The new administration of the recently elected US President Donald Trump is breaking taboos and stereotypes almost every day. At the stage of the election campaign, it might have seemed that Trump was returning the US to the isolationist tradition of Presidents McKinley and Taft. Of course, elements of the Monroe Doctrine are clearly present in the rhetoric and actions of the President, but at the same time, we are now seeing things that are out of the rut of classic isolationism (whose most typical defender is Pat Buchanan). Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech at the 61st Munich Security Conference marked the moment from which we can count the official beginning of the “Cold Civil War” within the West. A war in which on one front line there are right-wing, nationalist, conservative and other dissident forces, whose overlords are, if not the United States, then personally Trump and his MAGA team, and on the other front line there are left-wing, liberal and globalist forces, yesterday considered mainstream and still enjoying the support of the establishment of key EU countries. This war is transborder and ideological, almost quasi-religious in nature, and involves a wide variety of actors, from dissident political circles and academic institutions to entire states and transnational corporations.
Natural resources such as rare earth metals are essential to the success of this war, but ideological and spiritual affinity are even more important. The divide is within each country. A significant portion of American voters, still loyal to the ideas of global liberal democracy as understood by Presidents Obama and Biden, are more sympathetic to the current EU leadership and Canadian liberals; on the contrary, many European conservatives, dissatisfied with open borders for migrants and the dominance of “cultural Marxism,” wish success to the Catholic convert J.D. Vance.
I. The Western “Cold Civil War” outside the West
The opposing sides of the “Cold Civil War” are looking for allies outside the West: and if Trump is interested in illiberal Russia, then the EU may move closer to communist China. In the example of European-Chinese cooperation, the closeness of ideologies does not necessarily extend to a non-Western partner – but this was already the case during the Second World War, when the liberal US and conservative Britain chose to ally with Stalin’s USSR against their worst enemy. In the eyes of Euro-American liberals, this “worst enemy” is the Trumpist US, which patronizes the “far right”, and which seems to have displaced disoriented Putin’s Russia from the pedestal of “global evil.” To a certain extent, the closeness of liberal Europe and China can be explained by common tendencies to control the population (through vaccination and social rating) – what right-wing dissidents call a “digital Gulag” – as well as the desire of European and Chinese nomenklatura elites to preserve their power. Beijing, like Brussels, is extremely anti-populist in domestic and foreign policy.
Some of Trump’s allies, such as Hungary and El Salvador, have long established economic ties with Beijing, so an intensification of the US-China confrontation is not beneficial for them. The Islamic factor should also be taken into account: the increase in the Muslim population in the core EU countries – France, Germany and Benelux – leads to anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian tendencies in the Middle East, which was recently expressed in the EU’s readiness to lift sanctions on post-Assad Syria.
What does the “Trump revolution” mean for Asia? Could the “Right-wing International” be interested in Asian allies? The closest to Trump in his first term was Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who died tragically in an assassination attempt. India under the BJP and Modi government will be friendly to the US, as it was before. India’s readiness to pursue an active foreign policy is in doubt – the loss of positions in Bangladesh and the Maldives speaks of a crisis in Indian foreign policy and its inability to effectively contain China. The failed coup in the Republic of Korea has led to a purge of far-right, potentially Trump-oriented cadres from the Korean military and dashed hopes for an “Asian NATO” of the US, Japan and South Korea.
It remains difficult to imagine the prospects for Southeast Asia after Trump’s return to the White House. This direction may hold many surprises. Particularly interesting is the usually forgotten Myanmar, where the civil war that has intensified since 2021 has a distinctly ideological (in addition to ethnic) character.
II. The Rise and Fall of Myanmar’s “Deep State”
The Republic of the Union of Myanmar and the United States have much more in common than meets the eye. Following the transfer of power to the military – the Tatmadaw – in February 2021, the Myanmar people, primarily represented by the ethnic majority, the Burmese, were plunged into bloody chaos. The military removed the government of the National League for Democracy (NLD) under the pretext of large-scale electoral fraud. Already in 2021, the parallel between the elections in the two countries and, accordingly, the abuses in favor of the “progressive” forces (the Democrats and the NLD) did not escape observers. General Michael Flynn’s remark at a QAnon conference in Dallas that a Myanmar-style coup could happen in the United States was perceived by the liberal media as an indication of the desirability of such a turn of events (although Flynn’s statement was neutral).
