Born of Europe’s 19th century battles, it was a dodge that neatly taken the difference between the hard-boiled Prussians of the north German plain as well as the fun-loving Viennese of the Austro-Hungarian Empire: the Prussian states the situation is severe but not desperate; the Viennese says it’s desperate but not serious.
Which of today’s Southeast Asian militaries would be many at home in the outdated Hapsburg capital is a matter of debate. But there should be no doubt that Myanmar’s army is stamped entirely in the Prussian mildew.
Much since Western and some local pundits have used the word in latest commentary, “desperate” in the face of adversity is simply not in the DNA from the Myanmar armed forces, or Tatmadaw, that seized power in Naypyidaw early last year and has every intention of continuing to guide the nation’s future.
Indeed, the response from the military’s ruling State Administration Council (SAC) junta to difficulties its leaders would certainly undoubtedly view a lot more serious than something faced in six decades of army rule needs to be known for what it is: an exhibition of defiant resolve, a doubling-down on base-line political jobs and an unwavering determination to crush popular revolt – all underpinned by a remarkable level of inner cohesion and discipline.
The SAC’s current intransigence will be arguably grounded within at least two mindsets. At a day-to-day degree, it is almost certainly fueled by the insulation from the “command bubble” – the intrinsic detach between a military high command leading strategy on huge maps in air-conditioned war rooms plus subordinate elements mired in the mud plus blood of combat in the field.
Rigidly hierarchical militaries such as Myanmar’s, where bad news travels up the chain of order usually slowly plus sometimes not at all, only exacerbate that splitting up and the distorted – even delusional – perceptions it can breed.
In a sub-conscious and undoubtedly more dangerous level is a deeply ingrained mindset peculiar to Myanmar’s armed forces where the centrality of the army to the state causes it to be all but impossible in order to conceive of strategic retreat, let alone overall defeat.
Throughout the military’s ruling body from the senior echelons of the officer corps to rank-and-file infantrymen is an unblinking presumption that there can be no Myanmar without the Tatmadaw; indeed, that in a perverse, almost mystic sense, Myanmar is the Tatmadaw.
Because international pressure provides mounted in recent weeks this proprietary and fundamentally xenophobic worldview has given rise at almost every turn to anger and belligerence rather than hesitancy or a willingness in order to compromise. Desperation is certainly nowhere in sight within the Tatmadaw.
The SAC’s reaction to efforts within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to push for actual movement on the ill-starred Five Point Consensus of April 2021 has been dismissive, also contemptuous.
Diplomatic anger has been pointedly reinforced by rebellious steps on the household front: the slapping of a further six-year sentence on toppled and imprisoned State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, the particular execution of four opposition activists when confronted with international consternation plus appeals, and most recently the jailing of the United Kingdom’s former ambassador Vicky Bowman and her husband Htein Lin with an immigration technicality.
At the international level, the SAC continues to be able to draw power from high-profile latest visits from each Russian and Chinese foreign ministers, each of whose nations have pledged to aid the Naypyidaw regime to weather the particular storm and eventually prevail.
Preparations for elections scheduled for August 2023, meanwhile, have moved forward undeterred. Defined by the BARDA DE GOLF as the preferred gateway to a return to “multi-party disciplined democracy” that will guarantees the military a guiding function, largely unreported goes have involved the drawing up of voter registration lists plus changes to the administrative map that will impact the electoral process.
The junta’s resolve has been believe it or not striking on the battlefield. Remarkably, this year the particular rainy season which typically imposes a marked reduction in procedures between May plus October might as well not have to get happening as the army ratchets up the battle.
Despite weightier than normal rain fall brought by this year’s monsoon, the functional tempo on the ground offers scarcely slackened while air hits by both Russian-built helicopter gunships and fixed-wing jets suitable for close air support (CAS) operations also increased in strength through July and August.
Significant, too, has been the repeated resort in order to airmobile operations inserting small contingents associated with troops in Mi-17 transport helicopters supported by gunships straight into guerrilla-controlled territory mostly in the hard-fought western regions of Sagaing plus Magway.
At the same time, the military provides rolled out a brand new program to formalize and streamline nearby militia loosely known as Pyu Saw Htee into better organized and armed Individuals Security Teams (PSTs).
Drawn from pockets of conventional support such as the Myanmar Veterans Organization, the Fire Service, hardline Buddhist groups and activists from pro-military political parties, the PSTs are intended primarily to provide static security and free up normal security forces just for offensive operations.
But as the generals are obviously gearing up a war that is particular to escalate in the dry season beginning at the end of the year, they are also no doubt aware of their own most prominent vulnerabilities in the field that the coup has just accentuated.
Undermanned and over-extended as never before, the army’s effective combat products are unlikely to number much more than 100, 000 men stretched across the nationwide theater associated with operations from Putao in the far northern of Kachin state to southernmost Kawthaung on the Andaman Ocean.
And far more than defections, casualties are hemorrhaging these units daily, particularly in the western plus eastern regions of the nation where resistance installed by anti-regime People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) and their cultural insurgent allies is certainly increasingly well-armed and aggressive.
Wild statements from opposition resources that the security factors have lost nearly 10, 000 men in the first half of 2022 can be safely dismissed as propaganda. But a sober analysis of the spread plus frequency of hostilities this year suggests that typically the military is definitely losing at least 20-25 men each day, either killed or seriously wounded.
That almost certainly conservative estimation translates to between 550 and 700 males each month – or even around three to four Myanmar Army-sized battalions. Short of a regular and robust recruitment intake and efficient training regime, this level of attrition with the steady drain on morale it suggests is simply not lasting over the long term.
