Myanmar’s resistance coalition has lost the political and diplomatic war but not the military campaign. The main reason lies less in the junta’s strength than in what I call an “insurgency-industrial complex” that has grown around the opposition.
This international ecosystem of diaspora communities, exiles, dissidents, donors, rights-based organizations and Western governments, with the National Unity Government (NUG) at its center outside the country, is geared towards fighting a military dictatorship rather than defeating it and governing Myanmar in a different way.
Unless the resistance regroups around leaders inside the country and mounts a convincing battlefield turnaround, perhaps led by drone warfare, Min Aung Hlaing will keep consolidating his grip even as the fighting goes on.
It is critical to separate Myanmar’s two wars. After staging elections last December and January, Min Aung Hlaing has reinvented himself as a pseudo-civilian president. Since assuming the presidency in April, he has made eight foreign trips. China, India and Russia have received him, as have four Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states in three months, namely Laos in July, Thailand in August, Vietnam and Cambodia in September, and this month in Malaysia.
Counting Myanmar itself, nearly half of ASEAN now deals with him at the top level. Each visit lowers the diplomatic cost of the next. ASEAN, which has kept him out of its leaders’ summits since the 2021 coup, is now under pressure to readmit him. Once in motion, political engagement generates its own momentum towards normalization and eventual recognition. The political war more or less has been lost.
The military war, on the other hand, is not lost. The armed forces do not control most of the country. Ethnic armed organizations remain strong and continue to take the fight to the military in borderland states, while People’s Defense Force (PDF) units are still holding on in the central dry zone. Neither side has clearly won on the battlefield.
Yet the resistance had its chance and missed it. By mid-2024, resistance forces held more than half of Myanmar’s territory. The military was pinned down in Yangon, Mandalay and Naypyitaw and appeared close to being toppled. But the coalition of ethnic armies, PDFs and the NUG lacked the cohesion and bold thrust to take over. Its battlefield tenacity was not matched by political capability.
When Beijing saw that the resistance did not have what it took to seize control, it backed the junta, leaned on the ethnic armies along its border to stand down, and endorsed the election roadmap. The tide turned, and here we are.
Why did the resistance falter when it mattered most? The NUG has been weak and ineffective, but the deeper reason is structural. Donations, aid and grants flow into the insurgency-industrial complex.
These funds sustain offices, salaries, jobs, scholarships, residencies abroad and a way of life. Its currency is opposition and its output is advocacy. A resistance victory would end its funding model and require some of its leaders to return home to govern a broken country of 55 million people, with all the risks that entails.
Put this way, the insurgency complex almost needs a military dictatorship to fight against. For many in the diaspora and among critics who live outside the country, it is not about winning and taking over the country but about keeping a four-decade struggle going. To be sure, many exiles and dissidents are authentic and sincere and have paid a heavy personal price.
At issue are incentives, not intentions. And these incentives work squarely in Min Aung Hlaing’s favor. An opposition led from abroad keeps the contest outward-facing and predictable, and it allows the regime to portray its enemies as foreign-funded “terrorists” detached from the people.
It does not help that global standards on human rights and democracy have sagged, and international aid has been slashed systematically, from the dismantling of American aid programs to deep cuts by the United Kingdom and European donors. The moral pressure that once isolated Myanmar’s generals has weakened.
The only way to change this narrative and shift direction is a resistance counteroffensive, led mainly by the PDF and the ethnic armies still willing to topple the regime. The battlefield is where the resistance still holds cards, and the decisive weapon is the first-person-view (FPV) drone. FPV drones have already allowed small, motivated units to hit armor, outposts and supply lines. Scaled up and coordinated, a drone-led campaign against strategic towns and corridors could deliver the key victories needed to convince Beijing and ASEAN that Min Aung Hlaing is not a safe bet for them because he cannot control the country in the long run.
But a counteroffensive requires a different leadership. The resistance needs to regroup away from the NUG and towards those who are actually fighting inside the country. The Arakan Army, which now controls most of Rakhine State, has been the most successful fighting force in the civil war. Its commander-in-chief, Major General Tun Myat Naing, has the battlefield record and standing to serve as the resistance’s overall military commander. Meanwhile, PDF commanders must be brought into the top leadership, not treated as foot soldiers for exiled politicians.
Their fighters came of age during the decade of opening from 2011 to 2021, with mobile phones, jobs, travel, foreign investment and elections that counted. They want that country back. Their objective is to retake Myanmar, while the insurgency-industrial complex’s goal is to oppose the regime and keep fighting the military dictatorship to no end.
A leadership rooted inside the country would also be the kind of interlocutor that Beijing and ASEAN could take seriously, one with control over territory and troops rather than offices and press releases. That is precisely what was missing in mid-2024.
Unless there is a clear and convincing military turnaround in the resistance’s favor that is accompanied by a more capable leadership from inside the country, Min Aung Hlaing will continue to consolidate politically and diplomatically. Neighbors and major powers will deal with whoever looks set to last—right now that is Min Aung Hlaing.
Until the fighters inside lead the leaders outside, the resistance may win more battles but will keep losing the regional and international politics of the civil war.
Thitinan Pongsudhirak is a professor of comparative and international politics at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty Of Political Science and a non-resident associate with the Southeast Asia Centre at the London School of Economics.
This article first appeared in the Bangkok Post.