However Myanmar’s civil warfare isn’t just a humanitarian disaster—it’s a geopolitical fault line. The protracted battle has displaced over 2.6 million folks, fueled transnational arms and drug networks, and drawn in exterior powers like China and Russia—but it stays largely absent from worldwide coverage debates.
Analysts warn that continued neglect might destabilize Southeast Asia for years to return, doubtlessly empowering malign actors throughout the area.
“The USA has lengthy had an curiosity in peace, stability and growth in Asia and stopping the rise of a regional hegemon. The continued battle in Burma challenges all of those pursuits,” Derek Mitchell, Senior Adviser on the Heart for Strategic and Worldwide Research, tells The Cipher Transient. “Conflict and instability in a rustic on the cross-roads of Asia have price the nation billions of {dollars} in misplaced funding, led to cratering of the home financial system, and unleashed an explosion of drug, human and weapons trafficking, infectious illness, and a humanitarian disaster that has pushed thousands and thousands into neighboring international locations as refugees on the expense of regional stability and growth.”
A Nation in Collapse
Following the February 2021 coup, Myanmar’s army, generally known as the Tatmadaw, unleashed a violent crackdown on protestors. When bullets and concern emptied the streets, resistance went underground.
As we speak, that resistance has advanced right into a full-fledged civil warfare encompassing a patchwork of Folks’s Protection Forces (PDFs), ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), and native militias.
A few of the strongest EAOs, such because the Kachin Independence Military (KIA) within the north and the Karen Nationwide Liberation Military (KNLA) within the southeast, have aligned with the PDFs, forming non permanent alliances towards the widespread enemy. The junta, in the meantime, has regained territory in locations like Nawnghkio, however at a excessive price — each in casualties and rising resistance.
Simply weeks in the past, the junta stated it transferred energy to a civilian-led interim authorities and allowed the state of emergency in place because the coup, to run out forward of elections set for December and January. The established order hasn’t modified although, with coup chief Min Aung Hlaing retaining energy. Western governments and several other analysts have due to this fact dismissed the elections as a sham, anticipated to be dominated by army proxies and only a transfer to additional entrench the army’s energy.
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“The battle in Myanmar undermines ASEAN unity and dilutes U.S. affect within the area as a result of ASEAN is a weaker companion in consequence, and extra beholden to authoritarian companions in mild of the Myanmar junta’s realignment with Beijing,” Hunter Marston, an Indo-Pacific safety analyst centered on U.S. alliances, technique and Southeast Asian geopolitics, tells The Cipher Transient. “On the similar time, the battle has facilitated the proliferation of crime and illicit economies flourishing in Myanmar’s borderlands, which have focused U.S. residents in addition to different international locations across the globe, raking in billions of {dollars} every year.”
ASEAN, the Affiliation of Southeast Asian Nations, is a key regional bloc that the U.S. depends on to counterbalance China’s rising affect and advance diplomatic, financial, and safety cooperation within the Indo-Pacific. The Affiliation, lengthy hampered by inside divisions and non-interference norms, has not intervened in Myanmar. Current efforts to re-engage with the junta have made little influence and solely highlighted the bloc’s diminishing leverage. A fractured or weakened ASEAN, consultants warning, not solely hampers coordinated regional responses but additionally complicates Washington’s efforts to have interaction successfully on shared challenges, from maritime safety to transnational crime.
Nonetheless, that is not simply an inside struggle regarding Myanmar. Because the warfare drags on, it has develop into a brand new entrance within the international wrestle between democratic and authoritarian powers.
China, Russia, and the Battlefield of Affect
Myanmar’s geographic place, wedged between China, India, and the Bay of Bengal, makes it a vital node in Southeast Asia’s strategic structure. It is usually a rustic wealthy in uncommon earth minerals, oil, gasoline, and hydropower — belongings that Beijing, specifically, is eager to manage.
