Transcript: Episode #227: Above the Fray
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Host 0:20
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1:19
seat in my way that really is a good day. Yeah, absolutely yeah.
Brad 1:59
And welcome back. I'm joined today from Australia, by Nathan Russa. He's a satellite imagery analyst at the Australian strategic policy institute, focusing on human rights. And we're gonna be talking about the complicated and ever changing realities on the ground in this ongoing conflict. But before we do that, Nathan, thank you very much for joining us. Would you like to introduce yourself and your work for our audience?
Nathan Ruser 2:22
Hi, yeah, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, so I guess I've worked on sort of conflict tracking and human rights tracking, especially using satellite imagery for a while now, I've looked at Syria, and I've looked at shinjang. And in previous a bit of Myanmar as well. But now considering sort of the situation in Myanmar, the Human Rights emergency there, and the sort of ever changing, I guess, military realities on the ground, I've been focusing a lot a lot more of my time on Myanmar.
Brad 2:52
And it's actually really interesting, because you've got experience with different types of conflicts, whether these are international conflicts, you know, looking at the Russian Ukrainian conflict, but also the more subtle internal types of problems. The things for example, that we're seeing is since Yangon, China, and I know that you previously mentioned Syria. So how looking at the Myanmar conflict, how would you compare tracking the Myanmar conflict and analyzing the Myanmar conflict to the other types of conflicts that you've looked at? Yeah,
Nathan Ruser 3:24
I think it was, I forget who exactly said it, it may have even been Ashraf Ghani in Afghanistan, but he said internal conflict is ecology in the way that these actors sort of interact, compete, and everything. And I think Myanmar is really a proving ground for that strategy. There's the there's the massive conflict ecology, of how all these different ethnic resistance organizations or the older, more established Ayios, and the, the new PDFs have sort of come together. And it makes it a very difficult conflict to really track because so much changes at the local level over sort of over miles over villages over even times of day, the sort of limits of different actors control is hugely different. And so Myanmar is, in many ways, especially since the coup up until quite recently, it's been almost impossible to map in sort of a 2d representation of drawing colors and points and polygons on a map. Because it's been such a local localized dynamic that changes recently, there's been more sort of established control. And I think that's a huge testament to how much gains the resistance has made in recent months. But yeah, historic throughout the period of this conflict has been very difficult to track. And I'd say, rather than sort of Syria and shinjang and Russia and Ukraine, I think, in many ways, the closest analogue in terms of control on the ground would almost be Afghanistan. Stan, for the decades that there was a strong Taliban insurgency, and also quite stubborn Afghan security presence were sort of it was very similarly impossible to map with my guess the control being equally sort of changing day by day, hour by hour, and no, no firm frontlines. And I think that's what marks a lot of this conflict in Myanmar.
Brad 5:28
Because that's, that's kind of the hashtag with this. A lot of people when they look at conflict, they have this image in their heads, I think many of us have grown up, you know, watching documentaries and studying history. When we look at conflicts like what we'll want, like World War Two was so used to seeing colored maps. And you know, World War One famously with these trench warfare, you know, you had frontlines that did not move for weeks or months at a time, or they would move and then they would immediately move back. World War Two was very similar in a lot of ways. You know, the Falklands war, people who were in the UK, they, you know, people were tracking the war on like Google Maps at home, it was possible to do that. And now with Ukraine, we've got a lot of live updating maps of Ukraine that seem to be able to do the same thing. We've got a clear front line, yes, it does change. Territory changes hands. But why is Myanmar so difficult to pin down and say, Well, this is resistance territory, and this is done without territory?
Nathan Ruser 6:31
Why think when it came to Ukraine, one of the things when the conflict first happened when Russia first invaded, one of the sticking points I made sure I followed in my maps, was that the furthest the Russian military reached wasn't necessarily didn't necessarily mean they controlled everything behind it. I think for two or three weeks when I was mapping, Russia and Ukraine. Instead of using these colors on a map, I was using arrows to sort of show the troop movement. And what we saw there was Russia sort of sending troops as fast as they could towards Kyiv. And sort of not really focusing on securing the areas behind them. And I think that's that that sort of shows the I mean, that shows how much the conflict in Ukraine has changed from that to almost World War one style trench warfare. But I think, sort of understanding the tone of the conflict is one of the most important parts of mapping it. And so in the Myanmar Kant's texts, specifically, I think it's intensely difficult because from most of the post coup era, generally the military was sort of holed up in its barracks in the sort of towns that had had under firm control, but was able to send sort of marauding parties out into the countryside and the the resistance sort of had to just evaporate away from that. We're seeing that change a bit. But for a lot of the lowland Myanmar, that's still the case, where sort of territory is hard to define, if you look at it in, what does this group control? And what can this group prevent their enemies from entering, because in many cases, you can have PDF fighters walking within 200 meters of a main Township police station. But you can also have 100 troops from that same police station sending convoys out scores of kilometers into the countryside and sort of assaulting villages. So that that dynamic is hard to very hard to map, sort of, I guess, internally. And of course, this isn't sort of a one size fits all structure for me and my but I sort of view things in sort of a scale of one to five resistance control, where sort of you you can sort of see this dynamic of competing and conflicting control in a much more, I guess, nuanced and complex way than just colors on a map. But also that that makes it insanely, very difficult to map, especially at sort of the local village level that's required.
Brad 9:07
So I've had similar discussions with with people who've asked me or is it true that this amount of territory is under our control or that amount of territory, this city or this village, and I always have to explain, as you are the I mean, there is a difference between having a true presence and a difference between having government administration and a difference between not actively being afraid that the military could show up tomorrow, open fire with with mortars or artillery or machine guns and then just leave. These are different levels. And and it sort of reminds me a little bit of the Vietnam War, where the very concept of control and the metrics by which progress had to be evaluated were regularly being updated because the old thinking was not working. Is there any actual agreed upon One metric that can be utilized to determine who is in control because people love throwing these numbers out there, they love saying, Oh, the PDF is in control of this percentage of the country, the military is in control of that percentage of the country. Is there any way to actually measure that objectively?
Nathan Ruser 10:16
Not really. And I think Vietnam is a very sort of apt and other very app dumb comparison point. Whereas wherein you had massively different sort of local and temporal dynamics of control. I would say, and this is probably a bit of a deep cut. But there's a there's a Greek scholar called, I forget his first name, but someone, Columbus, and he wrote a book called the logic of violence in civil war. And there's a chapter on that that sort of looks at the different definitions and the different levels of control of groups in civil conflict. And I think that is a very useful starting point to sort of start context, conceptualizing what control looks like in Myanmar, because it's far from this single, binary. And but I think, yeah, like you mentioned, there's the big difference of sort of where PDF fighters are able to walk around with a gun, verse Where's civilians can feel safe, like even in compact, which is a town that was pretty thoroughly captured by the resistance recently, and I think they're crucially, the resistance was able to defend it from a very comprehensive attempt to retake the town from the set top from the tap middle, where they, I think there was three different columns of hundreds of troops, that all did a sort of coordinated assault on the town, and the PDFs are able to defend the town. And I think that's actually one of the first occasions where the the non ethnic resistance organizations have been able to capture and control territory against a counter a really consist a really, um, consolidated, counter offensive. But even then, we saw days ago, sort of airstrikes killing dozens of civilians in the town. And with sort of that, that threat from the air, there's a big, there's a big difference in sort of how you can, I guess, start to conceptualize this control.
Brad 12:18
But you're coming from a very interesting perspective, because you are, as you say, a satellite imaging analyst. And that's a very different view, than the view purely from from the ground. And we've spoken to analysts who are getting their information from fighters and people who are actually looking at the battlefield horizontally, not vertically. So it's very interesting to see, how do you find that looking at satellite imagery, you have a better or perhaps a worse insight into what we might term, the soft factors. So not just necessarily things like territory being controlled bombing runs, or barrages, but things like morale and the level of food that is available, the level of sanitation and hygiene that is available and the general sort of psychological state of people on different sides of the conflict. How do you relate to that dimension?
Nathan Ruser 13:15
I would say it's certainly worse in those soft areas. I think the satellite perspective on the on the ground perspective necessarily sort of go hand in hand, one can tell you things that the other thing that the other can't tell you and vice versa, I think. So when it comes to those soft power stuff. And even when it comes to sort of the changing realities of the dynamics of control that I've been talking about, I think reports from on the ground are by far the king, when it comes to learning about a situation in that context, I think where the satellite imagery is uniquely helpful, is providing a more comprehensive look at the situation. So the way that I sort of like to consider it is that when you're getting reports from on the ground, in most cases, those are data points, you sort of learn what's happening in this village at that time. But using the satellite imagery, you can sort of scroll through huge areas, sort of examine huge areas and get this comprehensive sort of idea of what the picture looks like throughout. I don't know, I don't know if that makes too much sense. So I'll throw in a bit of an example. But sort of when you're trying to track let's just say the kitchen, front line between the Kayo and the the junta forces. When you're relying on reporting and even on the ground sources, it's there a hidden miss, you'll hear about this particular hilltop which is controlled by one side or the other. But again, also there's a whole different issue of trying to find out locate exactly where that hilltop is. But with the satellite imagery, where that's been really useful for me has been to sort of go through the front line mark out ever Three sort of hilltop outposts mark out every securitized area, and then sort of being able to systematically go through them and say this one is kitchen control, this one is one to control. And you can sort of start to pick those different satellites signatures up because of the different doctrines and the different trainings of the different armies. So for example, quite easily looking from satellite imagery, you can tell a ke outposts from a hunter outposts, even if they're within, like a hilltop of each other. And so that sort of allows you to get this this I guess, more comprehensive map of the frontlines, especially in the more established conflict zones throughout the country. But yeah, when it comes to sort of the the nuances of control of sort of which authority is the one in charge of the curriculum in this school, it's there's satellite imagery is almost useless in that front. And that that way, you certainly need the underground reporting, and the underground sources.