The system that the NLD has established in Myanmar since coming to power in 2015 is in many ways reminiscent of the American “deep state.” Western observers’ misunderstanding of the NLD regime, its corruption, and its close ties to foreign NGOs has led to misplaced praise for the “Spring Revolution.” It should also be remembered that China, contrary to the stereotype of a “China-backed junta,” preferred to deal with the NLD as a more accommodating counterparty than with the nationalist-minded Military.
In 2015-2021, the formation of a social stratum of “democratic activists” was in full swing in Myanmar. Organizations such as the Soros Foundation and USAID spent huge sums to educate Myanmar’s youth into a cosmopolitan mass, loaded with superficial knowledge and a set of leftist dogmas. It was fashionable to denounce “Burmese chauvinism” and “Buddhist fascism,” to organize LGBTQ+ festivals, and to destroy families through feminist propaganda. Just like the American leftists, the NLD adherents in Myanmar believed that they were the chosen ones among the “gray mass of rednecks and male chauvinist pigs.” The targets of attacks were army veterans and Buddhist monks who “slowed down progress” and prevented the construction of a “democratic” utopia led by Aung San Suu Kyi.
The Rohingya crisis was a serious test for the NLD: the majority of Burmese Buddhists would not understand the open protection of Bengali immigrants, in connection with which the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi personally defended the counter-terrorism measures carried out by the Tatmadaw. This fully expressed the tragedy of a liberal utopia in a conservative religious country: even The Lady, integrated into the globalist establishment, was unable to go against the ethnocentric Burmese society. As a result, the “two Myanmars” temporarily united in opposition to the media campaign unleashed against the country. The 2021 coup and the dependence of the underground “National Unity Government” (NUG) on the liberal structures of the West forced Aung San Suu Kyi’s successors to make a sharp recognition of “inclusiveness” and even include Muslims in the government.
Just as with the leftist tendency to present the history of any Western nation as a chronicle of oppression and violence (the Project 1619, etc.), in Myanmar the globalist agenda was engaged in instilling a sense of collective guilt in the Burmese majority. Particular attention was paid to discrediting Buddhist monkhood according to the worst patterns of communist anti-religious propaganda (“religion is the opium of the people”). Buddhism was declared a source of xenophobia in Myanmar society. Thus, human rights activist, founder of the festival with the telling name One World and friend of the “Spring Revolution” Igor Blaževič, citing an example of a xenophobic statement he heard from a Buddhist monk, says that “if all around the country you have 1000s of these monks, who are saying, let’s say to their parishes and their villages, that they will be the lucky country, if there will be no Muslims in that country, we are in a deep problem we are.” It is obvious that the task of “re-educating” the Buddhist Sangha and believers will entail a violent breakdown of Myanmar society. In the event of victory of the “Spring Revolution,” the imposition of a local version of Wokeism on the Burmese people will provoke a painful reaction from the conservative majority. When liberal delusions collapsed after the 2024 elections in the United States, there are no compelling reasons to be guided by the erroneous dogmas of cultural Marxism in relation to the gallant Buddhist nation.
A significant proportion of Myanmar’s population is Christian (Baptist, Adventist, Catholic). The Myanmar government has traditionally been suspicious of Christian denominations, seeing them as instruments of foreign influence. However, the military has tried to show its goodwill towards Christians; Christianity, along with Islam, Hinduism, and Animism, is mentioned in the military-drafted 2008 Myanmar constitution. There should be no illusions about the NUG’s willingness to grant more freedoms to non-Buddhist religious minorities. As Catholic J.D. Vance probably knows, the Catholic world was shocked in February 2025 by the martyrdom of the Reverend Father Donald Martin (Ye Naing Win), who was brutally murdered by the People’s Defense Force (PDF) terrorists in Sagaing province. Yangon’s Catholic Archbishop Charles Maung Bo has always called for peace and condemned violence, no matter who uses it, but despite his neutral position, NUG adherents sharply attack him for “collaboration with the junta.”
