Myanmar’s Post-Coup Foreign Policy and Alignment Behavior: Assessing the Agency of a “Pariah State”

Abstract

The article scrutinizes the impact of the 2021 military coup and ensuing civil war on Myanmar's foreign policy, by looking at the degree of agency retained by Naypyidaw in its alignment choices vis-à-vis great powers. The investigation shows that despite a highly deteriorated strategic environment marked by Western isolation and the revival of the country's status as a “pariah state,” post-coup Myanmar still exhibits agency and autonomy in its alignment behavior. This ability is evidenced in the evolution of Naypyidaw's hedging strategy after the putsch, which saw the junta engaging Russia, Japan, and India to fill the power gap prompted by the retreat of Western stakeholders and find new counterweights to China's influence. Accordingly, such resolve in preserving the country's nonaligned posture serves as a stark reminder that regardless of their intrinsic deficiencies, weak actors like Myanmar often opt for nuanced alignment blueprints, alternatives to both balancing and bandwagoning.

Introduction

Myanmar's 2021 military coup and resulting civil war prompted an unprecedented and multilayered existential crisis for the fragile Southeast Asian state, de facto returning it to a dark past marked by authoritarian rule, interethnic violence, incompetent governance, and economic backwardness. From a political standpoint, the power grab orchestrated by the armed forces (also known as Tatmadaw) pulled the plug on a decade of incremental liberalization, sparking nationwide protests that rapidly escalated into a full-fledged civil war between the army and a resistance movement comprising ethnic armed organizations and pro-democracy militias. On top of that, in the wake of the military takeover, the legitimacy of the ruling junta was further weakened by the emergence of a shadow cabinet, formally known as “National Unity Government” (NUG), that claims to act as the legitimate representative of the democratically elected administration overthrown by the coup. In parallel, the country's political unrest also imposed a staggering humanitarian toll, with more than 1.6 million internally displaced civilians, 17.6 million citizens in dire need of assistance, and nearly half of the population below the poverty line, due to an economic meltdown that resulted in an 18 per cent gross domestic product contraction in 2021 alone (World Bank, 2021; Linn, 2024).

As for other key areas of statecraft, the army's power grab embodied a traumatic watershed moment also for Myanmar's relations with the outside world. In particular, the coup led to major diplomatic rifts with both the West and ASEAN, ignited a battle for diplomatic recognition between the junta and the NUG, and also caused severe reputational damage for the military-installed regime, after a decade of progressive reintegration into the international community (Hein and Myers, 2022). The U.S. and the European Union (EU) de facto severed their ties with the military junta and imposed several rounds of sanctions against its top echelons and revenue-generating economic conglomerates, while the Southeast Asian regional bloc barred the Tatmadaw-appointed political representatives from its summits. As a result, Naypyidaw's foreign policy was deprived of two sets of partners that had been highly instrumental between 2011 and 2021 not only in supporting the country's transition to civilian rule but also in providing an alternative to Naypyidaw's overdependence on the People's Republic of China (PRC) as its key external patron. Back then, Myanmar's diplomatic normalization with the West and its growing centrality inside ASEAN had paved the way for the emergence of an alignment behavior centered on the notion of hedging, as the administrations led by Thein Sein (2011–2016) and Aung San Suu Kyi (2016–2021) managed to significantly strengthen Naypyidaw's ties with a host of international stakeholders, while also preserving an intimate and rewarding partnership with Beijing (Fiori and Passeri, 2015; Peng, 2021).

Accordingly, in the wake of the coup many observers claimed that Myanmar's regression to military rule would also embody the twilight of its hedging behavior vis-à-vis regional great powers, due to Naypyidaw's “divorce” from the West, growing diplomatic isolation, and resurging “pariah status” in international politics (Geddie and Brock, 2021; Myers and Beech, 2021). In line with this view, which is still popular both in the mainstream media discourse and among several scholars, the loss of important counterweights to the highly asymmetric partnership with the PRC de facto limited the junta's foreign policy trajectory to two basic strategic options: self-aloofness and isolationism, or bandwagoning in China's shadow (Lintner, 2021; Kit and Ng, 2022; Kurlantzick, 2024; Zaw 2024). In a recent study on Myanmar's alignment choices, for example, Marston (2023: 66–71) contends that the country's domestic crisis put an end to its nonaligned approach to great power rivalries, arguing that Naypyidaw embodies a textbook example of what Shambaugh defines as “chafers,” namely small countries that have no alternatives to China's patronage but wish they were not so reliant on Beijing. In a similar vein, Hein and Myers (2023) claim that the Western retreat from Myanmar after the military takeover left the country under the heel of Beijing's unrivaled influence, leading to the consolidation of “a regime beholden to China's revisionist goals.”

