As Myanmar’s bloody civil war enters its decisive phase, Washington is still unable to formulate a policy toward the Southeast Asian country. Instead of unequivocally and firmly siding with the “resistance” or the Myanmar military, the Trump administration has taken a series of contradictory steps. The general lack of specialists in Burmese studies and the reluctance to understand the hyper-complex landscape of the Southeast Asian country are having an effect. In fact, even with the name of this country, the American elite is not certain: is it called Burma or Myanmar?
The once-promising US-Myanmar relationship fell victim to Francis Fukuyama’s End of History, when American foreign policy moved away from pragmatism and toward messianism or, as Burmese-American scholar Michael Aung Thwin called it, “democracy jihad.” Only a change in the ideological climate can explain the establishment’s irrational hatred of a state that had always been alien to anti-Americanism. Ironically, the military’s transition to power in 1988 was accompanied, according to eyewitnesses, by Tatmadaw hopes for improved relations with the US, following the example of Latin American countries with their rich history of US-welcomed coups. Washington’s moralizing course in supporting the Burmese opposition came as a cold shower for the military.
Myanmar was not always described by the White House as a rogue state. In 1962, the military’s rise to power and proclamation of the “Burmese Way to Socialism” did not prevent bilateral cooperation. In the context of Soviet and Chinese penetration of Indochina in the 1960s and 1970s, the Union of Burma, which maintained neutrality, was objectively more of an ally of Washington. This is a fair statement, since the Tatmadaw occupied its own sector of the front in the fight against the world communist movement, which in Burma was represented by the formidable and fanatical Burmese Communist Party (BCP). Rangoon’s efforts to eradicate drug production in the Golden Triangle were supported by the United States, and the Burmese military received several American helicopters for crop destruction and counter-narco-insurgency operations.
Fake News as a Catalyst for Decision Making
The first and most obvious source of contamination of American public opinion with controversial narratives about Myanmar is the total dominance of opposition media in the information space. The absolute majority of content in English and Burmese is produced by such resources as VOA, RFA, BBC, Mizzima, Myanmar Now, The Irrawaddy, etc.
Of course, the liquidation of USAID and USAGM, which to no small extent supported Myanmar exile resources, put them in an awkward position, but alternative sources of patronage were soon found. Trump’s presidency has not yet dealt a fatal blow to the Myanmar opposition affiliated with the Deep State. The few more or less honest and at least trying to look unbiased think tanks, such as the Institute for Strategy and Policy (ISP), cannot fully compete with primitive and loud media platforms. Moreover, there is no talk of introducing the English-speaking audience to the point of view of Naypyidaw supporters.
The key narratives of the radical opposition, broadcast to the outside world, have long been known. It is inappropriate to dwell on each narrative in detail now; it is enough to list them and accompany them with a brief commentary.
Aung San Suu Kyi: the sinless goddess and the overthrown idol
The consensus for all analysis is the one-sided interpretation of the events of February 2021 as a coup. No one is ready to talk about the undemocratic practices of the National League for Democracy and personally Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (DASSK), which led to the anger of the military and what the military itself calls a constitutional transition. The charm of a charismatic martyr for democracy overshadows the boring generals but is not a rational argument in favor of the former government. It is undeniable that by February 2021 the NLD was consistently moving towards establishing a self-serving one-party regime, covered by the rhetoric of people’s admiration for Suu Kyi.
Paradoxically, the military, even with its own mercantile interests in the coup, managed to prevent Myanmar from evolving into the Bangladesh of Sheikh Hasina and the Awami League. Knowing what fate befell Bangladesh, this country “with old democratic traditions” (according to Hasina)—namely, people’s discontent with the privileges of Awami League members, subsequent riots, and the revival of pro-Pakistan and pro-Chinese Islamists—one can say that Myanmar was lucky with the coup.
In addition, the elections to the lower house of parliament, which the military accuses the NLD of rigging, were held using the first-past-the-post (FPTP) voting system, which is inadequate for Myanmar conditions and was recently replaced by a combined vote for parties and candidates.
To be fair, the narrative of an “infallible” DASSK and NLD is not as successful as it could be. There is a prejudice against the ousted government that has been in place since well before February 2021 due to its alignment with the Tatmadaw in responding to the Bengali threat in Rakhine.
In this regard, in order to rehabilitate itself before globalist structures that are anti-Burmese and pro-Islamic, the National Unity Government (NUG) is trying to show that it is ready to recognize the decisions of international justice on the “Rohingya case.” Even though this same international justice still does not see much difference between Aung San Suu Kyi and Min Aung Hlaing.