It is natural that after the 2021 coup, which was presented by the Tatmadaw as the restoration of the Constitutional order, was perceived by the “progressive youth” as a terrible insult to their values, way of life and ideas about the future.
Viewers who watched Alex Garland’s Civil War (2024) may have a sense of déjà vu; it seems that the script the filmmakers had in mind for the US is already being tested in Myanmar. For example, the film shows a couple of “LGBTQ+ snipers.” At the same time, we see how the opposition in Myanmar is trying to show “diversity” in its ranks and entire analytical reports have been prepared on the topic of “LGBTQ+ Resistance” by NGOs (obviously not without the use of American taxpayer money). Members of Antifa, declared a “terrorist organization” by Donald Trump in 2020, are creating their “international brigades” in the “liberated territories” of Myanmar, inviting left-wing radicals from around the world to join them.
III. Exiles and Peasants: A Social Portrait of the “Resistance”
The social portrait of the “federal democracy” is overlooked. It is a mistake to assume that the majority of the “democratic activists” of the Myanmar opposition belong to the middle class, which has always been the breeding ground for liberal democracy in all countries.
The human assets of the “Spring Revolution” are divided into two large groups: 1) Burmese exiles abroad, providing propaganda and financial support to the NUG, PDF and ethnic “revolutionary” organizations (due to the fact that not all EAOs joined the war against the military, the term ERO was introduced); 2) “revolutionaries” in Myanmar, participating in the armed struggle against the government.
Burmese exiles in the United States are most often graduates of educational programs of liberal NGOs, selected for training back in 2010-2021. After thorough “brainwashing,” their consciousness is almost no different from the consciousness of a typical American leftist on campus. The texts of such activists are extremely primitive and poor in original ideas; it is obvious that a neural network would cope better with creative tasks than they do. Their main function is to lobby the interests of NUG in American and European politics. The most enterprising exiles are busy collecting donations for weapons and ammunition for PDF militants. In particular, this is done by the well-known Myanmar female activist Pencilo (Eaint Poe Ou), who lives in California. The “Dragonfly Project” initiated by her is aimed at raising funds for the purchase of UAVs for PDF and ethnic armies.
Considering the alliances that PDF has with the Arakan Army (AA), which is involved in the killing of Muslims, and the China-backed ethnic Han Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), which has Chinese intelligence officers in its ranks, Pencilo’s presence in the US seems very strange. However, Pencilo has been accused by other Myanmar emigrants of embezzling money and buying several luxury homes in California.
The vast majority of PDF fighters are poor peasants who have no idea about democracy and are eager to plunder the property of the “rich”, i.e. the military. Oddly enough, the military is the only middle class in Myanmar. It is therefore no coincidence that it was the military, with the support of Buddhist monks (a characteristic feature of Myanmar), who began reforms in the country, adopting a new constitution in 2008. This is perhaps one of the few constitutions in the world that enshrines the market economy as the only economic system of the state (Article 35).
Thus, the anti-junta insurgency in contemporary Myanmar draws its sustenance from the same social sources as the communist insurgency in Indochina in the 1940s-1980s. It is a revolt of the village against the city, of barbarity against civilization, of rural socialism against capitalism, of irresponsible populism against “disciplined democracy.”
The civil war in Myanmar is not a war between democracy and authoritarianism, but between two forms of authoritarianism. The first is the populist authoritarianism of the NLD (later the NUG and the PDF), disguised as “people’s democracy.” If Aung San Suu Kyi had remained in power, Myanmar would have gone the way of Bangladesh, where Sheikh Hasina, parasitizing on the democratic image of herself and her father, established a brutal dictatorship. The second is military authoritarianism, which also has ugly features, but which tends to transform into “disciplined democracy.” If the Tatmadaw wins, Myanmar has a much better chance of repeating the path of democratic transition like Spain, Chile and some other countries, where the military, after suppressing communist rebellions, embarked on a path of gradual reforms.