This article does not share such view. As noted by Fumagalli (2022), Naypyidaw's ongoing diplomatic confrontation with the West did not result in its total isolation on the world stage, nor did it prompt the adoption of a subservient attitude toward China. In fact, the following analysis posits that in spite of a highly deteriorated diplomatic landscape, which certainly affected Myanmar's alignment options and diversification efforts, its foreign policy still exhibits a constrained yet resilient degree of agency, as well as a strong commitment to preserve a somewhat independent position amid competing great powers. In order to substantiate this claim, the investigation first provides a theoretical overview of the notion of agency in international politics, highlighting the importance of alignment choices as a crucial domain for the expression of such prerogative. In parallel, the article examines the literature on the agency of secondary actors like Myanmar in their interactions with great powers, showing that the old prejudice that looks at small states as merely reactive entities has been recently eroded by a new wave of contributions. These scholarly works not only refrain from describing the alignment behavior of small countries according to the traditional “balancing vs. bandwagoning” dichotomy but also shed light on a series of far more nuanced alignment alternatives, such as hedging, that embody a clear manifestation of the agency of secondary actors in the international arena.

Building upon this theoretical exploration, the empirical part of the study examines three key trends related to Myanmar's post-coup foreign policy that reflect the junta's coping strategy to weather the diplomatic fallout of the coup and break the chains of Western isolation, while also preventing the country's subjugation to China's patronage. The first pillar of such strategy is represented by the burgeoning Russia–Myanmar partnership, which reached unprecedented heights in the wake of the 2021 coup. Naypyidaw's progressive tilt toward Moscow is thus presented as the first significant evidence of its resolve in retaining a sufficient degree of diversification in Myanmar's external partnerships, as well as in mitigating the country's dependence on the PRC for diplomatic protection, economic assistance, and military purchases. Second, the article looks at the quiet engagement nurtured by the military regime with India and Japan, which contributed to their defections from the U.S.-led sanction regime against Myanmar. Against this backdrop, the analysis contends that the junta's enmeshment efforts toward New Delhi and Tokyo should be considered as yet another indicator of its agency in proactively addressing the power vacuum left by the Western retreat from Myanmar, by reaching out to alternative stakeholders that can also keep China's influence in check.

Finally, the investigation delves into the post-coup management of the bilateral relation with Beijing, showing that Naypyidaw's approach to its most important external partner is still marked by an attentive mixture of deference and defiance, which is consistent with the hedging behavior displayed by Myanmar between 2011 and 2021. For all these reasons, the analysis concludes that Naypyidaw's resilient form of agency in weathering the diplomatic fallout of the military takeover, as well as in preserving a relative degree of autonomy vis-à-vis great powers, provides a series of important takeaways. From a theoretical standpoint, it serves as a powerful reminder about the risks of portraying small, weak, and largely ostracized international actors as passive and prone to self-aloofness, as traditionally claimed by conventional International Relations accounts. In addition, the continuities exhibited by Myanmar's alignment patterns before and after the coup suggest that the posture of secondary actors vis-à-vis great powers is determined by the interplay of structural elements and unit-level attributes, such as strategic culture. These cognitive and ideational features are usually shared by different generations of decision-makers, civilian and military alike, thus producing significant path dependence in terms of alignment behavior even in the aftermath of relevant political cleavages, as for Myanmar's 2021 military coup.

The International Agency of “Pariah States”: Time to Revisit the IR Conventional Wisdom?

For a long time, mainstream theories of international politics have looked at the notion of “agency” as a luxury that only few, powerful countries can afford. At its core, agency refers to the ability of a subject or entity to act, and thus exercise a certain degree of power, in a way that is conducive to the fulfillment of its interests, aspirations, and subjectivity (Braun et al., 2019: 788–789). When employed in the foreign policy domain, agency describes the capacity needed to make autonomous choices and increase a state's bargaining power, which stands out as a rather challenging task for small countries that lack the size and material capabilities of their bigger counterparts. For this reason, traditional IR theories have perpetuated two prejudices about small powers’ agency. First, they have treated secondary actors as objects rather than subjects of international affairs, ultimately depriving them of any ability to proactively shape their foreign policy trajectory (Morgenthau, 1948: 196; Elman, 1995: 177–178). In parallel, small states have been essentially depicted as undifferentiated units, due to the alleged causal primacy of structural factors over domestic ones in explaining their strategic conduct (Neumann and Gstohl, 2006: 17–18; Van Staden et al., 2018).

As could be expected, this long-standing prejudice has been particularly visible in the case of secondary actors that not only lack significant material capabilities but also endure a process of ostracization by a significant portion of the international community, thus earning the status of “pariah states.” According to the IR jargon, a pariah of international politics usually displays the following features: a small territory and an unfavorable geopolitical position surrounded by more powerful neighbors; a polity characterized by deep cleavages that question the very legitimacy of the state; as well as a condition of diplomatic isolation, due to the shaming by other states and multilateral organizations for violating international norms (Chow and Easley, 2016: 524). As such, this specific category of international actors has been usually described as extremely weak in terms of diplomatic leverage, and essentially left with “only marginal and tenuous control over its own fate, whose security dilemma cannot easily be solved by neutrality, nonalignment, or appeasement” (Harkavy, 1981: 135–136). In recent years, however, significant efforts have been made both within and outside the Realist camp to go beyond the stereotypical assessments of small powers’ agency in the international arena, in order to shed light into the ways through which these often-overlooked countries formulate and pursue their interests vis-à-vis more powerful actors.