Brad 15:58
I'm curious like that. How does that work? Because presumably, from a satellite, you're not identifying things like colors on a flag or the uniform being worn? Especially from top down, that would be very difficult. So how, how are you able to look at something like an encampment, which one presumes that a military encampments, a military encampment, they all kind of work the same way? Because there's one most efficient way to set up your real thing? How can you identify the differences between them?
Nathan Ruser 16:27
Yeah, you'd be surprised sometimes how Stark The difference is the SIP tap. Generally, their outposts are pretty uniform, they have these purely cleared areas with three or four different lines of razor wire or fencing around it. Pretty clear within the outposts, like it's basically a few tents and maybe a couple of trees, but it's not like forested, and in particular sort of shape and configuration of those frontline trenches. When you look at the kitchen outposts, it's often quite different with it's often quite forested that I guess the doctrine and the training of how they've constructed those defensive lines are quite different. And sort of once you've looked at, I think, if I go to my internal map, here, I've got about 750, different ethnic resistance organization outposts mapped, once you've sort of started to look at that number. And your mind is in the right sort of mindset, you can sort of key into the differences pretty easily. Another thing that's also crucial to tell is sort of how to access those outposts. So sort of, if you can see two outposts that look almost identical within 100 metres of each other, but one of them clearly has access from the west one clearly has access to the east, you can sort of start to trace those roads back to positions that you know, one side or the other controls. And that's how you can sort of start to assign that. And additionally, there's a few giveaways with a lot of junta positions, a lot of them have helicopter pads, a lot of them have sort of much more comprehensive artillery, sort of positions that ethnic armed resistance organizations just don't have. Where it really becomes tricky is when it comes to the pro junta militias, that have sort of been, I guess, recruited. And because a lot of them are splits and originally were part of the resistance, the ethnic resistance organizations, that's when it sort of starts to become a bit tricky because they've followed their old training and their old doctrine and their posts can look a lot like like, for example, some of the shiny nationalities army, outposts look a lot like a Kitchin, Independence army outpost, and sort of that's when you have to go back to well, who is reported to control this area, and sort of start to bring in those additional on the ground sides of stuff.
Brad 18:49
Okay. It's interesting, I was just I was thinking it'd be it'd be almost nice of them to sort of spray paint some logos on the ground. So you could see it from satellite imagery more clearly. But
Nathan Ruser 19:02
I wish everyone thought in a way of how to make the satellite analysts happy. But in many cases, that's what the helicopter outposts Are you see a helicopter outposts and almost universally, that's a that's 100 position.
Brad 19:14
Okay. Well, I mean, okay, that makes sense. And so air bases and things like that we can always presume are going to be Hunter controlled.
Nathan Ruser 19:21
Yeah, but also because of the, I guess the complexities of the logistics behind a lot of these more remote positions, which a lot of the frontline ones tend to be. Often it's just easier to supply even even historically, before the coup, but especially now, it's often easy to supply it via helicopter, or at least have access to helicopters. So even though even if there's like scores of outposts that would almost never have a helicopter there. They still like to have that helicopter landing zone. And that's something that obviously the ethnic armed organizations that don't have helicopters and have no need for helicopter they They don't bother with that.
Brad 20:03
And so is there anything that satellite imagery can tell us with regards to urban fighting and urban control, because you wouldn't have conventional bases, presumably, that are visible from the sky like one would presume that you'll you're more likely to have something like a converted police station as as your operating or your base of operations, can you see sort of lines of control in urban settings,
Nathan Ruser 20:28
you certainly can't get to that sort of scale of that level of detail, you can in the more militarized areas in urban areas. And what you can often tell is you, especially since the coup, junta positions and police stations, and even places like the General Administration, Division officers throughout the country have often um, fortified their borders, they've sort of dug those trenches, and you can see those. And you can additionally see the the checkpoints pretty easily with this sort of quality of satellite imagery we have now you can see sort of the roadblocks and the checkpoints and everything. So in that case, you can sort of get a pretty good idea of where the encampments are. But then there's real, that's whether then there's the difference of sort of, I can tell you that the hunter is in this position, but I can't tell you how far they wander from that position on a patrol. And that's when it sort of comes to the on the ground reporting. So for example, in Tazi, where there was a big resistance push to take the town, you could map out pretty comprehensively all the hunter outposts in the city. And then you sort of relied on media reporting sort of what the PDF statements were saying, to know exactly sort of beyond those positions, and even sort of when those positions were taken, where exactly the I guess the freedom of movement for Hunter forces in an urban area was
Brad 21:59
okay, and so if you can see the roadblocks, does that mean that looking at the highway system, looking at the road system in general, can you see which roads are and are not operable?
Nathan Ruser 22:11
Not always, because a lot of the things that sort of would, firstly, unless you're willing to spend a lot of money, which, unfortunately, not many people are willing to sink into Myanmar, at least from a satellite perspective, the imagery isn't necessarily super recent. So you're sort of relying on month old or even sort of sometimes a year old imagery. Um, so it's hard to sort of track the day to day developments from that sense. And also a lot of stuff like damage from some large mines that that won't really show up, what you can sort of see is the checkpoints. And again, it's hard often to tell, is this a pure sortie run checkpoint? Or is this a PDF run checkpoint. But you can sort of establish that their their, I guess, how I like to frame it is the satellite imagery, in many cases shows you a base, it shows you sort of the baseline to compare to. And then once you once you sort of start getting information from the incredible reporting and journalism on the ground, and on the ground sort of sources, you can sort of fill in a lot of that baseline and sort of see what's changed and what hasn't, if that makes sense.
Brad 23:27
Yeah. So it is very much a syncretic approach, like you need both types of input to really get a clear picture.
Nathan Ruser 23:33
Absolutely. Yeah, my mind that would be my understanding would be useless without sort of, on the ground info as well, and reporting and what statements are saying and all of that. The satellite imagery in some areas can be useful to map the frontline in other areas that can be useful to sort of locate the positions that various places are talking about. Um, but it really needs to be done in conjunction with sort of pretty detailed on the ground tracking.
Brad 24:04
Okay. That's good to know. So then, having sort of clarified what the information is what form it takes. What are you actually seeing like you're getting a very nice Bird's Eye picture of this ongoing conflict, what is the direction of the conflict as you see it?
Nathan Ruser 24:22
I think we're sort of starting to see a pretty clear trajectory, away from consolidation, or even majority Hunter control for most of the countryside into them needing to it's hard to sort of frame it really easily, but you're sort of starting to see more and more heavily defended positions, which indicate that sort of the, this is in the lowland area, that sort of indicate there's less freedom of movement on the ground for Hunter forces, they can't sort of send out the marauding crews that they used to walk through the country. reciting, you're saying that as well with the fewer villages being burned, that's not to say no villages are still being burned. But it's definitely fewer than we were seeing sort of in 2020 to early 2023. And the I guess you're just seeing this general shift towards, in many ways before it was. So it's a bit hard to it's a bit hard to articulate. But I think, for a long time, since the coup, when the resistance really pact sort of started in earnest, you had a lot of the countryside being controlled by the resistance in default by default, but then having to just move aside and sort of let the hunter forces through, you're seeing that sort of change in most parts of the country to a situation where the hunter forces instead of the ones that are sort of holed up in their fortified positions and not able to leave them. And so I think that's generally the trend that we're seeing. And then also in the sort of, more traditionally, sort of ethnically restive areas and a lot of the Borderlands you're seeing a straight movement towards complete bet areas being completely cleared if wonder forces sort of even these fortified outposts being captured by the resistance and affiliated organizations. And just a very quick almost consolidation of Hunter control to the purely the urban areas and purely sort of these these shrinking zones of control.
Brad 26:34
So it definitely does sound like we're moving at the very least in the right direction. With regards to pushing the military back and limiting the military's ability to do these, the sorties that they would regularly previously run I remember last year, we were hearing just story after story after story of the military just driving past the village, opening machine gunfire as they went or, or just shelling villages for the sake of shelling villagers or going in and abducting people, and then later having the bodies found. So it sounds like the military is simply less mobile and therefore less able to carry out these types of terrorist attacks. Fundamentally, they have no strategic purpose. So they're essentially terrorist attacks. So it seems like we're going in the right, the right direction with this. Yeah. Any problems with this? Like, do you think it's going to come to like a brick wall at some point?
Nathan Ruser 27:32
It's, it's hard to sort of assess that because a lot of the sort of more stronger, consolidated, areas of junta control aren't as fortified as the traditional, sort of, if you look at North Shan State, there's a military base on every hilltop, essentially, whereas sort of once you start to get to the urban, once you start to sort of start to get to the low land, floodplains. There's none of those natural defensive lines, it's not as heavily fortified. So I don't think there's going to be sort of coming up against a brick wall. But I think I think you're sort of saying that I don't think you're going to be seeing resistance forces marching through major cities in the imminent future. Because I think there is sort of the definitely the ability of junta forces to consolidate around these key positions, these key cities and these key transport lines. In Syria, we saw it it's not an official policy, but it was very widely called the useful Syria strategy where the Assad regime sort of pulled back from a lot of the outer parts of the country, and just focused on not letting there be huge areas of resist of opposition control in what it called the sort of useful Syria Damascus Homs, Hama Aleppo corridor. And I think for almost the last eight or nine months, even before the launch of Operation 1027, which has changed things massively. I think you sort of started seeing that trend happen pretty clearly where the roads and the transport and the logistics that the hunter was using to supply the sort of more remote areas were getting less than less tenable. And you sort of started seeing these outer out these these sort of more peripheral outposts falling and I think that's a trend that's going to just accelerate. And when you look at places like Rakhine State Qin state Shan State, Cochin state currently Korean, I think that's definitely their trajectory of pretty rapid in areas I think the possibility of pretty rapid junta collapse.