How Denying the Military’s Democratic Potential Harms Democracy
An important part of the opposition’s information war is the promotion of the thesis that the evolution of the Myanmar regime towards democracy is impossible. From this perspective, the reforms undertaken by the military, which began with the adoption of a new constitution in 2008, are declared to be nothing more than a clever ploy to retain power. The positive contribution to democratic reforms made by the president, retired general Thein Sein, in 2011-2015 is denied. This is despite the fact that even those Burmese who have a negative attitude towards the Tatmadaw speak warmly of the changes that took place under Thein Sein. The undemocratic aspects of the NLD’s rule in 2016-2021—with the exception of the “persecution of the Rohingya”—are swept under the table; for all the troubles that have befallen Myanmar, there is only one culprit—and that is the military—who must be, in the language of the revolutionaries of a bygone era, “liquidated as a class.”
First of all, it is necessary to realize that the Asian model of democracy is very different from the Western one and, one way or another, contains authoritarian components. The peculiarities of democratic transition in the Republic of Korea, Taiwan, and Indonesia confirm the importance of observing the interests of the armed forces, which are the guarantor of the constitution. It is equally important to realize that the narrative about the incorrigibly evil nature of the Myanmar military creates in the eyes of observers a situation of a game with one winner, which leads to a nonstop total war. The military regime’s attempts to talk about national reconciliation, in particular the call to opponents, including the People’s Defense Forces (PDF), to enter into negotiations, are distorted by the media as evidence of the military’s weakness, and thus the opposition itself rejects the olive branch extended to it from Naypyitaw.
By declaring its refusal to compromise with the military, the Myanmar opposition is fueling a revolutionary war of extermination, a war it cannot win. In its naive arrogance, the NUG is like Zelensky’s Ukraine—with the difference that no one will supply PDF with lethal weapons.
Dehumanizing the enemy: NUG’s total war against compatriots
The dark side of the NUG lobbying campaigns is the demonization of the Tatmadaw to the point of caricature, while sanctioning violence against military personnel (denigrated as “dog soldiers,” or “sit khway”), their families, and government supporters or members of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).
It must be understood that the Tatmadaw is now waging a more brutal and complex war than the US waged in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Deplorable human rights violations in the fight against a cunning and omnipresent enemy are unfortunately inevitable and must be investigated. However, very often the residents of the villages on which the Tatmadaw unleashes its air power are not innocent lambs and are involved in violence against farmers who are brutally slaughtered for merely questioning the rightness of the NUG’s cause.
At the same time, the Burmese and English language presentations of materials differ: a foreigner who does not understand Burmese does not have the dubious happiness of becoming acquainted with the overt mockery of the dead “dog soldiers” and ridicule of their inconsolable relatives that fills such subscriber-heavy resources as Khit Thit, 4C, and SittKhwayDead. The average American, accustomed to following the conflict in the BBC coverage, is separated from the shocking content containing slaughter, torture, humiliation, and bullying of Tatmadaw soldiers and non-combatants. However, it is not particularly surprising that gangs of psychopaths, hiding behind the title of “revolutionaries,” act in the traditions of the Khmer Rouge and ISIS.
Fatal Neglect of Myanmar’s Army: Propaganda That No Longer Works
It is hard to imagine the propaganda of the Myanmar opposition and its foreign allies without a constant emphasis on the impossibility of Naypyidaw winning the war and predicting the imminent collapse of the Tatmadaw. Strangely drawn maps are used, according to which only 21% of the country’s territory remains under the control of the “junta.”
The successes of the rebels from the fall of 2023 to the end of 2024 look discouraging: in August 2023, Laukkai and the headquarters of the northeastern command in Lashio fell under the blows of the Kokang Chinese MNDAA (with PLA advisers in its ranks), and in December 2024, the Rakhine AA captured the headquarters of the western command in Ann and brought the border with Bangladesh under its control. Undoubtedly, these catastrophic defeats at that time testified to the crisis of the Tatmadaw and its temporary unpreparedness to wage a modern war. But nothing more.
The fundamental inability of the disparate insurgent groups to move towards a single goal, coupled with the Tatmadaw’s far from exhausted resources, led to a turning point in the war. Already in the spring of 2025, the military had worn down the TNLA’s strength in Taungkham, the “Myanmar Verdun.” Since July 2025, a string of victories by the Tatmadaw has begun: the cities of Naungkhio and Thabeikkyin were recaptured from the TNLA and MDY-PDF; Kyaukme and the ruby capital of Mogok are awaiting liberation; KNDF units in Kayah State were driven out of Loikaw, the local capital, as well as from the cities of Mobye and Demoso; and in Kachin State, the KIA, already ready to issue victorious reports about the capture of Bhamo, suffered terrible losses and was forced to retreat.