IV. The Madness of the Crowd: The Dehumanizing Discourse of the “Freedom Fighters”
War crimes during the civil war in Myanmar are committed by both the Tatmadaw and the PDF and EAOs. However, the media, especially those financed until now by USAID and similar sources (The Irrawaddy, Mizzima, VOA Burmese), only mention the crimes of the military and keep silent about the rebel terror.
What dehumanizing technologies does the Myanmar opposition have at its disposal? The equivalent of the racist curse word kalar, used by the ultra-nationalists of the 969 movement, is the curse word dalan in the “revolutionary” circles, used against all those who collaborate with the regime. Dalan means “traitor,” and this is how PDF members call citizens who do not share the values of the “Spring Revolution.” The category of dalan includes officials, doctors, teachers, businessmen, who, after being labeled with this label, face the threat of death. PDF’s “revolutionary morality” excludes any pity for the dalan, who are seen as “servants of war dogs.” They can be shot in a cafe, have their house set on fire, or be caught on a country road and beheaded or quartered. Social media is full of videos of sadistic murders committed by PDF.
Most experts writing about Myanmar have a significant disadvantage: they do not know the Burmese language. This cuts them off from the wealth of information and does not allow them to get acquainted with the thoughts written by prominent oppositionists for their domestic audience. Regularly reading the remarks of “democratic activists” in Burmese creates a picture of the “Spring Revolution”, which is very far from the understanding of democracy that is inherent to Westerners.
In support of this thesis, we will give a couple of examples. The popular pro-PDF telegram channel of the Myanmar exile 4C (over 146 thousand subscribers) recently published a text entitled “Should prisoners of war be treated kindly?” “The simple and precise answer to this question is NO,” the author replies. He goes on to write about how to treat Tatmadaw combatants who surrender: “Soldiers wearing military uniforms or serving military dogs are actually military dogs. Regardless of the reason why military dogs join the army, they are military dogs. They have had many opportunities to avoid conscription… If they say they are prisoners of war and have been unjustly conscripted, hit them twice on the kneecap.” In another text, the same author calls on “revolutionary fighters” to spare the lives of prisoners of war, but only to use them as labor to meet the needs of the insurgents. This shows his ignorance of international law, in particular the 1949 Geneva Convention, which requires strict legal guarantees for the work of prisoners of war (and a ban on forced labor for officers), which the insurgents cannot provide.
Thus, there is little to distinguish the PDF from the Red Guards, the Viet Cong and the Khmer Rouge. To recognize the roots of the dehumanizing violence of the adherents of the “Spring Revolution,” it is necessary to understand the social environment in which this revolution was born. Already during the riots of 1988, many members of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB) joined the NLD. From the very beginning, the Burmese opposition inherited the communist mentality of the CPB. This fact was noted in the official report of the military-led government “Burma Communist Party’s Conspiracy to take over State Power” in 1989.
V. “Myanmar Resistance” as a Tool of Chinese Politics
In search of a methodological key to understanding the essence and prospects of the “resistance” in Myanmar, it makes sense to turn to the work of the German legal scholar Carl Schmitt Theory of the Partisan: Intermediate Commentary on the Concept of the Political (1963). Based on the material of contemporary national liberation wars in Algeria and Indochina, Schmitt formulated several theses on the figure of the Partisan. In particular, the scholar drew a line between the “telluric” type of partisan, connected with the “blood and soil” of the land for whose independence he fights, and the type of revolutionary terrorist acting beyond national borders in the name of global goals.
Schmitt makes the important point that the revolutionary terrorist, while fighting for a “world revolution,” in practice becomes a proxy for a “third force.” Which “third force” is skimming the cream of the NUG/PDF fight?