Brad 29:43
Okay. And so do you think do you think that the military's position might and I know this course will conjecture but do you think the military's position might just be you know what? Screw the ethnic minority regions? Whatever, we're not good at defending mountains. We're not good at defending forests. And and we need to consolidate around the Burma regions, just sort of the military abandoning those more forested, more mountainous, more ethnic minority dominated regions and trying to just fall back to the Burma heartland and, and hoping that they can maybe fracture the country but control control at least the majority.
Nathan Ruser 30:20
To an extent, I definitely don't think it will be a decision they make, or they choose to make it, I think it will be a thing that they're forced to make. If you look at North Shan State, for example, I think, already within the last few months, we've gone from them, controlling practically every urban major area, or the township centers and all the towns throughout Northern Shan state, to controlling less than 20% of them. And there's now basically been this very obvious pullback of forces to Lashio. And to sort of Pinole when, and those sorts of areas. So I think I think it's not going to be a decision where they go, you know, what we don't need Shan State, we don't need most of kitchen, I think it's going to be a area where the there are eroding control of especially transport lines, they're eroding control of supply, they're eroding control of sort of ability to keep these really remote places stocked with soldiers against a sort of more concerted resistant siege of them. I think that's going to force sort of the pull back from a lot of those areas. And then you're sort of, again, it's going to be hard to, right now, it's hard to see whether it's going to be a trend or just a single data point. But the key, the key is shooting down that, um, helicopter recently, without helicopters, most of these frontline outposts inherently cannot be sustained because there's no control of the roads anymore. And so if that, if the, I guess the helicopters and the aerial resupply becomes more, more vulnerable, then that's going to hate that's going to sort of speed up that decision. But I think I think they're a much I've heard a lot of conjecture, and I'm not sure if I wholly disagree with it, that the tatmadaw has famously and historically been good at defending hilltops has been good at defending these fortified regions. And once the resistance reaches these areas with fewer, I guess, natural defensive lines, it'll sort of push through quicker. And I'm not necessarily discounting that. But I think when you look at the sort of I think currently the hunter is strong enough that it can sort of create that those defenses around the areas that it considers the most, I guess, the most strategic and the most crucial for its survival. Of course, I should I should mention that I don't think that is a thing in the long term. I think we're seeing the most definite erosion of junta power. And I think within the within, not long at all that it'll be a very different conversation, but I think we're not about to see sort of resistance forces marching on to Mandalay or Naypyidaw or Yangon in the same way that we saw them marching into Lao Cai in Shan state.
Brad 33:24
So you you did mention the helicopters and the sort of waning military power now, the the three things I refer to them as the three A's of artillery armor and air airpower, these three things seem to be the real sort of Trump of the military, because this is something that the resistance forces have historically not been able to match, and more importantly, something that they have not been able to counter. And most important among those has been the air power, because it's so rapidly redeployable. Are we seeing a decline in the military's air power? Because that seems to be the big thing. That's that's stopping the revolution from really pushing?
Nathan Ruser 34:09
Yep, I would agree with you on that. And I'd say that the armor and the artillery won't save them. It's only the airpower, that saving all of these positions. I can't necessarily give any good predictions on sort of how the trajectory of that at the moment I'm not seeing massive struggle to resupply a lot of these outposts. I'm not seeing sort of. I don't know it's tricky, because you are seeing reports of sort of frontline outposts under attack calling for our support and not getting any and then surrendering. But I think it is not at the critical sort of inflection point of making the airpower useless. Yeah, I think it still has. I think the airpower itself is sustaining a lot of these positions and Right now I don't see signs of them it declining rapidly enough like imminent collapse of those of those of that air power supply. But yeah, they're definitely the issue is the tatmadaw is sort of traditionally fought on one front at a time it's fought in one place, sort of ceasefire then fought in another place. And it can focus, its whole airpower, its whole infantry in this one position. And that's sort of been a winning strategy for the tatmadaw Throughout history, that the resistance or the traditional ethnic armed organizations that have never really been able to counter that effectively, especially when pragmatically it's better for the groups that aren't under current attack to stop fighting. And now the difference is the fact that this resistance is Countrywide, you've got to fight in Shan State, you've got to fight in kitchens to gain chin, Rakhine everywhere. And there's only this, there's only the same amount of airframes. In fact, there's probably there probably are issues that I'm not fooling around on sort of maintenance and resupply of these, if they're airframes. So I guess the issue is, there's certainly less to get to to get to your question a bit more directly. I think there's certainly less airpower than is required throughout the country. And that's one of the reasons that we're seeing large areas fall. But I don't think the airpower is about to collapse in the same way, in the same way that the three A's you mentioned. I think our moat right now is basically useless to the hunter. Because it because they don't control the roads, because they don't, I think there's almost no area and we saw, I think it was last year, when they tried to send an armored convoys through Qin state, I think it might have been from Hakata mindat. And that was effective. So I think right now, the armor in that three, eight has become useless. But I don't think yeah, I don't think the airframes have, or maybe not useless, but definitely not saving their position. But I think the airframes the aircraft still is relevant.
Brad 37:10
This is one of the things like even the armor component, you know, I was getting word from resistance groups in in the in the east, incur any state basically saying that well, as far as they can ascertain, they're about to tanks, the military claims it's 10. But there are about two, maybe four tanks in the entire state, that just keep getting moved around from location to location, but they're so heavy and unwieldy, particularly in a mountainous region, that resistance forces can always just be somewhere else. They're not, they're not really a rapid response. Tool, they're just something that eventually will come along and try to scare you away from protracted engagement. But by then it's too late. So the the armor has, you know, what I'm what I've been hearing for quite some time concurs with with your conclusion that the armor is of limited value, when mobility is, is a sticking point, which in a lot of these areas it is and one of the other analysts we spoke to there was analyzing the interplay between environment and conflict was basically saying that there's a sort of not even a gentlemen's agreement, just a natural outcome, whereby a lot of the ethnic minority resistance groups want to fight in territory that is heavily mountainous or heavily forested. The tomato wants to fight in regions that are low lying, and an open plains. And so the actual brunt of the fighting takes place in regions that are hilly and moderately forested, because that's where both sides agree that they willing to attempt an engagement. And in those cases, armor and artillery are just very difficult to mobilize. So it makes sense, I think.
Nathan Ruser 38:58
Yeah, that sounds that matches with sort of my thoughts as well.
Brad 39:02
Yeah, I mean, there's the thing like, terrain doesn't change. Mountains are still mountains, forests are still forests, it doesn't matter what year we're in a heavy piece of metal, moving from point A to point B has to contend with the realities of the terrain. So it's not surprising that this is a this is still a sticking point. But that being said, let's move a little bit more global, not global, but a little bit more broad. Because you referenced operation 1027 And you reference that as a success. Now 1027 is named for the date the 27th of October when the three brotherhood Alliance officially sort of began this this offensive. It has now been two and a half months a little bit more than two and a half months since 1027 officially launched. How would you appraise 1027 and its role within the broader resistance movement.
Nathan Ruser 40:00
I think it's going to be hard to sort of, say conclusively, if this is the start of the end for the tatmadaw, or whether this is just sort of being a change in pace. And I think a lot of that relies on how content a lot of the three brotherhood alliance is in just capturing recapturing their territory, or whether they're committed to sort of eradicating the junta from from, from the battlefield outside of areas that they intimately care about. And I think we'll see that relatively soon with the MND. Wha, how they have now recaptured their homeland is they would frame it, and whether they then just sit in kokang and happy with that, or whether they sort of redeploy their soldiers to the moving frontlines and continue pushing. But I think more broadly, it's hard to sort of, it's hard to overestimate how much of a change this has been to the battlefield. On my map, which, again, my map is sort of opportunistically tracking as much as I can, I can't comprehensively map everything. But I have 625 Different outposts and positions in places that have been captured since the start of Operation 1027. And those numbers are sort of a huge move up a huge shift in gear from what we were seeing before. And we're seeing stuff like I think in in sweni, recently, we saw the the fall of the First Division HQ, which had never happened before. In Lao Cai, we saw the Regional Operations Command can HQ completely fall. And we've seen it just check my statistics here. But I think right now we have it up to about 38 different towns and urban areas that are under resistance control and about another 20 that are actively contested. Whereas before the 1027, that was basically zero. And we're seeing, even outside of the areas where these three brotherhood alliances are most active. I think we're still seeing quite a dramatic shift. I think what what stands out to me is calling in Sudan state. That's a district center that's like the seat of a district that is completely under resistance control. And that is almost like I don't think I would have projected that would have happened a few months before the launch of this operation. Likewise, we're seeing Louis call this the state capital of Kearney State basically being about 6070 80% resistance control. And that's something that I don't think we would have, we would have been able to foresee before the launch of this offensive and I think it's just Beyond The Beyond the, I guess, the development on the battlefield. I think it also has a massive impact on the military itself and sort of the decision makers and Naypyidaw, I think it's massively changed the tone of the Comp would have necessarily have not massively changed the tone in the conversation there from sort of being the top Madol will win to oh, what are we facing now? And of course, this isn't based on any knowledge in Naypyidaw and what the generals are thinking, but I can't see how that sort of steadfastness that the junta would come out ahead. I don't I don't see how that considering sort of the massive defeats in kokang and in other areas how that can be sustained.
Brad 43:38
Okay. So it definitely, it sounds like you're saying that not only has 1027 been a resounding success, but also that momentum there has not, has not slowed like this, we are likely to continue seeing successes of 1027 and the and the sort of the dominoes that have fallen as a result of that. Moving forward over the coming weeks and months.