But as numerous leaked documents given that last year indicate, recruitment into the regular solutions has dropped markedly since the coup, particularly at the critical amount of junior and non-commissioned officers (NCOs), the glue that retains a combat device together.
Regardless of whether current efforts to assemble PSTs can produce a fairly effective urban safety force capable of freeing up regular police and army battalions for the escalating battle in the countryside can also be a decidedly open question.
When Myanmar’s recent history is any yardstick, people’s militia systems traditionally raised within areas of ethnic group insurgency have never achieved any level of operational effectiveness or autonomy. It is doubtful whether hastily hired, ill-trained PSTs within urban centers liable to daily bombings and shootings by underground resistance cells will do much better.
Yet to what level Myanmar’s opposition forces can succeed in taking advantage of and building upon these regime vulnerabilities over the coming a few months is far from obvious. Broad assessments are inevitably complicated with the sheer size and diversity of the country and by the stark absence of impartial confirming from any of its battlefronts.
Two facets of the mid-2022 balance of issue are not in doubt though. First, PDF allows have successfully survived the military onslaught during the dry time of year months between The month of january and May this year, proclaimed by campaigns associated with raiding and low cost pillaging and burning up of villages that will swept Sagaing, northern Magway and areas of eastern Kayah State and displaced countless amounts.
Secondly, signs have emerged throughout the current monsoon period that notably better-armed and coordinated PDF forces are increasingly capable of pressuring the peripheries of regime-held township centers, plus occasionally conducting sustained attacks on law enforcement stations and other hardpoints inside towns.
These assaults are often supported by airborne bombing deploying in a commercial sense available drones to drop small munitions.
At the same time – plus despite the difficulties enforced by rainfall – the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in order to interdict road marketing communications which began within mid-2021 has escalated sharply in recent months, most notably between key urban centers in the middle and west from the country.
Matthew Arnold, one of the most perceptive independent analysts associated with PDF activity, information that “the Mandalay-Monywa axis is evolving into IED Avenue. ”
The near-daily find it difficult to hold open that avenue linking main Myanmar’s largest town with the military’s Northwestern Command in Sagaing has centered mainly on the townships associated with Chaung-U and Myinmu, where even large convoys are regularly attacked and military mine disposal (EOD) teams often work under fire.
Apparently as the consequence of both PDF guerrilla tactics and rainfall, military operations have got meanwhile become increasingly static and reactive. As offensive raiding and burning concentrating on PDF-dominated village residential areas during the dry season has waned, protection forces have dropped back on randomly harassment and interdiction (H& I) open fire from dug-in artillery and, when feasible, better-targeted air hits to relieve pressure on embattled strongpoints.
Quick-fix insertions associated with heliborne troops supported by gunships have got, as noted, furthermore increased, but generally appear to have been responses to PDF encroachments rather than offensive thrusts aimed at carrying the war to foe base areas.
Limited by the availability of Mi-17 transport helicopters (typically two or three for each mission) and thus manpower (around 30 soldiers to each helicopter), these airmobile forays appear seldom, if, to deal significant blows to an evasive enemy, let alone obtain sustainable gains.
The logic of this military dynamic can be compelling: it suggests that short of a major shot of fresh manpower (that is nowhere fast in sight) or perhaps a willingness to free up existing manpower by prioritizing certain regions over others (a stark challenge towards the military’s belief in the all-of-Myanmar mission), larger shifts on the battleground may emerge sooner rather than later.
The arriving year is likely to view the regime beginning to withdraw from exposed positions and possibly losing outlying townships in competitive parts of Sagaing plus Magway and in ethnic states on the national periphery.
Certainly, in western Rakhine and Chin claims where the military’s ceasefire with the powerful Arakan Army (AA) basically collapsed in Aug, that process seems to have already begun with the army evacuating or losing a thread of embattled roles at the end of the 30 days and able to supply others only simply by air.
Simultaneously, as “IED Avenue” between Mandalay plus Monywa suggests, the regime’s ability to secure key north-south communications arteries between Yangon and Naypyidaw plus Mandalay and Myitkyina is also likely to arise as a dangerous vulnerability and a further deplete on manpower.
The threat is very real in the eastern of the country exactly where elements of the Karen National Liberation Military (KNLA) have reportedly moved out of the hillsides to reach the Sittang River, possibly crossing it near Kyauktaga on the old road between Yangon plus Naypyidaw. (The more recent motorway lies 15 kilometers further west).
Any capacity by the KNLA and allied PDFs to operate over the west bank from the Sittang not only improves the threat to north-south road and rail links but also implies an ability over time to establish bottoms in the Bago Yoma, the strategically vital spine of mountains that bisects central Myanmar.
Meanwhile in northeastern areas of Sagaing and next southern townships in Kachin state, holding open the main road and rail series to Myitkyina just for military traffic is a daily struggle which has forced a growing program reliance on riverine convoys up the Irrawaddy. These, too, arrive under regular skyrocket fire from joint Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and PDF FILE forces operating along the riverbanks.
Viewed strategically, these growing challenges confronting Myanmar’s military junta stand for a sea change established against the situation only a year ago, when the survivability of still fledgling PDFs when confronted with overwhelming army firepower was in real doubt.
For a minimum of the coming yr, however , Myanmar’s increasing civil war will probably remain in the balance. Because the military struggles in order to contain an array of developing threats on several fronts, it will continue to keep hold two essential and interlocking benefits that resistance forces still lack and will almost certainly be unable to achieve: unity of command and unity associated with strategy backed by an instinctive and very Prussian determination to fight.
But whether these will be enough for the Tatmadaw to stem the rising onslaught remains anything but clear.