Transcript: Episode #244: Spirals and Snowballs
Below is the complete transcript for this podcast episode. This transcript was generated using an AI transcription service and has not been reviewed by a human editor. As a result, certain words in the text may not accurately reflect the speaker's actual words. This is especially noticeable when speakers have strong accents, as AI transcription may introduce more errors in interpreting and transcribing their speech. Therefore, it is advisable not to reference this transcript in any article or document without cross-referencing the timestamp to ensure the accuracy of the guest's precise words.
Host 0:21
The situation currently taking place in Myanmar is abominable. There's no safety anywhere in the world is all but turned its back on an entire people trying to claim their freedom and insist upon their human rights in the face of blatant evil and inhumanity. international media seems to have moved on to the next story scarcely reporting on this one anymore even as the horror continues. We get insight Myanmar podcast find this intolerable, and we stand behind the Burmese people in their courageous effort to live in dignity. This platform is dedicated to making sure that we keep the conversation going while ensuring these voices continue to be heard. Today's guests is one of those voices and I invite you to settle in and open up to what follows.
Brad 2:21
Welcome back everyone. Today we have a returning guest, Matthew Arnold is here to help us work through and understand the very complicated and ever changing situation in the northeast of Myanmar, where there have been quite a few developments over the last couple of months and indeed over the last couple of weeks. So before we deep dive into this very complicated topic, for those who who missed our last interview with you, would you care to introduce yourself and your background?
Matthew Arnold 2:45
Sure. My name is Matthew Arnold. By background I'm I've been an academic and an aid worker, academic background, did my PhD at the London School of Economics, mostly worked on strategic studies looking at war and different parts of the world particularly and, and what might be termed fragile states, weak states like South Sudan, Afghanistan, Congo, etc. Most of my work as an aid worker, worked for the World Food Programme for quite a while as emergency aid worker in different parts of the world. And then as as a more on the development side for quite a while with the Asia Foundation, mostly in Myanmar, where I wrapped up as the country rep. And then after that worked on economic policy, before the coup. And then since the coup, I've been doing conflict analysis on the on the ever evolving situation. So that's, that's kind of an overview in terms of specific interests. I mean, I'm very interested in in tracking the conflict situation, because this is a war and, and when we talk about politics and the wider social situation, we will always have to contextualize it within that very specific raw reality of war. So that's kind of my overarching interest.
Brad 4:17
Absolutely, I think we're very fortunate to have someone who has a specific focus on this kind of nuts and bolts type of analysis, particularly in something this complicated, and these it is quite complex. So let's let's look at the northeast of the country. We we saw back on the 27th of October operation 1027 launched last year, with the three brotherhood Alliance. And that pushed back the military aggressively but we recently heard that China had brokered ceasefire is between the military and the Brotherhood Alliance. Now that is a strange piece Some information. So is it is it first of all true that China is getting involved and brokering ceasefires? And second of all, why would the three brotherhood Alliance consider a ceasefire if by all accounts they've been putting the pressure on the military very successfully over the last few months.
Matthew Arnold 5:21
I mean, fundamentally, we have to reflect on on the on the military situation, which is the Northern Alliance achieved its major objectives, which was taking northern Shan they took, you know, all the major towns in in northern Shan except for musei. Going further south would have been problematic from a political standpoint because it then gets into the wider politics of Shan State, especially with the wider with with the Shan population. So, I think from a from a military perspective, this was a operation 1027 was a resounding success for the Northern Alliance. It was a it was, consequently a resounding defeat for the junta. The junta lost a huge amount of men weapons and territory. And then also the psychological blow of, of losing towns in the imagery of the junta suffering its biggest defeat in history. And China border where wants 3000 troops surrendered. Six Brigadier General surrendered. But this this was part of the overall situation which was of military defeat for the junta. So the fact that there was a ceasefire, I mean, this wasn't to stop fighting, per se. It was, it was a face saving gesture for the Hutu because he had already lost so much of northern Shan it was also a lot of pressure on the Northern Alliance from China to do so. I think we have to acknowledge that. There's also the reality that in all of this, we shouldn't be too obsessed with the notion of ceasefire is actually there's a lot of nuance in the spectrum to what that term means. At most. This was a tactical ceasefire, it wasn't a strategic permanent ceasefire. I mean, it left the junta in a very difficult position. Basically, it had lost access to last show. And from from most directions, it's the key towns that it took on the road from Mandalay to large to places like Chuck mu, Nan Cho were directly threatened. And it's its actual control over that main role was was diminished. So the junta signed a ceasefire, where not only had it lost most of Northern Shan actually, it had lost northern Shan except for musei. But then its positions further south on that that kind of key line of the of the road that goes for mandate late last year was in was it was left in a very weak position. So overall, though, the junta this was not a positive outcome for the junta ceasefire was signed. The other thing to just say up front is that we have to be realistic. I mean, we can expect resistance forces to be in full, massive offensive mode and in perpetuity, this is incredibly difficult to manage any military unit is going to take pauses to rest, recovery, regroup, and then also formulate plans for what comes next. So there's there you know, there's a certain cadence to warfare and, and that has to be accepted and predicted. So there's always going to be, you know, an increase in escalation, there also be pauses at eventually there will also be, you know, what we hope will be a complete cessation of warfare. But we have to be realistic and we can expect different armed groups that are fighting the junta to be you know, full on continuously, it's unrealistic to expect. The second thing I would note is that said say the ceasefire, the connotation that all resistance attack stopped in northern Shan is an accurate. I mean, the junta itself has continued to attack in places where the ceasefire has booked supposed to have been in effect. That's been both violence against civilians, but it's also been attacks on Northern Alliance position. So the the junta has clearly been violating the terms of that ceasefire, which I think people have rightly said is an affront to China, but then also just shows that you can't negotiate with with the junta but the SEC Good point is that armed resistance in northern Shan certainly hasn't stopped. I mean, take Kukai township for instance. There's been extensive successes there by the K key IA since the ceasefire before the ceasefire as well. And to the point where they've they've taken over multiple outpost and push the junta further out of that Township. The other thing is that townships that hadn't been specifically part of 1027 have seen significant fighting since in specifically I'm talking about my bein Township and moment Township. These are in the far northwest of Shan State, and we've seen extensive success there including the taking of towns and the the defeat of significant junta units. And then most significantly, I mean, we have Rakhine, so the AAA has massively escalated in Rakhine, but also in Colette wa in Qin. So we can talk about the ceasefire, but fundamentally, the overall trajectory here is still of massive resistance to the junta that is successfully taking a territory both in Shan State, but then also in other places like Qin state, and Rakhine State. And then other parts of the country at the same time have seen significant escalation and success as well. In fact, I would say this is what we're still seeing as these rolling waves where the junta is losing territory. I mean, the most significant was the PLA and its allies taking a town in southern Shan pool, we still also have significant resistance attacks across places like Northern Maguey Sekine kitchen itself where the care EA has been successful taking junta outposts outside of pecan Township, pecan town, and then also in places like go and Mon as well. So I think, you know, for for people tracking the situation, Operation 1027 was a resounding success for defeating, you know, the pathway to defeating the junta and should be seen as such that there was a ceasefire, what I would call a tactical ceasefire happen, I don't think is particularly significant, especially when we look back on how things unfold. I mean, ceasefires have been a common theme of warfare, and Myanmar's for decades. Some of them are more significant than others. But I don't see this particular one as being something that's going to last and fix battle lines for the long term. Absolutely.
Brad 13:05
So I just want to sort of hone in on on distinction, you made the distinction between what you call a tactical ceasefire and a strategic ceasefire. And I wonder if you can sort of elucidate what the distinction between those ears and specifically, if you can compare and contrast the types of ceasefires that we're seeing, or have recently seen, within the scope of Operation 1027, with the much more famous National ceasefire agreement, and the ceasefire, as you know, that led to the national ceasefire agreement in Myanmar, pre coop.
Matthew Arnold 13:40
I mean, I would distinguish them. I mean, there's a term truce, which also can be at a much larger level, there's this term ceasefire. But again, those are fairly ambiguous terms when it comes to what actually happens. I mean, the NCAA, in terms of what happened was, in effect, something that was meant to specifically lead to extended political negotiations that would set you know, the parameters for the country for the long term. I mean, I would consider that much, much more significant strategic in nature, structural in nature, compared to a ceasefire that basically stops fighting, but that does not involve any kind of further negotiations on it on a political level. So we have to distinguish between, you know, what is the purpose of a ceasefire? Is it is it simply meant to stop fighting? Or is it meant to be the basis for extended longer term political discussions? And I think, you know, we have to reflect on Myanmar history which is the junta has always signed ceasefires, with with armed actors and then you has this habit of saying that they're going to then lead to some kind of political negotiation or some kind of accommodation with the armed actor. And at times that's translated into groups like the BGS. The Border Guard forces, at times. It's translated into ceasefires, for instance, with the CIA. So
Brad 15:20
you make a distinction between what you call a tactical ceasefire and a strategic cs file. And so my question to you is, can you define the difference between those two? And can you then explain what is the purpose and the function of ceasefires that we're seeing during Operation 1027? And how you would compare those to the ceasefire that we saw during the national ceasefire agreement? And similar ceasefire is pretty cool.
