Myanmar junta chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing stands in a vehicle as he attends a ceremony to mark the country’s 78th Armed Forces Day in Naypyidaw, Myanmar, on Monday | AFP-JIJI
Igor Blazevic
We have reached a turning point.
For a long time, for about two and half years, Myanmar has been in a dynamic and negative equilibrium. It was negative because the military junta was inflicting huge suffering, destruction, deprivation and trauma on the population on a massive scale. It has been dynamic equilibrium because something was happening constantly – junta terror, resistance attacks, brave acts of disobedience – however, neither was the military able to defeat armed resistance or to suppress the civil disobedience, nor the resistance was strong enough to topple the military junta.
This has changed in October and November 2023. This change did not happen out of the blue. It has been aggregating for a long time. However, October and November brought the “Blitzkrieg” Operation 1027 which triggered a breakthrough out of the previous equilibrium.
We have now jumped into a new phase and a new power dynamic between the coup-maker’s State Administration Council (SAC) and the resistance.
DEADLY WOUNDED BEAST
The Myanmar military has for some time been bleeding on all sides. Now it has become obvious that the SAC is a deadly wounded beast. The Myanmar military dictatorship has visibly entered into a downturn spiral from which it cannot recover – except under one condition, which I will elaborate on later on.
I am talking about the collapse of the SAC, not about the collapse of the military. The “military-as-regime” was pushed into a downturn spiral at the end of which it will collapse. That does not mean that the “military-as-institution” will collapse. Because in Myanmar the regime is a military dictatorship, it is natural to consider the military-as-regime (SAC) and the military-as-institution as one and the same. Partly they are, but not fully. It is useful to keep that distinction, for better understanding, but also for important strategic choices, for psychological warfare and for political decisions.
The current SAC will inevitably collapse and with the collapse of the SAC also the Myanmar military dictatorship or military-as-regime will collapse. There will be still be significant leftovers of the military-as-institution. What will happen with those leftovers will depend a lot on the way the military-as-regime
will collapse. We can make assumptions and outline different possibilities, but we do not know and cannot know. We are in the midst of an accelerated and intensified history, which is still open and undecided.
When will the collapse of the SAC happen?
We do not know and nobody can know because it is still open, unfinished history. It depends on many factors and their interplay. It could be anytime between six to eight months from now on. It could also take place in one year or a year and a half.
How will military regime collapse?
This will most probably not happen through a total military defeat. I cannot imagine the Myanmar military defending junta leader Min Aung Hlaing till the last day, while allied resistance forces are gradually taking over territory until Min Aung Hlaing kills himself an underground bunker in the besieged and destroyed capital Naypyidaw. This is the story of Adolph Hitler in Berlin in 1945 but in Myanmar we will probably see another scenario.
Resistance military offensives can keep on exerting bigger and bigger pressure on the military. However, it is not realistic to expect, and it will be even very dangerous to expect that resistance forces can soon overrun the military that is entrenched in big cities. The disproportionality of military hard power is still too big.
COLLAPSE FROM WITHIN?
In order for the SAC to fall, the Myanmar military must, under multilayer pressures – armed resistance, civil disobedience, political pressures by the allied forces of the National Unity Government (NUG) and Ethnic Revolutionary Organizations (EROs), economic warfare pressure and psychological warfare pressure – break from within.
This can happen in two different ways. One is, the Myanmar military could implode from the bottom up. Exhausted, demoralized, poorly fed and poorly equipped units across the country that are under relentless attacks by the guerrilla resistance could at one moment stop following orders from their senior commanders and simply lay down their weapons. This could trigger a domino effect which will reach as far as the outposts leading to Naypyidaw. Some of the big cities, e.g. Mandalay, could revolt
and overthrow military control after intense but quick fights. Min Aung Hlaing will realize that it is over and will probably jump on a plane and escape to China or some other safe haven country from where he will hope he will not be extradited.
The fall of the SAC can also happen through an internal putsch which will remove Min Aung Hlaing, unilaterally declare a ceasefire and offer readiness to negotiate with both allied resistance forces and Myanmar neighbours and ASEAN. If this were to happen, it will depend a lot on whether this internal coup is carried out by senior generals who are complicit in crimes and terror, and who are deeply involved in the corrupt ownership of the economy; or the coup will be led by some other officers who have been less involved in crimes and are clean from corrupt enrichment. The former will have as a priority a desire to keep their economic assets they have stripped and accumulated and will try all they can to keep some powers, prerogatives and impunity, to protect their positions and ill-acquired wealth. If the coup is done by the other group, it will be easier for them to accept civilian control and security sector reform.
