The Washington Times’ Post

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A violent civil war is raging in Myanmar between a China backed military junta and a patchwork of pro democracy rebels in the Southeast Asian nation formerly known as Burma. Well, it hasn't gotten much attention in the West. Regional scholars warn that Myanmar's war has security implications for the United States. The war has displaced more than 3 million people and threatens to destabilize a region where Washington is struggling to hold democracies together and counter China's expanding influence. I'm Guy Taylor. National security editor at The Washington Times. And for this edition of the Threat Status Influencer series, we're at the Stimson Center in Washington, DC. And we're fortunate to be joined by Young Son, a leading expert on East Asian geopolitics who heads the China program here at Stimson and is closely tracking Myanmar's war. Young, thank you for joining me. Let's jump right into this. It's a complex civil war where the patchwork of armed rebel groups aligned under a movement known as the PDF or the People's. Defense forces battling the ruling military regime that ousted Myanmar's elected government back in 2021. There are ethno religious elements, Buddhist and Muslim. There's an illicit drug element given that Myanmar eclipsed Afghanistan last year as the world's top opium producer. But at 30,000 feet, Some characterize the civil war as actually a Cold War style conflict playing out in China's backyard with Beijing and Washington on opposite sides in a kind of great power proxy war. Is that an accurate depiction of. What's playing out in Myanmar right now? There's certainly an element of greater power competition in Yemma Put it simply that US supports democracy. Therefore, we have learned our strongest support to the pro democracy activists at the moment, the resistance. On the other hand, the Chinese have made it very clear that they are not going to support a People's War against this military government. If there's going to be any political shift in the country, it has to happen according to Chinese. Organically and not through a regime change. So that almost automatically put US and China on the opposite two sides of the spectrum, that China is indeed standing with the military and the US has been indeed supporting the democratic oppositions, especially the shadow government, national unity government that's currently in tied to the PDF. They claim that they have the command of the PDF. But because of the multifaceted. Aspect of this civil war, there's ethnic armed groups involved, there's People's Defense Army Defense Force involved, there are also local militias involved, so it's very difficult to mark a. A clear structure of the commanding structure. Why does the conflict matter for the United States? What is this sort of US foreign policy goal here? I think first, people like to look at it from a grid power competition point of view. And if you look at that, Myanmar does occupy a critical geopolitical location for China. That's Myanmar is China's corridor to South Asia, to Southeast Asia, and more importantly to the Indian Ocean. When China thinks about a potential, let's say, Taiwan contingency with the United States, one of the first things that will come to their mind is their ceiling of communications. Especially their imported sea lions, sea line of communication slacks and their import of oil and gas from Middle East and North America. North Africa will have to travel through the Indian Ocean, through the Strait of Malacca, then enter the South China Sea and come back to the Chinese coast. Well then that presents a Malaka dilemma as people call it, because that slog is extremely vulnerable for China from a energy security point of view. That's where Mama comes into play. Umm Yemas West Coast is is represents the shortest shortcut for China to access Indian Ocean. And in two thousand 2013 the Chinese did construct oil and gas pipeline from Myanmar's West Coast to bring oil and gas to China southwestern provinces. So that basically tells you the kind of geopolitical locations that Myanmar is essential to China's access to the. To the Indian Ocean, so from a US perspective, if Myanmar occupies such a central location in Chinas, for example, energy security and this access to the Indian Ocean, then there is a strategic implication of that of that fact. Then also I would say that in terms of Myanmar, US is also deeply committed to peace, democracy and prosperity of the country it's a country has 56 million people so it's one of the one of the largest countries in. In Southeast Asia, and it also represents, many would say that the last country in Southeast Asia that has not gone through the process of democracy or the democratization. We saw some political reform starting in 2011 and we also saw the NLD government led by unsung suchi governing the country from 2016 to 2 to 2021. But then the military coup of 2021 completely reversed all of that. So from a democracy and human rights perspective, Myanmar is critical for the US foreign policy agenda. Some have criticized the Biden administration in the last four years for sort of failing to have a very coherent policy towards the what's going on in Myanmar. I'd like to know your thoughts on that, But I also want to look more closely at just US foreign policy formation Visa V. This conflict there. In June of this year's Congress, the House stood up the first ever Congressional Burma Caucus. There's also the 2022 Burma Act. What is the goal of of these these moves? And is there any political consensus between Democrats and Republicans as to what U.S. policy should be? Oh, that's a very good question. And the answer is going to be it's going to be complicated because about the bottom line is there is consensus on Burma, which is democracy, but the challenge is how that democracy can be achieved. So First off, if you look at Myanmar, currently there is a military government that we are imposing severe sanctions upon. Both the military government and its senior leaders are under U.S. sanctions layers and layers of. Attention as in there's something that both the Democratic and the Republican parties have agreed. But then if you look at the other side of the same, of the same civil war, look at the opposition and the resistance. So the question becomes, who is leading the leading the resistance? We