Matthew Arnold 15:45
Yeah, I think I think we have to really nuanced what we mean by ceasefire, because it can cover a huge spectrum of possibilities. And there's also the word truce, which also has a wide range of possibilities. I mean, on one extreme, we basically have an agreement to stop fighting for either a fixed period of time or an indeterminate period of time, all the way to ceasefires that are focused on allowing for actual political negotiations to come to some kind of longer term political agreement. That that would be what I would consider the NCAA, this is at a structural level, a strategic level, it's really intended to shape up to shape the wider political settlement of the whole country. And then conversely, we have these, what I would call tactical ceasefires, which are simply meant to stop fighting on the ground. Perhaps they then lead to further discussions about, you know, a more significant sees for that allows for political negotiations. I think the 1027 ceasefire is what I would call a tactical ceasefire. I've seen other commentators have also used this term. But it speaks to a basic point, which is that the 1027 ceasefire in northern Shan simply stopped the fighting in no way was it meant to come to, you know, much larger political arrangements or start a larger process. Now, the Chinese may, you know, frame it, that it's the start of something, but I think everybody accepts that this. This wasn't the kind of ceasefire that was going to lead to anything more significant than an immediate stop to the fighting. And as I have been mentioning before, I mean, this ceasefire absolutely didn't we to a stop of fighting and in northern Shan because the junta has repeatedly violated the terms of that ceasefire. But then we've also seen successful attacks on junta forces in Kukai Township, and then also further in the northwest, in places like Matt and my band Township. So in all of this, I think, I think we have to really be careful, as always, with how we use terminology. And then I think also for for people who aren't so focused on the ground situation, we have to, you know, we also have to nuance or understanding.
Brad 18:31
And so one interesting thing that we have seen with ceasefires, whether this was during the NCAA period, or indeed, as you yourself mentioned, previously, with the currency spies during the 1027, the the military seems to have a habit of violating their own ceasefire agreements. Now, besides just violating the norms of war. There, there seems to be a reason that they keep doing this, that there must be some advantage to continually doing this, even though this must surely indicate to all parties China, included who brokered these these most recent ceasefire agreements, that none of these ceasefires will have any lasting power because no agreement signed with the military is reliable. What's What's the rationale for the military to keep violating their agreements?
Matthew Arnold 19:25
I mean, I can't think of any other words, I mean, force, you know, there's a will a term and a word, a term would be force of habit. And then a word would be desperation. I mean, the military has been violating ceasefire since I mean for decades. The these are transactional. The military. I mean, in my own opinion, as the NCAA was was never a viable peace process because it was never ever meant to take the military out of its central role. In the country's politics, or do anything serious to deal with its authoritarian nature and its its economic interests. So I don't think the military is ever had any sincerity in terms of how it approaches ceasefires. And what it does is it uses them basically to, to supplement. Its its military weaknesses. I mean, the simple truth is that the military doesn't actually win much, if anything, but what it has done over the decades is come to ceasefire agreements, almost never has it defeated armed opponents. There's very few examples of that. But what it has a long history of doing is signing ceasefires, which then allow it to stabilize the situation and what it considers to its favor, and then it goes from there. But I don't think the you know, the this fundamentally is not a military that has a wide ranging history of victory in any sense of that word. I mean, you can just go to the museum and naypyitaw. And when you go to the little section on victories, I love this section, because it's so pathetic. You know, what it talks about is being able to take hilltop forts. You know, this is what the military has been doing for decades. Now, people say, What about the, you know, the Communist Party of Burma, etc, etc. I mean, a lot of these, they imploded on their own. And you could say the fact that well, the junta succeeded and forcing a ceasefire and the union den and fracture well, maybe that was victory. I mean, people people can kind of can try and frame the scenes, however way they want. But fundamentally, ceasefires have always been used one on the ground in a very transactional way to kind of mitigate against the junta inability to come to an outright victory, and then in a political way to obfuscate obstruct stymie any kind of serious political dialogue. And I think right now, what we're seeing is that the if the junta signs a ceasefire, it's doing so because it's losing. Like I said, the junta lost northern Shan, it came to a ceasefire, because it you know, it lost northern Shan it also did so because it's it perceives the signing of ceasefires is a way to show diplomatically that it's still strong now to anybody who actually follows the situation on the ground. I mean, I'm talking about diplomats here, this This in no way was this a ceasefire that showed the junta coming out in a positive way. So I think the junta is continue continually going to push for ceasefires because it has very little other choice because it is losing militarily. And then it also likes to use it diplomatically to show that it can try and accommodate opposition, and that fundamentally, it wants political dialogue, which is all nonsense. There's now decades of history of this. And then I mean, we have the, you know, the PLA, which was an NCAA signatory, which had a convoy attacked by the military. And then the PLA decided that despite the NCAA, it had no choice but to attack the junta. So I mean, that's a choice that other NCAA signatories are also going to face. Some of that. I hate to say it, but it's kind of pathetic opportunism. You know, like the junta has been weakened militarily by other people who have been fighting for the duration. But regardless, it just it speaks to the wider question, which is that the junta doesn't value ceasefires, and there's no significant goodwill towards actually seeing those lead to political accommodation and a fundamentally different type of country.
Brad 24:17
But then, surely, then China would have known going into brokering the ceasefires that they were going to fail. And that potentially this would be a something of a political embarrassment for China seems like putting themselves in this position of saying, well look at us doing our best to broker peace and having that completely collapse within within weeks, if not days. What was China's thinking? Did they genuinely believe that this was going to turn the tide or is China just trying to pretend to be involved without actually having to change the realities on the ground?
Matthew Arnold 24:58
I mean, China has a long stamp meant standing foreign policy of supporting ceasefires and trying to broker in negotiations, especially on its border. So I don't think I don't think this particular this particular ceasefire was, was significant. It wasn't an outlier in terms of China's wider approach. I think also China from a strategic perspective, has come to a realization that the junta is weakening, if not collapsing, and that from, from their perspective, there's also a desire to kind of manage how, or attempt to, you know, put some parameters on on how that starts, how that unfolds. I mean, from their perspective, they probably don't want a quick, massive collapse everywhere, because the worry about their infrastructure, probably what they what they seek is, which is something that's more gradual. Now, I'm not saying that that the China's foreign policy is to see the junta defeated. But what I am saying is that China probably, well, China does worry about the security of its infrastructure across the country, but particularly in places where there's active conflict, and that it did probably push heavily to have a ceasefire, even if they, I think, I mean, rationally, it's, you know, I've always thought the Chinese were quite pragmatic in their own way. I'm not sure they expected this to lead to some kind of wider extended process, at least privately. But what they do, what they did want to see is that, you know, that things didn't escalate even further to the point where some of their core interest became damaged through the, through the intensification of the fighting. So there's there's this this kind of effort to try and dampen down some of the intensity of the conflict, to protect their core interests.
Brad 27:12
Interesting. And so let's let's look a little bit more broadly, because I know that most of the analysts were pretty nonplussed when the ceasefires were announced, they will not seen as something that's particularly relevant or particularly impactful. Whereas to us as a more lay audience, people who are not familiar with strategy, they they seem much more significant. So having clarified that, that element of this, let's look at the broader conflict against the military, as it currently stands you, in your previous interview with us and a few other experts who have come on, put approximate ballpark estimates on something in the scope of about six months for the military to either collapse or be rendered functionally, you know, neutralized, would you still stand by that estimate?