PHASES SINCE THE 2021 COUP
Since the coup in February 2021, the people’s struggle against the junta has gone through several phases.
The military coup triggered nationwide, mass, nonviolent civic resistance which lasted a few months.
The military tried to suppress protests and civic disobedience with a brutal crackdown. This has backfired. The crackdown activated the armed resistance and since then we had simultaneously ongoing civic resistance as well as gradually strengthening armed resistance. Both have been important to the same extent and both have been fuelled and sustained by popular anger against the junta and its crimes and by the heroic resilience of the people of Myanmar.
Faced with determined resistance which has shown no signs of receding, the junta escalated the level of violence and aggression. The military started to wage a full-fledged war of terror against the civilian population. The people of Myanmar did not give up in spite of the huge level of suffering and pain. They continued with stubborn – and heroic – self-defence.
During this phase, the junta had an upper hand. It controlled disproportionate resources and hard military power to sustain systematic, patient, ongoing aggression against the population of the country.
Their war of terror against the nation was highly destructive and plunged the country into an economic downturn. The junta cynically and ruthlessly calculated that they could endure longer than the resistance, that the people will give up and that they will regain control.
This is also what Myanmar’s neighbours and other ASEAN countries, as well as the UN agencies and the INGOs have been expecting to happen. So, they decided to sit-and-wait until the junta finishes its “dirty job”, reconsolidate control and remain the “only game in town”. In that case it will be again possible to resume businesses and developmental projects with those who affirmed themselves as the authorities.
However, things did not happen this way because the people of Myanmar have found deeper sources of determination and resilience. The resistance was able to survive, to learn, to pull resources and to gradually increase its own military capacity. The story about resistance units watching videos from Ukraine and starting to adapt commercial drones and gradually developing capacity to apply them on the battlefields with significant effectiveness is just one of such stories of learning and gaining strength.
This development led to the phase of mentioned negative equilibrium. During this period, the resistance was constantly becoming stronger and stronger and more and more united, although this process was very slow due to the fact that nobody from other states or intergovernmental organizations was ready to provide any meaningful assistance to the people who were defending themselves against the murderous gang in uniform.
Then, suddenly, a surprise “Black Swan” appeared. The Three Brotherhood Alliance “Blitzkrieg” disrupted the negative equilibrium and tipped the power balance in favour of the resistance. Operation 1027 opened two new fronts, in northern Shan State and in Rakhine or Arakan state at a moment when the military was already overstretched to breaking point.
Different resistance forces launched partly collaborative, party synchronized offensives and military started to crumble in many of its outlying posts and to retreat into a defensive mode.
JUNTA ON DEFENSIVE
This is the new phase where we find ourselves at the end of 2023. The junta is in a defensive survival stage. The resistance has gained momentum and is capable to sustain offensive pressures. The junta was thrown into a downward trajectory. The resistance has entered an upward spiral.
The junta is facing unsolvable weaknesses.
Armed conflicts are taking place in 221 out of 330 townships in Myanmar, which amounts to 67 per cent of the country. This is simply too much for a significantly weakened military to cope with.
The most serious weakness is dramatic loss of manpower and lack of capacity to recruit new soldiers in a situation in which it is overstretched extremely thin across a huge territory. Defection and non-cooperation rates are getting higher again. Units and junior officers on the ground know all too well what Min Aung Hlaing is refusing to accept – that roads are insecure for junta convoys and that any attempt to raid ERO-controlled territories with ground troops will end with junta soldiers being killed, wounded and decisively repelled.
Panic is creeping into the bones of solders in trenches of vulnerable outlying posts and anxiety is spreading among Naypyidaw inhabitants. This demoralization and psychological weakness will sooner or later break the SAC.
There are also other important junta’s weaknesses. Its administrative capacity has collapsed across a big part of the country. The junta military has lost control of 43 per cent of Myanmar’s territory. That means that the junta is simply not able to govern and control those territories, even if resistance forces are still not able to take over territory in full. Lack of hard currency, galloping inflation and economic meltdown is hurting the people hard, but they are also squeezing the junta’s capacity to act.
On the other side, the allied resistance is on a trajectory of accumulating more and more strength.
