Burn Myanmar, burn democracy. With the coup, the military takes everything back: suspended communications, closed airspace, Aung San Suu Kyi deposed, arrested and put under house arrest. Shattered, therefore, the last talisman of hope. That of an (im) possible balance between civil liberties and military powers, in fact.
A champion with unclear features, full of shadows: Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1991, leader of the opposition party, enters parliament in 2012, wins the first free elections in 2015 and wins them over in 2020.
Years of a revolution tainted, however, by the accusations of lack of protection, and worse still of persecution, of some ethnic minorities. In particular, in a Buddhist state, the Muslim one of the Rohingya.
The picture of the country is complex, the character even has something indecipherable. To try to understand both, the words of one of the leading experts in international politics. Ambassador, former Foreign Minister, “super diplomat”: Giulio Terzi di Sant’Agata. He who, beyond a myriad of other interesting ideas, met San Suu Kyi.
Ambassador, what is happening in Myanmar? Who are the good guys and who the bad guys?
«A troubled path towards a dream of democracy. Amid a thousand annoyances and some brutal reactions, the movement led by Aung San Suu Kyi had forced the military junta to at least metabolize the foundations of democracy, thus pushing it to accept the idea of setting out on a path of reform. This is also thanks to the arrival at the top, of the same junta, of more erudite and more reasonable personalities than those that had characterized the regime in previous years. We have thus gone from crazy characters, including for example a general guided by an astrologer and from bizarre esoteric theories, to people who are aware of the need for evolution, of openness to international reality.
The turning point is 2012, the year I met San Suu Kyi. In the then Burma, together with the European special envoy Piero Fassino, just as the European Union decided to remove the sanctions with the specific intent of favoring the democratic process in the country. Very interesting, unforgettable moments. With the head of state and within the walls of the house he had seen Suu Kyi already a prisoner at the time.
Starting point: the relationship with the EU, more generally with the international community. From an internal point of view, however, a finally democratic majority, characterized by a strong sense of identity and Buddhist, convinced that it can first face and then resolve a whole series of open tragedies: widespread guerrilla warfare as well as the coexistence of more than 10 different ethnic groups.
And here is the scourge: years in which the country has developed, even economically, but also years in which ethnic frictions have worsened, with the Rohingya who were not “only” persecuted, but who were literally massacred by the Armed Forces cwith everyone’s complicity. Everyone including San Suu Kyi, remained guilty silent, evidently tarnished. I say this with regret: I fear that there are no “good guys” in this affair ».
For some, San Suu Kyi would even be “yet another puppet in the pay of the CIA” …
“The CIA is not an element of this discourse. The real point is the Communist Party of China. The former Burma is a great light of hope that risks extinguishing itself with a totalitarian return to the past, due to the cynicism of international geopolitics. Cause China, in fact. I’ll be back later, but in the meantime it’s amazing how Suu Kyi hasn’t managed to protect her country even by being a nationalist. Too many mistakes on the Rohingya front, not even love of country and the flag could save it ».
Thus we arrive at the chaos of these days.
«It surprises whoever is … surprised. In Myanmar, the passion for democracy is rooted as more recent history shows and has been certified by international observers. Democracy, however, dies under the blows of the military who, otherwise doomed to irrelevance, come back bullying with checkpoints, stops, arrests, gags, real cordons that prevent and paralyze all the buildings and activities of the Suu Kyi party. A curfew is set in motion, any form of democratic representation is suddenly eliminated, the control of the military is once again full, ferocious.
The result is a huge underlying question, even bigger than the picture just drawn: the support of the European Union, in particular of Italy, in general of liberal democracies: where is it? Where is the freedom? Where is your protection, our unconditional support under whatever sky you are? “
The military takes full power for a year. Then they promise the vote. Do you believe it? According to the constitution, do you believe that this can still be defined as “democracy”?
“Absolutely not. The fundamental principle is violated. This is a state “according to” the law and not a state “of” law. Hitler’s Germany was also a state “according to” law. Freedom of expression, of demonstrating, individually or in the streets of an entire people die. The division of powers and representation dies. All this is missing and missing. Democracy is therefore missing ».
You mention Hitler’s Germany, I report you to Xi Jinping’s China, to which you promised to return. In which square is Myanmar placed on the square of the international chessboard? Yet another battleground between West and East? Yet another collapse under the blows of the apparently unstoppable Chinese dragon? “
«Equally important issue: the geopolitical balance. The coup could have happened above all because, beyond the electoral result which was manageable, the trial in Burma (but also in Cambodia!) Was already disturbed by China and the Chinese Communist Party which does not tolerate events that affirm an alternative to the regimes militarized and therefore – “Horror”! – democrats. Beijing sees certain spaces as its own appurtenances and, with a broader horizon, Xi cultivates his vision of going even further.
A display of encouragement to authoritarian involution. All very predictable, even here it surprises those who are surprised: the Burmese military apparatuses are notoriously tied to the Chinese Communist Party in a double knot.
And I close by quoting a book by David Goldman. Great character, lucid analyst, profound connoisseur of China: “You will be assimilated”, “you will be subjected”. Economically, culturally (500 Confucius Institutes, not by chance expelled by Trump, impose the history dictated by the party), in every sense or almost.
His study deserves pages and pages of in-depth analysis, but from which we inherit a positive conclusion: the great leaps forward are the children of the great crises. This challenge of the East lays the foundations for an epochal restart of the West.
China, to put it mildly, forces us to do more, and even to do it better ».
Speaking of the West, meanwhile the United States has a new president. And no one knows the US like you do. Biden has been described as “very tense” and his administration, on its first stress test, already promises a reaction. How far do you think it can go? Is it just the great and articulated game of diplomacy, of banging your fists on the table, or do you think there may actually be risks, balances that can really jump?
“I have had the privilege of knowing personally all the faces of the new American administration, starting of course with the new President Joe Biden. At the time he was Obama’s deputy and there is a trait that characterized the White House then and that returns to characterize it today: the extraordinary ability to rely on science, on data analysis, before making any decision.
A bit like when “those” United States decided to eliminate Osama Bin Laden: with an intelligence activity on the razor’s edge, complicated, bordering on the incredible. But founded, in fact, on trust in the qualities of its Armed Forces, its Secret Services, its technology. In a broader sense: in science, in a certain scientific nature.
This faith reverberates on foreign policy.
It will therefore push on sanctions, on the instruments admitted by article 7 and more generally by the United Nations Charter. The foot will be pressed hard on the accelerator of multilateralism, without taking disordered initiatives, but without even “drinking” the fairy tale that China has nothing to do with it.
And in this confrontation-clash with China there is also a curious and at the same time extraordinary element of continuity between Trump and Biden: they can change their calibration and ways, but the awareness of the entire American political universe, both democratic and Republican, that the real big issue is Beijing.
Only in Italy, by now the ex-majority could precisely “drink” certain fairy tales in sweet and sour sauce ».
To conclude, one more joke about the former Burma and its more famous face: will Aung San Suu Kyi return? What fate do you imagine for her? What future?
«She will continue to be a protagonist, even in such difficult conditions. This is if we can get it to reappear on the world political scene. This is the great objective for the international community ».

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