Matthew Arnold 28:08
I mean, like I said, in the last interview, all of us hate to give you even ballpark estimates of what's going to happen. But yes, I still generally stand by that. I think the junta is losing. I think the junta is collapsing. Now how long that takes? No, that's I'm you know, I don't have psychic powers. I can't put a precise date on it. But what I've emphasized for the long term is the overall trajectory of what's happening. And what was very clear before 1027 Was that the junta was had a negative trajectory, it was not succeeding at collapsing, the resistance resistance was saturated across large parts of the country and strengthening and then 1027 happened, the the, the trajectory for the junta in terms of a positive outcome for the junta. The slope is just you know, it's become even worse for the junta and that's, that's been exponential. So overall, this is this is a military that that has, you know, ever worsening options. It's really I haven't heard from anybody a coherent answer about how the boon to actually stabilizes this thing in its favor. I haven't heard one single person tell me that, because right now, the the trajectory favoring the resistance is clear. And I mean, even people who would push this, this, what I would consider a silly notion that there had been a stalemate for years because they were unwilling to talk about the wider trajectory. Even these people have concluded that the junta faces collapse in defeat. Now they've shifted to talking about doom and gloom about the wider prospects of the country. But you know, the the wider narrative here is it has shifted markedly, which is the junta is collapsing, and most likely the junta will be defeated. I think for me, What's also been interesting since 1027, is again, we have to take it back to more of a military analysis. I mean, I've heard some people say, there's this kind of naive assumption that none of this matters because it's still in the periphery. I mean, what constitutes the periphery? I'm not sure. But, I mean, there's fighting right outside and AP Don Karenni. And go and northern Shan and increasingly, Mandalay? I mean, there's fighting, you know, down in mind, I don't know what the periphery is. But anyway, that the, the, the notion is silly, because what it implies is that the, the junta is still, you know, incredibly strong, not filling significant pressure, and can just continue as is, regardless of whatever happens in these places where, you know, we're currently talking about this is nonsense, where we have to think through is that from a military perspective, what is the actual capacity of the military to still function in the way that it had done previously, and that comes back that overall capacity is diminishing markedly. And this is because the junta had placed a huge amount of its combat power in places like Northern Shan because it was of such strategic significance to them. We also have to talk about places like Palawa. I mean, the fact that the ACA took Polat, while people will say, Well, who cares about Polat? Well, I mean, I'm pretty sure the Indians would say they care. But the reality is that there was a huge amount of investment by the military, in keeping plot, what township in AAA still took it took it. So in all of this, we can't just say, Oh, well, these places aren't so important. And the military's capacity, you know, if they lose in northern Shan, it has no significance for what they can do. In other parts of the country. This is nonsense, utter nonsense. The junta his overall capacity to function as a military is diminishing. And this is we can see this very clearly in terms of the fact that the junta was unable to launch any significant counter offensive in northern shot. And then likewise, the military has been suffering defeat after defeat in southern Qin in Rakhine, but then it's also losing in other places. I mean, the fact that the PLA took the town after just a day or two of fighting, you know, is significant. So overall, the combat power of the military is decreasing everywhere. We have to acknowledge that, by my accounts that the junta is also suffering press, increasingly, as a has been in places like Saigon, northern Maguey, increasing parts of Mandalay, especially in Northwest parts of the region, in northern parts of the region. And then also in places like Eastern Congo. This is this is a military that is increasingly it is it's not on the offensive, it's on the defensive everywhere. And it's also on a defensive increasingly in urban areas. Again, I mean, for me, the fact that the PLA and its allies took a town within a couple of days, speaks to the weakness of the military. So I think this thing isn't going to slow down or assume a steady pace, because that's not how military defeat works. It starts to spiral and snowball. I think I also for me, I remember they had lost this, this outpost, and I think was a non show, outside of non show town. And they showed this picture of all the unit badges from from the junta that had been in the outpost. There were I think there were over a dozen or even two dozen different unit patches. This is a military that does not function coherently. It's cruising together what it can to form Garrison's and then spreading them out. This is its reality. I mean, in the past week, I've seen reports of the junta using The ATR 42 propeller, these are commercial airplanes to push bombs out of them. So in all of this, this is not a military that has a clear pathway to regaining the initiative, or even stabilizing things in its favor. This is a military that is collapsing. And so I also want to very specifically push back on this notion that the military is going to pull back into the regions and hunker down, and that'll just all be hunky dory. And it's completely feasible. I mean, it makes, you know, a neat sound. Sound piece. But but in terms of military logic, rationale, it doesn't. It's not as clear as that. Because the military, you know, it's like me saying, Well, if I chop off your arm, and I tell you to go to work tomorrow, because it's just an arm, and then why don't at the end of the workday, you tell me how you got on with it. It's like this is what's happening to the military, when it loses places like Northern Shan. Now, it's going to lose Rakhine likely then it will be Karenni and increasing parts of other other areas in the country. The other thing that I term I want to talk about is strategic depth. I mean, the notion that there's a stable part of the country that allows the military to project force into other less stable parts of the country or unstable parts of the country, it doesn't exist. This is a national uprising, there's resistance across the vast parts of the country. But the only part of the country that doesn't have consistent resistance is Irrawaddy region and certain parts of the go and southern Maguey. So the notion that the junta can just retreat into these areas, and it'll, it'll be able to hold out in perpetuity. At some point, you have to push back on this notion because it's a gross oversimplification of what might happen. Now there is some possibility for the junta to try and pull back and defend itself. And that's, we see indications of that. I mean, for instance, the junta deliberately, what I would call a coordinated retreat out of police border points on the Bangladesh border, because they knew they couldn't defend those police posts on that border. So there, there have been places where the military has deliberately pulled back because that they know that they can't defend areas. So they pull him back into bigger garrison. And we will see some of that, but I mean, I would also highlight things like the the military had this wonderful idea back in the day to put a lot of their industrial capacity in places like northern and central Maguey region. I mean, you have to look at these places where they put their factories, like it may have seemed obvious at the time, but times change, and now they're stuck with a lot of their industrial base in places that they increasingly can't defend, and are likely to lose.
Brad 38:21
So, you've, you've opened up a lot of directions of conversation here. And one of the things that that stands out to me, You did comment on, on the dissenting voices, basically. And this is part of the reason that that we wanted to do this episode in the first place. The majority of the analysts are saying basically the same thing that you're saying. However, there have been a number of posts, whether it's social media posts from from Myanmar, affiliated Talking Heads, whether it's articles that mean published online, that that are saying things that are much more pessimistic, there is still that undercurrent of voices who are saying, well, no, we need to focus on ceasefires. We need to focus on you know, integrating the Myanmar military into the new Myanmar state or or are talking about a protracted stalemate or a protracted conflict. The idea that there can be a clear and definitive victory in this conflict is something that certain commentators don't seem to want to embrace. And I'm just wondering, do you have any thoughts on like, why why there is this distinction between the commentators and the analysts like yourself who are saying that this is not up for debate, the military will categorically at some point lose, versus those people who are just very reluctant to say that that's even on the table?
Matthew Arnold 39:54
Well, I mean, I've always pushed back on on absolutist notions and I think the biggest A mistake made by I mean, some of these analysts was was from the very beginning, this notion that the military absolutely cannot be defeated, and that the absolutely only way forward was to have some kind of negotiations that fundamentally accommodated the military. And I would also just say, I mean, at some point, you have to question these analysts because they've been wrong about so much from the beginning. I mean, simple things like would there be a resistance? Would there be armed resistance by the Bomar would EAS work with other NGOs? Would EA do is work with Bomar armed groups? Would there be? What would the resistance persevere and expand? Would the iaito is on the China border launch a massive offensive? I mean, time and time again, look at the big picture questions. And these same analysts have been wrong. Again, and again, I can't say it enough. So this whole notion, it falls back on this, this idea that the only way forward is some kind of negotiation that accommodates this military, that is wrong on so many levels, from a simple fact check of reality, it's wrong from a moral level is wrong. I mean, why would anybody expect a population that has been brutalized for decades by a military dictatorship? Why should we perpetually expect them to accommodate that military? And then some of these same analysts are the ones who called out, you know, the violent get violence against the Rohingya rightly as a genocide? I'm sorry, but why do we expect the Myanmar people to accommodate a genocidal military? No, it's immoral, it is wrong. So I would just say, you know, we have to, we have to push back on on the the underlying notion of all of this, which is this, I want to call it an analytical point, it's more of like a filial philosophical point. It's also driven by ego, which is to say that, you know, the Hutu can't be defeated. By the way, the NLD and Aung San su chi are worse. You know, that also drives a lot of it. And that fundamentally, we have to, we have to negotiate with the military. So that that premise, that argument has has been the driving point over and over and over. And I would say that a lot of this, you know, they desperately been searching through confirmation bias for the last three years, to show that the military can't be defeated. And then it has to be accommodated. I mean, now, the big argument will be what we have to worry about balkanization and the fracturing of the state and everything else. And I would, I would also, I mean, Scott Marcio, the former ambassador of the US to Myanmar had had a really thoughtful tweet the other day where he said, Yeah, lots of things can go wrong in terms of a of a, of trying to create a different country in the future. But one thing is guaranteed, which is the junta is disaster for the country. Absolutely. And if there's an onus on all of us to help support the creation of a new country, that doesn't accommodate a genocidal military, I don't think we have to agonize over that point. Like this should be clear to people who have some kind of, you know, like, I don't see how you can have this notion of just saying that the military has to be accommodated. I said it last time, how many genocides does it have to commit before we stop pushing the idea that it has to be negotiated with? And certainly, I think that stands for countries that value human rights and democracy. But I think I would also say, you know, for countries that say have a more rich, you know, aren't so interested in those ideas and notions, and they're worried about balkanization and the rest of it, I would also say, look, the junta is losing. That's clear. The junta cannot control borders to India, Bangladesh, China, increasingly Thailand, like the value, the value added for these neighboring countries of engaging with the junta is rapidly collapsing, along with its military position. So in all of this, I would say Nico, the idea that fundamentally Absolutely, this military has to be accommodated. I know I'm sorry, it doesn't. This is this is this is not is not a line worth pushing? I would also say I mean, from all from my perspective, this will be accepted within the country. People, the Myanmar people are the ones who are ultimately going to determine when this thing stops. And I don't think that includes by saying, Oh, we've suffered decades of horrible violence by you, we've succeeded in defeating you to such a significant extent, it's still unfolding, and then suddenly, we're going to stop so that we can negotiate with this military that's called cause generations of misery for the Myanmar people.