Nathan Ruser 44:04
I yeah, I again, I think that is a matter of I don't think that's fully set in stone yet. Because like I said the MN D wa could just happily sit in Lao Cai, the tnla could take what they consider they want and then leave it there. Or they could keep pushing into Mandalay, they could start tape trying to take Mogok, they could start pushing towards Pinnacle when and I think that is the decisive thing on the momentum of this. And whether it sort of continues steamrolling at the rate that it has since 1027. Launch and even even sort of at the start of this year. I wouldn't have imagined could chi wouldn't have imagined or the division headquarters in sweni would have fallen so quickly. So I think the momentum definitely still is on the side of the and I know there was a bit of, I guess, conjecture for a while that because the Brotherhood basically launched a surprise attack, they were able to take 200 300 outposts all at once. And that rate of slowed and I think that right definitely had slowed. But I think we're sort of still seeing that the culmination of that momentum shift happening. I don't think it's I don't think it's there was this surprise attack? And since then it slowed, I guess. Okay.
Brad 45:23
Which, again, is still very favorable information for for us something that's very good to, to know. So now, let's actually turn to the slightly more global perspective. So you so you're working in Australia, you're working for the strategic policy institute. And I know that you're very keen to to draw the distinction between your personal comments versus what the institute may or may not believe. But before we delve into that, let's just clarify what actually does the ASB ai do?
Nathan Ruser 46:00
So we are basically independent think tank that, I guess it essentially sort of, it basically fills the role of a normal think tank, and that we have questions we want to answer. And we find the answer to them. For me, that's mostly been using satellite imagery and human rights. But for other sections of the organization that's been about defense acquisition that's been about cyber security and all of that. But I think at its core, we just sort of try and provide decision makers with the best available information. And I know that's a very generic response for what a think tank does. But I think that sort of fits us relatively well.
Brad 46:37
So just to get a little bit more clarification on that, like, you're, you're an independent entity, you're not part of the government. So how, like, what happens, the information, you have questions, you answer the questions, you have data, you have reasonable predictions, who winds up reading those?
Nathan Ruser 47:01
I think generally, the target audience is dishes, decision makers, policymakers, and just sort of allowing people that make the decisions in various capitals, especially Australia, to have the most relevant information. So it's this thing of we have a question, we want to answer it, we try and find someone that will fund us to answer that question. And we provide that information in sort of a digestible, clear way. But I, again, that process in a way sort of, I think, on the issue of Myanmar, particularly that that sort of is where it starts being a bit difficult, because regrettably, there's not as much care about Myanmar in a lot of these regions in a lot of these Western Regional capitals, as I think they probably shouldn't be. Yeah,
Brad 47:48
and so let's, let's talk about that. Because there seems to be, it's not just Australia, like, as you say, it's a lot of Western capitals. The Americans have definitely done some things over the last couple of years. We just saw them sanctioning emoji II recently, the Burma bill, the NDAA, and so on, the European Union has also made some, some movements with regards to Myanmar, but it is quite limited from the perspective of the people who are on the ground fighting, or even from the perspective of the civilians who are on the ground dealing with the consequences of conflict, these, these these sanctions and what money is notionally being made available to the general Myanmar cause? Doesn't seem to be translating into a whole hell of a lot on the ground. So why do you think it is that that Western states are not particularly keen, even though as soon as something happens in Israel, everyone's focused on it, as soon as Russia does anything, everyone's focused on it? Myanmar is closer to home for Australia than either of those two. But there's very little focus. I think
Nathan Ruser 48:53
Myanmar is also a perfect opportunity for Australia to sort of fulfill its desired role as a middle power in the region, and how it can sort of start to resolve these emergencies in these crises. But yeah, I think you're right, in that. There is a lot of inaction. And I think, again, I gotta stress that this is my cynical perspective of it, and not necessarily anything else. But I think it comes down to a few different trends. I think it comes down to the idea that supporting the unknown is risky, especially when the resistance sort of started moving from that. unarmed protesters being shot out in the street to fighting back I think there was this sense of, Well, we don't know these people, there's no leader that we can attach ourselves to and feel confident that sort of nothing bad is going to happen if we support these people. And I think that's been a major, sort of pushing point against real concrete action being taken this this idea of Better the devil we know. And especially when Myanmar has traditionally been seen as a very restive, very fragmented place. I think there's probably overblown concern that even if the hunter were to be ousted, then it will just be another round of infighting between various well entrenched armed groups across the country. And I think that's one barrier. Fair, I guess. Any real practical support for the against the hunter? I think another issue is that generally, I think in the last 1015 10 years or so, in my mind, since the Libya intervention, there has been a massive change in tone from Western governments against sort of intervening and tip and pushing tipping the scales in these humanitarian emergencies. I think we saw pretty much how poor the Western response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria was. We've seen similar stuff throughout much of the world, I think, where this this I guess, between 1990 and 2012, basically, there was this shift towards our to P, there was this shift towards right, responsibility to protect and shift towards, if a government won't protect its civilians, we will step in to ensure that they do. And you even saw that in the street on the streets and Yangon and throughout Myanmar at the startup immediately after the coup once they sort of started to get systematically shot at people holding signs saying are to pee. But I think the in the West, a lot of the conversation has moved away from that. But you also mentioned Ukraine and Israel. And I think that's sort of where it takes it to the third issue that I think is sort of inhibiting a helpful response. I think it's these just this idea of statism that I mentioned, Kelly versus book earlier in this interview, and I think he actually had a very insightful thing I read a while ago that said, under sort of, in this international, sorry, in this in this statist perspective, there's the idea of only states have the right to start a war and therefore only states inherently have protections from abuses in wool. And I think there's, I'm probably butchering that, that, um, quote, but I think it comes down to this idea of the Western focus is on states, it sort of moved from this idea of non state actors and protecting non state actor rights in conflict, to this very statist ideal of the groups that we need to move to protect our states we need to protect we need to defend human rights within this state within this state framework. I think that's been problematic because the nature of conflict has sort of shifted away from state on state conflict with the exception of Ukraine, of course. But I think that I think those are the sort of three trends that I see as the biggest barrier to a useful response.
Brad 53:10
Because I think, you know, you've raised a couple of points there, but let's just look at RTP for a second. You're right, very early on in the conflict, or not even the conflict that I mean, it was it was pre revolution, post cooperia revolution, we saw people on the streets. And Yangon, as you say, with these RTP signs, we saw a lot of internet content, focusing on RTP as well. And so when that started happening, you know, this, this entire coup for me personally has been an absolute Crash Course, in everything from from economics to Battlefield strategy, to international politics, to history to everything. And so I actually reached out to friends that I knew who had actually worked at the United Nations in very minor capacities, but nevertheless, I asked them to explain RTP to me, and they they sent me the actual documentation of RTP as sparse as it was. And I read it and I was shocked. I was reading this like this says nothing. This is a this is a two paragraphs of just words that add up to effectively nothing. And and my friend was telling me it's like, yes. And it took years of lobbying to get those words past the United Nations because no country wants to be hoisted on their own petard. No country wants to be passing these lofty, you know, declarations and, and treaties and agreements and all these sorts of things, only to later be subjected to them. When they themselves engage in questionable conduct and third party nations decide, well, we have the authorization to to take action here. So R to P, at least from what I saw was was phenomenally weak. And looking even at the United Nations Security Council, and The possibility of of bringing in peacekeepers, which because of the permanent seats of Russia and China was never going to happen. But even if it were to, again, talking to my friends in the United Nations, they're like, Well, don't forget that if you send in a peacekeeping force, number one, anything that happens to those soldiers, is bad for you politically. Number two, anything those soldiers do while they're there is bad for you politically. Number three, you have to foot the bill for your own soldiers. So a lot of countries just won't do it because they can't afford to send peacekeepers into into foreign countries. So it's the entire international framework seems to be so fraught with a lack of willingness to take a moral stance, a lack of willingness to invest political capital and money, and a lot of vagueness over what is and what is not actually permissible conduct. For for a country with the with the Myanmar context, specifically, one thing that that has been pointed out to me has been a sound, and that there are certain countries who do want to take a more proactive stance on Myanmar, but they're hesitant step on osteons toes. So do you feel that there's there's a situation where countries maybe do see the importance, the moral argument is clear to them, the geostrategic argument is clear to them. But it's this awkward social dance of who is supposed to take the lead, who is supposed to be calling the shots on this. And, and everyone looking around waiting to see whether anyone else is going to take the first step.
Nathan Ruser 56:38
But I think when I was sort of talking before, I sort of talked about 2011, and 2012, was the inflection point. And I think that brings back to a lot of what you were hearing, in that it took decades and decades of lobbying to get this relatively weak, R to P framework sort of accepted. And then we had in 2011, the Libyan intervention, which I'm not going to comment on whether the Libyan intervention was good or bad, but the fact that it was sort of framed within this RTP framework, and then sort of used by NATO warplanes to strike out military targets that weren't necessarily in the middle of massacring civilians. I think that leftover horrible taste and especially Russia and China's mouth, they they sort of considered that, that occasion of them being duped by the RTP framework, then being duped by this years of lobbying going, what's the worst that can happen, and then sort of seeing it used in their mind by NATO for a political point to overthrow a dictator that they didn't like. And I think that sort of, basically shattered the idea of RTP as a international consensus framework. And we saw that in Syria in Syria so quickly afterwards, where no one stepped in to do anything against the chemical weapons usage. And I think also in that period, there was also the Haiti UN peacekeeping force, which I think in a lot of cases, did did quite a lot of, I don't know the history of the Haiti intervention, as well. But I know it definitely didn't leave a good taste in a lot of people's mouths. So I think those two things combined are sort of what turned the page on this RTP policy and sort of made it from there something that something that, especially Russia and China, but also a lot of the Global South, and even sort of even you sort of mentioned, no country wants to put these mechanisms in place and then be subjected to them, you can see that in the US not being part of the ICC. But, yeah, I think I think that sort of turned it from these decades of lobbying to get something slightly productive into sort of it being dead in the water.