China, which has lengthy courted the Burmese army, has navigated a fragile stability within the battle. Whereas formally calling for peace and dialogue, Beijing has equipped the junta with arms and political cowl. In the meantime, its entry to uncommon earth provide chains by way of northern Myanmar has develop into much more precious amid international competitors for strategic assets.
“The junta receives direct and oblique monetary help from its gross sales of oil and gasoline to China and Thailand, restricted commerce with different ASEAN states resembling Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia, and direct money transfers and help packages from China,” stated Marston. “Its state-owned banks and corporations additionally extract quite a lot of income from pure assets throughout the nation, in addition to property taxes to a lesser extent in city facilities like Yangon and Mandalay.”
Russia, too, has deepened ties with the army regime. Lately, Moscow has develop into a main arms provider and protection companion to the junta, desperate to increase its affect in a area the place Western alliances have weakened. Myanmar has reciprocated, with junta generals attending Moscow’s army parades and alluring Russian advisors into the nation.
“That is not only a civil warfare — it’s an open door for authoritarian powers to achieve a foothold in Southeast Asia,” one former U.S. official who labored on Myanmar coverage tells The Cipher Transient.
Cross-Border Instability
The battle’s repercussions are already spilling throughout Myanmar’s borders. In Thailand, shelling and firefights close to the frontier have pushed hundreds of refugees into crowded border camps. In India’s northeast, cross-border insurgencies and weapons flows have revived longstanding safety issues. Bangladesh continues to shoulder the burden of over one million Rohingya refugees, with little prospect of secure repatriation because the army escalates its violence in Rakhine State.
Illicit arms trafficking, drug manufacturing within the Golden Triangle, and human smuggling have surged in tandem with the combating. Some rebel teams fund their campaigns by way of methamphetamine manufacturing and jade mining, whereas the junta leverages state-owned enterprises and army conglomerates to bankroll its warfare machine.
Mitchell emphasised that this has “additionally led to the proliferation of ‘rip-off facilities’ alongside Burma’s border which are bilking Individuals and others out of billions of {dollars}.”
“The violence and absence of an efficient worldwide response have created a gap for China to insert itself even additional into the interior affairs of the nation, nook its uncommon earths and broader useful resource market, and try to create a consumer state by way of which it could have strategic entry to the Indian Ocean,” he added.
Washington’s Take
So, what’s the US authorities doing to deal with the Myanmar disaster?
The second Trump administration has taken a markedly totally different method to Myanmar in comparison with the Biden period.
“The primary Trump administration was sluggish to sentence the Myanmar army’s violent clearance operations towards the Rohingya, which the Biden administration later confirmed met the factors for genocide and crimes towards humanity,” Marston stated.
Whereas sanctions towards the army junta stay in place, the Trump administration has largely avoided commenting on the nation’s inside dynamics. Broadly, it has sharply lowered U.S. funding for democracy promotion, human rights, and impartial media. American-backed retailers resembling Voice of America and Radio Free Asia have been considerably affected—a transfer that Min Aung Hlaing publicly welcomed, expressing his “honest appreciation” to President Trump.
In a notable diplomatic growth in July 2025, President Trump despatched a direct letter to Min Aung Hlaing concerning tariffs, which the junta interpreted as a type of public acknowledgment and a diplomatic victory, marking a departure from earlier diplomatic isolation.
Moreover, the Trump administration has enacted new journey restrictions, together with an entire suspension of entry for Myanmar nationals as immigrants and non-immigrants, doubtlessly stopping persecuted individuals from reaching American soil.
This mix of continued sanctions with lowered democracy help and a extra transactional, direct communication method with the junta underscores the Trump administration’s “America First” overseas coverage, leaving the way forward for U.S. affect in Myanmar unsure amidst the continued disaster.
There are, nevertheless, different efforts to deliver Myanmar again into the limelight.
Current legislative efforts, resembling the “No New Burma Funds Act” launched in July by Rep. Nikema Williams (D-GA), intention to curb oblique monetary flows to the regime. These embrace revenues from pure gasoline exports involving overseas firms, charges paid to military-controlled infrastructure, and leakage from humanitarian help operations in junta-held areas.