Brad 45:45
Absolutely. And so let's, let's look then at the actual conflict, because this is, I think these are these are the, the roots of misunderstanding, it's not so much that people are looking at this situation, and they're looking at the information coming out and they're coming to the conclusion that the analyst soul wrong, I think, there are a lot of misconceptions and misunderstandings about the realities. And we can go through them in order. But there are questions about, as you know, the centralized or decentralized nature of the conflict, the question as to whether the various ethnic armed organizations are going to potentially swap sides if they think the military can give them a better deal. We know, for example, that the military has posed to being allied to certain ethnic armed organizations, the question of whether ethnic armed organizations are interested in a nationwide victory against the military or whether they're only interested in establishing strongholds in what they consider to be their own territories. How, how can we approach this? How can we understand this a little bit more usefully and a little bit more accurately, because the, if we take it as a as a premise, and as a fact, that the ethnic armed organizations are not loyal to the concept of a decisive victory over that that model, then this opens us up to the possibility of as, as you brought up recently that the balkanization of Myanmar down the line? How would you explain this dynamic to people?
Matthew Arnold 47:24
Versa, I didn't, I didn't, I made my point was that this is an argument that's been made, it's been made for an extended period of time. And it's it's fundamentally it's kind of fear mongering to push a notion that, well, we should just negotiate with military because it could be even worse. And, you know, there's a, there's a really, really strong, strong chance that it'll be like the Balkans. And again, these make for nice sound bites and and media interviews, but it doesn't sync with reality. Now, I'm not saying everything's gonna be milk and honey, there, you know, there's no country that goes through these massive, you know, these massive processes that involve war, without there being a wide range of challenges and issues, there will be, it won't be clinically clean, there won't be this magical roadmap that lays everything out, and then just gets implemented. I mean, this is some of this. Some of this, again, is what what we're expecting is often lala land. I mean, for instance, the idea that after the coup, there was immediately going to be a single chain of command. This was also farcical. I think, for me, what's happened is that this is a country that's been brutalized by decades of military dictatorship. The country had 10 years, trying to accommodate that military through its own constitution. There was a, a relatively free and fair election with a very clear outcome, then the junta staged a coup, and then ever since then, has been using mass what I would consider systematic violence against civilian populations. Against that there arose a national uprising. Now people can say, well, it's not one movement, or it's fractured or dispersed or whatever. But the reality here is that none of this would have happened in terms of the military being its being in its current state. If it weren't at a scale that I would consider nationwide. Yes, there are parts of the country where there isn't a significant resistance, but by and large, using that term like this, the junta face faces a nationwide resistance. And I think at some of this, we have to be clear about what was possible. I mean, the the resistance from the very beginning was was was very clear to use his term. collective leadership, because nobody thought that there could be a single revolutionary party, or that would or that that would be a good thing. And we have to be careful about this, this notion of single parties that lead revolutions because they're a double edged sword. I mean, I've worked a lot in on South Sudan, South Sudan had the the SP lay the Sudanese People's Liberation Army. And over time, it became folk that originally it was focused on revolution across all of Sudan. Eventually, it ended up focusing on secession by the South after John Garang died, SP lay leader. But what happened here was that as the South Sudan after independence is turned into a dictatorship, that is as bad or worse than the dictatorship of Bashir, who was the dictator of all of Sudan when they were fighting that, that that war over the 80s and 90s. So and all of this, we have to be careful. Nobody wanted a single Revolutionary Party one because it didn't gel with the Myanmar context, we had long running insurgencies that never would have agreed to one single leader over everything that was never pragmatic or likely, it was also unnecessary. You know, what we've had is this notion of collective leadership that, again, in a comparative context has been remarkably successful, we have to reflect on the fact that we have a country that has had civil war since independence, and then has had military dictatorship for decades, basically, where the military has had state power for decades, meaning it's been incredibly entrenched. And now we're at the point three years after the coup, where the military is facing the possibility of outright defeat. So that was only possible through a collective effort. Now, I wouldn't say that that would have been possible through a single effort that was never on the cards, that was never going to happen. And I don't think it would have been, you know, for a country pushing for federal democracy. I don't think that was ever politically what would have been effective anyway. So for from a military perspective, a historical perspective, and then the realities of the current politics, it was never likely or advisable that there was going to be one single commander of the whole show. So I think we have to, we have to just push back on that notion because it just it doesn't sync with reality. I think we also have to push back on the notion that this is necessary, because otherwise we'll have balkanization I think that's a mis framing of the, you know, it starts to present a false choice, like either you centralize everything, or else you fracture. This is a false choice. This, this is this, this doesn't sync with the Myanmar context. Myanmar basically has to go through a rationalization or a reckoning of its political settlement that wasn't adequately sorted after independence that involves political dialogue across numerous stakeholders. So I mean, I've studied revolution extensively. I've worked in countries that have had single parties that have driven everything, including across ethnic lines. And the challenges those often result, most often result in dictatorships. So I think in all of this, we have to be, we have to set expectations. And we also have to get rid of these false choices. What we have now is a wider movement. And I do think it is a movement, I would call it a revolutionary movement that is focused on getting rid of the junta and creating a federal democracy. Now, will that be perfectly clean? No. Will there be issues? Yes. Will there be challenges more than anybody can never describe. But this country, more than any other that I can think of in the last 20 3040 years, has a chance to get rid of a horrible, horrible regime once and for all, and create a fundamentally different country. That is not going to happen by accommodating this military. It doesn't mean that Myanmar doesn't need a military. But this military doesn't need to be part of the code. country's future. The second thing in all of this is that, you know, we have to acknowledge that Aeos have been very clear about what they're looking for. And they've been fighting to achieve that for decades, I think, you know, everybody has to acknowledge the sacrifice and perseverance of these Aeos that that have been fighting for so long. You know, this precedes the coup, we have to give a lot of credit to that. At the same time, we have to acknowledge that the key factor that is shaping what's happened since the coup, and what will happen in the future, is that we now have a resistance against military rural, that includes the Bomar majority, plus ethnic minority groups. That's a historic change. That's incredibly important. People can say, Well, what about the Burma, the Communist Party of Burma, etc, etc. There's some truth to that. But that was for a fairly narrow amount of time, you know, way back in the in the 50s or so then then that that insurgent group became much more segregated between leadership and it's armed components.
