Experts from the U.S. Institute of Peace provide the latest analysis and perspective on the world’s critical hot spots, U.S. and global security and issues involved in violent conflict, based on the Institute’s work on the ground and with key individuals, governments and organizations. They give interviews and background briefings to journalists and write for news outlets around the world.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s trip to Myanmar this week has received mixed reactions by analysts, with some welcoming China’s willingness to keep dialogue channels open and others saying it had undermined Asean’s efforts to help resolve the country’s...
Myanmar junta chief Min Aung Hlaing has been shut out of Asean summits since he staged a military coup last year and declared himself prime minister. Questions are looming larger these days over whether he will continue to be barred, or if it even matters anymore, with...
A senior Shan analyst observed that China’s priority is “to stabilize the borderlands, and create an enabling environment for a border trade boom to deliver economic growth for their poorest provinces in their northwest, led by Yunnan.”
Jason Tower, the country director for Myanmar U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington, said that China is betting that the Myanmar military will not relinquish power.
The U.S. imposed new sanctions on senior leaders of Myanmar’s military junta on Monday—the eve of the one-year anniversary of their overthrow of the country’s democratically elected government and imprisonment of its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. The U.S., joined by the U.K., and Canada, announced sanctions on officials who helped prosecute Aung San Suu Kyi, the head of the National League for Democracy. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was arrested in the Feb. 1, 2021 coup. Myanmar courts have sentenced her to a total of six years in prison as of Jan. 10—but she faces additional charges...
The Myanmar military’s recent placement of landmines around oil and gas pipelines connected to southwestern China suggests the junta is hypersensitive to possible attacks on the projects amid an escalating national rebellion, experts say...
The cancellation of a visit by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Thailand on Thursday was a “missed opportunity” for the security allies to review areas of cooperation, analysts said. But Bangkok and Washington should now work more closely on the Myanmar crisis to strengthen bilateral relations that had become rocky after the 2014 coup that first brought Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha to power. Jason Tower, country director for the Burma programme at the United States Institute of Peace, said the Myanmar issue offered a significant opportunity for revitalising and strengthening the US-Thailand relationship...
In sentencing Myanmar’s iconic democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi to prison, the country’s generals have effectively exiled her from electoral politics. But that doesn’t mean the Southeast Asian nation is back to square one in its stop-start efforts to move toward democracy...
In September, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) invited a representative from Myanmar’s National League for Democracy (NLD), the party of detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, to its virtual summit for political parties in South and Southeast Asia. The overture came shortly after Beijing’s special envoy for Asian affairs, Sun Guoxiang, paid a low-key visit to Myanmar, where he asked to meet Aung San Suu Kyi and was denied access by the authorities. Sun made another unannounced visit this month...