When Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders met earlier this month in Vientiane, Laos, the dramatically deteriorating situation in Myanmar was once again high on the bloc’s agenda.
The Chair’s Statement was a discomforting reminder of one of ASEAN’s greatest-ever diplomatic failures: the Five Point Consensus (5PC) on Myanmar.
Since it was completed in April 2021, the five points “agreed” to between ASEAN and the head of Myanmar’s State Administration Council (SAC) junta chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing have achieved literally nothing.
“We reaffirmed our commitment to the continued and sustainable strategies and approaches to help the people of Myanmar find an inclusive and durable peaceful resolution that is Myanmar-owned and-led for peace, security and stability in the region,” the statement said.
This “reaffirmation” has been on repeat in every official ASEAN statement for over three years. So, too, has an internal review of the 5PC, a yearly exercise in pointing out the obvious failure of the consensus.
The regional grouping claimed that “(w)e acknowledged the Chair’s comprehensive report on the 5PC implementation and, in line with the assessment of the report, we called for more progress in all areas of 5PC due to our concern on substantially inadequate progress in the implementation of the 5PC. Therefore, we agreed on the following: Maintain the 5PC as the main reference to address the political crisis in Myanmar which should be implemented in its entirety.”
Laos has served as ASEAN’s rotational chair this year and Malaysia is set to take over in 2025. Indonesia remains engaged on Myanmar issues even after its well-intentioned leadership in 2023 was thwarted by the stonewalling of the SAC and Min Aung Hlaing, who has been denied attendance at ASEAN summits for over two years.
But what many observers refuse to acknowledge is that ASEAN’s relationship with Myanmar is mainly routine, banal and largely coup-blind. Myanmar’s coup-installed regime attends in-person and online regional meetings on everything from connectivity, climate change, health, crime, free trade and foreign affairs.
Multiple dialogue partners, Australia, China, Japan, the European Union, the United States, Russia and China all have their own interpretations of how best to deal with Myanmar and its brutal war but place higher importance on their relationships with ASEAN than on its one imploding member state.
Myanmar recently hosted the ASEAN Navy Chiefs Meeting, held under the catchy motto “Rowing towards peace and prosperity.” In September, the head of the Myanmar Air Force attended the ASEAN Air Chiefs Conference (AACC) in Cambodia.
In 2023, a similar meeting hosted in Naypyidaw was boycotted by the air force chiefs of Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. But there have been no such qualms lately, even while the Myanmar Air Force surges its terrorizing aerial bombardments, massacring hundreds of civilians in indiscriminate assaults across the country. The navy has also been bombing villages on the coast and along multiple rivers.
The 5PC’s failure is shared globally, from the United Nations (UN), Western states, Japan and the SAC’s ostensible allies in China and Russia, who have all committed to ASEAN’s lead role in engaging Myanmar’s regime and resolving the country’s crisis. Yet the only consensus the 5PC has secured so far is collective inaction.
Somewhat shamed by the nearly four years of the SAC’s campaign of war crimes against the people of Myanmar, many may see the 5PC’s failure as the root cause of a wider diplomatic dead-end. However, it is an easy-out to cast ASEAN as the sole culprit of this gruesome cul-de-sac.
The premier villain, of course, is Min Aung Hlaing and the regime that has steadfastly refused to work on the consensus, despite its insincere public commitment to the multilateral forum. An inept UN system, including a special envoy of the UN secretary-general who is still finding her feet after being appointed six months ago, geopolitical competition between China, Russia and the US, and a world of raging conflicts and humanitarian needs have all conspired to make Myanmar the world’s “forgotten” war.
Revolutionary diplomacy by the exiled National Unity Government (NUG) and multiple Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) has yet to convincingly reconcile a significant divide in diplomatic relations among those groups within China’s orbit, those close to the West, especially the K2C (Karen, Karenni and Chin revolutionary actors), and those such as the Arakan Army (AA) which straddles China, Bangladesh and Indian demands.
The diplomatic divides make for an extremely challenging and contradictory environment to navigate, but it’s not insurmountable.
Myanmar thought leaders, think tankers, scholars, media commentators, civil society leaders in women’s groups and human rights organizations are all providing valuable and sophisticated input publicly and quietly to revolutionary figureheads.
But the senior members of the revolution writ large only selectively listen. How many 5PC reform or review papers did the NUG or the K2C (Karen, Karenni and Chin revolutionary actors) produce ahead of the ASEAN Summit in Laos? Where is a strategy to engage Malaysia as the new chair?
While supporters of the NUG and EAOs talk up “territorial control” and battlefield gains against the Myanmar military, the diplomatic dimension of the anti-SAC struggle is a dismal non-performer.
There is no diplomatic equivalent of Operation 1027, the rebel offensive launched a year ago that achieved dramatic battlefield success and convinced many that a military victory against the SAC was possible.
The NUG’s international diplomacy is almost irredeemably sclerotic. Outreach efforts to a myriad of Western governments are mostly wooden, unconvincing affairs, a long-term deficiency of Myanmar political leaders operating abroad.
Most ASEAN states have likely concluded the SAC has stubborn staying power and are preparing for a possible election in 2025 as an imperfect re-engagement opportunity. ASEAN’s 5PC has failed, to be sure, but the bloc has served as a useful deflector shield for the fumbling diplomatic ineptitude of the West.
Lurking under all this, as opposed to looming over it, is American absenteeism on Myanmar. The US has been a most generous supporter of humanitarian assistance and has an extremely large US Agency for International Development (USAID) program to assist revolutionary governance.
But its embassy in Yangon is mainly silent and seemingly showing none of the leadership expected of the US within the diplomatic corps. Washington has likely concluded the NUG is ineffective and doesn’t swallow the spewing propaganda from pro-NUG think tanks and activists that a military victory is around the corner.
The obverse reality is Chinese interventionism, seen in its recent scolding of the Three Brotherhood Alliance (3BA) and their allies for Operation 1027’s phase two and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) for their quiet but nevertheless dramatic military gains of the past several months.
It is evident that Beijing has decided to prop up the SAC, or at least to give that appearance for now, as a negotiating strategy with the multiple revolutionary actors in its sphere of influence.
A further complicating factor of the ASEAN deflector shield is the multiple competitive mediation efforts of Western donors and peace organizations. Rather than constructing some credible approach to engaging ASEAN, revolutionary leaders are constantly distracted by incessant consultations in regional capitals or trips to Europe or the US.
If these efforts have produced any tangible results, they are not publicly discernable. Many of them seem to be highly repetitive and do not move beyond meetings or issuing statements. The purpose of a strategy is implementing it, not endless tinkering with it.
Without a clear foreign policy direction, opportunism by international actors abounds. But the NUG and EAOs must limit these distractions and concentrate on a collective political, military, economic and diplomatic focus.
There is also the dangerous folly of some international actors using humanitarian assistance as a vehicle for political mediation, which is literally gambling with civilian lives. Believing that there is any potential to engage the SAC on humanitarian aid ignores the reality of the past four years, where the regime has directly targeted aid as a weapon of war.
Ire at ASEAN’s inaction misses the point. The regional grouping will always be limited, that much was clear in April 2021 in the immediate aftermath of the coup. But it also paradoxically provides the impetus for Myanmar revolutionary foreign policy innovation, for which various anti-coup groups have the capacity.
For ASEAN has it right when it says the way forward must be “Myanmar owned and led.”
David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict, humanitarian and human rights issues on Myanmar