Initially, when the NUG announced the self-defence struggle, the resistance of the Bama population dramatically lacked weapons, ammunition, military experience and a chain of command. EROs have been slightly in a better shape, but they also did not have too much in the way of weapons and ammunition; most of them did not have too many soldiers and have been squeezed in very narrow territory. This has changed.
Each current victory of the resistance forces is adding supplies of weapons and ammunition, it is adding territorial control, establishing control over borders and important trade and supply routes and is adding capacity to expand taxation. Those are all game-changing increases in capacity to pull together much needed resources.
Each success of coordinated or synchronized operations of the resistance forces are increasing willingness to cooperate. Each joint victory generates trust and is making both the military and political alliance stronger.
One more important dynamic has been activated with the success of Operation 1027. The perception of who will be the more probable winner of the current war has changed.
The anti-junta alliance is gradually gaining a winning image. This is increasingly making it an attractive partner. It is no surprise that we are now seeing shifts among those Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) and political actors who have been so far sitting on the fence or have been even cautiously interacting with the junta. They are also recalculating their choices because they do not want to stay as the last ones with the losing side.
TWO POSSIBLE IMMEDIATE SCENARIOS
The Myanmar junta is a deadly wounded, bleeding beast, but it is wild beast, blind from the rage, which can still inflict a lot of damage and pain.
The junta cannot any more achieve military victories. It cannot regain territories it has lost and will lose more territories in the weeks and months to come. However, the Myanmar military still can inflict significant humanitarian disasters.
This is bringing us to two probable scenarios as to how things could develop in Myanmar from now on. At this point, it is not possible to estimate which scenario is the more probable one.
One probable scenario is that the SAC will collapse in the next six to eight months.
However, there is also a second possible scenario. According to this scenario, the junta will give up on the lost territories of the northern Shan State, on parts of Sagaing, as well as what is currently controlled by the Chin and Karenni resistance, Arakan Army and the Karen National Union (KNU). However, the junta will inflict heavy destruction in parts of Karenni, Karen, Chin and Rakhine states as well as in Sagaing and Magway with one single purpose, not so much to achieve military victories and to regain military control, but to impose a new level of humanitarian disaster on both the urban and rural civilian populations.
The military might give up on the “periphery”, bunker itself in urban centres and Myanmar lowlands and increase a level of civilian destruction in the “buffer zones” which they can reach with a combination of both artillery and airpower.
This is similar to how the Russian forces have fortified themselves in the East Ukraine and are relentlessly hitting civilian targets and civilian infrastructure on the western Ukrainian side. The Russians have been very vulnerable when they have been trying offensive operations to take control over Ukraine. However, when they stated to be defensive and just use artillery, rockets and drones to destroy Ukrainian civilian targets and when Ukrainians started to be expected to undertake offensives, suddenly Ukrainians started to be bogged down with heavy, demoralizing losses.
One can imagine how something similar could happen in Myanmar. This development cannot help the SAC regain control. But it could create a new exhausting and highly destructive stalemate. It would also create a situation in which everybody on the resistance side will need to carefully calculate does it have capacity for further offensive attempts and how much more civilian suffering can the resistance sustain. This development could bring us back to demoralization after the current optimism.
HOW A MISLEADING NARRATIVE CAN EMERGE AGAIN
This development would also bring us back to the narrative among diplomats, within the international community and neighbours that the military cannot be defeated and that any effort to defeat the military is just leading to enormous civilian suffering. Pressure from neighbours and other internationals could start again with the belief that they need to facilitate negotiations between the military and resistance.
This scenario would play even better for the military’s survival strategy if they will themselves remove Min Aung Hlaing and make an offer of some fake compromise. This will give the excuse to everybody among neighbours and the international community to start to pressure the EROs and the NUG to accept negotiations with the “new” military in order to end further human suffering.
The junta will now try to do whatever they can to create a new temporary stalemate on the battlefield. It will also try to increase destruction and human suffering wherever they are able to do so.
It is in junta’s interest to replace narratives about resistance successes and about the strength of resistance cooperation with narratives of suffering and destruction. This is why they will try to bomb, destroy, burn and cut.
The junta will also try to use neighbours and anybody ready to help, to replace narratives about its losses with narratives about possibility of “negotiations”, “humanitarian ceasefires”, “peaceful solution”, “elections”, or whatever else.
This is bringing us to the question of where neighbours and foreign actors stand on Myanmar and what we can expect them to do.