It is important to understand that this turning point is not an accident or a consequence of Chinese intervention. It stems from the obvious superiority of the Myanmar military, the superiority of its long-term strategy. The Tatmadaw appears to have what Nassim Taleb calls anti-fragility: the ability not only to withstand stress but also to emerge stronger from a crisis. Given all this, the opposition is finding it increasingly difficult to sell the NUG as a force programmed to defeat a weakened and demoralized “junta.”
The Karen Factor in American Politics: Onward, Christian Soldiers?
Despite the general ignorance of the American public about Myanmar, there is at least one ethnic group, or, to use the official term, “national race,” which is relatively well known thanks to its lobby. The Karen diaspora in the United States, numbering about 215,000 (2024), has been involved in shaping the anti-Burmese policy of their new homeland since the first half of the 1990s.
Despite the overwhelming Buddhist majority, the Karen are often mistakenly presented as a completely Christian people. In reality, Baptism is relatively widespread among the mountain S’gaw-Karen, and Catholicism predominates among the Karenni, who are considered a separate ethnic group from the Karen. The Karen National Union (KNU), fighting against the government since 1948, is presented in the worldview of the average American evangelist as the vanguard of the crusaders. It is common knowledge that several dozen foreign mercenaries, including US citizens, fought for Kawthoolei (the independent Karen state) in the 1990s and early 2000s.
The reasons for the success of the Karen lobby in the United States can be traced back to the 1950s, when the Chinese Kuomintang army retreated to Burma and formed an alliance with the Karen separatists. The KMT forces were then glorified as valiant fighters against communism and enjoyed US protection, which greatly damaged relations with Burma. Ultimately, General Li Mi’s subordinates played into the hands of the communists, drawing away significant Tatmadaw forces previously occupied with the fight against the BCP. Later, the main KMT units left Burma, but the Karen-Taiwanese ties remained. In the late 1980s, the Taipei-based World Anti-Communist League (WACL) called for support for the Karen cause, although the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), the armed wing of the KNU, never fought the communists and even sometimes entered into tactical alliances with the BCP.
By tapping into the sympathy of conservative Americans, including Southern Baptists, the Karen separatists have been able to gain the support of some US influencers. Karen propaganda has proven so effective that even Reagan’s administration veteran Douglas Bandow, an outspoken critic of NATO and a proponent of non-intervention in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and today in Ukraine, could not resist. In 2022, he recalled in The American Conservative, “Years ago, I was asked by ethnic Karen insurgents in Burma/Myanmar why Washington did not send troops there to do what it had recently done in Kosovo. If I faced such a regime, I also would want the U.S. to eliminate the brutal, oppressive Tatmadaw, as the Burmese military is known.”
This article does not aim to provide a detailed analysis of the religious landscape of Myanmar. It is enough to note that Buddhism and Christianity are intertwined there, forming a unique symbiosis. One of the attractions of Pyin U Lwin, this “Burmese West Point,” where the Defence Services Academy (DSA) is located, is the Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart, built in the Gothic style in 1890. It was a surprise for the author to see a plaque on the altar in honor of the Virgin Mary near the church with the words “donated by Lieutenant General Than Nyunt.” Myanmar’s military is not exclusively Buddhist; it has many Christians in its ranks, mostly from ethnic minorities (although there are also Burmese Christians). There have been estimates from “resistance” sympathizers that there are 30-40% non-Burmese (Karens, Kachins, Shans, etc.) in the Tatmadaw. The Free Burma Rangers, who train the KNU militants, are not on a crusade but are helping Karen Christians kill Karen Christians.
It should be added that on August 28, 2025, Myanmar’s Anti-Terrorism Central Committee recognized the KNU as a “terrorist organization.”
Misinterpretation of Chinese strategy
The common theme in the vast majority of publications on Myanmar is the belief in Beijing’s comprehensive support for Naypyidaw. The temptation to fit the conflict into the established scheme of the “new Cold War” between the US and China is too great. The Manichaean perception of reality as a total war between the democratic forces of Light and the authoritarian forces of Darkness, characteristic of the liberal public, also favors the placement of the Myanmar “junta” in the circle of authoritarian regimes unfriendly to the US. Critically important in this story is the desire of the Myanmar opposition media to please the American public consensus about the “Chinese threat” and to portray the Tatmadaw as almost a Chinese puppet.
