Myanmar vs. Its Generals
Thant Myint-U on the future of the protests, what Beijing wants, and what Washington can do to help.
On Feb. 1, Myanmar’s military staged a coup, overturning the results of the November 2020 elections and throwing the country’s top civilian leaders in jail on spurious charges. Since then, protests and government violence have escalated. To get a sense of what lies ahead, the dynamics driving the conflict, and what outsiders can do to defend Myanmar’s democracy, on Wednesday Foreign Policy’s Jonathan Tepperman interviewed Thant Myint-U—historian, former United Nations peacekeeper, former member of Myanmar’s National Economic and Social Advisory Council, and author, most recently, of The Hidden History of Burma—by email. Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Jonathan Tepperman was editor in chief of Foreign Policy from 2018-2020 and is the author of The Fix: How Countries Use Crises to Solve the World’s Worst Problems. Twitter: @j_tepperman
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