The world tolerates dictators when they wield economic or military power. Myanmar has neither – a tyranny we can punish. A job for Macron?
It is astonishingly rare that the international community truly puts its foot down.
Despite convocations, communiques and condemnations, diplomacy seldom acts with moral force. Tyrants are tolerated. Atrocities elicit “grave concern.” The reasons are many: lack of consensus, indifference, realpolitik, and the idea that some regimes are too strategic, resource-rich or dangerous to confront.
Take Azerbaijan, for instance. Since its 2020 victory in Nagorno-Karabakh, it has blockaded ethnic Armenians and conducted a massive ethnic cleansing, and now demands a “corridor” through southern Armenia under a barely disguised threat of invasion. Another regime might be put on notice, considering that it is among the most repressive on earth, but Baku’s is for now indulged. It has oil wealth.
But what happens when those excuses don’t apply? What if a regime is monstrous and also geopolitically useless? Would that not perhaps be an instance where moral clarity might drive action? There is a test case, and it is Myanmar.
The generals who rule this Asian country of 55 million are running a collapsing state that produces little but refugees, meth, and misery, and they have again imprisoned Aung San Suu Kyi (pronounced “Awng Sahn Soo Chee”), the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. It is a corrupt and clueless despotism.
Suu Kyi is the daughter of General Aung San, the man who led Burma to independence and remains its most revered national hero. She was seen for decades as the living embodiment of the democratic promise he never got to fulfill, assassinated just months before then-Burma gained freedom in 1948. That symbolic inheritance gave her unmatched stature in the eyes of the Burmese people — and made her a lasting threat to the little men with guns.
Her record during a brief stint in power a few years ago was disappointing, partly due to an apparent desire to placate them. She defended the military against genocide charges and under her leadership journalists were imprisoned. But after her party won a landslide election in 2020, the military staged a coup, arrested her, and sentenced her to 33 years in prison through a cascade of closed-door, politically rigged trials — on charges ranging from corruption to illegal walkie-talkie possession. She is held in near-total isolation (current location unclear) and denied access to her family and lawyers in a grotesque abuse.
Aren’t you itching to teach the generals a lesson? As a warning to “generals” everywhere? Wouldn’t it feel good and be right? This is precisely the kind of crisis where the world can intervene on behalf of decency. Because Myanmar offers nothing we can’t live without, and everything we should reject.
The Rohingya: A crisis that shattered illusions
If there was ever a moment when the world should have awakened to the true character of Myanmar’s military, it was the Rohingya crisis. In 2017, Myanmar’s armed forces launched a brutal military campaign against the long-persecuted Muslim minority. Entire villages were burned to the ground. Women were raped. Children were thrown into fires. Over 700,000 Rohingya fled across the border into Bangladesh in what the UN described as a “textbook case of ethnic cleansing.” Some labeled it genocide. The campaign was a calculated purge designed to remove an unwanted population and consolidate military control in a region of strategic importance. It was enabled by decades of systemic discrimination: the Rohingya had been rendered stateless by a 1982 citizenship law, denied basic rights, and scapegoated in political rhetoric for years.
The crisis also revealed the fragility of the international system’s response to atrocity. Despite mounting evidence, the world proved unwilling to act decisively. Many of the displaced remain in limbo in sprawling refugee camps, and the same generals who masterminded it all now preside over a nationwide reign of terror.
Since seizing power in a 2021 coup, Myanmar’s military junta has waged a campaign of terror against its own people, marked by systematic war crimes. Led by General Min Aung Hlaing, the regime has bombed schools, monasteries, and civilian gatherings in deliberate attacks on non-combatants. In April 2023, an airstrike on the village of Pazigyi killed at least 165 people, including children. Months later, another strike hit a school in Depayin, killing students and teachers.
These are acts of collective punishment designed to crush resistance (armed resistance movements control parts of the country, and the military relies on airstrikes and paramilitaries to hold territory). In the Shan and Kachin states, soldiers have executed civilians, including monks, torched entire villages and used residents as human shields. The Pinlaung massacre saw more than 30 people tortured and shot at close range. Landmines are laid around homes and fields, making daily life lethal. Arbitrary arrests are widespread; men and boys are taken without cause, tortured, or disappeared. Sexual violence has been deployed systematically.
The junta also blocks aid convoys, denies humanitarian access, and targets relief workers, leaving over three million displaced and cut off from food and medical care. UN investigators have documented these atrocities in detail, laying the groundwork for future prosecutions for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Who has the right to intervene?
So, are we allowed to interfere in the internal affairs of another country? The answer is not obvious to all, since there is something called the principle of sovereignty. There is also the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN General Assembly (also in 1948). And the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), adopted by the UN in 2005, holds that when a state commits or fails to prevent genocide, war crimes, or ethnic cleansing, others have not just a right but a duty to act.