Brad 58:58
It's just whether whether the, there's a situation where countries might actually want to act, but because of the inherent vagueness of the international community and the standards and norms and the documentation that exists, no one's really sure whether or not they have the authority of if, for example, you know, Australia were to put boots on the ground in Myanmar, which is never going to happen, but hypothetically, if they did, does does Canberra feel confident that the international community would not condemn that? Or is it just going to be this massive question mark of like, okay, we can try to go in and try to do some good, but we might be hailed as heroes of the international community, or we might be condemned as as Neo colonial invaders. And, and, you know, were encroaching on ASEAN and were encroaching on China's sphere of influence, and so on and so on and so forth.
Nathan Ruser 59:50
I guess to an extent, I think, yeah, I think it's tricky. I think when it suits their interests, a lot of countries in the world have no have no issue stepping over those sorts of regional bloc's. So if it wasn't, if it was something of interest to them, I don't think that's necessarily a barrier. But I think there is definitely an idea of, well, this is something that as Ian's working on, we shouldn't touch. And I think there's also this idea of sort of not wanting to support things that they don't know, entirely. And so I think that I think that those sort of come together of it would take us a lot of diplomatic, political and military capital to move the needle in this case. And here are the excuses to why we don't do it. And yet, we don't do it. So I think that is different. And there was also one more thing I wanted to add to the last rambling off topic thing. But you mentioned how there are some acts that sort of the the international community sees as more important. And I think, for me, I think even though there was so much inaction in Syria, I think chemical weapons is still something that is majorly is sort of something that's hugely frowned upon by the rest of the world. And so even though I can, I can understand when you see, soldiers getting injured or civilians, getting injured by chemical weapons, or claim chemical weapons in Myanmar, is nothing compared to the human rights abuses of bombing schools and killing hundreds of civilians. I think one thing that I keep trying to make clear to anyone that will listen, is that for actors on the ground in Myanmar, if you have allegations of someone using chemical weapons, get proof, get blood samples, get clothes, samples, take photos of the munitions take photos of the symptoms. And I think that is one avenue where sort of that could potentially move the needle not not to intervention, but that that could make the international community feel like it has has to respond in some way, which at the moment, they're sort of ignoring. So that's just one thing that I would say that if anyone has any contact or any way to get that message to people on the ground, that's what I always say if there's chemical use accusations, which there is quite often in Myanmar, get documentation because there's been no sort of adequately documented occurrences so far.
Brad 1:02:17
I mean, the obvious inherent issue with that is the difficulty of of getting documentation in a lot of those circumstances where you don't have electricity and internet, much less a functioning laboratory where you could do, you know, spectroscopy, for example, and, and determine what a sample actually contains. But, yes, I think that I think that's generally actually been a huge issue with the Myanmar conflict the reportage has has been very spotty, because you've got huge swathes of the country, which have no internet, which have no electricity. You know, I've I've worked with with advocacy groups, and I've tried to bring information to light and the concept of provenance, you know, where does a piece of of media come from? When was this taken? Where was this taken, who took this, what is being depicted here, is so difficult to ascertain. Because there's no infrastructure in place that the people are just happy to be able to get the footage out of some of these regions at all. And conducting autopsies, and conducting chemical testing is just so so difficult to accomplish. And I think this has been possibly one of the greatest successes of the military, is being able to quash a lot of valuable information from being able to make it to the international community and therefore protecting themselves from the condemnation that they they probably do deserve, even if some of the claims are false. And I'm sure some of the claims are false. Many of the claims are true. They should be tried in The Hague for what they've done. But
Nathan Ruser 1:04:01
yeah, that's that's an interesting perspective, because I think, from, from my view, coming from looking at shinjang, and looking at Syria, where there is intense contestation about every single thing that's happening, I've actually been surprised at how much there is not. There's not sort of a mainstream counter narrative, sort of when you sort of see, I forget where exactly it was. But when that school got bombed in last April and killed lots of people, there wasn't the massive conversation about, well, did it really happen or who really did it, like we see in shinjang, and Syria? So it's really interesting to hear your perspective on stuff not being documented well enough, which I do agree that there's a lot of stuff that is being poorly documented and sort of isn't making it to the UN. But from my perspective, I actually have been surprised at how uncontested a lot of the the claims are and I think that also comes down to the fact that in by and large, the resistance isn't making claims that are being found to be untrue. But But But yeah, it just compared to Syria or shinjang, or even the ISRAEL PALESTINE conflict, how, I guess yeah, my perspective, my experience is different in that not to discount what you've seen, which I agree with. Yeah, it's just interesting to different perspectives there in sort of the baselines of contestation. But I think there is definitely the idea that, because especially the UN gets a lot of its information through the mechanisms, it's established, which are inherently from states and quite statist, I think a lot does get missed and doesn't sort of make it to Europe when perhaps it should. And I
Brad 1:05:52
think that one of the fundamental differences if you're looking at Since young, you know, China, how do I put this generally, China has a very large, let's, let's call it national PR department, they are very, very much concerned with how they are represented internationally, they are, like the Chinese are incredibly fast, to respond to any statement by any government that is critical of China, whether China's international activities or China's domestic activities, Russia, seems to want to defy and want to show itself to be very strong and very powerful, and, you know, flex when it can, but at the same time, Russia is also very conscious that it has to try and portray its actions as justified is that there's an old joke of, you know, three people have been, have been taken hostage, by you know, your stereotypical cannibals in the, in the jungle, and, you know, like a German or French or Russian. And so everyone gets a last wish. And, you know, the French and the German they, they, you know, they use their last wishes, and ultimately they're killed by the by the tribe, and the Russians last wishes for the the tribal chieftain to punch him in the face, which he does. And then the Russian pulls out a machine gun and you know, murders half the tribe and the Chief Constable, why didn't you do that to start with? And it says, no, no, Russia is never the aggressor. And, and it really captures the essence of of that Russian PR. It's like, no, no, everything we do has to be to defend Russian minorities, there has to be to defend Russian ancestral territory. This this artificial narrative we've seen of Novorossiya, as part of eastern Ukraine as being an ancient part of Russia. It has to fit into that narrative. So Russia and China both are very conscious of their of their PR on and on the world stage. Whereas the Myanmar military, in particular, have followed an isolationist policy for so long, that I don't think they care. All that much like they're defending against the ICJ case, brought by the Gambia, but that's about as far as they're going. And they're not really pushing that all that hard, as far as I can tell. So the I just don't think they care. They're not contesting the details, because they don't really realize that international opinion matters. Number one, number two, so far, the international response to murdering civilians on camera has been a strongly worded letter.
Nathan Ruser 1:08:26
Yeah, I was gonna say that, why why should they care about it when it's hasn't hurt them at all really yet, in the international community? Yeah, no, I completely agree. And I think one thing that stands out to me is like, the only way in which the military gets its message out to the world is global new light of Myanmar. And how laughably poor that's been in some cases. I remember seeing an article, like in the middle of Operation 1027, saying how good Chinese cross border trade is, and then using photos from a captured border post. To demonstrate that, yeah, so I think you're right. But it hasn't been a huge priority. And I guess, why should it be a huge priority when when it hasn't really affected? What I do find interesting on that point is that, to some extent, China, but also, especially Russia hasn't sort of who is a major supplier and a major supporter of the Burmese military hasn't really, I guess, launched its capabilities in that that PR department to sort of try and hold water for the junta. And that's probably because Ukraine is taking up a lot of all of their attention right now. But compared to the ecosystems of disinformation, we saw around Syria that were almost solely coming from Russian sources rather than from Syrian domestic sources. I think it's interesting that we haven't seen that for Myanmar and I think it if I was in the halls, have power at Napier during the coup right now, I would be very nervous because in many ways Russian intervention is what ensured that the Syrian government could stay in control and in many cases, in most cases, freeze the conflict and push it in its favor. And I think it's an interesting sign that, that Russia, despite its material support for the hunter and its vocal support isn't really going to go to too much effort. Or at least not the effort that it did in Syria to save the hunter when it when it's falling.
Brad 1:10:36
I mean, Russia, Russia is at the point where they have to buy spare ammunition from North Korea, much of which doesn't work like that the situation that the Russians are facing is so dire, I don't think Myanmar is on their radar at all anymore. And I mean, you can blame them. I, I wonder, though, because I get the impression that as much as the Burmese military has this long standing relationship with with Russia, and even after the revolution happened, we saw min Aung Hlaing flew to Russia to receive some artificially created, you know, disdain, I think it was a an honorary doctorate or something from the military academy. So that relationship is definitely there. But, you know, Russia, Russia is Russia, like they'll they'll help you but that help has to be compensated you got you got to pay, they're not going to give you an attack helicopter, just because they really like you. You still got to pay the 35 and $36 million, that that thing costs. And I think the the attitude within the Myanmar military might be that they're hoping that China's going to sort of step up to replace the Russian support and and whether that's material support, whether that strategic support financial or whether it's PR. So this sort of segues us to the more pressing, you know, thing you talk about Australia aspiring to be a middle power in the region. Will China is not a middle power, and Myanmar is on the Chinese doorstep. So is there an extent to which proximity to China is causing a lot of hesitation among Western powers from from acting on Myanmar?
