MOST PEOPLE have heard of Myanmar's ghost-like capital city, Naypyidaw.

Unveiled by the military junta back in 2005, and built from scratch for reportedly billions of dollars, the capital has been a soulless white elephant in the middle of the country ever since. It even has its very own white elephants (in Myanmar they are seen as lucky), living in cages at the base of the bizarre, near full-size replica of Shwedagon Pagoda on the edge of the town.

What it doesn't have, famously, is people. Instead, it has deserted twenty-lane highways, Vegas-style hotels without any guests, and golf courses frequented only infrequently by top generals and politicians. It also draws curious film crews from across the globe — the BBC's Top Gear team played football and even held a drag race on its empty boulevards on their visit.

The city was built by the regime at speed for reasons that are still vague. Rumours range from the junta's paranoia over the ease of invading Yangon to astrological predictions regarding the auspiciousness of Naypyidaw's location. Whatever the thinking, it happened quickly: civil servants were reportedly ordered to relocate there within 48 hours, although many chose to stay in Yangon and still commute on a weekly basis, via a 5-hour bus trip.

But in the new semi-democratic era, things are changing a little. Some of the politicians and civil servants of the new administration have made their homes here. Other people who live in the surrounding villages come into the city for work. And others have been drawn to its infrastructure and facilities, which are unequalled anywhere else in the country.

That's what brought Aung Ngeain, 31, here. She's a fantastically successful Burmese archer, probably the most successful ever, with twenty-seven gold medals from international competitions.

Nowadays, she works as an archery trainer, trying to find — well, trying to find the next Aung Ngeain, amid Naypyidaw's bright lights and shiny targets.

It's a long way, literally and metaphorically, from where it all started for her.

She grew up in a town in Chin state called Mindat, where her father was a teacher and her mother made cloth. She describes their background as “poor” in a state which, as we have already seen in Chapter 1, is poor enough in itself.

CYCLONE NARGIS — a deadly storm whose clouds have gathered ominously at various points in this book — was a tragic episode in Myanmar's recent history.

After years of man-made misery and destruction at the hands of the generals, the natural world took its turn in the early hours of 2 May 2008. A huge tropical storm tore into the south of the country, leaving devastation in its wake.

According to official figures, 84,500 people were killed in the high winds, rains and floods, the three-metre-high storm surge, and the resulting destruction of villages, bridges and roads, mainly in the coastal Ayeyarwady Delta region.

A further 53,800 were reported missing, later presumed dead, possibly swept out to sea in the storm.

In reality, probably many more were hit. The UN has estimated that up to 2.4 million people were affected by Nargis, Myanmar's worst ever natural disaster. Millions were left homeless.

While Yangon also suffered, it was in the Ayeyarwady region that the storm really wreaked havoc. Many people there live simple lives as subsistence farmers or fishermen, and Nargis destroyed up to 95 per cent of buildings in some areas, as well as decimating crops and livelihoods.

The tragedy was exacerbated when the ruling military junta initially forbade international aid from coming into the country, a ban that was overturned after global outcry.

But figures like this can be hard to quantify. For Mar Mar Swe, a female farmer living close to Bogale in the delta region, the horror was much closer to home.

She had already had a rough few years. Her husband had died after many years of illness, leaving her alone with their baby son and other children, and badly in debt. Then came Nargis.

“I had been struggling, but then Nargis hit, and it destroyed my properties and my houses,” she says. “It was a nightmare time for me. I suffered so much.”

Things hadn't always been so bad for Mar Mar Swe. When she and her husband married, they received around eight acres of land from their families in their home village of Kyee Chaung. Like around 70 per cent of Myanmar's population, they lived rurally, supporting themselves. For a while, they were happy, working their land and looking after their kids.

This study seeks to establish an understanding of what is a special relationship, its dynamics, and its transformation into a pluralistic security community. The theoretical understanding is being tested through the examination of Indonesia–Malaysia relations, which in turn serves to foster better appreciation of the special relationship.

The existing literature has revealed that a special relationship between two states emerges when two sources of closeness coexist in their relations — that of the two states’ common identities and shared strategic interests. The two states concerned identify positively with each other owing to their two sources of closeness which result in them sharing an understanding that their relationship is closer than their other bilateral ties. Yet, certain conditions need to be in place before two states bound by their common identities could share common strategic interests.