Moreover, Burmese gems and timber usually attain U.S. markets by way of third international locations, and digital platforms could unwittingly monetize content material linked to the junta — all contributing to the regime’s monetary lifeline.
In keeping with Marston, “western international locations might theoretically apply secondary sanctions on any nation conducting enterprise with Myanmar’s vitality firms or state-owned banks, which might squeeze Thailand and Singapore specifically, together with China, however they’ve been unwilling to expend the political capital crucial to take action.”
“Moreover, Washington has avoided imposing essentially the most complete sanctions on Myanmar’s financial system for concern of injuring your entire inhabitants and setting the nation’s financial restoration again even additional after earlier rounds of sanctions within the 2000s,” he continued.
As well as, there may be the “BRAVE Burma Act,” a bipartisan U.S. Home invoice launched on Could 5, 2025, by Representatives Invoice Huizenga (R-MI) and Betty McCollum (D-MN), amongst different co-sponsors from each events. This laws, which has superior within the Home, goals to extend strain on Myanmar’s army junta by requiring stronger sanctions on entities like state-owned enterprises and people concerned within the jet gas sector, and by establishing a U.S. Particular Envoy for Burma.
“Proper now, the administration ought to appoint a particular envoy. Personnel is coverage, and and not using a champion in Washington, US Burma coverage will stay adrift,” Marston asserted.
Mitchell concurred that the Trump Administration “ought to appoint a particular envoy based mostly within the area to construct nearer relations with the (opposition) Nationwide Unity Authorities, ethnic leaders and different professional representatives of the Burmese folks, and coordinate with our regional allies and companions on a standard method to the battle.”
“The administration ought to make it clear that it doesn’t contemplate the junta professional and that its pretensions to rule are unacceptable,” he continued. “To that finish, it ought to tighten sanctions to close off its entry to cash, weapons, and worldwide legitimacy. General, the administration ought to acknowledge that China is making the most of our neglect and reply constantly with the place developments within the nation are trending.”
The Strategic Value of Indifference
Whole cities have been razed. Faculties and hospitals have been bombed. Greater than 18 million folks—practically a 3rd of Myanmar’s inhabitants—now rely on humanitarian help, in accordance with the United Nations. The warfare has triggered one of many world’s largest inside displacements and turned Myanmar’s borderlands right into a hotbed of organized crime, cyber scams, and weapons trafficking—networks that now attain far past Southeast Asia.
“The longer the U.S. stays disengaged, the more room there may be for China and Russia to entrench themselves,” says Hunter Marston. “With out high-level diplomatic strain or punitive measures, the junta may have no motive to pursue a negotiated resolution, and the nation’s collapse will proceed to pull down the area.”
China has already endorsed Myanmar’s deliberate elections in December, regardless of ongoing civil warfare and widespread instability. In distinction, ASEAN has stated elections ought to solely comply with a return to peace.
“Realistically, the one hope of pressuring the army to pursue peace talks is to win on the battlefield. Thus, it’s important to curb the army’s entry to arms,” Marston harassed. “The one manner to try this is by imposing secondary sanctions on Chinese language weapons firms like NORINCO, which proceed to supply munitions to the army. Doing so would put Beijing on discover that it not has carte blanche in Myanmar and would align with the targets of U.S. competitors with China in checking China’s international army enlargement.”
Mitchell additionally underscored that Washington’s solely leverage for constructive change lies in instantly chopping off the junta’s monetary streams. If Myanmar is allowed to fall totally into the grip of autocracy, crime syndicates, and overseas army powers, the results is not going to stay confined to its borders.
“Pressuring overseas banks (in Thailand and Singapore, for example) into shutting off monetary companies to the junta, sanctioning Myanmar’s Central Financial institution, and imposing penalties on different banks inside and out of doors the nation doing enterprise with the junta will help shut off capital to the regime,” he stated.
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