The country’s neighbors continue to treat the military administration like a viable sovereign entity. They risk being left behind by events.

The military junta that attempted to seize control of Myanmar in February 2021 has failed. Free movement of its personnel is now reduced to the areas south and west of Mandalay in the country’s core. Even there, it is facing daily assassinations and bomb attacks and is barely able to govern due to widespread civil disobedience and a lack of public trust. The Naypyidaw junta, as it is aptly becoming known, is bunkering down wherever it can, reliant on its air force and roaming bands of methed-up soldiers to sow chaos in areas outside of its control.

Nonetheless, a group of Myanmar’s neighbors, India, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Laos, seem adamant about treating the junta like a single sovereign entity and nursing it back to strength. Through what’s being called a Track 1.5 dialogue, these countries are seeking to marginalize the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which has been placed by the United Nations and the wider international community in the driving seat of international Myanmar policy. ASEAN had been inching towards a more moderate and critical position on Myanmar, until Thailand launched a separate track of talks aimed at undermining this approach. Track 1.5 talks have included junta officials and aim to bring stability back to the country, in the hope the junta can force through a transition to a slightly more democratic-looking political arrangement, despite continued exclusion of its much more popular political opponents.

Even for states that couldn’t care less about the junta’s extreme human rights abuses or other moral concerns, this junta-first approach makes minimal sense, on realist grounds.

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