As indicated in Chapter 2, while the common identities of the United States and Great Britain gave rise to their similar strategic understandings, they, however, did not see each other as a strategic partner up until the late nineteenth century. The steady growing of American power since 1850s, which eventually matched with Britain's existing power, produced their mutual need for strategic cooperation.

The Anglo-American special relationship subsequently began to emerge; thereafter, the two states rely on each other for survival. They forge strategic partnerships between them to preserve their similar vision of international order, which is rooted in the English concepts of liberty. Likewise, despite the shared values of the United States and Israel render both similarily prefer a Middle East that is compatible with the interests of Western democracy, the United States did not recognize its mutual strategic dependence with Israel up until 1967 when Israel had demonstrated its capacity by decisively defeating its Arab foes in the Six-Day War. Henceforth, the United States forges a special relationship with Israel. The two states work closely with each other to fashion a strategic landscape in the Middle East which both similarly prefer.

In other words, this study has revealed the relationship between identities and power in the creation of the common strategic interests of two states sharing common identities, which subsequently gives rise to their special relationship.

This chapter reveals the double-edged effects of the Indonesia–Malaysia special relationship. By the mid-1980s, a solid foundation had been established in Indonesia's and Malaysia's domestic politics as well as in their regional affairs. The unmistakable political supremacy of the indigenous people over the Chinese in Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as ASEAN's proven ability to function as a shield for its member states, revealed that the Malay world had taken root in archipelagic Southeast Asia. In other words, the strategic cooperation of Indonesia and Malaysia — forming the Malay world — was well established. Indonesia's and Malaysia's respective nationhoods too had become entrenched. Consequently, the two states each began to venture into a new stage of economic development that would transform their respective economy and national identity.

By the late 1980s, the transformation of Indonesia's and Malaysia's economies had ushered in an era of high economic growth in the two states. With their new found economic might, Indonesia and Malaysia were looking beyond ASEAN, striving to expand the space for their respective survival. Indonesia and Malaysia competed with each other amidst their endeavours to expand their respective influence abroad. The competition was enhanced by the mismatch of expectation between them; and mutually reinforced with their respective assertion of their superiority over the culturally similar counterpart.

The intertwined three sources of conflicts were also embedded in the territorial disputes between Indonesia and Malaysia and the issue of Indonesian migrant workers in Malaysia. The three sources of conflicts reinforced one another. Anti-Malaysia sentiments emerged in Indonesian society as a result — which were the substantial conflicts between Indonesia and Malaysia.

Because of the war avoidance norms that existed in the Indonesia– Malaysia special relationship, the substantial conflicts between them had not been able to turn into violent ones. The absence of power imbalance in the Indonesia–Malaysia special relationship means that the relationship remains as a security regime, not a security community. Indonesia–Malaysia relations are fundamentally competitive. The two states continue to understand each other in egoistic terms. War between them is unlikely, yet it remains possible.

THE SOLID PRESENCE OF THE MALAY WORLD AND THE NEW STAGE OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

By the mid-1980s, it was evident that a solid foundation had been established in Indonesia's and Malaysia's domestic politics as well as in the regional affairs of ASEAN.

BURMESE POP star Ah Moon is reading out her social media messages as we sit in the Yangon traffic.

“Bitch, slut, get out of the country,” she says, scrolling down. “And it's just because I'm wearing what I want. But when people call me things because of what I'm wearing, or showing skin, I think they need to see that I'm a human, a woman, and showing your body as a woman, and showing your abilities, and raising your voice — there's nothing wrong with that.”

Her jaw juts defiantly, and we pull away from the traffic in her car.

“I'm in a situation where I push boundaries every day,” she says. “It's not because I'm not respectful to people, it's because I want to show people from Myanmar that just because you are from this country, you don't need to box yourself in. You can be out of the box, you can look at the outside world, and I think catching up is not a wrong thing.”

Ah Moon, twenty-five, is one of Myanmar's leading pop stars. Think of her as the Beyoncé of Destiny's Child, or the Harry Styles of One Direction — her career started in a talent show, then a girl band (one of Myanmar's first), and she has emerged from that as her own woman, with a string of hits under her belt, a film, and more than a million followers on Facebook.

Apart from that you can't really think of her like Harry or Beyoncé, because she's actually far more revolutionary than that.

Under the military junta, making music in Myanmar was effectively banned, and things have been very slow to change since then. While there were some brave acts out there who tried to produce original sounds, in the main, pop music was made up of Burmese copies of Western hits called copy tracks, for many years. Even then, censorship was everywhere.