In his analysis of the interactions between China and a small African state such as Djibouti, for instance, Cabestan (2020) argues that secondary actors can manifest their agency in an asymmetrical relation by taking specific steps aimed at mitigating the inherent imbalance of such ties, as well as the risks of becoming overdependent upon a single external patron. This view is echoed by Cheng-Chwee Kuik's nuanced analysis of the negotiations between China and Southeast Asian countries for the realization of Beijing's “Belt and Road Initiative.” His investigation, most notably, defines agency as the capacity of smaller states to formulate their own strategic preferences and translate them into tangible outcomes, despite the asymmetric power structure they are compelled to face (2020: 6). Against this backdrop, Kuik (2023: 2–5) contends that secondary actors can express agency both through affirmative actions and by means of more subtle behaviors, that might be directed at “denying, delaying, or distancing from a stronger power's initiative.” In a similar fashion, recent studies focused on different areas of the globe, such as Latin America, have largely confirmed the idea that small powers might exhibit alignment patterns that contradict structural explanations, due to the impact of their agency and subjectivity that also stem from cognitive-ideational variables, as for the concept of strategic culture (Martín et al., 2024). The general assertion that small powers lack international agency, moreover, has been increasingly challenged also in the field of Foreign Policy Analysis, where a number of important contributes showed how secondary actors are capable of making autonomous foreign policy decisions based on domestic factors, leadership choices, and strategic calculations (Hey, 2003).

Similar findings contribute to the analysis of secondary actors and their strategic conduct in four fundamental ways. First, they acknowledge that asymmetrical relations do not completely deprive the smaller side of its agency, which can be displayed either via proactive actions or by relying on strategic ambiguity. Second, this recent wave of studies points specifically at alignment choices as a key domain for the exercise of international agency on the part of small powers. In a nutshell, the notion of alignment describes the cooperative links that might emerge between two countries in key areas such as security and foreign policy, aimed at achieving mutual strategic goals (David, 1991; Chidley, 2014). Alignments can be institutionalized via the establishment of formal military alliances, or display a more informal structure. Their constant evolution, moreover, reflects the dynamic configuration and reconfiguration of international relations, as a result of continuous shifts both in the distribution of power at the global and regional level and the interests and agendas pursued by international actors (Kuik, 2010: 93–94). As such, alignment choices are an integral part of the political toolkit that allows small states to protect themselves against external threats and pursue a set of strategic interests, despite their significant deficiencies in terms of self-help capabilities.

Third, these contributions serve as a reminder that secondary actors might cope with structural constraints in a peculiar way, inasmuch as they see the world through equally unique lenses, stemming from unit-level attributes such as their strategic culture. The latter, most notably, revolves around a set of beliefs, attitudes, and practices held by a given polity, which affect the way it perceives external threats and formulates foreign and defense policies (Passeri, 2019: 936–939). As such, the prism of strategic culture looms very large in clarifying how small powers express their international agency, and why their alignment behavior often transcends the prescriptions offered by traditional IR theory accounts. Last but not least, the evolving literature on small states’ alignment behavior clearly shows that their strategic options are not limited to the “balancing vs. bandwagoning” dichotomy put forward by traditional theories, according to which secondary actors can only choose between “alignment with” and “alignment against” a great power (Waltz, 1979: 126–127; Snyder, 1997: 6). Such a binary representation, moreover, has been largely disproved by the empirical record of small powers’ foreign policies in various parts of the globe, including Southeast Asia. In fact, the strategic behavior of Southeast Asian states has historically reflected a strong inclination to eschew all-out alignment options in their interactions with more powerful counterparts, in favor of far more nuanced alternatives (Goh, 2007; Ciorciari, 2010).

This preference for establishing limited forms of alignment with multiple stakeholders, which can act as mutual counterchecks according to logic of diversification, has historically served the purpose of safeguarding a certain degree of regional autonomy, independence, and room for maneuver amid competing great powers. As a result, the mantra of nonalignment was first employed by Southeast Asian states to navigate the Cold War era and then overhauled to address a changing strategic landscape, marked by the rise of China (Roy, 2005: 308–312; Emmers, 2018: 360–365). Since the early 2000s, this evolution brought the wide majority of the small and middle powers located in the region to rely on a strategic blueprint that has been alternatively described as “omni-enmeshment” or “hedging” (Goh, 2007; Kuik, 2016; Wu, 2019). In line with this approach, Southeast Asian countries have progressively strengthened their partnerships with China, both to maximize the economic returns of the Chinese rise and socialize Beijing with an expanding network of regional norms and institutions, while simultaneously engaging the U.S. and other external stakeholders as a risk-contingency measure. As such, the display of agency provided by ASEAN states in choosing not to choose amid great power rivalries but rather pursue strategic diversification with an expanding pool of security partners, highlights the need to revisit the IR prejudice about small powers’ alignment behaviors.

If the bulk of Southeast Asia still exhibits a firm reliance on its hedging tradition, notwithstanding a mounting Sino-American rivalry that pushes regional actors to tilt toward one side, Myanmar makes no exception to this trend (Fiori and Passeri, 2015; Stromseth, 2019; Peng, 2021). As an inherently weak, fragmented, and war-torn country located in a difficult geopolitical setting, Myanmar has been typically equated to what Keohane (1969: 296) defines as a “system-ineffectual” state, which can simply cope with the structural forces that constrain its alignment options, rather than influencing them. The historical record of the country's foreign policy, however, paints a different picture. In fact, since the early post-independence period Myanmar's alignment choices have been instrumental to one, paramount goal: achieving a sufficient degree of independence and autonomy vis-à-vis great powers, also through a self-imposed ban to join military alliances (Bünte and Dosch, 2015; Myoe, 2020). This significant display of agency has been pursued in spite of many challenges, including the country's own political history marked by long spells of authoritarian rule and endemic domestic unrest along with ethnic and religious cleavages, which severely tarnished Myanmar's image on the global stage. Still, the nonaligned foreign policy playbook was utilized by different generations of military and civilian leaders alike as an integral component of Myanmar’ strategic culture to address, first and foremost, the highly asymmetrical relation with the country's most important partner, namely China (Shang, 2022).