THREAT FROM NEIGHBOURS
So far, the overwhelming perception among Yangon and Bangkok-based diplomats, Myanmar neighbours and other regional and international actors has been that whatever is happening in Myanmar, the military is too strong to be defeated.
Expectations have been that in the end, the junta will anyhow, through combination of brutality and trickery, reconsolidate control over a large swathe of the country. So, diplomats and foreign policy-makers made the assumption that it is and it will be inevitable to deal with the junta, even if they are murderous and disliked. The generals have been seen as someone who is and will be in charge.
This has changed now. Understanding has spread that the junta is on a downturn trajectory and that it could fall. This is a significant and important change. The change of perception can change the attitudes and policies of neighbours and other countries toward Myanmar.
However, it is important to understand that change of perception is still not a change of policy. Change of perception is necessary for a change of policy, but change of perception does not automatically lead to a change of policy.
Three neighbours, China, India and Thailand, are increasingly nervous. They want stability in Myanmar to pursue their economic and geopolitical interests and what they see is a country falling in deeper and deeper conflict, in economic meltdown and in instability that threatens to turn into a state breakdown.
They are becoming more and more aware how weak and incompetent the junta is, but – and this is the most critical but – they cannot imagine stability in Myanmar without the military. They simply do not
believe and do not want to believe that the NUG and EROs are able to come to political agreement about the future of the country. They do not believe that the NUG and EROs are able to take over government and to provide stability and keep the country together.
They have partly interiorized the decades of military propaganda that the military is the only national institution capable to hold the country together. Partly they are projecting on Myanmar the negative experiences from the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and South Sudan.
Those historic experiences with state fragility of robustly diverse and divided societies in a moment when long established dictatorships are falling run deep in the collective mind of the foreign policy decision-makers. Historic experiences from other places, particularly if they are relatively recent ones, create assumptions, prejudices and mind frames that are not easy to overcome or remove.
The NUG and EROs do not need to persuade international actors that they stand for democracy and/or federalism and that democracy and federalism are better than military dictatorship. In today’s messy “multipolar” chaos, outsiders will not become supportive toward the NUG or EROs in order to help them achieve democracy or federalism. The NUG and EROs also do not need to persuade international actors that the Myanmar military is committing horrendous crimes and that civilian suffering is enormous. International players will not intervene against the military for those reasons either.
The NUG and EROs have a mountainous task to persuade neighbours and other internationals that the best bet for preventing the disintegration of Myanmar comes from the NUG and ERO alliance. They need to persuade neighbours and other internationals that the SAC is the primary and only source of instability and serious security threats for neighbours. They need to make the SAC appear as the only obstacle for de-escalation of violence, as the one that is responsible for the illicit drug trade and human trafficking, for the collapse of vaccination and treating of infectious diseases spreading over the border, and as a threat that can trigger a mass exodus of the scale seen in Syria or Venezuela.
They need to persuade neighbours and internationals that the futile effort of Min Aung Hlaing and the SAC to stay in power will actually lead to the disintegration of Myanmar in five to seven territories controlled by different armed militias. And at the same time the NUG and EROs need to persuade neighbours and internationals that they have solid mutual political agreement and a joint transition roadmap which they are able to credibly describe, so that the removal of the SAC and installation of the NUG and EROs transition government will be able to quickly de-escalate violence across country, impose
law and order, cope with hyper-inflation, revive economic activities, manage return of IDPs and refugees, and restore stability.
In order to be able to do so, the ethnic-democratic alliance need to have in hand a solid political agreement to be presented and they need to have a blueprint of how the future transition government will look like and what will be the transition roadmap for the first months and the first year after the collapse of the military junta.
It is not enough to say that the NUG and NUCC has already outlined such a transition roadmap.
This is bringing me to the next point about the three sources of legitimacy.
SHIFTING SANDS OF POST-COUP LEGITIMACY
It is very important that everybody who is involved in the lead political bodies of the anti-junta alliance recognize and accept the changing power relations as we approach the third anniversary of the coup.
It all started with the nationwide protests, mass public participation, and a civil disobedience movement. The diaspora was energized and mobilized as well. This Big Bang of the People Power generated new entities that took leadership roles in the Spring Revolution – the NUG, CRPH and NUCC. All three of them enjoyed popular support. They have driven legitimacy partly from the 2020 elections and partly from the post-coup mass support coming both from inside the country as well as from the diaspora. Hundreds of thousands of people undertaking significant risk and standing on the streets calling for the international community to “Reject the Coup” and “Recognize the NUG” gave a strong mandate to new political entities that replaced the dissolved parliament and arrested elected government.