Anyway, my point is that, in all of this, we this notion that there was going to be one single chain of command, and that if there wasn't, the only possible outcome is country fractures. It's not that simple. This is just what I would consider very simplistic fear mongering. What I would say is that there are real risks that face Myanmar should the junta fault, this is inevitable. As I said, there's no other no country goes through these processes without having bad things happen, having, there will probably be further violence or be bad incidents, there'll be some bad blood. You know, we don't know what will happen. But what we do know is that having a genocidal military still involved in the country, and this horrible notion that only this genocidal military can keep the country together, we need to move on, like the country, you know, we need to get the benefit of the doubt, to all of these resistance groups fighting against the military, that that they can create a better future. I would also say that, you know, the notion that there is no chain of command also needs, that also needs qualification. I mean, we have to give credit that there has been a huge amount of coordination communication, between Ayios and the N ug, and then also within in UG. I mean, I've worked in countries where we've had massive amounts of inter communal violence during the during the course of war. And we don't see that in Myanmar, like, I'm sorry, people throw this out there. It's completely inaccurate, especially from a comparative sense, like Sudan has not erupted into inter communal violence, it just hasn't. What we see overall is that there is an a massive amount of public Goodwill for getting rid of the junta in creating a different country that is a federal democracy. Now, different groups have different understandings of what that term means. That's natural, that's what has to be negotiated. That will also take time, we can't front load all of these incredibly complex, sensitive political negotiations before before the fact, which is the defeat of the junta. I always give people the example of the American Revolution, like we didn't have a Constitution before the end of the war. We also have incredibly mythologize the notion that George Washington was in command of everything, I mean, read any history of the American Revolution, and there is an incredible amount of resistance actors doing what they thought they had to do. But ultimately, it panned out. So my point here isn't that, you know, everything will be milk and honey, is that we have to give the benefit of the doubt, to a revolutionary movement that intends to get rid of the junta and create a different future for the country. And so the last thing I would also point is this notion that what's happening now is just a continuation of what has always happened. I mean, this is just, it's just total nonsense. You know, this, this, this idea that, well, there's all these different groups, and they don't care about anybody else. They just care about themselves. I mean, some of this is silly, because some of these international actors have also said, Well, forget about everybody else. Just focus on your local administration. You know, sign a long term ceasefire with the junta forget about the rest of the country. So mean some of these international policy prescriptions have also been incredibly toxic. But then at the same time, people push this notion that without the junta, it's just an A balkanize. So, in all of this, I think there's, there's an onus on us to give the resistance, the benefit of the doubt that there is a wider movement to create a different country that doesn't involve a genocidal military. And for me, the probably one of the things that makes me most optimistic about that is that, I mean, when you look at other countries, one of their big issues is that they have certain individuals who have been involved for decades, and they're driving everything. And this is a revolutionary movement that has had an incredibly important non violent component to it. That's not just the CDM and includes the wider participation of local communities and inclusive diaspora and includes the activist networks. But it also includes the CDM, the civil servant boycotts, or strikes, but plus the public boycotts on things like taxes. So that's been incredibly important. But then also, we have this, this this massive involvement of the youth, I don't think we can understate the importance of the youth to what is happening, and Myanmar, and that entirely new generations, most of which came of age during the transition years, and they saw that a different type of country could be possible. And they were absolutely unwilling to accept a return to military dictatorship, that this, we can't just write that off as like, oh, none of this matters. It's just a continuation of what had already happened. I mean, this is cynical to the extreme. And it's just grossly unfair to a population that has suffered endless atrocities by the junta, and received, you know, very little tangible support, and what is what is a very just cause to get rid of that genocidal military. So I mean, sometimes I just get so frustrated with just the rank cynicism, of some of this, some of this analysis is like the man or people can't win. If they have a federal democracy charter, they have a human rights ministry in Aug. You know, they have collaboration between Bomar groups, and Aeos. Like they have codes of conduct, they have all of this. And then none of this, you know, it's like, impossible for this to be acknowledged this. It's just everything has to be this doom and gloom. And then all these all these, I would call them goalposts. I'm an American, that's what we say these continually shifting the goalposts, like before we say, Oh, it doesn't matter, because the resistance doesn't control towns, nothing matters because there's no unit level defections. Nothing matters because the there's no surrendering of, of military units, nothing matters because the junta can control territory, and on and on and on. So it's like, all of these things are happening. And then you just get this this brain negativity. And this is this is a comment that's anymore about the Myanmar people. My suggestion is don't work. Don't Don't let it rile you up too much. I mean, this is a revolution that you own. Fundamentally, it will be decided domestically. Like, it would be nice if there were more international support, but whatever happens, fundamentally, it will be because of what Myanmar people do, to choose and set their own future. So I think we have to, we have to acknowledge that and, you know, not not not too riled up by by some of this really simplistic, sensationalized analysis that, that, you know, just just always points to, you know, to argue that Myanmar is basically a lost cause. And that it's, you know, nothing good can happen there unless the international actors kind of saved the Myanmar people from themselves. I mean, all of this is just so weird. So, I think that's, I guess that's just the overarching points.
Brad 1:04:44
And I mean, you know, we appreciate that analysis and not to, to question or disagree with, but I do want to come back and clarify this. Specifically, when it comes to the ethnic armed organizations. Are you saying that you do not envisage A situation in which the CEOs having pushed the military out of the territories that they associate themselves with where they're associated ethnic origin or the ethnic group is dominant and their language is dominant, would basically delineate a new border. And while still notionally supporting the the revolution would not venture beyond that, you know, not to go so as extreme as to say, well, would we see the kitchen and Shan ethnic organizations besieging Naypyidaw. But do you envisage the possibility that they would they would come up to the border of the territories that they have historically claimed? And say, well, we've secured this territory now, our job is done. Someone else will continue the revolution elsewhere?
Matthew Arnold 1:05:52
Well, I think overall, it'll be it'll be a mixed. I mean, in all of this, we have to nuance it. I mean, what we've already seen is that Ed knows ke the cane you have been very willing to work with with Bomar PDFs directly engaged with in UG, so the current IE the chin. And that there. And then there's also even aside from direct military cooperation that existed before 1027, even before that there was support by other EU's for for the resistance that came in different forms. But I think this notion, I mean, I've always pushed back on this notion that basically Aeos don't care about anything else. And they all just want to create a wall state. I just like maybe a couple years, things like that. But I don't think just saying everybody just wants to be like the wall. I don't think that's accurate. I think it's much more nuanced than that. So my perspective is that we have and I said last time that I really hate this term, EEO because it, it leads to overgeneralization and grossly simplistic observations, like my perspective is that we have to nuance the intense interest actions of different ethnic armed organizations in terms of how they engage with the wider goal of our schema junta in creating a different type of country. Now, I don't think the MMD a has ever said that they're going to march on Naypyidaw. So I think we have to be clear that, you know, certain Aeos are going to focus on what they've said they were going to do for decades, which is they do want to create a a different kind of political reality, a different kind of social reality, for parts of the country that they consider to be areas of their interest. There's nothing outlandish about that they've been very consistent. I mean, they've been talking about it for decades. At the same time, since the coup, they've also been clear about saying nothing in this country can change unless we get rid of the junta. And that I think a lot of these is also through the failed NCAA process, which is just going to increase as other groups like the PLA also say, what's the point of continuing to engage with a collapsing junta is that fundamentally we have to get rid of the junta and then negotiate a different kind of country. So I think within within that wider political context, I would say you know, when it comes to groups like the cane you that the cranny be a thick MPP or the Candia so you see are now we have the chin, which are putting together Chin State Government. We have the key IA K pick, you know, we have different we have a whole range. And then on the other side, we do have groups like the MNDA. That have been very clear that they are much more focused on their their immediate area. We also have the AE which has been very clear about what they're looking for. So I think saying there's one answer for all EAA O's is is not accurate. We have to nuanced the wider situation here. What I what I think is true, overall, is that everybody wants to get rid of the junta. Plus, I think we have to say, there is a genuine, wider discussion about coming to a new political settlement that involves federal democracy. IE is fundamentally is about a different type of political arrangement, ie federal and democratic now what federal means is always going to be open to discussion. There's actually no technical measurement For federalism, it's a political understanding. So if that's federal confederal, whatever that has to be negotiated in the future, what I don't think is, is I don't buy into these arguments that EA owes, which is take the area that they can that they want to control and then do nothing further. Because there's no logic to that. I mean, what is the point of AAA taking Rakhine State, and then the next to a country that's left in a toxic state of of war for the next decade or two? It makes no sense. It's the same with groups on the Chinese border, what's the point of having war across the Braemar heartland, in terms of your own viability, in terms of economic growth, political stability, social development, etc, etc. It's in nobody's interest to have a large part of the country that remains at war. It's illogical. And that's very clear. So I think my argument in all of this is that we have to nuanced the conversation, we also have to be pragmatic, I think we also have to reflect on the reality that the N ug has invested steadily, consistently extensively in developing PDS in developing chain of command and doing so in partnership with Ayios. That, that they work together as part of a part of a wider collaboration to get rid of the hooter especially the kitchen chin currently in Korean. So I think we have to acknowledge that that's been going on since the coup. And then in terms of the Northern Alliance, I think from a from a, we still deserve to give them the benefit of the doubt about their political intentions, in their public statements in their, you know, be a verbal or written, they have been very clear that they do want a different country to emerge, and that they do want a different type of political arrangement, and that they're not outright secessionist. So I think we need to get some of this is there just tropes that are thrown out there, people latch onto them, because they can kind of be summarized into a sentence. Now, there are genuine there are that this, again, is not to say everything is going to be milk and honey, there will be tensions, there will be disputes, there will be times when people feel like this side, or that side isn't doing enough, to be honest, that happened before the coup as well. I mean, for decades, there is resentment amongst ethnic minority communities that the Bomar weren't fighting. And that after the coup, there was this really weird idea that the EAS would group together and they would fight the junta and everything would work out wonderfully. So like I'm sorry, like that was never going to happen. Like either the Bomar start fighting as well, or the EU's aren't going to or aren't going to collaborate work together with them. But what we have is a clear demonstration that the Bomar are willing to fight have been fighting, and have been doing so successfully. And that's going to escalate further. So what I'm saying here is that a lot of these, these kind of these these tropes that are based on saying, well, it's just a continuation of history. And these are all completely disparate, scattered armed groups that don't care about anybody else. It's not true, it's not accurate. It's certainly not accurate, if that's the, the generalization for everything, everybody everywhere, we need to nuance it. And I would say the the overarching trend here is that there has been there is a military dictatorship that has been actively defeated. And that is only happening because it involves the Bomar majority, working together with ethnic minorities, whatever good comes next will also only happen because of that. So I think that's that's something that we have to acknowledge. The other thing I would say is from a geopolitical perspective, is that what is unfolding now also, like there's, say, take the Chinese, what exactly is the point of China being interested in a situation in Myanmar where you have one armed group, you know, the AEA that controls one side of their pipelines, and then the China border controlled by another group, and then you have just, you know, never ending war in the middle. So I think in all of this, you know, even if you strip it aside of the morality and ethics of the matter, which is very clear, ie getting rid of a genocidal military, there's there's a certain pragmatism to see the junta ours did in some kind of wider political settlement agreed upon. And in one that keeps Myanmar together as a whole, albeit with a significant amount of autonomy, as his long been discussed and was actually the founding discussion for the country going back to Anglin, etc.