For Myanmar, the management of the bilateral ties with Beijing has historically entailed two opposite risks. The first is to become overdependent on Beijing, either for economic gains or diplomatic protection, in what would constitute a major breach of the country's sovereign status (Myoe, 2015: 25–30). On the other hand, the geographic proximity between the two actors as well as China's leverage and interests in Myanmar has also consistently ruled out the possibility of alienating the PRC, for instance through the adoption of a more adversarial behavior consistent with the logic of balancing. As a consequence, Naypyidaw has historically handled its interactions with China by employing an attentive mix of deference and defiance, aimed at maximizing the trade-off between the potential risks and returns stemming from the bilateral relationship. Arguably, this hedging approach paid its highest dividends between 2011 and 2016, as Myanmar's first civilian government after a long era of military rule successfully reintegrated the country into the international community, acquired an unprecedented centrality among the ranks of ASEAN, normalized its ties with the West, and simultaneously consolidated a fruitful yet less subservient relationship with Beijing (Fiori and Passeri, 2015). Subsequently, the country's agency in opting for nuanced alignments was further reconfirmed by the progressive cabinet led by Aung San Suu Kyi (2016–2021), who carefully balanced her personal ties with the West by establishing a rather intimate relationship with the Chinese leadership (Myoe, 2017). At the start of 2021, however, the Tatmadaw's power grab and ensuing civil war not only paved the way for the resurgence of the country's status as a “pariah” of international affairs but also threatened to destroy the very foundations that had sustained Myanmar's hedging efforts during the previous decade.

The Impact of the Coup on Myanmar’s Foreign Policy and Alignment Options

The return of military rule unleashed severe repercussions on Myanmar's foreign policy and international standing, forcing the junta to cope with four major sets of consequences. The first stems from the reputational costs of the army's power grab for the country's global image, after years of cautious optimism in the international community with regard to Naypyidaw's protodemocratic transition. Against this backdrop, the brutal crackdown of the anticoup protests through a vast array of repressive tools that encompassed indiscriminate airstrikes against the civilian population, the detention of several thousand political activists, and even the weaponization of the Covid-19 pandemic to crush opposition forces, led to the resurgence of a series of labels, such as “pariah state” or “rogue country,” that had been attached to Myanmar's past military juntas (Nortajuddin, 2021; Passeri, 2022). Fully aware of its status as a renegade of international politics, especially in Western diplomatic circles, in the wake of the putsch the military regime acknowledged that it had to learn again “how to walk with only few friends,” in order to cope with shrinking strategic options (Nichols, 2021). In parallel, the coup and its dramatic aftermath further impaired the junta's legitimation both domestically and abroad following the ongoing clash for diplomatic recognition with the representatives of the ousted civilian cabinet, who gave birth to the NUG. Between 2021 and 2024, the latter was recognized as the legitimate leadership of Myanmar by several Western countries and international organizations, as for the EU Parliament which adopted a resolution in October 2021 that refers to the NUG as the sole lawful representative of the Myanmar people (Strangio, 2021). Furthermore, the struggle for recognition between the two entities also had important spillovers at the United Nations, as the Myanmar delegation not only pledged its loyalty to the deposed regime but also obtained a green light by the UN General Assembly Credentials Committee to retain its post, despite the junta's repeated attempts to appoint a new diplomatic representation (Lin and Thuzar, 2022).

Third, the power grab directly impacted Myanmar's alignment choices, resulting in a highly deteriorated external environment that significantly constrained the space and options for Naypyidaw's diplomatic diversification endeavors. This outcome was largely determined by the regime's ongoing diplomatic rows with the West and ASEAN, which had played crucial roles during the previous decade in supporting Myanmar's transition to civilian rule. With regard to the ties with the U.S. and the majority of EU members, the putsch put an end to the process of mutual rapprochement started in the early 2010s that had provided a significant legitimation boost for Myanmar's domestic reforms, through a series of milestones such as the first state visit to Myanmar of an American sitting president in 2012, the lifting of Western sanctions, and the growing influx of international investment (Passeri and Marston, 2022: 200–201). Back then, the normalization with the West had served three interlocking goals: reintegrating Myanmar into the international community, kickstarting long-term economic growth, and recalibrating Naypyidaw's foreign policy toward greater diversification of the external partnerships (Bünte and Dosch, 2015). In such perspective, a widespread concern both in the civilian and military establishment stemmed from the intimate and increasingly asymmetrical relationship with China, which had established an economic and political footprint inside Myanmar that was regarded by many as too intrusive and essentially neocolonial (Lu, 2015). As the rapprochement with the West mitigated Naypyidaw's dependence on Beijing as its main diplomatic patron, the former felt confident enough to display growing defiance toward the PRC on a series of relevant bilateral matters, as in the paradigmatic case of the suspension in 2011 of the controversial Myitsone Dam project. Through these acts of signaling, the civilian government led by Thein Sein sought to show that Myanmar had fully reembraced its nonaligned posture, after years of marginalization due to Western sanctions.

