Whoever devised the motto for your Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2022 should be experiencing distressing chagrin following early August’s ASEAN Foreign Ministers Meeting (AMM).
“Addressing Problems Together” rings much less resounding as a style with the Myanmar army regime’s aggressive recalcitrance to work with the regional grouping on everything of substance.
Since agreeing to a “Five Point Consensus” in Jakarta within April 2021 carrying out a February military hen house, Myanmar’s State Administration Council (SAC) offers since been trying ASEAN’s patience, which appears to be, at least within an ASEAN context, with breaking point.
SAC head Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has been excluded from high-level ASEAN meetings because the October 2021 Peak, which the Singaporean foreign ministry called “a difficult yet necessary decision in order to uphold ASEAN’s credibility given the ineffective and highly restricted progress” on the consensus points.
This particular month’s formal AMM declaration had strong words of warning in order to Naypyidaw : “We extensively discussed the particular recent developments within Myanmar and expressed our concerns within the prolonged political crisis in the country, including the execution of four opposition activists…(w)e were significantly disappointed by the restricted progress in and lack of commitment of the (SAC) authorities…and in line with Article 20 of the ASEAN Charter, we all recommended that the ASEAN Summit assesses the particular progress. ”
The day after the annual meeting, current ASEAN Special Envoy and Cambodian Foreign Ressortchef (umgangssprachlich) Prak Sokhonn informed a press meeting, “I am…just an unique envoy, not a superhero or a superman. I believe even a superman are unable to resolve the Myanmar issue [overnight]. I will not give up on Myanmar, ” when he pledged to return to the war-wracked country for the third trip in September.
Subsequent his last go to, Prak bemoaned that he wasn’t a wizard that could solve the impasse. At this pace, he will require work powers to produce everything resembling progress.
Min Aung Hlaing has been throwing out raspberries at Cambodia since it assumed this year’s rotating chair of ASEAN, deluding Prime Minister Hun Sen he would launch imprisoned Australian economist Sean Turnell and would permit Prak to visit Aung San Suu Kyi, amongst other rebuffs.
Singapore’s Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan told reporters over the last day from the AMM that, “I have to be very frank. It’s very dreadful. I think there is a real danger that the coup is sliding into a civil war. ”
A few stuff are remarkable about these comments. The first is such strong words from a Singaporean diplomat. Then his municipal war remark, which implies he really hasn’t been paying close up attention to Myanmar in which a civil war has been raging for over per year, on top of the 70-year-long ethnic conflict.
And third, that will Singapore is an energetic supporter of hands and material to the main aggressor and war criminals of that civil war, the Myanmar military. A written report on August eleven by Justice for Myanmar defined comprehensive arms and support sales simply by Singaporean companies to the Myanmar military in the last several years. This doesn’t bode well for the kind of sustained redirection ASEAN needs to create.
The AMM attendees’ evident anger had two interrelated factors. The first was a year of installation frustration at the insufficient any discernable buy on the agreement Minutes Aung Hlaing experienced made, the humiliation many in ASEAN must feel that actually they can not wring an insincere concession out of the Myanmar military, and that there are far more important industry, security and post-pandemic cooperation priorities without Myanmar persistently getting the albatross round the neck of regional cooperation.
However it was the execution of dissidents Ko Jimmy, Ko Phyo Zeyer Thaw, Hla Myo Aung, and Aung Thura Zaw that repulsed ASEAN, which was made clear in a joint declaration right after the state murders at the end of July.
What is behind the SAC’s stonewalling? In fact, even perfunctory, performative cooperation with ASEAN would assuage the peripatetic West, soothe the United Nations straight into further entrenched inactivity and convince the particular international media that ignoring Myanmar is certainly justified.
Get some meetings, phase a fake prisoner amnesty, frontload civilian diplomats in relationships rather than SAC Stormtroopers, sanitize the post-coup crime scene along with smoke and decorative mirrors: it’s all ASEAN wants. Instead, there is certainly increased violence across the country, an implausible peace process and duplicitous elections being prepared for 2023.