When a military-backed civilian government took over from the generals in 2011, things improved, although not immediately. Ah Moon's former group — the Me N Ma Girls — remember celebrating because they were allowed to wear coloured wigs in one of their videos.

TWO PEOPLE are on the stage in a gloomy performance space in downtown Yangon. One of them, the woman, has an apple, and a knife. The other, a man, has an array of make-up on a table behind him.

She starts to cut the apple and then feeds it to him. He accepts, chews, swallows. Then says, in Burmese: “I don't like apples.”

He opens up one of the compacts, starts to put make-up on her.

“Make me beautiful,” she tells him. “I want to be beautiful.”

They go through the process again. He chews the apple. She purses her lips for the lipstick. Then they do it again. And again.

Soon, she is still feeding him apples, and by now, he is shouting about how he doesn't like apples. Meanwhile, her face is a grotesque mask of make-up: red slashes of lipstick, dark eye-shadow circles around her eyes like bruises, pancake-thick foundation. She is still asking to be made beautiful. He is still eating the apples.

The stage goes dark; the performers bow.

It's a startling, moving and powerful piece, and the audience love it. For me, it talks about human relationships, how often we don't really listen to the ones we love, and the complicated relationships between men and women in a world of outdated gender norms — men get fed, women get makeovers.

The artist behind it is Ma Ei, one of Myanmar's leading female performance artists in a vibrant modern scene.

“It is about relationships,” she says afterwards. “Not only men and women but also mother and daughter, mother and son, brother and sister, friends. Sometimes we are tired of each other, but we can't stop, really, can we?” she says. She pauses, then looks up, wide-eyed, smiling. “Right?” she adds.

Ma Ei is a fascinating artist. Her work — powerful, questioning, feminist — would be ahead of the curve in any country, but in Myanmar, it's jaw-dropping. In 2015, she made headlines with an exhibition about periods, in which she lay in a red-lit room for three days and handed out sanitary towels to visitors. This, in a country where most people don't even talk about menstruation.

When I first started thinking about this book in 2015, it was a few months after the first openly contested elections in Myanmar in decades.

After years of oppression and brutality, the political party of democracy hero Aung San Suu Kyi had swept to power, and hope was everywhere.

In the run up to the vote, it had been the word on everyone's lips as I travelled across the country for my work as a journalist. On the night of the election, it rippled through the singing, dancing crowds on the streets of the country's biggest city, Yangon. And it dominated headlines for days afterwards, nationally and globally: the beginnings of hope, freedom and democracy for a people who had lived crushed under military rule for nearly fifty years.

Much of that hope centred on one remarkable woman: Aung San Suu Kyi herself.

She had been a lightning rod for Burmese hope since 1988, when her trip back to her homeland to care for her sick mother coincided with a national democratic uprising that Suu Kyi — the daughter of Burmese independence hero General Aung San — ended up leading.

The 1988 uprising was brutally suppressed, and the military regained control once more. But Suu Kyi did not give up, despite the fact that her efforts to bring freedom to her country saw her incarcerated in some form or another for the majority of the next twenty years.

Her sacrifices, her courage, and her commitment to peaceful protest in the face of oppression made her an icon both at home and abroad. In 1991, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In Myanmar, she became known as “The Lady”, an honorific nickname that gives an indication of her place in the popular imagination of her country.

So it is no surprise that hope was the order of the day on 8 November 2015, as voting slip after voting slip came in backing her party, the National League for Democracy. But now, as I sit down to write this preface two years on, the story is altogether more complicated.

IN 2005, when Wai Wai Nu was eighteen, she was arrested and put in prison by Burma's generals for no other reason than that her father was an opposition member of parliament (MP). Unfazed, she sassed the judge and reassured her family even as she was taken behind bars.

When she was released seven years later, undaunted and even inspired by the injustice she had both suffered and seen in jail, she immediately began work as a human rights and women's rights activist.

When I first met her in 2015, she was busy campaigning for equal human rights for all, despite the shadowy presence of Special Branch police officers haunting the events she spoke at.

In short, I think she might be one of the gutsiest people I have ever met.

Now, though — as we talk at the end of 2017 — the thirty-one-yearold is wary. She speaks diplomatically, thoughtfully, and she is obviously worried about the topics we discuss over the phone as she heads to visit her father in hospital in Bangkok.

