National Union (KNU), whose territorial advances have been remarkable in the past year, but also the Karenni, Mon and many People’s Defense Force (PDF) allies. Some of these relations may involve elements of the NUG, but it is not seen as a major partner in this quiet diplomacy. On May 9, the KNU issued a statement that assured the Thai public that the armed group “made all efforts to mitigate any impacts on the Thai public” following its capture of the Htee Kee military base in Tanintharyi. The KNU has been methodically overrunning all the remaining SAC bases along the joint border, which will further strengthen their position in bilateral trade and security discussions.
As Western attention and assistance to Myanmar reduces, regional diplomacy, multifaceted, secretive and complicated, will be more transformative to the country’s future than far away international forums. The NUG’s foreign policy should be adapted for that harsh reality. Believing in Trump’s America is to be on a hiding to nothing.
David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict, humanitarian and human rights issues on Myanmar.