Brad 1:15:25
So then, right, let's look at the actual the flip side here. We were talking about the various groups, I know you don't like the term a yo, yo, so let's the various revolutionary groups. But on the other side of the line, we've had a number of organizations, obviously, the border guard force is a very good example of this. But there have been a number of armed organizations that did at least a year or two years ago, align themselves to the military. Has there been any particular change on that front? Have we seen these groups fleeing the sinking ship? Are they abandoning their alliances with the Central Military Command? Or do they continue to notionally work alongside the military?
Matthew Arnold 1:16:12
I mean, I would say, I mean, we've seen border guard forces, you know, kicked out of the country defeated, outright scattered. I mean, certainly the Koch con is the most striking example. We've seen border guard forces, like currently ones, which just changed sides as units. That happened quite a while ago. And then now we have, you know, the saw CIT to Beauregard force, and Schweiker. CO saying, you know, at least officially, they're no longer affiliated with junto, they won't take salaries, etc. I think, you know, we have to be clear that a lot of these, a lot of these actors, I mean, I would call them, these were very transactional relationships. These were, we signed a ceasefire with you, and we carry on with our business activities. And that's a win win for both of us. And including to the point where the military has become exceptionally involved in these scam cities like existed up in ko con areas, but then also in the Milwaukee area down on the Thai border. And so I would say, in terms of these types of arrangements, I don't really see them as you know, since here, extensive, long term political understandings, these are transactional business deals. Now, that's, that also is a little bit of an overgeneralization. But I would say, you know, if you nuance all of all these points, that what we have is the junta that has very few sincere allies. And that's a key point that we have now. And all of this, who are who are the BGS, the large militias that have a structural significance that are still on the side of the junta, ie willing to fight. I mean, even the piano and southern Shan is probably reassessing its position right now, because being a direct military partner of the junta is a losing proposition. So on all of this, as I said, these, you know, these are overwhelmingly transactional arrangements which were premised on, we have a ceasefire, the junta doesn't attack us, the junta is still more or less the national power, you can guarantee us some kind of certitude about what's going to happen in the future, as well as some protection, all of that is collapsing. What we have instead is a military that is collapsing. And that its its its value added as a partner is rapidly declining. Now, that's, that's true, not just for the border guard forces, but also for neighboring countries. I mean, when when the when the junta can't even access the border, its value added to neighboring countries, you know, it just starts to implode. And I think that's also true with some of these some of these other actors. So to the specific question, I think you're getting that was like, some of these groups did come to arrangements. I would say the question is like, was there any wider political significance to that? And was that political significance of a type that would lead to some kind of political arrangement that would allow the junta to stabilize the wider situation in its favor? And to that, I would say no, you know, even groups that have kind of been fent city like the new new mon state party like this, the value, the conspicuous value of fence sitting is rapidly collapsing, because the junta just doesn't have anything to offer. And then in all of this, you have the the wider public sentiment, which is we want to get rid of this military once and for all. So I think I think there are reasons, you know, there is a history here, which is, I mean, one thing that the junta is good at, like I said, it's not winning militarily outright, it's coming to ceasefire arrangements. So there is a history of that, like I said, you know, there's, I mean, this is this is what the military considers victory. And it's always been to the detriment of the country. But I don't see that as something that's going to be an increasing trend, because there's just this straight up reality that that the military just has less and less to offer in terms of ceasefire partners. And that's both from I mean, that's across multiple, multiple angles, it doesn't have much to offer in terms of military guarantees, it doesn't have much to offer in terms of political guarantees or access. And then most important, I would say is also it's the economic benefit of such arrangements is also decreasing because the military is losing control.
Brad 1:21:15
So then, that I think, brings us back to a very important question, probably probably the most important topic. And that is, how do we come by the information that we have, because the analysts overwhelmingly agree we've had a slew of guests come on, providing us with with information that comes from either the the industrial perspective or the strategic perspective, the economic perspective. But one of the big questions is How do we understand what we understand we have people making statements about the the amount of aircraft that the military have the number of bases that they still have estimates on on troop sizes, for example, USIP, published an article, which, which we discussed the other day, estimating that the genuine size of the military is only at about 150,000 Men, which is which is a very, very low estimate, you know, with the military, having said for years and years and years that they had a troop size of about 400,000. So we're talking about a number that's almost a third of the military's reported figures. We've got maps that show bases, enemy military, the military bases, and yet we've got people saying like, yes, there's a military base there, but we're not worried about it. Because the dummer are basically besieged in that base, they can't move anywhere, they can't go anywhere. In a conflict, this complicated in a conflict, this murky, where we don't really have, you know, CNN on the ground, wearing bulletproof vests, giving us Direct footage, we don't have reporters, getting interviews from people, we don't have all of the advanced apparatus of of a Western military information system. How do we actually know the situation that the military is in? How do we know the tide of war? How can we make these predictions?