The expectation has been that the NUG will receive international recognition and that it will mobilize assistance from the other countries. This did not happen.
The junta tried to suppress protest and disobedience with brutal violence which led to the emergence and growth of the armed resistance. The NUG endorsed and called for the self-defending struggle, and tried to play the command role. However, the NUG lacked resources to affirm itself in the leadership role of the armed struggle. It did not have arms and ammunition, it did not have production capacity, it did not control territory necessary for m
and command authority, and it did not control sufficient steady revenue streams to effectively finance nationwide armed resistance.
Armed struggle led to the growth of power and influence of the EROs. They had weapons, ammunition, some production facilities, access to borders; they had territory for training and logistic bases and they had a lot military experience. A complex resistance army developed out of the convergence of interests of the NUG, the uprising of the majority Bama population and EROs.
As a result, the junta’s power and control started to shrink significantly. Liberated territories expanded primarily in the ERO-controlled areas. The proto-states started to develop in Kachin, Chin, Karenni and Arakan states, more recently in the northern Shan State as well. The Wa has for already a long time consolidated its own fully autonomous rule.
In the meantime, for multiple reasons the NUCC process got blocked and has not been unlocked until now.
All those developments have created a very different situation than was apparent at the beginning of the Spring Revolution.
The NUG starting to float in terms of its own authority. It started to be ambiguous – is the NUG a governing authority over all other stakeholders; or it is just one authority among several other political authorities which are mutual and equal, or is the NUG a coordinating body of an alliance of the willing which is helping hold a unifying front but cannot exercise authority over the EROs or different bottom-up developed autonomous state executive or coordinating councils. This ambiguity did not come from the NUG itself, but from the extent in which other actors have been ready to accept the NUG as governing or coordinating body.
The role of the CRPH become even more problematic because it was increasingly starting to act more as a blocking factor and as a guardian of the past, instead of being visionary co-driver of the revolutionary momentum.
THREE SOURCES OF LEGITIMACY
In order to advance mutual trust and cooperation which is necessary to move the current political process forward and generate political agreement and a blueprint of how the future transition
government will look like – the one that will be solid and look credible to skeptical Myanmar neighbours and others in the international community – it is, I think, very important that all political actors in existing the anti-junta alliance understand and respect that in the current situation we have there sources of legitimacy and authority in Myanmar.
The first source of llegitimacy and authority is coming from the elections. Not just from the 2020 elections, but from three overwhelming victories of the NLD over military parties. For 30 years the NLD has been the prime democracy party of Myanmar and Aung San Suu Kyi enjoyed and for sure still enjoys overwhelming popular support. This is a source of legitimacy and authority which nobody should try to throw off the deck because it will just trigger a dangerous backfire.
The second source of legitimacy and authority is coming from the decades, in some cases 70 years of national liberation struggle of the ethnic nationalities. This source of authority is in this moment strengthened by the expanded territorial control of the EROs and by “interim” state building processes. This is already yet another source of legitimacy and authority which nobody can question, dismiss and overlook any more.
There is also the third source of legitimacy and authority, the one that is a more dispersed ad vague than the first two, but not less relevant. In the moment of huge uncertainly and enormous risk, different individuals and groups took leadership roles and become drivers of the Spring Revolution. Since the armed resistance started, we also have the constantly developing legitimacy and authority of on-the-ground commanders and leaders of self-organizing of communities across Myanmar. They should be also recognized and respected in their right to be stakeholders of the institutional build-up of the future Myanmar.
What is very important in this moment is that none of the three mentioned sources of legitimacy claims to have superior authority over the other two. Any competition of authorities will be disastrous. The only way to achieve viable and credible political agreement is the way of “tripartite toleration”. Each of them needs to accept and treat the other two as equally legitimate.
If anybody plays “hardball” claiming that it has higher authority than the other two, the result will be polarization, disunity or paralysis of so much necessary political process.
HOW TO MOVE FORWARD?`
The current war of terror the military is waging against the nation and the liberation war the people are waging against the kleptocratic gang in uniforms could develop in three different directions.
Hard to achieve, messy and good scenario is: Allied democratic and ethno-federalist forces will keep on generating momentum which will lead to further weakening and implosion from the bottom up of the SAC. A complex, messy built up of the federal democratic country will follow.