But then again, the current US administration clearly cares more about sovereignty than human rights, and is positively disdainful toward the UN. To that add political hesitation, bureaucratic inertia, and selective outrage, and you get a lot of evildoers getting away with murder. So we must be practical. For intervention to be justified and effective, some conditions should be met:
- Crimes of magnitude: Mass atrocities must be underway or imminent. Myanmar has already cleared that bar, from the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya to the attacks now carried out against civilians.
- A legitimate alternative: Intervention must not create chaos. Myanmar’s National Unity Government (NUG) — a body-in-exile with grassroots support — offers a plausible partner for coordinated assistance.
- A realistic chance of reducing harm: Sanctions, diplomatic isolation, arms embargoes, and support for the opposition all fall within the spectrum of legitimate engagement that can achieve this.
- Strategic and regional considerations: Intervention must weigh the risk of escalation, especially in a region where China, India, and ASEAN states have vested interests. It this case it is manageable.
Despite the ease with which Myanmar clears these bars, and the scale and brazenness of the atrocities, the international response has been tepid. The International Criminal Court, hamstrung by Myanmar’s non-membership and political obstruction from China and Russia, has managed only a limited investigation focused on the Rohingya deportations to Bangladesh. But the court, which has been so creative in bringing charges against elected Israeli leaders, has failed to do any such thing in this case.
And the world’s media? The stories have been covered here and there, obviously — but with nowhere near the genuine dedication it brought to coverage of the Russian assault on Ukraine, or anything resembling the fetishistic obsession that greets any conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Journalism is in most cases a business, and a struggling one at that — so after a certain point it basically gives the people what it thinks they want. Myanmar is far away from the West.
Myanmar is vulnerable
Myanmar’s GDP per capita is about $1,250, one of the lowest in Asia. Its inflation rate of about 35% is one of the highest. The currency (the kyat) and foreign investment are in collapse. Its exports—rice, gas, garments, gems—total just over $16 billion. These goods are all replaceable, and in some sectors (such as rare earth minerals, which it also has), supply has already been disrupted by the raging internal conflict. There is no strategic or economic penalty to cutting Myanmar off. Its trade matters to the generals far more than it matters to the world.
Isolating Myanmar won’t unravel global markets. It won’t trigger regional war. It won’t crash energy supplies or fracture alliances. So Myanmar is a case where meaningful pressure can be applied without much sacrifice. The junta depends on foreign currency, trade licenses, diplomatic recognition, visa access, and outside investment. Remove those, and the regime begins to suffocate.
Even its supposed allies are unreliable. Russia sells it weapons and offers rhetorical cover at the UN, but contributes no real economic lifeline. India cooperates for border security but avoids diplomatic entanglement. China invests heavily in infrastructure, yet remains coldly transactional — more interested in stability than loyalty, and still hedging its bets with ethnic militias along the border. China won’t go along with sanctions — but it won’t fight too hard to save a regime that can’t maintain order or protect its investments.
These are not true patrons and none of them will sacrifice anything meaningful to save Myanmar from isolation. A coalition of democracies — led by the G7 and EU, with partners like Australia, Japan, South Korea, and perhaps ASEAN outliers — can suffice.
Here’s what a serious policy would look like:
- Ban all visas and financial transactions for military officials and cronies, and freeze assets held abroad, especially in Singapore, Dubai, and Europe.
- Bring war crime charges, and fast. Apply universal jurisdiction in countries that allow it, like the UK.
- Close embassies, and suspend Myanmar from ASEAN and the UN’s key working bodies.
- Restrict all trade with state-linked conglomerates. Focus trade restrictions on military-linked sectors like jade, gas, and rare earths. Kick the regime out of the global banking system.
- Divert humanitarian aid to civil society and border-based relief networks, away from junta ministries.
- Support lawsuits under universal jurisdiction in Europe or Latin America.
- Recognize the NUG as a political partner.
As ever, some will argue that isolating Myanmar will hurt ordinary people. That’s a legitimate concern — but the status quo is already hurting them. Targeted economic measures, paired with humanitarian exemptions and cross-border aid routes, can protect civilians while isolating their oppressors.
Others will point to hypocrisy: the West tolerates bad behavior elsewhere, so action in Myanmar would be selective outrage. Perhaps. But the insistence on consistency is a recipe for doing nothing even when you can. We cannot fix everything, but Myanmar is a place where we could act.
Is Donald Trump capable of leading such a project? Possibly not: He seems consumed right now with combating the danger of windmills and Stephen Colbert. But Emanuel Macron seems eager to something somewhere. Keir Starmer too. Possibly Friedrich Merz as well. What I propose is a thing.
A la guerre, chaps, und machen-Sie schnell!