Matthew Arnold 1:23:16
I mean, I would, I would take it back to the beginning. I mean, I remember being in Yangon immediately after the coup. And there were there were a lot of again, these very absolutist articles that said, I think the figure at the beginning was between 350 to 400,000. And, you know, X 27 biggest military in the world, I forget the number, but there were these kind of I mean, I remember one article in particular, I don't want to name it because I don't want to get into a tiff with, with with people. But I think you know, there's always been the single sentence notions of the military can't be defeated. It's too powerful. Like, well, this is utterly moronic statement, like any military can be defeated. I was, you know, it's like saying, listening to somebody from the US and say, the US military can't be defeated. And you're like, Well, let's talk about the last 20 years of history. Like, maybe you weren't defeated outright, but you certainly didn't win. So in all of this, I would say, you know, we, this, these kind of single sentence summaries get established. And then and then they kind of get accepted as, as, you know, absolute facts. And then there's, there's there's very little willingness to then nuance it as the situation unfolds. What we've had, I mean, the military at the time of the coup very well could have had 350,000 personnel. Now, out of those 350,000 personnel, you have to accept that, you know, probably upwards of a third to 40% or even more or just support staff service staff. In terms of actual combat staff, it would be, you know, significantly less than the total number. And then the other thing is, we have to talk about, you know, the actual coherence and capacity of that military to function. And this is where I think one of the biggest challenges for the military has been that after the coup had to start fighting a war, that over decades, it had, you know, it had lost focus on or hadn't prepared for, which was, it had to fight in multiple ethnic minority areas against long established Aeos, including ones that were exponentially stronger because they had collaborated white with wider parts of the population, like in perennial chin. But then they the military was also having to fight across vast swaths of the middle of the country. Specifically, I'm talking about Saigon and Maguey, especially northern Maguey, where they just weren't prepared. I mean, if you look at a map of formal military installations, I mean, it's again, historically, in terms of its infrastructure for the last 2030 years. I mean, Sudan was basically a transshipment point for logistics, staging, to do operation and other parts of the country. For instance, chin and put chin. So the the raw reality that that the military faced after the coup, was something that it was not prepared for. I mean, we also see this in terms of things like the the military had absolutely no ability to move large numbers of troops across, you know, vast swaths that are Skyn in Armored Transport. We also didn't have enough helicopters to move troops when they were facing daily IED attacks and ambushes. I mean, overall, what I'm implying here is that, you know, we've had a military that is, has really struggled to deal with a reality that it wasn't prepared for, because it never thought that the majority would partner with ethnic armed organizations and wider ethnic minority communities to push for the outright ouster of the military. So my point in all of this is that the the analysis of what the military is what it is capable of doing, what kind of fight it has to fight, and what tools it has available, has always been incredibly, if not oversimplified, just outright wrong. This is not a conventional binary Civil War. It never will be. So this is from day one has been a bottom up national uprising that spans the population. And that's that's not a that's that's the type of war that is difficult for any military to fight. But it's, it's it's particularly difficult to fight for a military like the one in Myanmar, because it just wasn't focused on that. I mean, this is this is and I think this is where some, some of the analyses that I found more persuasive are these notions that, you know, over the 90s 2000s, this, this military really lost track of its overall purpose because it shifted heavily towards its economic interests. Now, it still retain quite significant combat power, especially in terms of LEDs, in air force that could focus on one or two theaters at a time. And then, and I'm really talking here about the ability of the military to fight the Ka extensively, but then also fight a, that that's what I would consider the kind of the high point of the military's combat capacity back in around 2018 2019. Now, go go back to 2020 to 2023, where the military now has to fight across by my count in any one month, the military has to fight and at least 60% usually 65% or more of the country's townships. That's incredibly difficult to do. And I mean, for instance, takes a GYN, you know, I've heard some of these really farcical ideas like there was only one li D and so again, like in the break this this is a military that's been clusion together unit since at least the end of the dry season of 2022. So basically, this is a military that's been vastly stretched out and forced to never had enough manpower for the task at hand. Now how do we know that? I mean, we just have to look at what's unfolding. I mean, this, this is military that hasn't been able to launch any counter offensives. And Shawn, every week is losing more towns. And even people who have said the military hasn't, you know, can't be defeated can fight in multiple theaters have conceded that in places like the guy and the junta had already lost control of, of a large majority of the rural population. So in all of this, the military has just been incapable of kind of re formulating its its force posture in a way to do with the post to reality. I mean, I would also say a significant thing. And all of this is, you know, we have to look at proxy indicators of military capacity. And I mean, for me, the biggest indicator, it's not even a proxy is a direct indicator of military capacity, which is, can they mount serious counter offensives? Anywhere? Can it could they do it in northern Shan? Can we do it in Rakhine? The answer so far has been no. What they're doing is trying to keep what they still have defend what they still have, and then committing mass violence against civilians. I think that's also an overarching point. In terms of military analysis, we, we've had this idea since the beginning. And this, this is something that really, really grates me, because a lot of people who talk about the strength of the military talk about in purely military terms, as if the as if the the civilian atrocities are just kind of something that happens on the side. And I think we have to be very, very clear, that completely ingrained integrated into not just the culture, but the doctrine of this military is systematic violence against civilians. This is This is arguably the biggest tool that the junta uses. It's not successful at the tacking other military forces. What is successful at is attacking civilian populations, unforeseen ceasefires, that's what it's been doing.
Now, there's some variation in that, obviously, I mean, we can talk about, you know, current areas in the 1990s, we can talk about, you know, other parts of the country. But I've always said any, anytime somebody wants to talk to you about the military capacity of the Myanmar military, and they don't talk to you about the extreme use of violence against civilians, just tell them they're full of nonsense, like you can't separate these two. And this also speaks to the to the actual military capacity of the Myanmar military, which is that, you know, through through their, their ideology, doctrine, indoctrination, etc. You know, they've been willing to use violence against civilians since the beginning. And that's only escalated over the years. So in all of this, I'm I'm going off on a little bit of a side tangent, but I think it's fundamental to the point which is you can't talk about military power without talking about military violence against civilians. And we see this right now they've been bombing that the town in southern Shan that the PLA took yesterday, the day before. I mean, it's the same in Rakhine has extreme amounts of violence against civilians right now. Because the Hutu is losing in Rakhine. It's the same in Sudan, we had over 800,000 IDPs. And so again, the biggest misconception about Skyn is that these 800,000 IDPS happen because of violence between armed groups. It happened because of junta violence against civilians. That was a junta strategy. So let me get to the point of how strong is the military? What capacity does it retain? And what does that kind of pretend for what might unfolding next? I mean, in terms of capacity, we have to reflect on what is happening to the, to the military, which is conspicuously losing it, it is losing towns, it is losing outposts, it is losing massive fortifications. I mean, for me, Platt wha is worth examining poletto was not just an outpost here, an outpost there a base here erode their plight, what was like an insanely fortified militarized position that had been held by the junta for long for decades, and had been constructed to be this kind of, you know, in this place that could never be taken by any type of resist. stance, but it fell. So my point in all of this is like there is a conspicuous erosion of military strength. And that for me, one of the biggest indicators of that is that the violence against civilians is escalating. I mean, I track the atrocity violence against civilians, it's gone up massively in the last couple of months in terms of air attacks on civilian populations, as well as artillery shelling of populations. At the same time, though, we see rural parts of the country that have seen fewer ground raids, because the military just doesn't have the ability to project into parts of the country. For instance, parts of Saigon, you know, have been relatively more quiet in rural areas, because the military can't do these, these types of ground rates that they were able to do. I'm in earlier years are there months. The other thing that I would say is that the fighting is becoming an increasingly urban.
Now this, the military doesn't no military wants to fight a war, that's urban, urban fighting is the worst kind of fighting. It's very difficult. It's just a horse. It's a it's a bad situation. militaries like freedom of movement, they like to maneuver they like to use multiple types of weapons systems, they'd like to do coordinated attacks, urban warfare is just difficult on all those counts. And so the question here is, you know, this, this is a, a war that is increasingly focused on taking towns, and that is that that's a clear sign that the junta is losing. And that's that's a trend that is still continuing every week, there are more towns that are lost. I mean, the other thing that I would, the other thing that I would highlight is that the junta once it loses territory, it's not taking it back. I mean, this is this is what I've talked last time we did an interview. And I made the point that there's a certain a certain threshold that has been crossed, whereby if the junta doesn't actively defend an area, it will lose it. We've also passed a threshold where when the junta does lose, something is not going to get it back. Like if anybody I remember some of these conversations about although the junta is going to launch these big offensives and retake these towns in northern Shan. And it was all nonsense, because if you actually looked at the wider military situation, it wasn't going to happen because the military is already spread too thin, in too many parts fighting too many local local battles. So the whole notion that the junta has a strategic depth where it has all these large, intact units that it can maneuver to retake territory. This just speaks to the point that the junta has been hollowed out. Now, that didn't happen just because of 1027. That was a process that had already been happening over the preceding 1820 24 months. This was a military that was fighting in areas where it just never had the manpower, even at its height, to deploy large numbers of troops. And I And again, I give some guidance as an example of that. The junta cannot fight in Rakhine northern Shan, Corinne, mon tonometry. Eastern go, and then deploy massive numbers of troops across the Gein and Maguey. So, you know, these are the fact that once the junta loses territory is lost, you know, the fact that if the junta doesn't defend territory, it's going to be lost. This this whole speaks to the weakness of the military. I mean, then we also have some of these more conspicuous things like the junta doing forced conscription down in the go, Irrawaddy and gone, or are trying to chain gang use and Yangon city, to or putting up false advertisements to try and get them to join the military. I mean, this this is desperation. There's no other word for it. There's also the question of the Pew Socci. I mean, one thing that I will also say about, you know, when we reflect on whatever happens in the future, which is that the Pew saw T never never transpired into what they were intended, which was a popular militia force that was a very able to spread out and prevent the emergence of resistance, or at least to keep it relatively tamp down and the pupusa T 's had a, a significance that I would consider notable in certain townships. I'm especially thinking of places like Khan blue and cigar Township, but this The ability of the military to kind of generate larger units to compensate for its initial size, or to compensate for its combat losses. You know, it's just never had that capacity. So what it's had is what it has. And that's just been decreasing. And if you're a military strategist, I think one of their biggest issues is very stark, which is they had this military, they then had to, we're confronted with a national uprising spread not just in existing EU, oh areas, but across wider areas like all of currently state, all of Chin State, and then across places like Sudan, and they just haven't been able to create the forces necessary to to respond to that reality. And so this this, this is, this is a question that also comes to a head because if you're a military planter sitting in Naypyidaw, one of your questions now is, I have all these dispersed forces, mostly in small units, we're talking not even, you know, at best, they're still a full battalion, or a name, but in reality, they're more like a half of a battalion in terms of actual manpower. But a lot of these places, they're even smaller groupings. And they're spread out everywhere. And so this this is also at a point in the war, where we have to talk about logistics. And I mean, it's a bit mundane, but at the end of the day, any war eventually comes down to a question of logistics resupply rearmament. I mean, that's certainly the conversation that's going on about Ukraine. But it's also true in Myanmar. The question in Myanmar is, how does the junta resupply so many different units spread out and so many different places that are faced with with daily attacks and the outright possibility that those locations might be overrun? I mean, I read the Daily reports about the conflict situation. And I mean, they're using helicopters to drop supplies into loikaw moika. I mean, this is true. Also places like haka, you know, they used helicopters to drop ammo and troops in the townships immediately outside of monuments, again, like Mulan, and ADA. So in all of these places, there's a question about how much manpower ammunition does the junta have available to carry on now, I'm not saying the junta is going to collapse tomorrow, or next week. I'm I've said that, for me, there's a plausible argument that junta could collapse in the next three to six months. I made that argument a month or two ago, a couple months. So we'll see what happens. Like I'd be the first to admit when I'm wrong. But what we have here is a junta that's dispersed spread too thin, but also has incredibly diminishing capacity to reinforce resupply rearm so many dispersed small units that are facing what I it's a bit academic, but I would call it envelopment, which is IE at risk of being overrun. And if you're a military planter and Naypyidaw The question is what do you do about it? And from my perspective, there's not a lot you can do about it. Because they simply don't have control over the roads. They don't have enough transport helicopters, they don't have the support of the population for a lot of to move large amounts of equipment and material. And so this is real question facing the junta now. And I think this was also a question, for instance, and what happened in flat WA, and in other areas is that the junta just doesn't have the capacity to resupply so many disparate positions, and so much of the country. And so in some of these places, it's also a question, it's an open question of how long these junta positions can hold out, given their available manpower and ammunition, as well as their basic rations. And I think that's something it's hard to assess. But it's something that is is of strategic significance, as as 2024 Really, really gets going.