Another, bad scenario is: The junta will manage to survive with the help of neighbours, China, India and Thailand. The military will re-consolidate control over two-thirds of the country. Some EAOs will get a high degree of autonomy in “their” territories. Something similar happened in Syria when Russia and Iran intervened to help resuscitate an already falling Assad regime. This scenario is not very probable in the case of Myanmar, but we cannot completely exclude its possibility.
The worst possible scenario: Different resistance forces will not find political agreement among themselves and under combined pressures of military atrocities and outside actors will abandon the current aligned struggle. Without a functional alliance, the military will not be defeated. What will follow is two to three more years of destructive conflict with no winner. Myanmar will at the end finish being broken into five to seven territories controlled by different armed militias. This scenario will resemble something between what happened in Libya and South Sudan.
What interests us is what is needed for the first, not easy to achieve, messy but good scenario.
As a start, it is necessary under any circumstances to hold together the current anti-junta alliance and as much as it is possible, expand and deepen it. This requires to put aside mistrust instead of reviving it. To bet on what is possible instead of fuelling old grievances. More importantly, this requires recognition and acceptance of all three sources of legitimacy and to consciously and intentionally cultivate “tripartite toleration”.
For the NLD political leaders it is critically important to show full understanding of the legitimate fear of ethnic nationalities from democratic majoritarianism. They need to find political courage to boldly commit themselves to ethnic self-determination. It is not good enough to say that “we have already done that in this and this statement and in that and that document”. It is necessary to repeat it, multiple times. This should be done not only by those involved in the NUG, but even more so by the other senior NLD leaders.
On the other side, political leaders of the ethnic stakeholders should also avoid trying to impose a confederal “coming together” model on Myanmar as a whole. Political leaders of ethnic stakeholders should understand and tolerate that on the side of the political leadership of Bama majority nobody in this moment has a full mandate to decide how central and coastal areas of Myanmar will be organized. (Note, I will comment more on the “coming together” concept in one of the chapters which will follow).
It is also important for everybody to understand that ethno-nationalist principle can work for some parts of Myanmar, but not for many others. Some federal units of Myanmar can be organized around ethno-centric principle without significant challenges. However, many other states are so diverse and mixed, sometimes without a clear ethnic majority, so the ethno-centric principle will simply not work in a democratic polity.
Let me mention just some of potential problems of the ethno-centric federalism: Territorially concentrated sub-minorities within the states where another ethnic group is in the majority and claims its historic ownership and self-rule rights. Such sub-minorities will, as we know, demand autonomy or their own state. In Myanmar we also have several groups spreading across more than one state. They are the majority in their “own” state, however they are also concentrated as a minority in neighbouring states. This creates pressures on “correcting the borders” which is dangerous thing to do in diverse and mixed societies. At the end of the current conflict, we will have ethnic groups which will be in military and administrative control of “their” de facto state, but not the de jure one, at least not according to previous organization of state units. We will also have some extremely diverse states or diverse state in which titular ethnic will not be a majority one. Last but not least, the majority which used to be a domineering one and which is territorially dispersed across all other states will not accept to be second class citizens in other groups’ states and can become easy prey for radical nationalistic populism.
In the case of Myanmar, one model fits all will not work. And almost everybody will need to make some concessions and sometimes even hard compromises from its own maximalist demands.
I am confident that the Spring Revolution, current joint struggle against military junta and joint victory over military dictatorship are creating the foundation for the political agreement about a future asymmetric federal and democratic Myanmar. However, to achieve it and to agree on details where notorious devils lurk, it will require a lot wisdom, moderation, statesmanship, responsibility, time and negotiations to find such compromises.
In this moment we have three different concepts of the future Myanmar cherished by different stakeholders who are all indispensable for the victory over junta. One is the concept of symmetric ethno-centric federalism with different actors having different ideas about the number of states. The second concept is the concept of confederal, “coming together” state with very high degree of self-rule of constituent ethnic states and very weak central government. The third concept is a concept of asymmetric federation which combines ethno-centric principles for some of its units and territorial principle for other units. Proposals have been done, mainly by outsider experts on institutional building in divided and post-conflict societies, to have a look also into the experiences of deeper decentralization to the level of townships and local authorities as one concept worth considering.
I am of the opinion that in current conditions, in the midst of ongoing war and unfinished liberation struggle, when political leaders cannot even safely meet to talk and negotiate, it is not possible to seek for and find compromise between the above-mentioned different concepts.