However, following its initial success, Myanmar's hedging strategy started to show some significant cracks in the wake of the 2017 Rohingya crisis, which not only prompted Aung San Suu Kyi's fall from grace in Western diplomatic circles but also caused a significant outflow of European and American investment. In such scenario, the 2021 military takeover acted as the last straw in an already strained relation, de facto returning Myanmar's ties with the West to the bitter confrontation experienced before 2011. Accordingly, in the wake of the coup more than 20 governments and international organizations, including the U.S., the EU, Canada, Australia, and the UK, reimposed several rounds of sanctions against the Tatmadaw's top brass and revenue-generating economic conglomerates. In 2022, the U.S. Congress also passed an upgraded version of the “Burma Act,” which authorizes the provision of nonlethal military assistance to the NUG. Additionally, the U.S., Australia, and Germany also decided to downgrade their diplomatic representations to Myanmar by refusing to replace their outgoing ambassadors (Strangio, 2022a). In response, the military junta recalled its representatives from the aforementioned countries, further widening the rift with Western stakeholders.

Fourth, Myanmar's political unrest largely disrupted its ties with ASEAN, while also causing repeated splits inside the regional bloc on how to deal with such a defiant regime. Against this backdrop, the most tangible contribution provided by the multilateral grouping to a deescalation of Myanmar's domestic crisis materialized after a series of delays and tortuous internal negotiations in April 2021, at the special ASEAN Leaders Meeting held in Jakarta. The summit led to the formulation of an ASEAN-sponsored roadmap for a peaceful solution of the country's civil war, also known as “5-Points Consensus” (5PC), which entailed a series of steps and milestones including the appointment of an ASEAN Special Envoy to Myanmar, entrusted with the task of visiting the country and engaging in talks with both the junta and the NUG. Yet, in the wake of its launch the 5PC was largely discredited by the Tatmadaw's leader Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, who referred to it as a mere set of “suggestions” that might be considered in the future “after stabilizing the country” (Jaipragas, 2021). In October 2021, the junta's repeated stonewalling in granting access to Aung San Suu Kyi and other incarcerated leaders of the ousted government forced the ASEAN Special Envoy to cancel his much-anticipated visit to Myanmar. Frustrated at Naypyidaw's uncooperative stance, few weeks later the bloc's chair Brunei took the unprecedented decision of barring Min Aung Hlaing and other top-echelons of the military-installed regime from the upcoming ASEAN summit, while allowing for the participation of nonpolitical representatives from Myanmar. In response to this bold move, the junta blasted ASEAN for its alleged intrusions in the country's domestic affairs, opting to completely desert the meeting (Yee, 2021).

Since then, the exclusion of the junta's representatives from ASEAN gatherings has been further endorsed by the grouping's subsequent annual chairs, namely Cambodia, Indonesia, and Laos, which also failed to achieve any significant breakthroughs in the implementation of the 5PC. On top of that, in the runup to the 43^rd ASEAN Summit, held in September 2023, the bloc also decided to revoke Myanmar's designation for the 2026 ASEAN rotational chairmanship. Back in 2014, the conferment of Myanmar's first-ever ASEAN annual chair had embodied an important milestone for the country's reintegration in the international community, as it raised the legitimation of the Thein Sein government and nurtured its engagement efforts with the bloc's dialogue partners. For all these reasons, in the wake of the coup, the combined impact of the aforementioned repercussions led to the formulation of various speculations about Myanmar's possible tilt toward isolationism or bandwagoning in China's shadow. This argument stemmed from the idea that the military takeover and its dramatic aftermath had not only stripped Naypyidaw of two crucial components of the hedging blueprint pursued until 2021 but also impaired its already limited leverage in the framework of the asymmetrical ties with the PRC, thus leaving the junta with little choice but to compromise on its posture of active nonalignment.

Contrary to such predictions, the empirical record of Myanmar's alignment behavior in the three years that followed the coup portrays a far more nuanced picture. On the one hand, the reestablishment of military rule certainly reduced the country's strategic options in terms of alignment choices and diplomatic diversification, as well as its already limited leverage vis-à-vis Beijing. Still, a number of important evidences show that although highly detrimental to Myanmar's alignment choices amid competing great powers, the military takeover did not embody the total twilight of Naypyidaw's hedging blueprint. In fact, the evolution of the country's foreign policy between 2021 and 2024 seems to not only reflect a constrained yet resilient display of agency but also a tacit and incremental adjustment process, aimed at finding new counterweights to the paramount relation with the PRC. Against this backdrop, the idea that Myanmar's great power diplomacy still exhibits a strenuous reliance on hedging is validated by three key trends that shaped the international trajectory of the military junta in the wake of the putsch, namely the progressive tilt toward the Russian Federation, the quiet engagement efforts pursued with India and Japan, as well as the ambivalent approach employed with China, which is marked by an attentive mixture of deference and defiance.