Nathan Ruser 1:12:29
I'm not sure if I'm honest, I think I think there's arguments on both sides. But I also think the idea and it's definitely been something that the large parts of the Resistance has sort of been advertising, that Myanmar is a perfect opportunity to counter China in the region. The NUJ is a perfect opportunity to sort of get rid of what they could argue was a Chinese client state, which I think is a bit simplified, but replace it with some with the democracy, focus government, and sort of and sort of this massive opportunity. And I again, I think, yeah, I don't know how much that has sort of moved the needle in capitals one way or the other. Because I think there is that argument. There's also the argument of we don't want to except we don't want to confront China in this area where it has built so much of the core of it sort of economic tendrils through the region. So yeah, I'm actually not sure there. I think there's arguments on both sides. And I guess when the needle isn't moving at all, it's hard to see why the needle isn't moving. But I think Chinese policy is hugely interesting when it comes to Myanmar. And I think I think China in this regard is hugely pragmatic. I don't think it has any amount of loyalty to the hunter, I think it has loyalty to its own interests in the region. And you've sort of seen the NUJ playing that up in a way, sort of saying that they will support a One China Policy quite recently, I think, reasonably they had no, they have no option but to do that. But I think operation 1027 There's been a lot of conjecture on just how involved China was in greenlighting that, but I think they're definitely definitely I think the scale of fighting on China's border. I guess it's hard because the Chinese Chinese policy definitely doesn't determine what the three brotherhood alliances are even the United State army does. But I think there definitely have to have been some level of acceptance within Beijing that
Brad 1:14:55
track a little bit on that because some of the information I'm being told is that Um, what the United State army does, is 100% dictated by China to the to the extent that some of the leadership of the United State army has now been detained and is awaiting trial in China. And were were replaced at the behest of Chinese authorities. So, I mean, I don't know where your information comes from my informations, you know, coming from filtered through multiple sources. But at least what I'm being told is that China is has a significantly larger role to play in in guiding the direction of some of these organizations, particularly the UW USA.
Nathan Ruser 1:15:35
Yeah, that is one question. I definitely had quite recently, like, even in the last week, when the UWS a sort of moved on, I think it was Hong Kong and pan long. Would they have done that without an okay, from China to do that? And yeah, I think I think, to some extent, what China wants isn't a hunter, but it wants stability. And I think it's pretty willing to blow to join in with whatever way the wind is blowing. And I think, yeah, there definitely has been an acceptance of well, we're going to deal with the MND, WA, and the United States Army on our border rather than the hunter. And I don't know if that's a policy that they actively pursued. But they're definitely accepting of it. I
Brad 1:16:22
think, I think the way that you've characterized China is, I think, a very, very accurate and very important characterization of China, like when it comes to Taiwan, when it comes to Hong Kong. China is very ideological. But when it comes to pretty much anything else, China is first and foremost, pragmatic. It's, it's very much like we will play whatever game we need to play, we will partner with whoever we need to partner with. We have strategic objectives, and we're willing to, you know, meet you halfway to achieve those objectives. So when it comes to Myanmar, I wonder whether you've been following this and how much you you think it played a role in it. We recently interviewed Jason tower of the US Institute for Peace with regards to these scam centers that have held 10s of 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of people in slave like conditions, many of whom are Chinese citizens, with the tacit approval of the Dumbledore 1000s of whom have now been released by the three brotherhood Alliance. So I don't know whether you've necessarily been following that. But I wonder, do you think that that would have played a role in the Chinese government suddenly shifting towards the three brotherhood lights?
Nathan Ruser 1:17:37
Prior to operation 1027 being launched? What was the week earlier that there were, I think it was 30 Chinese civilians killed by the cocaine VGF? I think that is definitely something that I think that definitely played a role in sort of the operation being launched when it did.
Brad 1:17:54
And there was some mortars very recently hit the Chinese side of the border, they hit a Chinese religion.
Nathan Ruser 1:18:00
Yep. And it seemed like they couldn't have hit it accidentally.
Brad 1:18:07
But I don't know how you accidentally fire more to the wrong side of the border. But
Nathan Ruser 1:18:10
yeah, but yeah, I think I think we're sort of seeing I think Chinese policy towards Myanmar is, has shifted a bit and I am no stranger to how uniquely horrible Beijing can be in circumstances. I've spent years researching shinjang I've spent lots of time following Hong Kong. I know how horrible it can be in places. But I think the like you said the guiding force and Myanmar is pragmatism. And I think it's important to I guess, for actors to recognize that even though even when China is doing things that are absolutely not supportable, its strategy in Myanmar is a different is being guided by many different principles than what's guiding those crackdowns elsewhere.
Brad 1:19:08
One thing I enjoy, like I was as I was looking through your Twitter feed, and if you'd like us to we'll, we'll link it at the bottom of this interview so people can can look at your coverage, as well. But your your Twitter bio has Shinzon. Right. picking quarrels and provoking trouble, which I'm glad to see what you're doing your best to live up to. And for those of the listeners who don't know what this is, it's a a piece of legislation in China that is so broad in its definition application that it can effectively be used by any police in any circumstance to arrest someone who may potentially if you squinted at them, possibly be doing something that the party does not approve of. It's just a very convenient way of getting We'd have quote unquote troublemakers. So I sort of tickled me when I saw that in your in your Twitter bio, and it's good, good to see you, you know, living up to it
Nathan Ruser 1:20:12
ASPI especially has not made any friends in China because we've spent years mapping out the scale and extent of human rights abuses in Xinjiang and we'd very much base their, their PR machinery against that, um, but I think I think it is important to not get hysterical when it comes to China policy. And to sort of have this have this sober look at sort of what Chinese goals are, even if it is a recognition of goals of colonialism and arguably genocide in Xinjiang in Myanmar, the goals and the guiding principle is different. And I think it's an important nuance to sort of understand when it comes to looking at Myanmar in its regional context.
Brad 1:20:54
And on those goals, specifically, you know, my interest was piqued because I was doing a pre interview with someone a few days ago, and he's published an article that will will hopefully reference an interview. And one of the points that comes up is the Strait of Malacca. Now, again, for those who may not be familiar with it, because it comes up a lot. The Strait of Malacca is correct me if I'm wrong, it's on the south of continental Malaysia. And it's a very important straight for sea transportation, basically connecting the Indian Ocean and everything west of the Malay Archipelago to the South China Sea and ultimately the Pacific Ocean and everything east of the the Malay Archipelago. And it's a quite a narrow strait. And it's it's there's always been this fear that Western powers could in the event of conflict with China block that straight and therefore hamstring China's ability to import resources into export products. Myanmar is located to the west. And the the theory has been put forth, that Chinese interests may involve having access to Yangon Harbor, historically one of the biggest hobbies outside of North America, which is located to the west of the Strait of Malacca, thereby being able to protect themselves from the possibility of Western powers trying to cut off their chokehold. Would you agree with that analysis?
Nathan Ruser 1:22:28
I think that's definitely been a guiding sort of aspect of especially the One Belt One Road initiative on the PRI. I think Chinese policies sort of in a few nuanced ways evolve past the VRI now, but at its core, yeah, absolutely is interested in being able to get resources and get economic value. Avoiding the Strait of Malacca and Myanmar has been a huge aspect in that so has sort of some overland ports. And I think, sort of even Bangladesh is quite important in that aspect. But yeah, but I think when it comes to the pragmatism, China doesn't care if it's top Madore troops guiding that pipeline towards Rakhine state, they just care that it's not being attacked.
Brad 1:23:17
So stability is actually the objective of the Chinese here, you would say?
Nathan Ruser 1:23:23
I think so I think in that. Yeah. I mean, I'm not an economic expert in any sense. But I would say that yeah, they they they view Myanmar geographically as important, but not necessarily one government or one hunter or not, a lot of the a lot of the VRI work was done with the NLD to establish these pipelines and these ports and these, this access. And yeah, I don't think they're necessarily glued to the hunter in a way that a lot of I think a lot of people in the West still assume. Yeah. But yeah, the Belt and Road Initiative is very centrally gone through Myanmar, and a lot of overseas infrastructure investment is absolutely centered in the country.
Brad 1:24:18
But and so, this is something that has always confused me, for example, because you you mentioned that the the NLD government was playing along with the the PRI and I, you know, I was living in Yangon from end of 2016 onwards. And I saw with my own eyes, the sheer volume of Chinese, especially construction, right, a lot of a lot of Chinese construction sites were popping up around Yangon. So it seemed to be that there was a good relationship between the democratic or pseudo democratic government and Chinese economic interests. Whereas when you look at the military, yes, the military can change and it can evolve. But it was under the military dictatorship, that ethnic Chinese, were being effectively hunted down. You know, I was I was being told stories from from friends in Yangon of back in the 60s, the roof tiles of Chinese homes being ripped up and boiling water being thrown through. The Embassy was attacked and had to be temporarily shut down like this. The Chinese are pragmatic, absolutely. And they can move past things like that. But they're not foolish. And they should remember that it's the exact same military, it's the same club that led that charge against the ethnic Chinese in Myanmar, who are taking power now. So it always felt to me as though if China wanted to truly be pragmatic, it would want to back the democratic forces that have already shown themselves to be open to Chinese economic interest and expansion. And not the military forces who have shown themselves to be indifferent to the Chinese, you know, slave labor in Myanmar and and being responsible for for small level ethnic cleansing.
Nathan Ruser 1:26:17
Yeah, and there's also the legacy of the Communist Party of Burma. And it's Chinese support. And I think that probably guides a lot of those sort of ethnic hostility that you were that you were hearing about. Yeah, I mean, I think, in Beijing's side, there are positives and negatives for more democratic government in Myanmar, there's definitely, I think, in no small extent, they just see that the military is horrible at economic management. And they're acutely aware that if you want economic development in Myanmar, the military has been by far the biggest hindrance of that in the country's history, compared to sort of, I think in the pre interview, you mentioned how you could see year on year development and growth during the slight NLD opening up. So I think that's like one of the positives. Also that historic sort of, I guess, targeting that I don't think China sort of is hung up on that, but they definitely don't forget it. But then I also think that historically and generally globally, China gets better with more authoritarian governments and a push away from authoritarianism is a push away from how much China can easily tip the scales, in Myanmar, so I think I think there's positives and negatives on both sides. Okay.
Brad 1:27:38
Which makes sense. But then, okay, so moving moving away from China, then let's let's focus then on Australia, because ultimately, an aspie you're, you're hoping that your work, your research, the information that you provide, is going to make its way into the hands of the people who make decisions with regards to Australia's position in Myanmar, the region generally. So what are you? What are you What are you noticing at the moment? Does Australia have any aspirations towards Myanmar? Does Australia have any policy towards Myanmar? Is it a just wait and see approach? Or, or is it just not even on the discussion table?
