The Spring Revolution Will Win (Emergency Edition)
In the aftermath of Operation 1027, a decisive military maneuver executed by the Three Brotherhood Alliance, Myanmar finds itself at a critical juncture. The alliance— comprising the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, and the Ta'ang National Liberation Army— executed coordinated attacks on m key military and militia installations, reshaping the dynamics of the conflict overnight. Their objectives range from safeguarding civilians, to combating online gambling fraud along the China–Myanmar border.
In response to this rapidly evolving, high-stakes situation, we are expediting the production of "Special Release" episodes. These interviews will provide listeners with timely and informed analyses of the rapidly unfolding events. Given the urgency, these episodes will be released without the usual extended written summaries, so that we can release them as quickly as possible. As Vladimir Lenin once remarked, "There are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen." Myanmar is presently navigating one of those transformative weeks, and our Special Episodes aim to offer valuable insights into these pivotal moments. This is our second episode in this series.
Our guest is Matthew Arnold, an academic and independent policy analyst. Since 2020, he has worked across a range of projects covering economic reform, governance, and conflict in Myanmar. Arnold formerly served as The Asia Foundation’s country representative in Myanmar, and before that, in assorted roles with the Foundation in Yangon since 2012. Prior to Myanmar, Arnold conducted extensive academic research on conflict, governance, and state fragility. He was previously a senior research fellow at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University, where he conducted research focused on foreign interventionism and post-conflict reconstruction in fragile states. He also regularly taught at Tsukuba University in Japan on these topics. Arnold also worked for the UN World Food Program for four years managing operations in refugee camps in Ethiopia and in humanitarian crises ranging from Liberia, Darfur, South Sudan, Afghanistan and the DR Congo to Sri Lanka, Aceh, and Timor-Leste. He has co-authored two books: Militias and the Challenges of Post-Conflict Peace (Zed Books, 2011) and South Sudan: From revolution to independence (Oxford University Press, 2012). He also has published in leading journals on security and development issues, including Asian Survey, International Peacekeeping, Journal of Modern African Studies, and Conflict, Security and Development. He received his doctoral and master’s degrees from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Following the talk with Insight Myanmar, Arnold wrote the following passage, summarizing the view he expressed during the conversation:
Myanmar’s Spring Revolution Will Win
Operation 1027 was a milestone in Myanmar’s revolution. The ongoing successes of Operation 1027 were made possible by 33 months of revolution, both armed and peaceful. In turn, Operation 1027 makes possible the wider waves of junta collapse that can now be expected. Operation 1027 is a historic milestone that built upon what had preceded it and catalyzed everything that comes next.
Myanmar’s conflict is that of revolution; namely it is defined by a people in mass rebellion against military dictatorship. Yes, there is a wider history of civil wars across the country and there are massive political cleavages still existing, but the war since 2021 is not a simple continuation or escalation of what came before. Namely, resistance to the junta is driven by a society’s desire for a fundamental rupture with its past -- a new beginning freed of military dictatorship and defined by inclusion. Foreign cynics can scoff at this point, but masses of Myanmar people sure don’t.
The nature of revolution is the basis for understanding what has happened and what might happen next. Wars driven as popular uprisings against a near universally loathed but deeply entrenched dictatorship are defined by inertia and trajectory. Dictatorial regimes most often succeed in snuffing out resistance to their rule fairly quicky. In contrast, Myanmar long ago passed a threshold the junta could no longer realistically collapse resistance to its rule. Instead, resistance to the junta continuously expanded across the country to such an extent that the prospect of success became increasingly clear to those on the ground.
A key logic for instigating Operation 1027 was surely a straightforward assessment of the military balance. This was not confined to the last few months; it was a view of the wider trajectory of the war from the past two-and-a-half years. This trajectory has been increasingly favoring the resistance since at least the end of the dry season of 2022 bus became steeper over 2023. Operation 1027 was implemented by three of the most competent, strategically inclined EAOs in the country. It was not a rash, opportunistic decision and I don’t believe one instigated by China. Operation 1027 was a bullish statement of confidence, not a coerced half-step by actors unkeen on it.
The stark truth for the military is simple and becoming bleaker day by day: it faces too much resistance in too many places and doesn’t have the depth to recover. This has been the war’s trajectory for at least 18 months now but has now escalated markedly over November. The military doesn’t have intact reserves at the unit level that it can move as needed. Its inability to launch any notable counter-offensives since 27 October 2023 attests to this reality. The junta will lose more and more towns and ever greater swathes of territory. This in turn will only quicken the pace of the junta’s collapse as the resistance achieves greater armaments while the junta loses greater numbers of combat forces and the ability to function coherently as it is attacked across the country.
It is easy to find faults in the resistance, to nitpick it in a thousand ways and claim these flaws lead only to defeat or that they mean the best outcome can only be negotiated settlement that accommodates the military. Myanmar’s revolution is what it is: a sprawling bottom-up revolt initially driven by the imperatives of local self-defense that grew into a national uprising based on shared aspirations for a better future built upon federal democracy. Yes, more coordination, more messaging, more clarity about its politics, more inclusion, more and better of everything would be wonderful. But the flaws don’t detract from the bigger picture. Look around the world and there is no clearer example of a mass movement fighting for a just cause. Moreover, despite whatever its critics proclaim, the raw fact remains, Myanmar’s pro-democracy resistance is not being defeated militarily and shows no sign of wavering despite all the horrors the junta has thrown at Myanmar’s people.
The junta’s incessant brutality has lit a fire it does not know how to extinguish. That will not change. It created this raging inferno of resistance through the arrogance of staging another coup and the mass atrocities it committed afterwards. More atrocities will not shift the war in its favor. The democratic resistance is viable and ascendant to the point where it can achieve outfight victory because it is, and will remain, a popular national uprising of a people determined to rid themselves of juntas once and for all. The junta will lose, it is just a matter of time but likely within the next 3 to 6 months. The post-conflict peace may be messy in places, at least to parts of the international community, but it will not be Syria or the Balkans. There is simply too much social goodwill and solidarity amongst the Myanmar people, the starting and end point of this revolution.
If other countries want to help, let them start by being more open-minded to the prospects for positive collective change rather than driven overwhelmingly by the fear of what might go wrong and the unhelpful, dogged insistence that Myanmar is fractured beyond repair. Myanmar’s future is not set in stone. The world owes the Myanmar people the benefit of the doubt given their collective determination and fortitude to win despite the barbarity of the junta. In multiple ways, this effort has been decades in the making and now it is becoming a reality. This should be all the more evident given the impetus created by Operation 1027. In such a dark, jaded world, surely the prospect of a genocidal junta collapsing is worth countenancing, preparing for, and, indeed, celebrating.
Please note that many of the comments made in this Podcast were first articulated in a series of op-eds over 2023 in The Irrawaddy. See: Revolution and the Escalating Collapse of Myanmar’s Junta (irrawaddy.com); Myanmar Resistance’s Next Steps are Clear; It’s the Junta’s that Aren’t (irrawaddy.com); What Myanmar can Learn From Sudan’s Predictable Tragedy (irrawaddy.com); and Call It What It Is: A Revolution (irrawaddy.com)