National Interest

by Jim Webb

    As Myanmar’s military junta fails to regain control of the country, the Trump administration should move toward recognizing the determined opposition.

    As President Trump finalizes tariff agreements in the world’s most populous and vibrant region, his administration should pursue a historic opportunity to free the people of Myanmar from a repressive regime and to allow the country to take its deserved place in the international community. The administration’s position to date has been the opposite, revealing very little understanding of both Myanmar’s present situation and the potential impact if the United States leads the way toward ending the Southeast Asian country’s ruinous civil war.

    An Asia Times article on June 18 entitled “Donald Trump’s Craven War on Myanmar” lamented that Trump “has declared war on the conflict-stricken country with a series of ‘reforms’ that will only benefit the ruling junta,” then criticized an odd presidential proclamation to “fully restrict and limit the entry (into the United States) of nationals from Burma.” In another puzzling turn, the White House demanded that Myanmar “release all unjustly detained prisoners, cease violence against civilians and engage in dialogue with all stakeholders to end the crisis.”

    Such demands imply the administration’s belief that Myanmar’s situation over the past four years is simply a “crisis” initiated by a group of misbehaving political activists against an established government: that, naively, the “crisis” could be quelled by freeing prisoners who were “unjustly” detained, ending violence against carefully selected groups of civilians and bringing together a plethora of “stakeholders,” most of whose unifying goal has consistently been to remove the very junta that took power at the end of a gun in the first place.

    Myanmar’s true “crisis” is that the ruling junta is not a legitimate government, that the power of the junta is derived by having, in their view, “justly” imprisoned those whom they usurped and that as it steadily weakens its grip the junta has allowed China to control key economic and strategic activities that benefit its regional and international expansion.

    The Trump administration’s positions suggest a rush to judgment in the National Security Council as larger international issues suck the oxygen out of a very busy room. In addition to four years of a full-blown civil war, the country’s economy has weakened and its infrastructure has degenerated. On March 28, 2025, a powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake hit the middle of the country, affecting 17 million people, killing more than 3,500 and causing $11 billion in damage, according to the World Bank. Only a little international aid made it into the country. And the struggling country has now been slapped with a 40 percent tariff rate.

    For all of its high-energy foreign policy endeavors in other regions, the Trump administration has overlooked Myanmar in its East Asian strategy. A vast country of 55 million people with an abundance of rich natural resources, it is geographically positioned in what strategists term an “interior position.” Sandwiched between the giants of China and India to the north and west, with Thailand flanked to the east and a vast coastline on the Indian Ocean, Myanmar has always been a rugged terrain coveted by external powers.

    The Burmese, along with several largely independent sub-states of mixed ethnology at its outer periphery, are inured to continuous conflict. For many decades, despite such turmoil, Myanmar’s agricultural economy earned it the title of “the rice bowl of Asia.” The empire builders of Great Britain found Myanmar to be a vital strategic asset for the Indian Raj. In the outer peripheries, as today, were tough, lawless bands who refused to accept the authority of any form of central government. Britain fought three wars between 1826 and 1885 before taking control and declaring Burma to be part of British India.

    Since gaining full independence in January 1948, the Burmese government has alternated between military juntas and civilian efforts to implement a democratic federal system. In 1962, the military took control, followed by a bloody, repressive coup in 1988, reducing the country to an isolated hermit kingdom.

    I first visited Burma in 2001 as a private citizen and have interacted with its people for years thereafter, coming to understand the country’s challenges. Years later, in 2009, while serving as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on East and Pacific Asia, I became the first American leader allowed to visit Myanmar in 10 years and remain the only American leader who ever personally met with General Than Shwe, the junta’s reclusive leader at the time. I also met with democracy activist and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Aung San Suu Kyi, who was then under house arrest.

    The visit marked a key turning point, officially opening up Myanmar to the outside world. For the next decade, the country, including its military, moved carefully but steadily toward democracy, even as Aung San Suu Kyi’s iconic status diminished in the eyes of the outside world. Then came a surprising and sudden halt to progress.

    In the election of November 2020, Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won a historic landslide victory, carrying 396 seats, 74 more than required for a majority in the parliament. But on February 1, 2021, without warning, the military seized power in a coup, ejecting the legitimate government and imprisoning many NLD members, including Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint.

    Since 2021, Myanmar has slid steadily downward into civil war. No longer the “rice bowl of Asia,” it now resembles a deteriorating garbage dump. Following the coup, a countrywide opposition sprang up, not formally connected but united in its opposition to the junta. A variety of ethnic armies, the descendants of the lawless bands of old, have stood up against the junta. They are well-trained, reasonably well-equipped and generationally opposed to central authority. Political activists and leaders, many of them members of the dissolved parliament, have formed a shadow government known as the National Unity Government, or NUG, which claims, with much justification, to be the legitimate ruling body of the country.

    As the opposition grows, the junta’s military and political strength has diminished. Lacking strong public support and overall military success, the junta has turned to outside assistance. Most importantly, Myanmar is rapidly becoming a strategic and economic colony of China. Russia provides most of the regime’s weapons, including tactical aircraft.

    In strategic terms, China now operates an oil pipeline that traverses 770 kilometers over Burmese land from the Indian Ocean to refineries in China’s Yunnan Province. This strategic prize eliminates the necessity of a steady flow of tankers waiting to pass through the choke point of the Strait of Malacca, where an estimated 90,000 ships pass through every year, including 80 percent of China’s imported oil. With a stated capacity of 440,000 barrels a day, the pipelines are becoming a guarantee that oil will still flow to China if a regional crisis arises.

    Economically, according to Investing News Network, China is by far the world’s largest producer of rare earths and it “obtains 70 percent of its medium to heavy rare earths feedstock” from Myanmar. The largest mines in Myanmar are in Kachin State, in the far north and abutting China. China has provided security for the operational mines in Kachin, with the approval of the junta.

    In late 2024, the highly capable Kachin Independence Army (KIA), a fierce opponent of the junta and a long-time enemy of China, seized two towns in Kachin state and may lay claim to other mines. As global demand for rare earth minerals grows, these vast resources will increasingly draw the attention of other foreign countries, especially the United States.

    China dominates much of Myanmar’s organized crime. As The New York Times points out, “War-torn and fractured by rival armed groups, Myanmar is now the crucible of a cyber fraud industry run by Chinese crime syndicates that use trafficked people from around the world to swindle tens of billions of dollars from other people around the world.”

    The time has come to rectify the damage originating from the junta’s ineptness and unpopularity. The Trump administration should take the international lead in devising a formula that fosters domestic stability and restores Myanmar’s position as an independent and respected member of the international community. With a concerted effort from business leaders and the United States, a reintegrated Myanmar could become, for the first time in history, a strategic and economic strongpoint in the Indo-Pacific region.

    An initial but vital step would be to support the restoration of the shadow government of the National Unity Government (NUG), populated in part by members of parliament who won a strong majority only months before the 2021 military coup and recognize it as the legitimate government of Myanmar.

    As Anthony Davis wrote recently in The Asia Times: “Certainly, Myanmar’s key neighbors, China, India and Thailand and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc more generally will waste little time in endorsing the polls and expanding engagement with any administration dressed in civilian longyis rather than military khakis. Once that engagement gathers traction, it seems likely enough that the West will slowly, if grudgingly, fall into line.”

    With the diplomatic restoration of the NUG as Myanmar’s legitimate government, the United States could bring that traction and lead the way toward a prosperous and important future.