Exactly what does Article 20 from the ASEAN Charter portend? It literally claims: “As a basic rule, decision-making in ASEAN shall be based on discussion and consensus…Where general opinion cannot be achieved, the particular ASEAN Summit might decide how a specific decision can be made…in the case of a severe breach of the rental or non-compliance, the matter shall be referred to the ASEAN Summit just for decision. ”
This kicks the can down the road a few months, giving Min Aung Hlaing some breathing space. But evoking this Article indicates ASEAN might be prepared for a few more punitive actions.
It’s still highly doubtful ASEAN would ever get rid of a member state, which may require motivation plus resolve the bloc lacks. But it could potentially go some way to putting Naypyidaw on heightened alert when the preliminary steps to feasible excommunication keep coming, from disinviting Min Aung Hlaing a year ago to considering short-term suspension at the peak this year.
1997, the year Myanmar joined, the regional grouping delayed Cambodia’s ascension over Hun Sen’s violent coup against Prince Ranariddh. The threat of non-ascension didn’t last long, though: Cambodia had been permitted to sign the ASEAN Rental in November 2007 as planned (along with then-Myanmar best minister General Thein Sein).
It underscores the depths of despair ASEAN must be feeling in the event that Hun Sen plus Cambodia are so obviously upset with the method things are going within Myanmar. But this comparison ends terribly. There was a Japanese-brokered “Four Pillars” peace plan, which has a few unsettling echoes using the Five Point Consensus, and eventually rigged elections in July 1998 in Cambodia. That will “peace plan” permitted Hun Sen to forge a thuggish plutocracy that has lasted for 24 yrs.
The Myanmar military usually doesn’t react well to threats and habitually looks for a club with which to defeat problems away. Minutes Aung Hlaing’s caveman diplomacy is without the cunning that will previous military commanders have demonstrated in being able to manipulate foreign maneuvering. But what further regional solitude will mean to other mature SAC military plus civilian leaders can be impossible to anticipate.
Myanmar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) and the condition propaganda machine appeared to scramble for damage control days following the AMM.
The junta’s Burmese language Myanmar Alin and its English stablemate The Global New Light of Myanmar went laudatory ASEAN selection interviews with MOFA Permanent Secretary Chan Aye and Ministry of Investment and Foreign Economic Relations Permanent Secretary Dr Wah Maung, artwork attempted portraits of virtuous membership.
Another article through MOFA extolled the virtues of the ASEAN Coordinating Center designed for Humanitarian Assistance (AHA-Center), which is pursuing one of the Five Points to coordinate humanitarian support. Its “Joint Requirements Assessment” conducted recently stated: “Myanmar is eagerly awaiting attempts to secure the second phase associated with provision of the humanitarian assistance as the government of Myanmar offers given [a] green light to do this in Mon Condition, Shan State, Kayah State, Rakhine State, Bago Region, Magway Region and Sagaing Region. ”
Many of these regions are experiencing high amounts of violent conflict and massive emergency requirements with an estimated over one million internally displaced. The AHA Center is so ill-suited for the task associated with coordinating war zone humanitarian aid that its former director, Adelina Kamal, has written convincingly numerous instances since late 2021 that this approach will never and cannot work, and has suggested much more principled and practical alternatives.
In his “state of the union” speech marking 1 . 5 years since the coup, Minutes Aung Hlaing claimed that “(w)ith deficiency of stability in the country, applying the ASEAN General opinion at the time was challenging…as the situation has improved on all fronts, we are implementing the (consensus) to the level we can within the ASEAN framework. We are furthermore striving to prevent any kind of encroachment upon the internal affairs…(and) the particular sovereignty of the condition. As the country begins to achieve normalcy, we are able to make improvement. ”
Put simply, the check is in the mail. Exactly what he really meant to convey was, “ASEAN, your reality verify bounced. ” He was more courteous in his address marking the 55 th wedding anniversary of ASEAN , which fell on August 8, per day remembered in Myanmar marking the 1988 Uprising.
Everything seems so far from those halcyon days of Shwe Myanmar a-thit (New Golden Myanmar) when the Thein Sein administration served because ASEAN’s rotational chair of in 2014. The motto that year was “Moving Forward in Oneness to a Peaceful and Prosperous Community. ” Eight years upon, a recalcitrant Myanmar is dragging the bloc backward right into a new era associated with war, instability and crisis.
David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict, humanitarian and human legal rights issues on Myanmar