Of Strategic Quandary and Realpolitik: India’s Stealthy Moves on the Eastern Chessboard

With the establishment of formal bilateral ties in 1951, both India and Myanmar have faced multiple crests and troughs in maintaining a steady balance of geopolitical interests, sailing through various coups, tension struggles and internal strife. India and Myanmar share a particularly sour relationship, wherein the effects of internal turbulence are seen on the emotional, social and economic aspects of the other. These include border tensions, immigrant management issues, refugee influx, colonial policy inception and narcotics trafficking across borders.

Illustration by The Geostrata

Burma was under British rule till 1937, post which poorly managed border relations led to major issues. Myanmar has also housed separatist insurgent bases from across India’s Northeast, making it a bottleneck to tackle, with many of them being patronised by the state as well. India’s ‘Look East’ policy was a major shift in focus as it led to the formulation of better and development-centric policies for South-East Asia, since the February 2021 coup by the Tatmadaw. Ever since the February 2021 coup, the bilateral equilibrium between the two has been under pressure.

China continues to broker peace treaties and ceasefires under the garb of improving bilateral relations while Myanmar reels under sanctions from powerful states like the U.S, the U.K., Australia and Canada. This has also been reflected in Myanmar’s signing of the BRI pact.

While India is also developing connectivity projects like the India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway and the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project opening its northeast through the ‘gateway’ to Southeast Asia, these policies have been waxing and waning in front of the big trade and investment figures from China and incessant instability and infiltration in the Northeast, forcing India to adopt a rather “good fences make good neighbours” approach.

A perceived maritime threat for India comes in the form of “little Chinese surveillance islands”, the likes of Hambantota and Gwadar, with the possibility of one in Myanmar’s Coco Islands, furthering India’s tricolour escort from reaching Burma. It would be safe to say that the same umbrella which harbours China’s cultural, regional and economic interests is laden with holes of greed and tyranny, percolating deep through borders.

THE PRESENT REEKS OF CONSPIRACY

Even the present is replete with instances of instability and refugee insurgency in many parts of India, creating a big crevice in the relations of the two. On December 6, 2024, India issued guidelines to seal its borders with Myanmar, scrapping the six-year-old Free Movement Regime Agreement (FMR) that allowed a 16 km visa free entry into each others’ borders. Myanmar is the only ASEAN country that shares a border with India, maintaining strong relations is crucial to securing a bigger, broader geopolitical footprint and wavelength in Southeast Asia.

The Manipur government has also backed the construction of over 70 km of fencing and the formation of special task forces to curb illegal migration through the India-Myanmar border. This immigration takes place owing to a highly porous and poorly guarded border, which gives leeway to rebel groups in India, which develop insurgent camps near the border, making the area susceptible to the operations of insurgent groups and organised crime, a grave cause of concern for India’s national safety.

Manipur has received a big chunk of illegal migrants over the past 1.5 years. A state government committee set to identify such migrants identified 2,187 of them. Last September, 5,500 illegal immigrants were caught in Moreh, and 4,300 were pushed back from Manipur.

Recuperating from a diplomatic dilemma, India has to take care of the security situation in its Near East while ensuring that Myanmar becomes a safe and friendly gateway to Southeast Asia, but it comes with its own set of challenges as presently, a battle between two ethnic armed groups (The Chin resistance front and Palam Palum township) in Myanmar has forced some 4,000 Chin people in the country to take refuge in Mizoram. This becomes a contemporary issue for India, looking at the governance mishap in West Bengal and other neighbouring areas. India cannot afford to entertain refugees along with the many ongoing kinetic conflicts.

More than 30,000 refugees from Myanmar and Bangladesh have been living in Mizoram even before the arrival of 4,000 Chin people due to constant communal tensions and lack of safety avenues to escape. About 2,000 Kuki-Chin refugees from Bangladesh arrived two years ago following communal clashes between ethnic groups and security forces. Apart from the refugees, more than 5,000 Kuki-Zo people have been displaced by the ethnic violence in Manipur. This also forces India to rethink its security principles and become stricter with border regulations. 

The second problem lies in the ‘C’ word; India’s diplomatic commitments and internal principles do not allow it to hover on multiple borders as China does. The very fact that China is spending so much time and resources on Myanmar is testament enough of something brewing under stool waters, and that needs to be identified. Trying to make up on friendly terms with Myanmar would hamper India’s border safety, increasing the risk of Chinese hostility.

