13 - The Continuing Political Salience of the Military in Post-SPDC Myanmar

Summary

For a long time, analysts and commentators have labelled the various army-dominated types of government that Myanmar has experienced since General Ne Win first seized power in 1958 as “military dictatorships”, without making much of a distinction between them. Little effort has been made to differentiate the various forms of political intervention the Burmese armed forces (or Tatmadaw) and its successive leaderships have favoured over the past six decades. To better grasp the diverse realities of the Tatmadaw’s enduring interventionism—and, more particularly, the landscape shaped by the transition that began in 2011—this chapter rediscovers old theoretical models of the “praetorian state”. The literature on praetorianism highlights the patterns and drivers behind the military's intrusion into state policy-making, and examines plausible paths towards military disengagement. Above all, it distinguishes different forms of political intervention by armed forces (from direct rule to indirect forms of influence and policy control) and evaluates their impact on political stability, governance, and democratization.

I argue hereafter that Myanmar has long been a “praetorian state”, with its armed forces enjoying various degrees of policy control. All the requisites of a praetorian state can be identified in the country since its independence in 1948: an unruly political and civilian scene; a fragmented, if not polarized, post-colonial society constantly at war with itself; and extensive perceptions of domestic and external threats, all clearly formulated by a leviathan-type army institution able to deal with its internal differences and appear as a unified, cohesive, and disciplined organization with vested interests.

These praetorian patterns did not vanish with the startling transformations initiated by President Thein Sein's administration after 2011. Therefore, drawing on classical categorizations of praetorian regimes may help us better to construe the militarization of Burmese political affairs, and understand in particular the implications of the military-civil transition observed after the disbanding of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) in March 2011.

The passage from direct military rule to a quasi-civilian government is a classic example of “praetorian transition”. Over time, military institutions move up, or down, the scale of praetorianism, according to their interests and ability in seeking more or less control over policy-making. In the post- SPDC landscape—which had been foreshadowed since the adoption in 2003 of a “Road Map” towards a “discipline-flourishing democracy”—the Burmese military institution has transferred to civilians much of the power it had monopolized during the years since 1988.