Facing battlefield losses, Myanmar’s junta may look to ASEAN for off-ramps

Facing battlefield losses, Myanmar’s junta may look to asean for off-ramps

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WRITTEN BY HUNTER MARSTON

9 January 2024

As 2023 drew to a close, Myanmar’s military (or sit-tat as it is known in Burmese) looked increasingly overstretched and its hold on power unsustainable. In a remarkable display of logistical coordination and interoperability, a collection of ethnic armed groups and resistance forces seized military bases across the country’s north. ‘Operation 1027’, as the coordinated launch of the first attacks came to be known, stunned Myanmar analysts who had begun lamenting a stalemate. With economic collapse and rampant corruption under military rule, and with morale in the barracks at an all-time low, the junta may find itself looking to international partners for off-ramps.

Chief among that list of partners is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional grouping of 10 member states. Critics discount ASEAN’s ability for collective action given its cherished policy of non-interference in member states’ internal affairs. Surely more powerful patrons like China and Russia rank higher on the junta’s list of foreign patrons. Yet, Beijing has grown frustrated with the State Administrative Council’s (SAC) inability to eradicate widespread scam centres that have proliferated in Myanmar’s lawless frontier states since the coup, and Moscow is focused on consolidating control in Ukraine as Western support falters.

ASEAN has largely spurned Myanmar’s coup makers since an emergency meeting in late 2022 produced a decision to block junta representatives from senior-level summits. Nevertheless, ASEAN provided early cover for the junta, or the SAC, and the generals may find a mediated solution increasingly appealing if and when they determine they have lost momentum on the battlefield. As this moment nears, the international community should bolster support for Laos’ chairmanship of ASEAN and provide technical assistance to facilitate diplomatic talks in line with Indonesia’s ‘quiet diplomacy’ during its 2023 chairmanship.

Internal collapse may force the junta’s hand

Since late October last year, resistance forces have seized control of more than 300 sit-tat bases and 20 towns across northern Myanmar, including key territory and trade zones along the borders with China and India.

Identifying possible mediators and key stakeholders is critical at this particular juncture, and given the present circumstances we need not let perfect be the enemy of good.

With the resumption of fierce fighting between the Arakan Army (AA) and sit-tat in western Rakhine State, the Myanmar military’s hold on power looks increasingly tenuous. The AA is one of the most formidable and well-resourced ethnic armed groups in the country. The AA and Myanmar military signed a ceasefire in 2020 brokered by Japanese special envoy Yohei Sasakawa, allowing the junta to concentrate its firepower in the country’s central and northern regions where resistance fighting was most intense. All that has changed in the past month and a half.

According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, “The simultaneous offensives have presented the Myanmar armed forces with their most serious battlefield challenge in at least 30 years”. The AA has reportedly rejected Senior General Min Aung Hlaing’s call for dialogue.

Yet, Min Aung Hlaing, who declared himself Chairman of the SAC regime following the February 2021 coup, appears unable to follow his predecessors’ core precept of divide and conquer, whereby the military would seek ceasefires with some groups while actively waging war on others so as to avoid fighting all simultaneously. That latter scenario seems to be exactly what is taking place now — and it could trigger the junta’s undoing.

The writing is on the wall for the SAC. The National Unity Government, representing the civilian leadership elected in the 2020 election which the military rejects, claims to control more than half of the country’s territory. With ethnic armed groups linked to the Three Brotherhood Alliance seizing significant checkpoints on the border with China and making gains against the junta in Sagaing, Chin, and Shan states, it is only a matter of time before resistance forces challenge the SAC’s hold of power in Mandalay (the second largest city in the country) and Naypyidaw (the capital).

The sit-tat has no institutional memory (at least within the generals’ lifetimes) of waging guerrilla warfare from a position of disadvantage. Accordingly, if the resistance were to succeed in taking control of Naypyidaw, top leaders around Min Aung Hlaing would likely pressure their commander to seek negotiations as the only feasible off-ramp.

ASEAN’s role moving forward

Given its cascading failures on the battlefield, inability to stem financial freefall, or garner even a glimmer of popular support among a defiant population, Myanmar’s junta may feel compelled to re-examine the terms of ASEAN’s 2021 Five Point Consensus (5PC). The 5PC represented an olive branch to the junta from a divided ASEAN, which includes several authoritarian governments that remain sympathetic to the junta.

Among the conditions called for in the consensus were the “immediate cessation of violence” and “constructive dialogue among all parties concerned”. Despite raising no objections in Jakarta when the consensus was first concluded in April 2021, following Min Aung Hlaing’s return to Naypyidaw the generals made clear that they would only honour the terms of the agreement “after we achieve a certain level of security and stability”.

While not ideal, the 5PC remains a viable option for the junta to pursue dialogue. With both sides rejecting talks (at least publicly), it is far from clear how the necessary negotiations would take place. Long-time analysts have pointed out that the sit-tat is unlikely to negotiate unless it feels it has no other way to survive. In light of the near-universal abhorrence with which the military is now viewed across Burmese society, it will also have to be completely dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up.

A “troika” model broached by ASEAN during the group’s annual summit in September offers some hope that ASEAN could bring some pressure to bear on the junta. Under the new mechanism, the current chair would be supported by the previous and incoming chairs. Thus for 2024, Laos, Indonesia, and the Philippines (which will serve as chair in Myanmar’s place in 2025) would comprise the three-state bloc.

Myanmar’s generals could hope to find some support from authoritarian friends within ASEAN (especially Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam) for a negotiated off-ramp that might represent their best chance of survival, making an ASEAN-brokered solution in line with the 5PC impossible to ignore.

Of course, as research has shown, transitional justice as well as reconciliation and accountability mechanisms are essential to long-term political stability, peace, and reconstruction in post-conflict societies. Yet identifying possible mediators and key stakeholders is critical at this particular juncture, and given the present circumstances we need not let perfect be the enemy of good.

ASEAN may still not be the ideal interlocutor for the regime, as recent murmurings from the new Thai government suggest. But it might just be the body that Myanmar’s generals look to when they see their options run out. ASEAN owes it to the people of Myanmar, a fellow member state, to be prepared.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.

Author biography

Hunter Marston is an Associate with 9DASHLINE, a PhD candidate at the Australian National University, and an Adjunct Research Fellow at La Trobe Asia. Image credit: Flickr/Allyson Neville-Morgan.