Myanmar's coup, the international response and the China factor.

 As international condemnation continues in response to the military coup in Myanmar, frustration grows with the United Nations Security Council's inability to take decisive action.  Yet despite renewed calls for the UN to approve sanctions against the military leadership and military-owned economic holding companies, it remains unlikely that the Council will be able to void China's veto.

FDR and Churchill meet with Chaing Kai Shek and his
wife Soong Mei-ling in 1942 (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

When the United Nations was first created in 1944, the architects designed its highest body, the Security Council, with unique veto powers for the wartime allies. At that time, this meant, alongside the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and the Soviet Union, China was accorded the same great power status. However, at that juncture, China was officially under the authority of the nationalist Kuomintang party led by General Chiang Kai Shek, and much of it under Japanese occupation. With his American-born and Christian wife, Soong Mei-ling, the United States had high hopes for Chiang and the KMT. Indeed President Roosevelt envisaged a pro-Western and democratic China as the cornerstone of his post-war plans for peace and stability in Asia and the Pacific. 

Mao Zedong proclaims the People's Republic of China, 1949
Source (Wikimedia Commons)

However, plans for a Concert of Europe like Great power arrangement among the allies soon fell victim to geopolitics and the onset of the Cold War. Within a few years of the end of the Second World War, the United States now confronted the Soviet Union and its allies in an existential and ideological battle for power and influence. This struggle, which began in postwar Europe, soon spread to Asia with Japan's defeat and the resumption of the Civil War in China between Chiang's Nationalists and Mao Zedong's Communist Party. In 1949 Mao was victorious, and the defeated remnants of Chiang's regime and armed forces fled to the island of Taiwan.

Despite their defeat for the next 22 years, the Nationalist government on Taiwan retained its seat in the United Nations as China's official government and a veto on the United Nations Security Council. However, in 1971, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 2758 to seat the People's Republic of China as China's sole legal representative. The resolution passed 76-35 with both the United Kingdom and France in support. Unbeknownst to everyone at the time, Henry Kissinger has begun secret negotiations with Zhou Enlai to start normalizing relations with the United States. As a result, despite some misgivings, the US did not actively attempt to prevent Taiwan's expulsion.

Birds of a feather? Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin
Source: Yuri Kochetkov, EPA. 

Why the history lesson? Because it is essential to understand how it came to be that a one-party authoritarian regime came to wield a veto on the Security Council. Alongside Russia, as the successor to the Soviet Union, there are two potential votes against any decisive action against the generals in Myanmar. Such votes are more than merely hypothetical; rather, they are probable. In China and Russia, autocratic leaders (Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin) have strengthened their power in recent years.

Moreover, both countries face discontent and opposition. In China's case, this is in Hong Kong, where it has sought to reduce the autonomy of the former British colony, while in Russia in response to the arrest of prominent dissident Alexy Navalny. In other words, neither government is anxious to see democrats prevail in a confrontation with authoritarian strongmen lest it catalyzes reformers.

President Obama meets Aung Sann Suu Kyi in Yangon
in 2014. Source: State Department photo by William Ng/ Public Domain

China has additional reasons to favor the military leadership in Myanmar. While the regime was under military rule between 1990 and 2015 China became Myanmar's biggest foreign investor and an essential source of economic and military aid. In return, China gained an important ally in Southeast Asia, a region it has increasingly begun to flex its diplomatic, military, and strategic muscles. Western economic sanctions effectively isolated the Myanmar regime and ensured that China was the only real source of support for the Junta. With the release of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2010 and the transition to democratic elections in 2015, the United States and other western countries rapidly lifted diplomatic, economic, and financial sanctions as a carrot to coax the Junta into making additional reforms. One result of this was leveraging Myanmar away from China, a move some in the military welcomed since they were wary of becoming too dependent on their Asian neighbor. 

Fast forward to the coup on February 1st, and Myanmar once more faces isolation. Again, Western political leaders and international human rights groups have called for a return to punitive sanctions. For Beijing (and to a lesser extent Moscow), the coup represents a potential opportunity to wrestle Myanmar more firmly back into its sphere of influence. Indeed, just weeks before the coup, Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing met with China's top diplomat Wang Yi. Some suggest this may have been a precursor to action with Beijing's tacit approval. As a result, while the Chinese government is unlikely to explicitly side with the military, it seems almost guaranteed that it will veto any substantive United Nations authorized sanctions. Already it blocked a move by Security Council on February 2nd to issue a joint statement condemning the coup. Moreover, with Myanmar's generals forced to rely more on China, Xi Jinping could find it easier to leverage the military government to allow the stalled $3.6bn Myitsone Hydropower dam project to resume, and to export surveillance technologies and military equipment to the Junta government. 

Myitsone and Chibwe Hydropower Station Construction, Myanmar

The upshot of this scenario is that the international community will likely have to coordinate its response to the coup outside of the United Nations in much the way it did after the 1990 coup d'etat. This will require firm and decisive leadership by the Biden administration, the European Union, and the United Kingdom. It will also need these actors to put enormous pressure on China's neighbors in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The task will be a challenge, but it will be the only way to put sufficient external pressure on the regime. Whether it succeeds or not is a different matter.

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