But the most important source of pollution of the information space with the harmful myth of the “China-backed junta” is the fundamental refusal of think tanks to study the internal world of the Myanmar military and Tatmadaw supporters and their opinion on the policies of world players such as China, India, the United States, etc. When examining the domestic strategies of Burmese Buddhist nationalism, the dominant ideology in Myanmar, the stereotype of some unholy collusion between Naypyidaw and Beijing is shattered.
Moreover, China’s policy is also misinterpreted, which is due to the neglect of the foundations of Chinese strategic thinking by Westerners.
When China orders its puppet Kokang Army to leave Lashio in April 2025, it does not mean that it is supporting the military regime. Chinese policy is characterized by ambivalence, and this ambivalence is the key to its growing power. China never puts all its eggs in one basket: not only does it hand out Chinese ID cards in Kokang, integrate ethnic rebel-controlled zones into the economy of Yunnan Province, and even supply weapons and military advisers to the MNDAA, but it also sells aircraft to the Tatmadaw, patronizes Myanmar on international platforms, and arrogantly invites Min Aung Hlaing to marvel at the majesty of the Red Emperor through a Beijing parade.
The 19th-century German legal scholar Rudolf von Ihering once noted that Western thinking is characterized by the pursuit of truth through struggle, while Eastern thinking (including Chinese Confucianism) is characterized by the establishment of harmony through compromise. Harmony in Myanmar for China is obviously a system of checks and balances that prevents either Naypyidaw or ethnic insurgents from achieving success. It is also obvious that such a system is more favorable to the EAOs in the borderlands and serves as a source of Sinophobia for the military, who cannot subdue the Wa and Kokang, since the latter consider Kunming and Beijing, and not Naypyidaw, as their suzerains.
China has pressured the Northern Shan insurgents, but it has not annihilated them. When China wants to teach the Myanmar military a lesson again, it will use the MNDAA, UWSA, and their allies. The architecture of Sino-Myanmar relations is based on the permanent threat to Myanmar, with 55 million people, from the Red Dragon, a nation with a population of 1.4 billion. This is the reason for Naypyidaw’s cautiousness in its relations with China and the military’s non-public hatred for the dark force that imposes its evil will on their Buddhist homeland. From the Qing Eight Banner Army to the communist radicals of the BCP and the narco-state of UWSA, nothing has changed, and there is no reason to believe that the new generation of the Tatmadaw will suddenly believe in the Chinese dream.
The idea that EAOs are content to be under the CCP’s thumb has begun to creep into the minds of some NPG-friendly analysts. The Irrawaddy published an article, accompanied by an infographic, about the sale of MNDAA-occupied northern Shan to Chinese businesses. The article is at odds with previous The Irrawaddy articles that have argued that the MNDAA is by no means a Chinese puppet. “The only way to apply current communist methods is to maximize shareholder dividends,” as Guo Shuqing, head of the China Construction Bank, put it. Beijing’s dealings with the Wa, Kokang, Palaung, and Kachin fit into this utilitarian logic. But do the Burmese revolutionaries realize that by their ardent support for the MNDAA, a support that cannot be forgotten, they have contributed to the enslavement of their nation by their northern neighbor? It is unlikely, since the realization of this fact leads to the recognition of the moral bankruptcy of the “Spring Revolution.”
Conclusion
There has been a stir over reports that the Myanmar government has hired two American lobbying firms, DCI Group and McKeon Group, to improve relations with the United States. Such activity should be treated with skepticism, and not for the reasons that the lobbyists have already been cursed by NUG supporters. The fact is that US-Myanmar relations will remain at a low point until a qualified expert community in the field of Burmese studies, independent of the Democratic or Republican dictate, emerges in the United States. This expertise should not tailor its conclusions to justify the importance of the equality march near the Shwedagon Pagoda or the urgent need to expand lithium mining. Its only task is to give an adequate and unbiased picture of the situation in Myanmar.
The approach to the key Southeast Asian country at the crossroads of India and China has not yet been found. The officials’ decisions range from Rubio repeating the standard formulas of the Burma Act to the sudden lifting of sanctions against several military-related individuals. Trump’s personnel purge has cut off the tentacles of the Deep State bureaucracy but has not created a truly professional corporation of patriotic managers in its place. This means that the Trump administration is susceptible to manipulation from many sides interested in anti-Myanmar interventionism of one kind or another. This is sad, because against the background of failures in peacekeeping in Ukraine, a tariff spat with India, and the threat of a false start in Venezuela, it is Myanmar—provided it takes a subtle approach—that could become a profitable acquisition on the list of US partners.