This would also undermine the success of India’s ‘Act East’ initiatives in the region and push the junta further into China’s orbit. PM Modi recently met Myanmar’s Senior General Min Aung Hlaing ahead of the SCO Summit in Tianjin, wherein the interaction was laced with India’s readiness to initiate developmental projects, aid in the peace process, and to highlight a Myanmar chosen ‘peacefully by all citizens’. 

MYANMAR- A PATCHWORK OF POWER

The mushrooming of various People’s Defence Forces (PDFs), the National Unity Government (NUG) and Armed Ethnic Organisations (AEOs) has made one thing clear: it is taking Myanmar more than one front of governance to tackle its affairs, provided they wish to counter the Tatmadow (military junta), and most of its citizens are unsatisfied due to the political instability and governmental malfunction that’s gnawing at the country’s very future.

With an internal displacement rate of over 3.3 million, the coup has brought bad omens to Myanmar in the form of food shortages, economic scarcity and political instability, displacing Shan, Karenni, Rohingya and Karen communities, amongst others.

Due to consistent rebel attacks, which the military has luckily or unluckily not been able to tackle, Burma’s critical infrastructure and economic apparatus is going through an intense bereavement. 

In August 2024, the Three Brotherhood Alliance took control of the Northeastern Regional Military Command (RMC) in Lashio—a key military headquarters and an economic access point to China. Similarly, in December 2024, the Arakan army, an ethnic Buddhist militia group, won a battle in Maungdaw. With the Arakan Army taking control of villages and townships in the state, minority groups, such as the Rohingya, continue to fear ethnic persecution.

The Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) has been struggling against the innumerable local Burmese regimes and the junta, with partner organisations like the Rohingya Solidarity Organization and Rohingya Islami Mahaz, pushing us to think more about the victimisation circle. The forced conscription into the army has further aggravated displacement and population outflow from the country, not discounting the fact that the Myanmarese army has been overpowered and overwhelmed by the guerrilla tactics and efficient jungle warfare waged by the ethnic militias.

Myanmar currently struggles with a past laden with the oily smell of the unique Burmese recipe of ‘hybrid democracy’, a present of ‘disintegrated power’ and a future of ‘bleak democratic restoration’. The answer to the question of why this is such a prolonged conflict lies in a past of conflicting retreats and the very constitution of this country, and the number of armed minorities and ethnic groups in the country, 21 of them. With each of them fighting for a different objective, it is next to impossible to seek a peaceful solution that satisfies all of them and leaves the country setting for peace instead of protest.

In the past few years, the uninvited arrival of the Kuki and Chin refugees and the establishment of sensitive ethnic touchbases in India from Myanmar have gathered attention and frolic, nettling India’s ‘Act East’ and ‘Neighbourhood First Policy’ more than ever.

This has turned into a nationwide armed resistance post the February 2021 coup and has resulted in one of the largest displacement crises in Myanmar’s history, with a rate of more than 3 million internally displaced.

FOREIGN INVOLVEMENT: THE ADULTERATION OF HOPE

Myanmar is left isolated for most days of the year. Except for times when the West feels it makes for substantive and famous propaganda news, they issue impractical directives as if cleaning a forest of dry leaves, not understanding it is indeed one, but of dry aspirations. For the U.S and EU, it comes as easily as issuing multiple sanctions on the military, providing the benefit of doubt to the opposition and moving on to discuss how the global superpower remains the same for the umpteenth decade, forcing a title of heterogeneity on the world.

When these sanctions from the richer countries hit the common people, it becomes an ugly combination of irreversible social and spiritual poverty. EU countries, which were apparently very active during the ‘democratization era’ in Myanmar from 2011-2021, have taken a step back and cut their relief to it by more than 70%, with no visible signs of a dialogue.

The imposition of sanctions and an arms embargo calls into question the ‘values-based’ order and the Lisbon treaty’s democratic ideals that used to be a foundation of the EU. It has reduced Myanmar to an ‘alms-receiving’ country, subject to the European whims and fancies. It has also suspended Myanmar from its general preferences scheme that allows access to the bloc’s main market. 

For Russia and China, the establishment of close ties with the military is directly proportional to gaining geopolitical power and global clout in the region for a substantial duration, with oblivion covering their ears from shrieks of human rights violations, refugee struggles and people’s desire to resign from their own nation.