Nathan Ruser 1:28:19
I don't think it's been hugely discussed where it matters. I think Australia is distracted with a lot of other things. Russia, Ukraine, and ISRAEL PALESTINE, the issue in the Red Sea, China, more generally, in the Asia Pacific, I think that's taking up a lot of policymakers. Time, and I think they'd sort of, uh, this isn't a core interest to us. We'll just wait and see approach. I think there is definitely opportunity to be proactive and support, sort of how the how the, the direction that the wind is moving to, and I think I think it's hard, harder now in western capitals, to think you can just sit it out, and eventually everyone will come to an agreement. And we'll get back to what we had in 2015. I think that's becoming less and less. I mean, I don't think it was ever a realistic possibility. But I think it's becoming a thing that decision makers can less and less hope will come back. And so I think, as far as there is a, I guess, a push to think about Myanmar? I think it's I don't necessarily think they're I don't necessarily think that the conversations that guided policy have, hopefully, it just gets back to something that we can tolerate and are familiar with. But I also don't think Myanmar has particularly thought about much at the moment, unfortunately,
Brad 1:29:48
but can it not be sort of packaged. I know that this is such a hyper simplistic representation of the situation. But this is an argument that I've heard made because it's an easy argument to make. If If we don't get involved in Myanmar, China will write this. It's a very simple dichotomous approach, and it ignores the subtle realities of international politics and economic interests. But ultimately, can this not be something to to make people in policymaking positions aware that look, this country is big? Like it's it's physically bigger than Ukraine, it's 10 million people larger than Ukraine. It's also a lot closer than Ukraine and China is eyeing it up. Would that not sort of get people to realize that this is not something we can just ignore?
Nathan Ruser 1:30:39
I guess, I think the big problem is firstly, that there's more pressing stuff in the eyes of policymakers, there's there is sort of the concern about the Western Pacific becoming a much more hot conflict zone, there is things that are taking up the limited time, but I think one of the other issues is Indian policy, which we haven't talked about yet. But I think a lot of we mentioned sort of ASEAN before and sort of people being regionally I guess, territorial to some extent, I think there's an idea of Oh, in that part of the world, India is sort of leading the front to contest Chinese influence. And Indian policy is, I would say almost even maybe more, as much if not more than the Chinese policy is in bizarre support of the hunter. So I think there's the idea that if this is what the if this is the track attack that India is following, why should we rock the boat? I guess? I don't know. I mean, I'm not clued in on the discussions. That's just an impression.
Brad 1:31:52
But I mean, so Okay. Okay. So India is, it is a bit of a wild card. India and China have been competing, let's, let's put it gently they've been competing for some time now. And Indian aspirations are very clear. And it's something that you see, like, even if you spend enough time on the internet, you see a lot of the Indian voices sort of pushing very similar lines of rhetoric. So the idea that India will ascend and it will become a superpower, it will rival the United States and the European Union and the Chinese interests. This is something that we've been hearing for quite some time. So it's very clear that India wants to take a very proactive role in in the region. And when it comes to Myanmar, specifically, it, it's kind of weird, because they did accept quite a lot of refugees. There are a lot of refugees living in Mizoram, in India at the moment, mostly from Finland. And yet simultaneously, the relationship between the Indian military and the Myanmar military has remained quite strong. My understanding I may be wrong is that there has been a significant amount of cross border terrorist activity. And that the two militaries have been cooperating for quite some time to try and clamp down on that and, and for that reason, the Indians are very interested in maintaining a strong military regime within Myanmar, to protect themselves from instability and effort from terrorist organizations being able to slip across the border for sanctuary and then slip back into India to carry out attacks. Is that commensurate with what your understanding is of Indian policy?
Nathan Ruser 1:33:39
Um, I don't know. I can't comment hugely on Indian policy, because that's not where my expertise is. But I would say yeah, it absolutely is a hugely porous border, India doesn't. India can't stop insurgent groups from crossing the border. And, yeah, there definitely has been historic ties between the militaries, especially along the border. I think there was a famous field one year it was but quite recently, there was a famous raid into Myanmar by the Indian military that definitely was allowed by the Burmese military. But then there's also the the idea that what's it called that a lot of some of the militias that the Burmese military is supporting are the ones that are against the Indian state so it's not it's not a simple exercise in we support the Burmese military because they help us fight against people that fight against us. But I'd say generally, and again, it sounds it sounds weird, but I don't necessarily know if it's a huge priority in New Delhi either even though it is right on their doorstep even though the number of refugees is quite large. I think the even when you look at and I don't want to get too into the weeds on Indian policy in In the northeast, but I think even when you look at many poor, that one of the issues, there has been sort of a central government dissident disinterest in resolving the domestic crisis in many poor, let alone sort of addressing their role across the border. But it's not an area that I'm an expert in. But I, there is sort of this this just we'll keep doing what we've always done, and that what we've always done has been dealing with the Burmese military dealing with the tatmadaw.
Brad 1:35:35
But then bringing it back to Australia, like it sounded to me, I may be wrong, but it sounded to me like what you were suggesting is that the Australian position is to sort of look at Myanmar and potentially other regions as well. And to say, well, we don't necessarily have to oppose Chinese interest, because India will will oppose Chinese interest for us. Is there a sense that and I don't know whether you can comment on this or not. But is there a sense in which Australian observers are kind of saying, well, if India gets involved in a situation, that's kind of a win by default for us?
Nathan Ruser 1:36:14
Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure I'd characterize it as an Australian position more of an excuse for a lack of position. But yeah, I'm not sure. I think we have. I think it is just contributing factor to our general apathy.
Brad 1:36:36
So it Okay, so it's not so much that were ideologically aligned with Indian foreign policy interests. It's more just, well, you know, better India than China, and it's fine. It'll sort itself out sort of thing. Yeah,
Nathan Ruser 1:36:52
I think I think, especially historically, maybe, and again, maybe in the last few months, developments on the ground will force that to change. But I think it's historically I will look at it later, let's just cross our fingers and hope it gets back to something that we're familiar with. And at worst we dealt with. Yeah. And I think it's a I think it's tricky to put so much intent and thought behind the policy when the policy has sort of been non existent.
Brad 1:37:24
Yeah, I mean, that that makes sense. But it keeps coming back to this Australian policy position, which is apparently not to have a policy position on on Myanmar, it is this hamstringing potentially hamstringing Australia and Australia's hopes to be a mediating force to be a positive influence within the broader Southeast Asian region. Because if you're not doing anything, you can't really move forward, you can't position yourself better to do things in the future is, is this a wasted opportunity for Australia?
Nathan Ruser 1:38:02
I think it's a missed opportunity for sure. And I think beyond just Australia, it's a missed opportunity in the West, and in sort of the parts of the world that generally care about human rights. I think there is a very easy victory to be had in more meaningful support for the democratic revolution in Myanmar, that that isn't forthcoming. So I yeah, I don't necessarily think it, the lack of the lack of interest in policy is a huge cost. But I think it's definitely a missed opportunity in Australia and in Europe, and in the US and the UN.
Brad 1:38:43
And so we discussed this in pre interview, that, that my thinking on this matter is that simply nobody wants to be caught out down the line, having advocated for an intervention, whether it's humanitarian, whether it's military, whether it's economic, an intervention that goes on longer than promised and costs more money than promised. And as we saw from the withdrawal from Afghanistan, on the on the Biden, you can not only face negative repercussions for instigating an operation, and then for prolonging that operation, which is why, you know, George Bush got in trouble for instigating going into Afghanistan, Obama got in trouble for for extending the operation Afghanistan, and then Joe Biden, cops a lot of flack for pulling out of Afghanistan, you can't do right for doing wrong. So nobody really wants to get involved in something that's going to cost more money or cost lives or take longer than promised. And nobody wants to be seen associating with parties that a year from now, five years from now might come under accusations of having committed war crimes having behaved unethically having been duplicitous or or who potentially do not turn out to be the great partners of peace? That that they're supposed to be, you know, selling missiles under the Reagan administration to Iran was perhaps not the best PR move they could have made in hindsight. So is that is that sort of dictating policy? As far as you're seeing it of everyone saying, Well, I would just rather not be caught associated with something that might go sideways. And if I sit on my hands and do nothing, at least no one can say I made the wrong choice.
Nathan Ruser 1:40:34
Yep. And I think that's the sort of tied that international, maybe not intervention, but international sort of policy has gone in the last 10 years. You mentioned Reagan sending missiles to Iran, but also sending missiles to the Mujahideen in like, anti air defense missiles to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan. I think that killed ever the possibility of helping like providing material to shoot down planes, not just in Myanmar, but in Syria and everywhere else in the world where that could be useful, even with the massive civilian protection that would come from it. I think, broadly, there's just no appetite for doing much I think there's this. And I think, not only is there a cost to doing actions, but there is a surprising cost in terms of attention and policy and thought to even learning about the situation, if that makes sense. I think there's an idea of, we don't know who the resistance is, I guess we know that there's the NLD. We guessed, we know there's the the key leaders, but we don't know who is controlling the is controlling violence on the ground. And we don't want to support we don't want to provide material support to an actor that yeah, like you mentioned can turn out may turn out in the future to have had done atrocities or even just the idea of, well, Myanmar is historically been a place its longest insurgency in the world by many metrics, it's always had violence, we don't want to just feel the next round of violence after the hunters fallen. And suddenly, that's the ethnic groups against the NLD. I mean, not the NLD, the N UG. And I think, I think reality, I think the NUJ is doing a much better job than even the NLD of sort of bridging these ethnic gaps and sort of presenting a future of Myanmar that is amenable to not just the Burma heartland, but also all these traditionally, more restive ethnic areas. And I think I think the NUJ is doing a pretty on like, I think it's difficult to fault what they're doing in building confidence with the eh, eh, pos and the ER arrows, and everything. But I think there is just also a general idea of insurgency and violence is part of Myanmar, we don't want to provide things that will fuel the next round of that, even if it helps resolve this one. And I think that that's one of the other sorts of costs that policymakers are putting on it and are putting on action.