Better to take a pragmatic approach: to sustain and broaden the alliance around existing consensus and cement it additionally with mutual assurance regarding principal demands of each stakeholder. This is good enough to prevail over a deadly enemy.
In order to prevail over a deadly enemy, it is necessary to gradually integrate all different dimensions of struggle in an overarching strategy. Critically important dimensions of the way forward are:
· Ongoing armed resistance: Organize and coordinate a few more waves of simultaneous attacks on the military’s weak points and supply lines on multiple frontlines. Multiply impact of those pressures and hard bites with good psychological and information offensives calling upon the military rank and file to abandon Min Aung Hlaing and the other criminal kleptocratic generals.
· Political alliance: It is necessary to project both domestically and internationally an image of determined and confident anti-junta Coalition of the Willing that is strong enough to look like the probable winner and as an Allied Force that can be in charge of an orderly transition process.
· Ongoing civic resistance and public participation: It will be useful to undertake one or two more bigger collective actions of civic resistance in the next 6-8 months. It is important both domestically and internationally to show what is the will of the people. In case that any of
Myanmar neighbours will try to come to save the junta or if regional and international actors will start to put pressure on the NUG and EROs to accept negotiations with the SAC, civic resistance groups and civil society should organize strong pushback protest actions. Foreign countries should not be allowed to meddle in the internal matters of Myanmar by providing lifesaving hooks to the junta.
· Keep on cutting the junta from important revenue chains: The junta is running out of money and is already in a desperate state. A few more effective, well targeted rounds of sanctions will inflict additional, breaking pressure on the SAC. In addition to sanctions, it will be advisable for resistance forces to look into possibilities for smaller scale diversions which will not inflict big damage but will serve signalling purposes. Passive striking has proved to be very effective in Iran in the moment when Shah Reza Pahlavi was falling. It makes sense to look into such options as well.
· Continue staging actions of revolutionary fundraising: War and revolution cannot be won without money. Foreign donors might provide funding for civil society, HR defenders, media or humanitarian aid. However, donors will never fund revolution and victory. This can be only self-financed by the people and diaspora. It makes sense to make additional fundraising efforts in 2024. The junta is on the brink of breakdown. It makes sense to mobilize for the few more final punches.
· Information & PsyOp warfare: Operation 1027 has been remarkable not only by the level of cooperation and strategic patency with which it has been prepared. It has also been a masterpiece of psychological and information warfare. 3GHA was not taking military posts due to the military offensive and surprise factor only, but also because of very well played communication. It has offered inspiration to everybody else to get better in psychological warfare and public narratives undermining the morale of junta troops and loyalists.
· This diplomatic “offensive” must be launched quickly. The NUG and allied EROs should rapidly form a joint foreign affairs team for visits to Washington, Brussels, London, New Delhi, Tokyo, Canberra, Jakarta, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, etc. The team should be ready to go to Beijing if invited.
ONE MORE TASK: START WORK ON REFORM PLANS
As already mentioned, one probable scenario is that the SAC will collapse in the next six to eight months.
It is important for us to recognize that neither Myanmar stakeholders participating in the anti-junta resistance, nor Myanmar neighbours nor the international community are prepared to deal with the vacuum that will emerge with the collapse of the SAC. There is a solid level of military cooperation and basic elements of political agreement among political and armed actors participating in the anti-junta alliance. But a lot is still open. It is not quite clear who will be in authority and who will manage transition and how in the case of the sudden collapse of the SAC.
A lot of what the anti-junta alliance and political bodies of the Spring Revolution have as policy plans is still very general and very aspirational. The reality of policymaking and even more so the reality of transition policymaking is much more complex. When dictatorships fall, many things start to move quickly and in many directions. Decision-makers do not have any time to make considerations, to collect information and to get advice. Under multiple pressures they are forced to decide and to act.
It is good to have general aspirational policy goals, but it is as important to quietly prepare concrete policy plans and make necessary political agreements among those who will be key political actors with real power. Even if we do not manage to make concrete policy plans, it is good to at least start proper thinking and discussion.
It is, I think, important at this point to realize that it is not enough if various NUG ministries say that they have prepared policies in place. It is also not enough for EROs or for state interim councils to focus their own thinking and preparations for the post-SAC period only on their “own territories”. At this point, we do need joint NUG and ERO policy teams to start to prepare concrete policies in case we will actually suddenly find ourselves in the messy post-SAC transition. We should not allow ourselves to be surprised by something that becomes so probable.