The Evolution of Myanmar’s Hedging Behavior After the Coup

A first indication that the military junta is deeply committed to logic of diplomatic diversification, which is consistent with the approach pursued by its civilian predecessors, can be derived from its budding ties with the Russian Federation. In this regard, it is worth noting that between 2021 and 2024 both Moscow and Naypyidaw paid significant efforts to further strengthen their bilateral relation, building upon a process of mutual convergence that had materialized since the early 2010s (Storey, 2023). As a result, in the wake of the coup the diplomatic honeymoon between the two sides paved the way for a flurry of high-level contacts and bilateral agreements, mostly centered on energy and defense cooperation. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, most notably, paid three official visits to Russia since the reimposition of military rule, more than in any other country, including the trip to attend the “Eastern Economic Forum” held in Vladivostok in September 2022, where the two governments inked a roadmap on nuclear cooperation (TASS, 2022). Interestingly enough, the frequency of these meetings stands in sharp contrast with the visible lack of direct exchanges between the Tatmadaw's commander-in-chief and the Chinese President Xi Jinping, who never met in the three years that followed the army's power grab.

Undoubtedly, the shared challenge brought about by Western sanctions and ostracism following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 acted as a strong catalyst behind the strengthening of the Russia–Myanmar partnership. This view was echoed by several analysts of Asian politics, who argued that the mutual embrace between Moscow and Naypyidaw merely embodies a temporary “marriage of convenience” between two pariahs, which sought to join forces in their ongoing confrontation with the U.S. and its allies (Strangio, 2022b). A careful analysis of the strategic drivers that persuaded the junta to progressively tilt toward the Russian Federation, however, suggests that such move was inspired by larger and more ambitious goals. This is not to deny that the bilateral relation displays a pragmatic and even transactional nature, especially when it comes to the joint attempt of weathering Western sanctions. Such spirit came to the fore between 2022 and 2023, as Moscow's repeated vetoes at the UN Security Council against resolutions aimed at condemning the military regime were rewarded by the junta through the increase of Myanmar's hydrocarbon imports from Russia, which assists the Kremlin in its quest to find new costumers amid the Western embargo on Russian oil and gas (Kapoor, 2022).

Yet, the ongoing bolstering of the Myanmar–Russia partnership is not simply rooted in their “divorce” from the West, nor it exclusively rests on the provision of diplomatic support in exchange for economic gains. In fact, from Naypyidaw's perspective this alignment holds the promise of simultaneously addressing various strategic imperatives. The first is to partially fill the power gap created by the progressive retreat from Myanmar of Western stakeholders, which began in 2017 as a result of the Rohingya crisis. In parallel, the ties with the Russian Federation serve the purpose of equipping the junta with a counterweight, albeit limited, to the PRC, thus enabling the Generals to keep on hedging their bets between Beijing and alternative stakeholders (Myers, 2021; Crabtree, 2022). Against this backdrop, Naypyidaw's resolve in mitigating its overreliance on Beijing by increasingly leaning toward Russia is particularly visible in the defense sector, where China's once dominant position has been progressively eroded by Moscow's military procurements. As a result, the Tatmadaw's aggregate defense bill from the Russian Federation for the last 20 years recently rose to US$ 1.7 billion, equal to the amount purchased from Beijing over the course of the same period (International Crisis Group, 2022). According to the UN, between 2021 and 2023, the junta imported US$ 1 billion worth of weapons to crush opposition forces, with Russia accounting for almost half (US$ 406 million) of this arms trade, followed by China (267 million) and India (51 million) (OHCHR, 2023). For all these reasons, it can be argued that the ongoing tilt toward Russia stands as a key pillar of Myanmar's post-coup foreign policy, inasmuch as it allowed the military-installed regime to retain a certain degree of agency and diversification in its alignment choices.

In a similar fashion, Naypyidaw's hedging behavior is also reflected in the efforts devoted in the wake of the coup to quietly engage India and Japan, which share the same fear of seeing Myanmar progressively turning into a Chinese client-state (Sharma, 2021). From the junta's perspective, the preservation of the bilateral partnerships cultivated with New Delhi and Tokyo by the previous civilian cabinets acquired an even greater significance after the 2021 coup for two reasons. First, because it led to India and Japan's defections from the U.S.-led sanction regime against Myanmar, thus allowing Naypyidaw to partially break the chains of Western isolation. As such, the junta's ability to leverage on the Indian and Japanese stakes in Myanmar, as well as their shared concerns regarding China's footprint in the country, stands out as another remarkable evidence of its agency in proactively addressing the diplomatic fallout of the military takeover. Second, the mutual engagement process nurtured with New Delhi and Tokyo should be regarded as a crucial pillar of Naypyidaw's constrained hedging behavior. In line with this logic, the preservation of cordial ties with the Indian and Japanese governments, which also rests on the protection of their interests in Myanmar, serves the purpose of further consolidating the aforementioned balance of external influences acting as mutual counterweights.