Brad 1:44:32
So, I want to thank you for coming on and discussing these things. Because my hope our hope here is that with episodes like this one, what we can start to do is not just to inform people about the general conflict, but inform people about the mechanics underlying the conflict and therefore put them in a better position to be able to evaluate when there's different information coming from different Sources information that may seem conflicting, to be able to evaluate Well, which of these sources is more likely to be true which of these sources is using argumentation and evidence that is in line with our understanding of, of the Myanmar conflict and not having to rely on a more generalized understanding of past conflicts like Vietnam like World War Two and conflicts that that are deep in the cultural zeitgeist but are not not relevant. So I sincerely hope that that we've done something to help chip away at at the knowledge gap. But before we end, you, you may remember from the last interview that we did, we always like to end with some final thoughts from our guests, just something to put into the minds of our audience as they go on about their day after the episode. So if there is anything that you would like to express or any thoughts on this topic, or Myanmar more broadly, that you think people should consider? I'd like to invite you to share that now.
Matthew Arnold 1:46:01
Well, just one other I think one of the I just forgot to mention it. I mean, in the wider context of Myanmar's history, certainly in terms of its military history, and this notion that the military can't be defeated. I'd also say, I mean, one thing that the military has always pushed, as have have the proponents of the idea that it can't be defeated, is its ability to sign what I would consider, you know, strategic long term ceasefires. And I, I've already made the argument that I don't think the 1027 ceasefire was strategic, or long term, I think it's it's short term and tactical. But I would say, you know, probably one of the biggest signs of failure of the junta since the coup. Well, there's two one to two main ones. One, the junta has never, ever been able to build up political support, and Bomar majority, it just hasn't happened. The junta has never stabilized. Popular support, much less grown it in terms of the Bomar population. Second is the junta has not signed the strategic long term ceasefire as with any new groups. So in the past, this was always what the military would say, Oh, if we've been winning, and achieving success, and we haven't been defeated, not because we actually got rid of our armed opponents, but because we came to a long term ceasefire with them. And what we're seeing now is the actual collapse of that the PLA, the PGS, saying, well, actually, we don't want to be involved with the junta at all anymore, because they're, they see the writing on the wall that the junta is collapsing. And it's very, very plausible that it will be defeated outright. I think in all of this, my my final comment would be, you know, the Myanmar people should take heart like this has been your revolution, you have been the ones who have pushed it, you've succeeded more than any other country has, in the last 2030 years, when confronted with a deeply entrenched, genocidal military, ie one that is using that is willing to use mass violence against the population. All of this has been through the determination and dedication of the Myanmar people. And and again, fundamentally, what I say I've always I've never been a proponent of the idea that the Myanmar situation was going to be resolved through international action. I've always been a proponent that this was going to be a Revolutionary War, win or lose, that would be determined inside the country by Myanmar actors. Now, things are still going to unfold. Again, I'm not psychic, I don't know everything that's going to happen. But I maintain my my my point about the wider trajectory of the war, which is that the junta is losing, it is collapsing. And fundamentally, that doesn't mean just in so called, you know, peripheral areas, but across the country. And so 2024 will be a difficult year because as the junta loses, it will use more and more violence against civilians. It doesn't have the military capacity to fight or willingness to fight just against armed opponents, it will increasingly just target civilians. It's done that for decades. It'll keep doing that it will do it more. So I think it's important, you know, for the Myanmar people to focus on, on on what's happening now and to maintain faith, that they can create a better country and that it will be their country. And to be honest, out of all of this. They'll probably be better off for it if they if they can push towards outright defeat of the military. And then have the types of political negotiation that is required for stable long term political settlement. And I think that's something that that the Myanmar people have to own, and really be dogmatic about owning it, and be proud of what they've achieved so far, because it really is historic both within the country but also from an international comparative angle. Yeah, so that's, that would just be just a final point.
Host 1:50:37
For whatever reason, even as the conflict and Myanmar continues to worsen, it somehow continues to be shut out of the Western media news cycle. And even when the foreign media does report on the conflict, it's often presented as a reductionist, simplistic caricature that inhibits a more thorough understanding of the situation. In contrast, our podcast platform endeavors to portray a much more authentic, detailed and dynamic reality of the country and its people, one that nurtures deeper understanding and nuanced appreciation. Not only do we ensure that a broad cross section of ideas and perspectives from Burmese guests regularly appear on our platform, but we also try to bring in foreign experts, scholars and allies who can share from their experience as well. But we can't continue to produce this consistency, and at the level of quality we aim for without your help. If you would like to join in our mission to support those in Myanmar who are being impacted by the military coup, we welcome your contribution in any form currency transfer method. Your donation will go on to support a wide range of humanitarian and media missions, aiding those local communities who need to post donations are directed to such causes as the Civil Disobedience movement, CDN. Families of deceased victims, internally displaced person, IDP camps, food for impoverished communities, military defection campaigns, undercover journalists, refugee camps, monasteries and nunneries education initiatives, the purchasing of protective equipment and medical supplies COVID relief and more. We also make sure that our donation Fund supports a diverse range of religious and ethnic groups across the country. We invite you to visit our website to learn more about past projects as well as upcoming needs. You can give a general donation or earmark your contribution to a specific activity or project you would like to support, perhaps even something you heard about in this very episode. All of this humanitarian work is carried out by our nonprofit mission better Burma. And the donation you give on our insight Myanmar website is directed towards this fund. Alternatively, you can also visit the better Burma website better burma.org and donate directly there. In either case, your donation goes to the same cause in both websites except credit card. You can also give via PayPal by going to paypal.me/better Burma. Additionally, we can take donations through Patreon Venmo GoFundMe and Cash App. Simply search better Burma on each platform and you'll find our account. You can also visit either website for specific links to these respective accounts or email us at info@betterburma.org. That's betterburma. One word, spelled b e t t e r b u r m a.org. If you'd like to get another way, please contact us. We also invite you to check out our range of handicrafts that are sourced from vulnerable artists and communities across Myanmar. Available at alokacrafts.com Any purchase will not only support these artists and communities, but also our nonprofits wider mission. That's aloka crafts spelled A L O K A C R A F T S one word alokacrafts.com Thank you so much for your kind consideration and support.