That's because she is also a Rohingya Muslim, a member of an ethnic group in Myanmar who have been called the most persecuted in the world.

In recent months, an unimaginably brutal campaign of violence against the Rohingya in their home state of Rakhine has seen around 700,000 flee the country.

Thousands have been killed, many of the women gang raped, and hundreds of their home villages burnt by the Burmese army. The UN's top human rights official has said it looks like possible genocide — a genocide that is, almost unthinkably, being overseen by the government of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

For Wai Wai Nu, it's even closer to home. Her eighty-seven-year-old grandma has been displaced by the violence. Her house, land and village have all been destroyed, and she is currently in Buthidaung, a town in Rakhine, because she cannot walk to Bangladesh. She has no one to help her. Wai Wai's family in Myanmar cannot reach her.

“She has lost everything,” says Wai Wai Nu, who struggles to find the words to describe what is happening in Myanmar.

This chapter explains the dynamics of a special relationship and its transformation into a pluralistic security community. The first section of this chapter reveals the double-edged effects of a special relationship. A special relationship produces substantial cooperation and substantial conflicts between the two states involved. This section explains that the intertwined three sources of conflict in a special relationship — power competition between the two states involved; their drives to assert the superiority of their respective national identity over that of their culturally similar counterpart; and the mismatch of expectation between them — breed and enhance the negative identifications between the two states involved, which lead them to understand each other in egoistic terms. In other words, the two states share conflictual intersubjective understandings, despite having special ties with each other.

The second section of this chapter explains that a special relationship constitutes a security regime. A security regime refers to the war avoidance norms around which expectations of the states involved converge. Each of the states observes the norms in the belief that others will reciprocate. This section reveals that the war avoidance norms in a special relationship that come with the emergence of the relationship are produced by the two sources of closeness of the two states involved — common identities and shared strategic interests. As both states in a special relationship observe their shared war avoidance norms, the substantial conflicts between them, therefore, will not easily turn into violent ones. Finally, this section points out that a special relationship — as a security regime — serves as the foundation for the two states to transform into a pluralistic security community. Yet, one element needs to be in place, without which the transformation could not take place.

The chapter's final section reveals that the presence of power imbalance in a special relationship is necessary if it is to transform into a pluralistic security community. It points out that two states in a special relationship start to share an understanding of collective-self, namely, they constitute a pluralistic security community, when one of them has become overwhelmingly powerful.

THE DOUBLE-EDGED EFFECTS OF A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP

As explained in Chapter 2, two states’ common identities give birth to their similar strategic understandings.

This chapter explains that a special relationship between Indonesia and Malaysia had emerged shortly after the fall of the Sukarno regime.

Indonesia's confrontation against Malaysia had been effectively defeated by Malaysia, in which the Anglo–Malaysian military alliance was the backbone of its security. The power owned by Malaysia had accordingly succeeded in halting Indonesia's tendency to launch military attacks on Malaysia. Indonesia began to share the same understanding held by Malaysia that power balance existed between the two states, which meant a basis of order had emerged between them. Indonesia and Malaysia began to coexist peacefully.

Meanwhile, the presence of power balance between Indonesia and Malaysia also meant that both states possessed the necessary amount of power that shaped their similar strategic understandings rooted in common identities into their common strategic interests. Since then, Indonesia and Malaysia needed each other to form the Malay world in archipelagic Southeast Asia — a shield that protected their existence as states built around the Malay way of life. Two sources of closeness — common identities and shared strategic interests — henceforth, coexisted in Indonesia–Malaysia relations. A special relationship, therefore, had emerged between Indonesia and Malaysia.

The two sources of closeness in Indonesia–Malaysia relations generated their mutual aspiration for peace, which were strong enough to give rise to the war avoidance norms shared by the two states. In other words, the Indonesia–Malaysia special relationship constituted a security regime between them.

Upon the establishment of their special relationship, Indonesia and Malaysia worked together to create a friendly regional climate of Southeast Asia, which essentially reflected the Malay way of life. Together they moved to establish ASEAN so as to forge a friendly order of Southeast Asia through regional cooperation. The creation of ASEAN was an expression of the Indonesia–Malaysia special relationship. ASEAN's essence as a security regime, in the meantime, was created and sustained by the special relationship.

