All those who promote and believe in the inevitability and desirability of a “negotiated solution” for the post-coup crisis in Myanmar are overlooking two fundamental factors in junta chief Min Aung Hlaing’s survival strategy.
First, Min Aung Hlaing is betting that the authoritarian alliance of Russia, China, and in the case of Myanmar India belongs here as well, plus Iran and North Korea are able to provide him with sufficient support to ignore everybody else. He and his governing body, the State Administration Council, are doing all they can to engage and please those countries and to offer them any incentives they might be interested in.
While the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as well as Asian and Western democracies are extremely cautious not to make Myanmar a playground for a proxy war between the United States and the China-Russia-Iran anti-Western alliance, Min Aung Hlaing is doing just the opposite. He is doing all he can to bring the authoritarian alliance into Myanmar and make it increase (in the case of China and India) or gain (in the case of Russia) strategic assets and interests in the country. This will give them concrete reasons and benefits to help his regime survive during a moment of extreme weakness.
Second, Min Aung Hlaing has endorsed (total) destruction as his main strategy for warfare and regime survival. It is indeed fascinating how many policymakers, diplomats and analysts are looking at Myanmar through the prism of their own negative experiences in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria and Libya, and see “Balkanization” or “fragmentation” as the main concern.
At the same time, they have completely forgotten how Vladimir Putin won the second war in Chechnya, how Russia and Iran helped Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad survive and prevail, and how Russia is waging its war of aggression and genocide in Ukraine.
Intentional targeting of the civilian population and total destruction of civilian infrastructure and people’s livelihoods is not a side effect, or unfortunate collateral damage, but the core and essence of Russia’s and Min Aung Hlaing’s military strategy.
The main principles of this strategy are: Whatever we cannot control, we will simply destroy, burn to the ground. We do not fight primarily our armed enemies, instead, we intentionally and as massively as we can, target their civilians, so that internally displaced persons, cut off from food, shelter, sanitation, medicines and fuel, become a burden for the resistance.
Last but not least, Myanmar’s military is not similar to the defense forces of other countries. It is a Spartan army that does not see itself as part of society. It is a ruling, domineering class that preys on the civilian population.
Since Myanmar is a country abundant with natural resources and with significant geostrategic value for China and India, its military does not need people. It just needs to capture and control natural resources and use revenues from them to fund its defense against the people it has subjugated.
These are deep-rooted mindsets that do not equip or guide anybody to come to the negotiating table ready to compromise. For Min Aung Hlaing and his military, negotiations and ceasefires are just continuation of warfare by other means.
Igor Blazevic is a senior adviser at the Prague Civil Society Centre. Between 2011 and 2016, he worked in Myanmar as the head lecturer of the Educational Initiatives Program.