On their part, both New Delhi and Tokyo displayed certain receptiveness in reciprocating the junta's diplomatic overtures. In fact, the realpolitik approach that guides India and Japan's agendas in the Myanmar crisis came to the fore immediately after the coup and was further highlighted by their decision not to impose sanctions on the Tatmadaw. On February 2, 2021, the then-Japanese deputy Defense Minister Yasuhide Nakayama candidly told journalists that one of the key concerns of his government regarding the Tatmadaw's power grab was seeing Myanmar join “the league of China” (Reuters, 2021). In that occasion, the Japanese official also ruled out the possibility of severing Tokyo's development assistance toward Myanmar, arguing that a similar move would further push Naypyidaw under Beijing's shadow. As a result, the Japanese diplomatic mission to Myanmar refrained from taking part in the joint declaration issued on February 15, 2021, by several foreign embassies to condemn the military takeover, and, few weeks later, the Ambassador Ichiro Maruyama met with the junta-appointed Foreign Minister, Wunna Maung Lwin. The move attracted bitter criticism both domestically and abroad, due to its significance in boosting the legitimation of the army's power grab (Passeri, 2021: 16). Since then, human rights groups have reported that Japanese stakeholders invested in a company linked to the Tatmadaw for the realization of a bridge in the Bago region, while also denouncing that the junta utilized several Japanese-funded civilian vessels delivered between 2017 and 2019 to crush opposition forces (Nikkei Asia, 2023).

Similarly, in the three years that followed the putsch, the Indian government displayed a cautious and pragmatic approach toward its problematic neighbor, which reflects Myanmar's growing strategic relevance for the Modi administration. Such an increasing geopolitical salience stems from three sets of imperatives, namely the management of the insurgency-prone, 1.600 km-long border between the two countries; the bolstering of India's military footprint in the Indo-Pacific, against the backdrop of its growing competition with China; and the attainment of the ambitious goals pursued under the banner of Modi's “Act East” policy (Marjani, 2021). Building upon these drivers, in the wake of the coup, the regime in Naypyidaw endeavored to engage the Modi administration and further widen the gap between its low-profile reaction to the putsch and the highly adversarial posture of the West. For example, in the three editions of Myanmar's Armed Forces Day that followed the putsch the Indian military attaché stood out as one of the very few foreign dignitaries who received an invitation to attend the Tatmadaw's parade (Peri, 2021).

On top of that, mounting international criticism did not deter the two sides from further expanding their cooperation on security, trade, infrastructures, and even in terms of diplomatic coordination. In December 2022, for example, the Indian delegation at the UN Security Council raised many eyebrows with its decision to abstain from a resolution aimed at condemning the brutalities of Myanmar's military regime, along with China and Russia. Few months later, a UN report denounced a series of arms transfers between the Tatmadaw and Indian state-owned defense enterprises worth US$ 51 million (Krishnan, 2023). Furthermore, 2021–2022 proved to be a record year for India–Myanmar trade, as the combined volume of bilateral exchanges reached US$ 1.89 billion, the highest since 2016 (Mizzima News, 2023). In May 2023, moreover, the two countries inaugurated a long-awaited seaport in Sittwe, which is expected to act as a central pillar of the US$ 484 million “Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project” pursued under Modi's “Act East” policy (Zsombor, 2023).

The third empirical evidence that challenges the argument according to which post-coup Myanmar is either practicing self-aloofness in the international arena or bandwagoning in China's shadow, can be found in the junta's management of the bilateral partnership with Beijing. Contrary to such expectations, Myanmar's current posture vis-à-vis the PRC is not that dissimilar from the approach exhibited between 2011 and 2021 by the Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi cabinets, inasmuch as it attentively combines elements of deference and defiance that stand at odds with the ratio of bandwagoning. This careful mixture of seemingly counteracting moves reflects Naypyidaw's ambivalent sentiments toward its far bigger neighbor and is ultimately aimed at signaling that although the junta acknowledges the vital importance of Sino–Myanmar ties, it also strives to preserve the country's autonomy and agency in the field of alignment choices. In fact, it could be argued that the coup and its dramatic aftermath harmed the bilateral partnership between the two actors, rather than acting as a catalyst for its strengthening, adding mutual feelings of suspicion and frustration that clash with the official rhetoric fueled by both sides, which labels the Sino–Myanmar relation as a “fraternal friendship” (Mezzera, 2021).

On its part, even before the putsch, the Tatmadaw had complained on many occasions about Beijing's assistance to the ethnic militias that confront the army along with the China–Myanmar border. In the wake of the 2017 Rohingya crisis, Min Aung Hlaing even alluded that the guerrilla operations carried out in Rakhine State against the Tatmadaw had benefitted from a Chinese support (Zaw, 2020). In a similar fashion, Myanmar's military leadership is also wary of the “backchannel diplomacy” unleashed by Beijing to engage the NUG and nurture the fruitful dialogue established with progressive forces before the military takeover, which reflects China's attempts to hedge its bets against the unpredictable outcomes of the country's civil war (Hein and Myers, 2023). Arguably, Beijing's efforts to reach out to the NUG further amplified the junta's sense of uncertainty and distrust with regard to the agenda and underlying intentions of its powerful neighbor, adding strong incentives to the adoption of a more nuanced and ambiguous alignment blueprint toward the PRC. Additionally, the Tatmadaw has historically considered the country's dependence on China in terms of diplomatic support, economic cooperation, and military provisions as a looming threat to its self-image as the champion and ultimate custodian of an independent and nonaligned Myanmar (Myoe, 2009: 3–4). Since the early 2000s, this perception increasingly propeled the Tatmadaw's active search for alternative security partners, as for the Russian Federation and, to a lesser extent, India and Japan. In recent years, moreover, anti-Chinese sentiments have been on the rise also among ordinary citizens due to the neocolonial approach exhibited by Beijing's economic penetration in Myanmar, which significantly tarnished the image of the PRC both in the eyes of the local establishment and the country's civil society (Palmer, 2021; Chan, 2024).

