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...

Civilian-Military Relations

Conflict Analysis & Prevention

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...

Global Policy

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...

Civilian-Military Relations

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...

Civilian-Military Relations

Global Policy

Khayan is a largely rural township in Myanmar near Yangon city. Like much of the rest of the country, it is on an edge. An army captain was killed there in August in a drive-by shooting. Similarly gunned down was a military-appointed village administrator who once ran for election as a member of the military proxy, Union Solidarity and Development Party...

Civilian-Military Relations

A video of a little-known political leader declaring war on Myanmar's military regime went viral on social media on Sept. 7, garnering more than 1 million views on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms within days. Clad in...

Civilian-Military Relations; Democracy & Governance