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After insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol, it shouldn't be a surprise that the generals in Myanmar decided to stage a coup this week.
Nobody is suggesting a causal link between white supremacist followers of Donald Trump who invaded the halls of Congress and the generals who seized power in Myanmar, rounding up elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her top ministers. There is, however, a very real connection between these geographically dispersed events. Democracy all over the world is in retreat, from Western countries that once thought of themselves as bastions of freedom to nations in Asia, the Middle East and Africa, where representative government has shallower roots. And there's a painful message for America in the tragedy now unfolding in the Southeast Asian country. After spending the past decade encouraging liberal reforms in Myanmar, Washington is no longer in the same position to shape events there, however much one hears pundits insist that the coup is a "test" for the new Biden administration. As the New York Times put it, America "is not the dominant moral arbiter in world affairs that it once saw itself to be."  Trump supporters including members of several white supremacist and other far-right groups invade the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, where lawmakers were confirming President Joe Biden's victory in the Electoral College. Photographer: Eric Lee/Bloomberg This week in the New Economy
President Joe Biden has threatened to reinstate sanctions on Myanmar, declaring that "we will work with our partners to support restoration of democracy and the rule of law, and impose consequences on those responsible."
But how far will these partners go? India has been hedging its bets, cultivating both the generals and civilian leaders who ostensibly shared power in Myanmar even while engaging in an increasingly zero-sum competition. Tokyo, which supplies millions of dollars each year in aid to the Southeast Asian nation, played a similar diplomatic game. Singapore and Thailand have become major investors there. All worry that punishing the generals too severely will only push them into Beijing's arms. That may happen anyway. Before Myanmar opened up to the West a decade ago, China had arguably been treating its much smaller neighbor almost like a vassal state, enriching the generals with business deals but also humiliating them by stirring up ethnic strife in the country. Now, in the face of international condemnation, the generals may very well turn to Beijing for support once again. Nor is it clear what kind of democracy the Biden team would like to restore in Myanmar, even if it had the ability to intervene. The country's democratic transition, always fragile and deeply flawed, hadn't stopped a military campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya Muslims. Aung San Suu Kyi herself defended the military against allegations of genocide, forever tarnishing the reputation of the Nobel Peace Prize winner among her Western supporters.  Aung San Suu Kyi Photographer: Paul Miller/Bloomberg Perhaps the likeliest outcome in Myanmar is a geopolitical scramble involving the U.S., China and a host of other players, leading to a messy political compromise. Sanctions, if applied, will have only limited effect. Maybe the generals will hold new elections down the road if they can find a way to rewrite the constitution in ways that maintain their grip on power regardless of the ballot box. This is how democracy is hollowing out around the world while at the same time authoritarianism is advancing. In Ethiopia, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, another Nobel Peace Prize winner (and a former Army intelligence officer) is stifling the freedoms he ushered in when he swept into office, releasing thousands of political prisoners. Across the African continent, there are as many as 21 former military men in power, said Chidi Odinkalu, senior manager for Africa at the Open Society Foundations. According to the latest Global Democracy Index, just 8.4% of the world's population now live in a full democracy while more than one-third live under authoritarian rule. That dismal finding, the worst since the Economist Intelligence Unit started producing the annual survey in 2006, was partly the result of the coronavirus pandemic, which delivered a huge blow to civil liberties by giving governments extraordinary powers via drastic lockdowns. America, on this index, is a "flawed democracy." Worse, the social cohesion needed to support a "full democracy" has collapsed in that country, the compilers of the index argue. In Myanmar, the problem is quite different: its people mostly yearn for full democracy, but its generals are intent on crushing it.
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