talk about the national unity government, which is the shadow government in exile, but the people, the forces that are actually actively fighting and also winning. On the battlefield in the country are actually not the PDFs. The ethnic armed groups are winning the battles inside the country, which raises the question, does does the United States support and hug or do we support the groups whose arming the ethnic armed groups? There are several different sources because if you look at the the armed groups on the type order, they're pretty good evidence to suggest that they get their money, they get their weapons. From the black market and then those on the China border is more intriguing because in some of the recent fightings we have heard ridiculous stories such as, oh, the I'm the group stepped into the forest and they just saw a pile of Jones just sitting there waiting for them. Well, there are plenty of speculations that certain elements in China have been supporting the ethnic armed groups along the China border and at this point the US. Has authorized non lethal aid, is it delivering non lethal aid and is it is there also a push for the US to directly arm any of these groups? I would say within the policy community there is definitely strong voices calling for the US to directly arm the oppositions to arm, especially the People's Defense Force. The ethnic armed groups is a different story because they are a lot of them are indeed engaged in drug trafficking, arms trafficking, human trafficking, so. For example, the largest ethnic armed group in Emma, the United State Army, is closely watched by DEA and a lot of its leaders are still on the list of Interpol because of their involvement in the drug trafficking. So arming the ethnic armed groups is going to be a very, very tricky issue. But Armins resistance is less tricky. You could say that while politically speaking, these are the democratic oppositions fighting a military. Winter. So why don't they deserve the US military assistance? I think the hesitation of Washington comes from 2 aspect. So the first one is the lack of capacity on the part of the resistance, that if we're arming them, we want to make sure that the arms will not go to flow into the wrong hands. And the second piece of it is we also need to be aware of the potential consequences of that level of involvement by the United States when US arms. Our position, it will automatically translate to Beijing. The message is US is supporting militarily the regime change in Burma and that will automatically translate into Chinas strengthened support for the military government, which potentially will lead to the intensification of the civil war. Let's drill a bit more into this, the China factor and what are Chinas's interests, what's really driving Chinas policy here? Coming to what China wants in Burma, they basically want three things. The first one is border stability. They don't want 10s of thousands of refugees to flow into China, which is why they're supporting the armed groups to almost create a buffer zone along the border. The second piece we talked about is connectivity is Myanmar as a corridor to the Indian Ocean and to sub regions. The third one is actually counter the United States that this spread of democracy or the spread of the democratic influence. On China's border is seeing as a potential threat to China's national security. In 2011, when Myanmar was going through or first starting the democratic democratic reform, the message translated to Chinese society was, well, if the Burmese military government can even pursue democracy, why can't we? Why can't Chinese Communist Party also look at the political liberalization? So there is an ideological and political overlay. Of what is happening in Myanmar, which is why China will not allow a regime change by force to happen in the country's horrific human rights abuses are an aspect of this civil war. 10s of thousands of Myanmar's Rohingya Muslims are actually have fled are living in refugee camps in Bangladesh. The State Department has actually declared the military junta attacks on the Rohingya as a genocide. There are reports that the the military Hunta government is bombing civilian areas under the PDF's control. Really horrific stories of gang rape, mistreatment of children, all kinds of things. Is that actually happening to the degree that it's reported? And 1:00 and 2:00, what is the the military regimes goal in in in doing that type of attacks on on these these people? 1st, What I would say is that the Burmese military historically has had a reputation for his atrocity and brutality. And throughout different decades we've seen military coups, we've seen the persecution and also the brutality against ethnic group, against ethnic population and also against civilians. So what is happening now is certainly a repetition or a pattern that we can we can see from the history and honestly what we are seeing. From the media is really the tip of the Asperg where you see one case being reported on the media, there's much more under the surface that have not been reported. So it is true. And the secondly, what does the Burmese military wants to achieve? This is a strategy that they call scorched earth strategy. And the goal is to make sure that the territory that the PDF or the resistance will occupy will have nothing left. So if they are not controlling the territory. Leave the resistance stands to gain the territory, then the Burmese military will make sure they have nothing to gain from that that territory. So they scorched earth strategy has been ongoing since since the military coup of 2021. And we are seeing this repeatedly in the in the on the battlefield between the Burmese military and the resistance. So they also use air strikes against civilians or against the territory being controlled by the resistance. Because after three years of a war of attrition, the Burmese, Burmese military capability, especially their human resources, has also undergone severe attrition, which means that their ability to actually launch an army offensive against the territory controlled by the resistance is quite limited. But it does mean that they will use air strikes. Young son, so interesting, so insightful. Thank you very much for joining me for this. Edition of the Threat Status influencer series. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Guy Taylor. Until next time.