Brad 1:43:16
Because the question then becomes, what is the worth of clean hands? Because you're we can we pick a conflict, you know, like, I don't care, like you could throw a dart at a list of conflicts on the wall. And I can, I can show you, anyone can show you have all of the parties. So that conflict did something wrong. You know, like, we can look at, you know, World War Two, and we can say, well, you know, the Nazis were committing horrific atrocities. Yeah, of course, they were. Absolutely they were. But the Red Army were not exactly polite. Even even the allied forces on the Western Front, did engage in war crimes, nowhere near to the extent that the Germans did, but they did do it. And we all just sort of recognize that. That's terrible. And we do what we can to try to prevent that. But we also recognize that, that it's not something to hide behind and say, Well, if we get involved, you know, a village might get might get, you know, torched. Like, yeah, but that village is going to be torched. If we don't get involved, we can do more good. And everyone seems to be preoccupied with this idea of No, I cannot be associated with anything negative, it is better to it's the trolley experiment, it is better to not pull the switch and be associated with killing that one person than it is to you know, let the other five people die. You know, and what is what is the political value or and the long term value to the health and the relevance of the nation. If everyone's obsessed with having clean hands and never being involved in anything that might later turn out to be unpleasant in the media.
Nathan Ruser 1:45:12
I think there's also the issue of people have learned what conflict resolution looks like people have learned what peacebuilding in the theoretic looks like. And straying from that is also something that they view as a cost. We have these ideas and these mechanisms of regional actors and dialogue coming together to come up with a peace agreement to stop the fighting. And anything outside of that framework is a risk, and it's a cost. And I think that's an issue as well. But I think, yeah, I guess it's tricky, because yeah, I think the reality is that, and I think this is something that the people on the ground in Burma have learned, we've seen how quickly it went from R to p to save us un to save us us on the ground, all of which was unheeded. I think, to some extent, and of course, we should do all we can to sort of help build productive policy. But I also think on the ground, the Burmese people are proving that they can. They can they can make their they can write their own future. And it's an it's definitely pointing the right direction. And I think that's, I guess, one of the more positive outlooks to look on it even even with the International abandonment that we've seen. And, of course, this isn't, this isn't an excuse for that abandonment. But the even in spite of all these obstacles, the resistance is moving the needle the right way.
Brad 1:46:45
Absolutely, it is, and I think I agree with you. And I am in awe of the resistance movement and what they've managed to accomplish. I'm in awe of the national unity government and what they've managed to accomplish, I have many criticisms of the resistance, I have many criticism of the PDF of the EAS and of the N ug, but those do not overshadow the fact that this has never been done before. And this is happening under circumstances and on a scale that that we haven't seen before. However, the flip sides of the coin, though, is that it's not like you're pointing out that the conflict is going in the right direction. And that's and that's amazing. However, post conflict. You know, everyone needs to come together. Everyone needs to agree on something, the economic revival of the nation, is something that has to be dealt with COVID-19 has not yet been fully dealt with. Because the vaccine programs were interrupted by by the coup that like people forget about that. Because we're, you know, living here like triple vaccinated or quadruple vaccinated in Western countries. There are many people in Myanmar who have never seen a COVID 19 vaccine yet. And all of this is going to take a lot of, of effort. And there are already questions being raised about, hey, these CEOs and these PDF who have been manufacturing weapons, acquiring weapons stealing weapons, they now have weapons, is there going to be a buyback scheme? Is there going to be a voluntary disarmament? You know, is the nation potentially going to disintegrate? And looking not just that the conflict, but the post conflict? Are you as optimistic about the post conflict prognosis if international abandonment continues? Or do you think that as soon as the conflict begins to wind down, countries are going to be more willing to get involved?
Nathan Ruser 1:48:46
It's a good question. And I think one other aspect of the international response that we haven't touched on so far, but you talked about it, I guess, in the vaccine delivery is how much international aid provision has been stubborn against coordinating with resistance forces and has been in many ways tied to the reach of the junta government, which is shrinking and shrinking, and therefore, the ability of international aid provision is shrinking and shrinking. And there's becoming this this situation where the needs are growing. And even if there was adequate funding, the inadequacies of the UN response and the international aid provision response denies that from getting to where it's needed. That's a whole other aspect that I just wanted to bring up. In as far as the post conflict goes, I'm I don't know a lot of it depends on the policy of the iros, the yeas and the N UG. And there are some red flags I see for example, looking at sort of some of the tnla statements towards the Ka in northern Shan State and how they're sort of step Hang on toes, how's that gonna resolve? I'm personally I've been skeptical in the past and the N ug has managed issues in a way that I think has been productive and helpful. And I guess I see no reason that once victory is closer, that's going to massively change. And I think the international community, once the hard work is done, won't necessarily have a problem stepping in and helping out as much as they have had a problem with that before. But yeah, a lot of that's still in the air. And I think there definitely is the opportunity for governments and policymakers and analysts and think tanks to sort of make sure that they're using influence however they can to sort of help move towards a future that resolves a lot of these issues.
Brad 1:50:54
So to take this down to brass tacks, because we we do number, you know, among some of our listeners, certain people who are in policymaking positions. If if you were to talk directly to a policymaker, what would you say can be gained by whether Australia or the Western powers? What can be gained, very pragmatically speaking in getting involved in Myanmar proactively?
Nathan Ruser 1:51:26
I think I mean, it's a bit it's a bit ideological, but I think the idea that you can turn a country that has historically been a violent dictatorship into really, what could arguably with the right, sort of with the right timeline become a pretty flourishing, progressive, great democracy. I think that's an opportunity. But I think, speaking to a policymaker, one on one speaking to a diplomat speaking to whoever would listen, the one thing I would say is that the status quo is dead. There's there's not going to be a movement where the there's a slow democratization of the country where the military sort of enables the govern the country to become more democratic, that it's the idea that we can wait and hope for the best and hope not just hope for the best but hope for something familiar, isn't going to happen. It's a matter of the military winning or the military losing and not. Not putting your foot on either side is sort of as bad as putting you off is not as bad, but it is definitely a hindrance rather than a help.
Brad 1:52:41
Okay, I think that's a very important perspective, I think that's a very useful way to put it. And I think ideology is something that we we kind of don't want to focus on as much, but we, but we should, if, if we do genuinely believe in the ideas of spreading democracy, and spreading stability and spreading, you know, all of the the advantages that come with emerging from dictatorship and emerging from conflict, then we need to, I think, play a very proactive role in making sure that those benefits can reach the people who are standing their arms open, asking for democracy, asking for development asking to open their, their nations and their borders and broaden their horizons. And I just think it's, it's, it's horribly ironic, that we can live in a situation where we in the West have been on the high horse ever since World War Two, talking about oh, how we need to, you know, change the world and turn on New Leaf and democracy and peace and stability and all that sort of stuff. And then you look at Myanmar, when the people are in the streets, demanding it, asking for it saying, we want this, please come get involved in our country and help us achieve this. Everyone's just sort of turns their back and starts whistling nonchalantly. It leaves a bitter taste in the mouth is.
Nathan Ruser 1:54:05
And even along with that, having done so much work on human rights in Xinjiang. It's a bitter taste in the mouth where we say, well, we should care about human rights and shinjang when we struggle to care about human rights in other places, and there definitely is that aspect of politicized ulterior motive, which which is a hard accusation to sort of dismiss when when we have such a lackluster response to abuses in other places, in in terms of what to say to policymakers, and I'm sure I know you've had Shawn tonnelle on this podcast recently, who I'm sure has said it to Australian policymakers in a much more educated and a much more knowledgeable sense than I can but in that pragmatic sense. There's also the fact that if you want a prosperous country in Southeast Asia with huge economic and human potential, the military are not the people. They're not the caretakers that can that can bring that pretense interest out of the country then either in its economic or its people that people sense.
Brad 1:55:06
Absolutely, absolutely. So I think we've covered, we've covered a lot of ground in the last approximately two hours of discussion. And I really want to thank you for for setting aside the time to discuss that I, it's hard
Nathan Ruser 1:55:25
for me to think of what because I know who the people that listen to this podcast are, they're pretty informed about Myanmar compared to the general public or even the policymakers. But I guess one thing that I think, I guess one thing I would say that I would want to stick in your mind is that in the last few months, and keep in mind, this is the dry season that we're talking about. In the last few months, we've seen a massive change in the tone of conflict in Myanmar, we've seen it change from this really dynamic, shifting control on the ground, to the resistance across the country being able to actually control and defend areas against a consistent military counter attack. And this is this is in the dry season, when the Myanmar military is at its most capable, and it's most mobile and its most effective. I think, what I would say is that on the ground, what we've seen in the last few months is not just the capture of on to positions, but also the establishment of resistance outposts across the country and Saigon in Korean in Karachi. And in Shan State, the actual change from this being a resistance that stands in place, but then moves aside when the military comes by to one that can actually stand their own, defend and effectively attack military positions. And I think this is a shift that I've noticed in the last few months. And of course, it's not uniform across the country, places in the far south are still struggling, and are still sort of further back in that timeline. But I guess I just from my perspective, 1000s of kilometers in the sky, on a satellite looking down, you can see the change in tone of this conflict. And I think a lot of people, observers on the ground are also acknowledging this change of tone. And I think it is pushing towards a Myanmar that is, I guess, pushing towards resistance gains and resistance some victories that even months ago I didn't really think were likely. And so I guess that's that's just my perspective of how everything's changing recently and how people should think about it moving forward.
Host 1:58:05
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