While Indonesia and Malaysia identified intimately with each other because of their special ties, their egoistic understanding of one another, nonetheless, persisted. The reordering of the strategic landscape in Southeast Asia, which took place in the late 1960s, revealed such basic qualities of Indonesia–Malaysia relations. In order to respond to the changing strategic environment, Indonesia and Malaysia sought for each other's cooperation, aiming to create an autonomous Southeast Asia that ensured their basic security.

This chapter explains that a special relationship did not exist between the Sukarno-led Indonesia and Malaya/Malaysia. Indonesia and Malaya/Malaysia were bound by their common identities rooted in the Malay way of life. Because of them sharing common identities, both states shared similar strategic understanding of the regional order of archipelagic Southeast Asia. However, Malaya did not possess the necessary amount of power that would engender Indonesia's recognition of its strategic reliance on Malaya; whereas the amount of power owned by Indonesia had surpassed a level that produced Malaya's strategic dependence on Indonesia. Besides, Indonesia did not immediately realize its mutual strategic dependence with Malaysia, during the period when Malaya had expanded into Malaysia. In short, the similar strategic understanding of Indonesia and Malaya/Malaysia had not been shaped into their common strategic interests by the power owned by Indonesia and Malaya/Malaysia. Indonesia aimed for its strategic preponderance over Malaya/Malaysia; whereas Malaya/ Malaysia desired for its mutual strategic dependence with Indonesia.

Two sources of closeness — common identities and common strategic interests — did not coexist in the relationship between Malaya/Malaysia and the Sukarno-led Indonesia. In other words, there was no special relationship between the two states.

The three sources of conflict that were embedded in the ties between Malaya/Malaysia and the Sukarno-led Indonesia — Indonesia's assertion of its dominance over Malaya/Malaysia and Malaya/Malaysia's attempt to balance against Indonesia's aim for regional dominance; the two states’ drive to emphasize the superiority of their respective nationhood over that of their culturally similar counterpart; the mismatch of expectation between them — were mutually reinforcing one another. The two states plunged into armed conflicts as a result.

INDONESIA–MALAYSIA COMMON IDENTITIES —THE MALAY WAY OF LIFE

The pre-existing dominant ethnic community in archipelagic Southeast Asia forms the basis for the establishments of Indonesia and Malaysia as two sovereign nation-states. The culture of the ethnic community, namely, the Malay way of life, constitutes the central character of the two states’ respective national identity. As such, Indonesia and Malaysia are bound by their common identities rooted in the Malay way of life. The Malay way of life is constituted by the combination of three essential elements — the notion of kingdom, the Malay language and Islam. Within the mindset of kingdom, the people of the dominant ethnic community in archipelagic Southeast Asia speak the Malay language and adhere to Islam.

HTIN HTIN Htay is speaking in a low, urgent voice. The late afternoon sun is creeping around the roof of her wooden house, throwing shadows on the decked balcony where we are speaking. Confused cockerels are crowing below us.

She is telling me her childhood memories.

“In this village here, at midnight, the government soldiers came to force us to relocate to other places,” she says.

“I remember. I was eight years old. We had to move before 10 a.m. They said that if anyone remained in the village they would be killed. In fact, they said we would be like ash, flown away into the air, finished.”

Terrified by the threat, Htin Htin's family fled as instructed, taking very little other than what they had with them at that moment. A few days later, they went back to see what food or personal items they could collect.

“We went to check the village. I saw a lot of dead bodies, being put under the bridge. So I said to my mum, what is that? And she told me not to look, it is too scary. But I saw a woman praying to the army not to arrest her husband, so they cut off her hands and shot the husband. I saw that,” she says.

It's a long time ago — Htin Htin Htay is now thirty-four years old — but she still remembers what she saw, and what, as a child, she shouldn't ever have had to see, back in the 1980s and early 1990s in military-run southern Myanmar.

She goes on: “And then a doctor who had come to cure diseases, they asked him about his background with the rebel group. He did not answer, so they cut off his tongue and tortured him, and he died. The villagers could hear him yell and shout because of the pain, but nobody dared help him. I saw that kind of thing when I was eight years old. That is my background, growing up in a black area.”

When talking about Myanmar's conflict-hit areas, a black area means a place held by insurgents or ethnic armies (white is government-controlled, and brown contested). For Htin Htin Htay, that was her home, the village of Oattu in Tanintharyi region, the south of the country — about an hour's motorbike ride from the nearest big city, Dawei.