The latest phase of Myanmar’s decades-long civil war is turning that country into another New Cold War battleground due to its geostrategic location between India and China. The official dispatch of non-lethal US aid to anti-government forces per 2022’s “BURMA Act”, which is likely a cover for facilitating clandestine arms shipments and other forms of relevant support, is being counterbalanced by armed Russian aid. Here are some background briefings that dive much deeper into the details of this conflict:
* 8 February: “Myanmar’s Three-Year-Long Conflict Isn’t As Simple As It Seems At First Glance”
* 23 February: “America Is Preconditioning The Public For More Meddling In Myanmar”
* 5 March: “American Meddling Could Disrupt Myanmar’s Fragile Chinese-Mediated Peace Process”
* 18 March: “Myanmar’s Rebels & Their Foreign Supporters Really Dislike Thailand’s Four-Point Plan”
* 28 March: “TASS’ Interview With Myanmar’s Leader Had An Interesting Connectivity Tidbit”
* 5 April: “The West Is Returning To The Rohingya Issue In An Attempt To Divide & Rule This Part Of Asia”
* 27 May: “Bangladesh Warned About A Western Plot To Carve Out A Christian Proxy State In The Region”
The above piece about more meddling in Myanmar concerned the Mainstream Media’s efforts to popularize the narrative that one of its many rebel groups was peddling nuclear materials to Iran. It never took off and was therefore abandoned, but a new coordinated push for more meddling has just begun. It started on 30 May when the International Crisis Group, which is funded by a slew of Western states, published its report about “Ethnic Autonomy and its Consequences in Post-coup Myanmar”.
The organization suggested that “Western and multilateral donors also need to explore far more flexible aid responses that are not predicated on the fiction of a central government authority” amidst Myanmar’s ‘Balkanization’ into a collection of ethno-regional statelets. They predicted that these polities will be reluctant to forge the federation that they’re all officially working to achieve after the war ends and will instead create a confederation that retains each group’s de facto independence.
Reading between the lines, this is a thinly disguised call for the West to treat each polity accordingly on the pretext of preventing another Yugoslavia, which was referenced as an example of the worst-case conflict scenario in their report. One day later on 31 May, NBC News then published a piece about how “How Myanmar’s civil war is rippling into the U.S. and around the world”, which coincided with the Council on Foreign Relations’ (CFR) one about “How Myanmar Became a Global Center for Cyber Scams”.
The Western public didn’t bite the nuclear narrative bait earlier this year for justifying more meddling so the new narrative is to fearmonger about the threat posed by Myanmar-based scammers. To be sure, this threat veritably exists, but the coordinated way in which awareness is being raised about it right now suggests ulterior motives behind this “public service announcement”. It’s also very concerning that the powerful CFR is involved in this as well given their track record of pushing for aggressive policies.
Putting everything together, these three information warfare products imply that the West should treat each ethno-regional rebel group as an independent actor on the pretext of coordinating with their security forces against those scammers that pose such a threat to West right now. In reality, however, such a move would be about institutionalizing Myanmar’s Balkanization with a view towards forming a confederal union after the war ends if the rebels end up toppling the government with Western support.
Furthermore, as an alleged means towards the end of rooting out these scammers, the West might also more openly dispatch armed aid to the rebels and come clean about their other forms of support to them. In that case, Thailand might emulate the role of Turkiye in Syria or Poland in Ukraine by serving as the West’s logistical support base for fueling this fierce proxy war if that happens. This new coordinated push for more Western meddling in Myanmar should therefore be very taken seriously.
