US President Donald Trump has remade American foreign policy into a dangerous mix of belligerence, atrocity crimes and incoherent lunacy.
The broad elements of the Trump administration’s almost non-existent Myanmar policy are well known. The gutting of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), cancellation of a scholarship program, a travel ban for most Myanmar citizens and threats to people on Temporary Protection Status (TPS) visas are consistent with the new cruel xenophobia.
Congress is little better. Myanmar was long a bipartisan issue. Yet a coherent and committed policy for post-coup Myanmar is now a disappearing act akin to the mystery of Senator Mitch McConnell’s recent absence from public view for several weeks. Probably the last ardent lawmaker defending detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi, McConnell is evidently not compos mentis personally, let alone to events in far-away Myanmar.
The US seems more obsessed with rare earth metals, increased trade, cracking down on scam centers and increasing Sinophobia. Myanmar is viewed in Washington almost exclusively as a vassal state of Beijing. Trump and MAGA care little about human rights in the United States. Why would an authoritarian war zone like Myanmar loom large in their vicious worldviews?
This obsession with China as the marionette master of Myanmar has been one of the twin pillars of Myanmar thought, such as it is, since the 2021 coup. The other is a dangerously unconvincing narrative that the opposition National Unity Government (NUG) enjoys not just a monopoly of popular support but “controls” most of the country and is close to military victory.
These narratives are being spun by a mixture of feckless foreign activists, Myanmar Christian leaders pushing a religious freedom agenda and increasingly conspiracy theory-laden public commentary and analysis.
Assuming there is anyone in the US Capitol reading these obscure articles, incredulity will likely be the result. Trump barely reads anything his own government hands him: why would he peruse anything written about Myanmar?
The former US diplomat Dan Swift wrote in Asia Times that the arrest in China of prominent Myanmar intellectual Min Zin on June 3 was “Beijing’s offering to Naypyidaw — a public demonstration of loyalty” after Donald Trump visited China and President Xi Jinping.
The logic was that China needed to secure access to the energy pipelines running from Kyaukphyu in Rakhine State, besieged by the insurgent Arakan Army (AA) for two years, to counter its energy transport vulnerability in the Strait of Malacca.
Georgetown Security Studies Review published an article called “The Pipeline that Fuels Myanmar’s War”, claiming much of the civil war was about China’s need to secure the two energy pipelines.
There, of course, are more pressing issues driving the conflict across Myanmar than China’s energy supplies. The author suggested the US government support the armed opposition against the Myanmar military, an option that seems as unlikely now as it did in 2021.
In a twist of logic, a recent piece from Responsible Statecraft, “As Myanmar collapses, it’s time for China to step up and be the hero”, argues it is in Beijing’s interests to overthrow the Naypyidaw regime.
The author, Doug Bandow, is a senior fellow at the conservative Cato Institute think tank and a former special advisor to President Ronald Reagan. Reagan was president in the 1980s. Who is next to rush to liberate Myanmar? Airwolf? The A-Team? And are we talking about the same China?
A recent commentary in Jamestown (not a very prominent think tank) made the obvious point that the Arakan Army was the most effective insurgency in Myanmar: something well known for years to even the casual Myanmar observer.
Some pro-NUG writing is not just misleading, but laughable schmaltz. Seeking inspiration from the American Revolution for Myanmar’s post-coup resistance, as one recent piece from the Southeast Asia Peace Institute argued, is silly indulgence.
One major failing of the Trump administration is the failure to act on the detention of Min Zin, an American citizen, who has reportedly been charged with espionage. The fact is the motivation behind Min Zin’s arrest is still a mystery. Yet the US government seems little concerned, at least in public (consular access to the scholar has been granted).
Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s press conference on July 22 was deplorably ill-informed.
Question: “Has Min Zin been recognized as wrongfully detained?”
Rubio: “Who?”
Question: “Min Zin, who was arrested right after the summit, right after the Trump-Xi summit.”
Rubio: “The scientist?
Question: “(N)o, not the scientist. He was a researcher, a scholar.”
Rubio: “Yeah, the researcher, geologist.”
Question “…as he been classified as wrongfully detained by the State Department?” Rubio: “I don’t believe so yet.”
Rubio concluded by remarking, “there’s some conditions that have been shifting with regards to Myanmar or Burma over the last few months that we’re keeping an eye on and see if there’s opportunities to engage.”
Is it more ominous to have attention from Rubio and Trump or not?
As a pure coincidence, the American businessman Adam Castillo, former head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar (AMCHAM), was detained by Myanmar authorities after flying into Yangon airport in mid-June. Castillo was the founder of AGS Myanmar, self-described as the “the country’s premier security risk management firm.”
Yet it is unlikely that Castillo’s clumsy efforts on conflict tracking, or his astonishingly absurd book “Finding Our Voice-A Story of Leadership in Crisis and the American Spirit Abroad” (its cover showing the author draped in the American flag with Yangon’s Shwedagon pagoda in the background), were causes for his arrest.
It is reportedly related to a business dispute instead. The Trump administration doesn’t seem seized by Castillo’s case either.
The American human rights advocacy organization Fortify Rights released a statement on June 15 claiming both cases, Min Zin and Castillo, were related – albeit with no credible evidence, just speculation.
Just as disbelief at the recklessness of such a conflation was spreading, Fortify Rights issued a retraction two days later, saying, “following new developments and additional information regarding the arrest of Mr. Castillo. Their respective cases are linked in no way,” the retraction claimed. This form of hair-trigger media alarmism is dangerous for Myanmar writ large.
One element of this opinionated slop is the shrinking space for more honest reporting. Myanmar social media vilification of Min Zin in recent weeks has been vile, as keyboard commentators charge him with collaboration for seeking principled, evidence-based solutions to the conflict.
This denunciation extends to any article that questions the legitimacy, or credibility, of the NUG. Calling for accountability for human rights violations perpetrated by NUG People’s Defense Forces (PDF’s) or Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) is also denounced as heresy and harmful to generating Western, particularly American, support. Some commentators even accuse any deviating opinions as being pro-military.
Billy Ford, the author of the ridiculous American revolution piece, accused the Myanmar media outlet Frontier Myanmar of being under the sway of “Military Intelligence.” The vile accusation that Frontier’s reporting is pro-regime is not just fatuous, but dangerous.
To claim Frontier reporting has been pro-military since the coup is not just idiotic, sloppy, slack-jawed, devoid of any evidence and vicious, but also potentially harmful. Stopping just shy of incitement to violence, it’s a short step to just that. It is not just a threat to freedom of expression and the potential for violent reprisal, but also confusing to Western policymakers.
Myanmar needs to take its foreigner opinion generator problem seriously. It’s all a good bit of fun to critique pompously ill-informed articles generated by the Washington think tank community.
But there comes a time when they become less of a nuisance and more of a ghost in the machine. Why do opposition organizations let so many freewheeling foreigners have free rein over public narratives in the West?
That such alternative realities are being propounded in the halls of power and the offices of Congress in Washington has an opposite effect. It renders Myanmar as too big a problem to solve. Or a conflict to be solved by containing China, plundering raw materials and peddling American goods to a dictatorship.
This could result in the Trump administration supporting Min Aung Hlaing’s gangster regime, not the revolution struggling to overthrow it.
David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on Myanmar-related conflict, humanitarian and human rights issues. He is a long-time contributor to Asia Times.