Russia, castigated by the world for its treatment of Ukraine, is now eyeing the possibility of engagement with Myanmar to redraw its image, which currently is of a notorious and imperialist power.

The China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC) opens up transportation, oil, gas and industrial projects for China. The refugee spill-over across the Yunnan province that shares the longest Chinese land border with Myanmar is another concerning factor for China, which it alleviates through humanitarian and military investments in Myanmar.

Russia has also invested in Myanmar’s military since the 1950s, and it aims to increase its arms export wavelength in other countries of Southeast Asia, via Myanmar, a relationship that is dual-sided. The Eurasian Economic Cooperation (EAEU), headquartered in Moscow, also feeds on Myanmar’s potential as it signals towards greater future bonding and economic trade with neighbouring countries by becoming a seemingly nonpartisan peacemaker in the conflict, providing, under its able agency, financial and economic aid to Myanmar, which is also a medium of intervention in internal politics and governance.  

THE ASEAN FACTOR

Myanmar joined ASEAN in 1997 along with Laos, and also became a party to the ‘ASEAN way’ which focuses on non-interference in each other’s domestic affairs and cultivating an environment of geopolitical, economic and cultural cooperation. Despite all of these ‘rosy’ policy implementations, ASEAN has failed to address the current crisis in Myanmar, primarily because of the constant disrespect of the bloc consensus by the junta, differing opinions internally and silence by other members and the risk of indulging too much. 

Owing to its strategic location, Myanmar offers ASEAN promising future potential, acting as a bridge between South Asia and Southeast Asia.

It is also a key participant in regional developmental projects like the BRI, India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway, among others. It is also rich in deposits of oil, gas and hydropower capacity, central to ASEAN’s energy interests. 

Despite agreement to the 5PC, the junta has not upheld any of its recommendations and ideas, on top of that is ASEAN’s bothersome silence when it comes to international treaties demanding peace and stability in Myanmar.  In late May 2021, the grouping’s countries worked together to stall a UN resolution calling for an arms embargo against Myanmar. When the resolution was finally voted on at the UN General Assembly in June, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Brunei abstained, reflecting perpetual ambiguity and second thoughts.

All member-countries, despite being signatories to the ASEAN charter, which identifies “strengthening democracy, enhancing good governance and the rule of law” as one of ASEAN’s primary objectives, have failed to deliver a proactive stance with respect to the situation at hand, as they have no option but to stop interfering with the junta’s many meaningless projects in the country.

ASEAN’s exclusion of the junta from its high-level association brought nothing more than just a label of illegitimacy and political untouchability on the junta as they continue to plunder cities, control infrastructure and key funds and deprive the nation of progress in all aspects, making it a facade of poor political play. 

Myanmar has already ignored ASEAN’s ‘5 Point Consensus’ that puts out directive policies for member states. The gathering is now internally divided on how to deal with one its most notorious and unstable members. As the junta prepares for another explosive election plan in December of 2025, it remains to be seen if ASEAN will be stuck on the stagnant peace plan or work better to alleviate the crisis of its valued member. 

WAY FORWARD

A pearl of wisdom for us is that India needs to adopt a mediation approach by reworking engagements with the military, pushing it to respect Myanmar’s regional autonomy. A good step will be to increase diplomatic presence in the region and focus on healthier trade practices to keep Myanmar from becoming just another surveillance outpost for Beijing.

It is both a challenge to convince the junta of the possibility and need for a democratic setup, elected by the people, owing to everyone’s interests and also an opportunity to play a part in the peace process, emphasising India’s national fundamentals encompassing peaceful strategic and cultural collaboration, which seems possible with consistent effort.

For India, possible growth comes in the form of handling the Rohingya, Kuki and Chin refugee issue with more care, analysing border conflict and issuing stricter guidelines to manage the same, deploying cultural and soft power diplomacy to understand the challenges better and enhancing security cooperation to deal with the elephant in the room. It would be a cherry on the cake to rework the loopholes in the ‘Act East’ policy by funding better border management while deepening cultural cooperation.

These approaches work insofar as the subject country, that is, Myanmar, is allowing help to reach targeted areas of conflict, stress and inefficacy. Decades of social struggle, ethnic conflicts and coups do not bode well for a future that is seemingly bogged down by tensions, blocked diplomacy and tyranny that’s sucking the spirit of life out of its people. 

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BY GUNCHA

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