These are policy fields which I see as very important ones to be prepared for:
1) who, where and how secures human security and law and order;
1) security sector reform;
2) coping with hyperinflation, emptied state budget, bankruptcy of cash stripped banks;
3) urgent need to restart economy while at the same time it will be necessary to restructure it;
4) huge and complex issue for which we need to prepare is the fact that even when the military was removed from the political power, an economic power, particularly financial capital will be in the hands of military families and cronies, international investors or in hands of organized crime. Even if those who accumulated huge wealth under military regimes are sidelined from political power in the aftermath of the fall of military dictatorship, if they keep the ill-acquired economic assets, they will find a way, four or eight years later to recapture political power by buying and corrupting politics and the state;
5) judiciary reform and the speedy cleaning of judiciary is always a hard task to be tackled. This is one more sector in which old regimes survive after they have been defeated and from this entrenchment to corrupt, subvert and undermine democratic performance and democratic consolidation.
There are for sure two to three more important sectors. Myanmar revolutionary and liberation forces must be prepared to have concrete policies which they will implement quickly. The window of opportunity after the fall of dictatorships is open for a year or maximum two for radical reforms.
If there is an understanding of what will be the most critical tasks and challenges in the immediate post-coup period, and if we have political agreement between the NUG and EROs about establishing taskforce teams, it is possible to find expertise among CDM technocrats, educated Burmese at home or in the diaspora, with some help of foreign expertise.
This is the task which should not be postponed and needs to be done in parallel with securing victory over the military dictatorship.
APPENDIX
Remark about the confederal (“coming together”) scenario
Proponents of this scenario argue that as a consequence of the coup and the Spring Revolution uprising, central government does not exist anymore in Myanmar.
What we have is an emerging of “federalism from below”: emerging proto states based on ethno-centric principle (Kachin, Wa, Karenni, Karen, Arakan and Chin states). What is now needed is to accelerate a similar process in other ethnic states (primarily Shan and Mon) and even more so to start the same
process of bottom-up state building in Sagaing, Magway and Tanintharyi divisions (maybe some others as well).
Once those “bottom-up” constituted states will liberate themselves from the forceful military unitarism, they can choose to “come together” in (con)federal union – or not.
I see a few serious problems of the confederal (“coming together”) scenarios.
It is very dangerous to assume that central government does not exist anymore in Myanmar. International relations are terrified of stateless territories or failed states. From the international relations perspective, there is a state Myanmar with the seat in the UN. If the revolutionary actors themselves question and deny the NUG to be the legitimate Myanmar government, what will happen is that the SAC or any other entity put forward by the military will have a better chance to become regionally and internationally recognized as the Myanmar government. If the Spring Revolution leaders had not been so quick to form the NUG, ASEAN and Myanmar’s neighbours would long ago have recognized the SAC as the government and all others would have followed suit.
If the anti-junta alliance loses the already existing “centre” that is formed on the wave of the mass popular Spring Revolution, we risk the breaking of the resistance into a fragmented, “leaderless” movement which will not be able to generate new coordinating and leadership body. Historic experience shows that leaderless movements always finish in entropy, fragmentation, chaos and defeat. Better to keep what we have and upgrade it and reform it, instead of breaking it with nothing to replace it with.
There is one more very serious reason for cautiousness. It could be very dangerous to conceptualize a future Myanmar federation as exclusively based on the ethno-centric principle. There are many reasons to believe that this can lead to a Bosnian type of ethnic cleansing.
It is true that some parts of Myanmar can be and should be organized as ethno-centric states with a high degree of autonomy. It is highly probable that many other parts of Myanmar will remain parts of a held together federation which will be organized on the territorial principle.
To find agreement and compromise about this, it is better to first defeat and remove the military dictatorship which is lurking for any disagreement between allied revolutionary forces to misuse it with its “divide-and-rule” tactics.
At this point of time, as I have said earlier, it is better to keep the winning alliance solid and credible based on minimum consensus about future asymmetric federal democratic Myanmar and on mutual assurances that everybody’s principle demands for self-rule will be satisfied and expressed readiness to seek consensual solutions which will bring peace to the country.
Better to focus now on re-agreeing and re-articulating a blueprint of how the future transition government will look like and what will be the transition roadmap for the first months and the first year after the collapse of the military junta.