If we look at China, it is precisely this power, which from time to time makes threatening statements about the NUG, that is the beneficiary of the decay of the Tatmadaw’s rear. Firstly, the PDF terrorism facilitates the operations of the Han MNDAA. Secondly, thanks to the allegedly Western-backed “resistance”, China can blackmail the Myanmar government. As part of this blackmail, the State Administration Council (SAC) is forced to make concessions that it would not make in stable times. Third, the presence of violent friction within the Burmese majority allows Beijing to talk about a civil war instead of the proxy war it is waging through the Three Brotherhood Alliance.
It is noteworthy that against the backdrop of the dissolution of USAID and the end of American financial support for NUG, some far-sighted opposition analysts suggest paying homage to China. An article on the opposition resource The Irrawaddy even before Trump’s inauguration suggested that NUG make efforts to attract Beijing to its side. It was quite rightly emphasized that “the portrayal of China as being fully committed to supporting the junta is overblown and dangerous” (this thesis was also raised in our previous articles). The emerging geopolitical turn and rapprochement of the EU with China, and the US with Russia, may well lead to a miraculous transformation of NUG from “pro-American” to “pro-Chinese.” In addition to PDF, there are neo-communist groups acting on behalf of the Burmese people, but not subordinate to NUG: such as the PLA, BPLA and BNRA. There is reason to believe that these “revolutionary forces” may become a more complimentary partner for China than the discredited PDF. In any case, the leader of the BPLA, Maung Saungkha, has connections in the Western left and at the same time emphasizes his closeness to the Han MNDAA.
In his recent article, the respected and very well informed Swedish researcher Bertil Lintner talks about how in the 1960-80s, the territory of Burma adjacent to China under the control of the BCP was the center of the entire Chinese-backed Marxist-Maoist movement in Southeast Asia and Oceania (even Australian communists trained at the BCP bases). Today, there is a possibility that Beijing will restart the project of an international revolutionary movement against the USA and India, and the EAOs will play some role in this.
The strange sympathies of Western journalists for Myanmar “freedom fighters” such as Maung Saungkha, the leader of the BPLA, which derives itself from the Communist Party of Burma, make one wonder. Isn’t this sympathy reminiscent of the European left’s love affair with the Pol Pot regime in the 1970s? The genesis of this unnatural attraction is described in Peter Fröberg Idling’s book Pol Pot’s Smile (2006). You can be sure that there is no shortage of revolutionary “Pol Pots” in the forests of Myanmar.
VI. Conclusion
The ideological confrontation between nationalists and liberals, which reached its apogee in the United States, has spread throughout the West. But we should not underestimate the fronts of this war that are located outside the West. The military government of Myanmar, inspired by indigenous, religious and nationalist ideals, has clearly benefited from the victorious march of the Trumpists. The closeness of worldviews objectively works for the restoration of relations between the United States and Myanmar. There are removable obstacles on the path to this rapprochement: the remnants of the pro-NUG lobby in US think tanks and the incorrect interpretation of the Myanmar regime as “supported by China.”
It is difficult to predict US policy towards Naypyidaw at this point. The cancellation of payments to the “democratic opposition” was made as part of the destruction of the Deep State and is apparently not an element of the long-term “Myanmar policy” of the United States.
Of course, the Myanmar military would hardly agree to become a US proxy against China if such a proposal were made. The military’s consent would strengthen China’s support for the separatists; an open Chinese invasion at the moment would threaten the Tatmadaw with the collapse of the front and the loss of independence. At the same time, it can be assumed that Myanmar will become an element in a new conservative “Holy Alliance” designed to crush the power of the globalist bureaucracy and communist China. The US can cleverly use the excellent relations between Myanmar and Russia. Russia itself also needs to abandon the Soviet-style “fight against colonialism” and finally understand that its enemy is not European civilization as such (to which “Holy Rus’” historically belongs), but the left-liberal anti-Christian establishment, against which Trump and Vance have declared a “Crusade” in the name of real Europe. Long-term cooperation between the United States, Russia, India and Myanmar would create a new configuration in Southeast Asia and would benefit all participants.