Three years ago, in the wake of a military coup that eviscerated Myanmar’s democratic experiment, many predicted that the army’s power grab implied profound future changes to Naypyidaw’s foreign policy. The presumption among a number of foreign policy analysts was that the divorce from the West and reimposition of various rounds of sanctions against the military-installed regime would deal a mortal blow to the increasingly diversified great power diplomacy pursued by Myanmar during the previous decade, leaving its generals with just one choice to make: isolation or functioning in China’s shadow.
With no end in sight to the civil war that ensued following the coup, those predictions have proven to be wrong.
The military takeover certainly took a harsh toll on Naypyidaw’s international relations. It erased the normalisation process with the United States and the European Union between 2011 and 2021 while also prompting a rift with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The brutal repression of domestic dissent that followed it led to the revival of Myanmar’s status as a “pariah” of international politics, further delegitimising the junta’s authority .
The putsch also set the stage for a battle for diplomatic recognition between the latter and the representatives of the ousted civilian regime, which gave birth to a shadow cabinet known as the National Unity Government. The international fallout of the coup significantly reduced Naypyidaw’s strategic options, as well as the pool of external partners that had contributed to its progressive reintegration into the global arena.
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Myanmar’s military government lost direct control over 86% of its territory after months of fighting
Myanmar’s military government lost direct control over 86% of its territory after months of fighting
However, despite its disruptive impact, the army’s power grab did not alter the underlying logic that crafts Myanmar’s relationship with the outside world, nor did it pave the way for the twilight of the country’s historical non-aligned stance vis-à-vis great powers. Post-coup Myanmar is not truly isolated on the global stage, not even from the Western camp, considering that both India and Japan decided to defect from the Washington-led sanctions regime.
Moreover, Myanmar is not progressively turning into a Chinese vassal state. Rather, it can be argued that the coup and its dramatic aftermath damaged Sino-Myanmar relations by creating an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and distrust.
The military-installed regime views Beijing’s “backchannel diplomacy” towards pro-democracy groups with a mix of wariness and disdain, fuelled by what Naypyidaw perceives as a Chinese neocolonial mindset regarding the ongoing exploitation of Myanmar’s natural resources. Beijing appears increasingly frustrated by the junta’s inability to protect Chinese interests in the country, de-escalate the civil war and re-establish a semblance of domestic order, especially in the regions bordering China.
Accordingly, as the military junta continues to navigate a nuanced foreign policy that is consistent with the non-aligned playbook practised by generations of Burmese policymakers, Naypyidaw’s post-coup international trajectory serves as a reminder that pariah states can still exercise agency and strategic autonomy. Myanmar’s agency is apparent in the manner in which it addressed the diplomatic fallout of the coup, seeking to fill the power gap left by the retreat of Western stakeholders by reaching out to alternative actors, which can also act as partial counterweights to China.
The diplomatic honeymoon currently enjoyed by Myanmar and Russia, for example, serves this purpose. Moscow has replaced China as Myanmar’s main defence partner, following a flurry of bilateral meetings between the military junta and the Kremlin that stands in vivid contrast to the near total absence of high-level exchanges with the Chinese leadership.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) meets with Min Aung Hlaing, chairman of Myanmar’s State Administration Council, on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum, in September 2022. Photo: Kremlin/DPA
Furthermore, Naypyidaw’s constrained yet resilient international agency is visible in the quiet engagement process nurtured with India and Japan, which share the same fear of seeing the troubled Southeast Asian state becoming a Chinese satellite. Interestingly, 2021–2022 proved to be a record year for India-Myanmar trade, as the combined volume of bilateral exchanges reached US$1.89 billion, the highest since 2016. Likewise, a 2022 report noted that about 70 per cent of the Japanese companies that had invested in the country planned to either maintain or expand their operations.
In parallel, Myanmar’s approach to China is still characterised by an attentive mixture of deference and defiance, aimed at signalling that although the army acknowledges the paramount importance of its ties with Beijing, it remains committed to acting as the beacon of the country’s independence against external intrusion.
For all these reasons, for the foreseeable future Naypyidaw’s foreign policy is likely to continue to replicate the pattern already exhibited in the wake of the 2021 military takeover and to display recurring acts of defiance that signal the preeminence of its autonomy and self-determination.
Andrea Passeri is senior lecturer and director of the BA programme in international relations at Taylor’s University in Kuala Lumpur
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