In line with its “carrots and sticks” approach, in the wake of the coup Myanmar showed a deferent and accommodative stance vis-à-vis the PRC with regard to the resumption of the infrastructural projects pursued under the banner of the “China-Myanmar Economic Corridor” (CMEC), many of which had been put on hold or scaled down by the previous government over fears of a Chinese “debt trap” (Ramachandran, 2021). Back then, around 40 per cent of Myanmar's US$ 10 billion national debt was owed to the PRC, despite the efforts of the Aung San Suu Kyi cabinet that managed to decrease the outstanding debt with Beijing by 26 per cent (Radio Free Asia, 2020). Still, with the reimposition of military rule, the imperative of weathering Western sanctions through Chinese investment persuaded the junta to adopt a more receptive approach toward the resumption of the CMEC. After the visit to China of the then Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin in April 2022, the two sides pledged to speed-up the construction of the most important projects pertaining to the CMEC, such as the deep-sea port and special economic zone in Kyaukphyu. In return, the junta obtained a guarantee that Beijing would respect and safeguard Myanmar's sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity “no matter how the situation changes” (Myat, 2023).

Similar openings, however, have been offset by the military regime through a series of defiant moves, aimed at addressing the highly asymmetrical nature of Sino–Myanmar ties and the strategic dilemmas related to China's footprint in the country. Besides the aforementioned reliance on dominance-denial efforts centered on Myanmar's blossoming partnership with Russia and quiet engagement with Japan and India, this ambivalence is also apparent in the rather tepid atmosphere that surrounds the limited interactions between the two leaderships. Emblematic, in such regard, is the almost total absence of direct contacts between Min Aung Hlaing and the Chinese leadership in the three years the followed the coup, which stands in stark contrast with his frequent trips to Russia. Since assuming power in early 2021, Min Aung Hlaing only met with the then-Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang in May 2023, during his first and long overdue official visit to Myanmar. Months before, the official trip to Myanmar of the previous Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, held in July 2022, had been completely snubbed by the Tatmadaw's commander-in-chief, as for his calls on the junta to work with opposition forces to deescalate the country's domestic crisis (Benar News, 2022). Few weeks after Wang Yi's visit, the army's decision to execute four political activists through the first use of death penalties in decades was interpreted by many as a deliberate slap in the face for Beijing's mediation efforts (Siow, 2022). In a similar fashion, in the wake of the putsch Beijing reiterated its opposition against a possible dissolution of Aung San Suu Kyi's “National League for Democracy” (NLD), in light of the extensive bilateral ties cultivated by the PRC and Myanmar's prodemocracy party between 2016 and 2021. Nonetheless, in early 2023, the junta decided to go ahead with the plan to disband the NLD and impose a draconian new party registration law, in yet another display of autonomy and defiance vis-à-vis its powerful neighbor.

Concluding Remarks

The main purpose of this study was to assess the repercussions of Myanmar's domestic crisis in the foreign policy realm, and, specifically, in terms of the degree of agency and strategic options retained by the military regime in spite of a highly deteriorated external environment. This endeavor appeared worthwhile because the case of Myanmar's post-coup foreign policy can offer important indications not only for the country's future trajectory but also to test a series of axioms that have historically shaped the IR literature on small states and their alignment strategies. In such perspective, it is undeniable that at a quick glance Myanmar appears as the perfect embodiment of the stereotypical portrait that looks at small powers as mere pawns in the “great game” determined by far superior actors, given its material limitations, domestic cleavages, and unfavorable geopolitical location. Such prejudice gained significant momentum in the wake of the army's power grab, which not only revived Myanmar's connotation as a “pariah state” and limited the diplomatic space for its diversification efforts but also amplified the country's dependence on China. According to this interpretation, a semi-isolated and war-torn Myanmar would have likely succumbed to the systemic pressures that pushed it either under Beijing's shadow or toward a state of self-aloofness from the international arena, thus resulting in the twilight of Naypyidaw's hedging efforts.

Nevertheless, as the country grapples with the far-reaching consequences of a domestic crisis that has recently entered its fifth year, the military regime has not shown any significant indication that it intends to compromise on the fundamental tenets that have historically shaped Myanmar's external relations. On the contrary, in the wake of the coup the junta exhibited a constrained yet tenacious exercise of agency in its alignment choices that encompasses proactive conduct as well as more muted forms of resistance vis-à-vis the aforementioned systemic pressures. This analysis, in particular, argued that Myanmar's resolve in safeguarding a certain degree of diversification in its ties with great powers is reflected by three different sets of actions, namely its strategic tilt toward Russia, the deliberate engagement of India and Japan, and the ambivalent attitude displayed toward China, which stands out as the key target of Naypyidaw's hedging strategy. As a result, the combined effect of these efforts allowed the regime to partially weather the diplomatic fallout of the putsch, as epitomized by Moscow's unwavering protection of the junta at the UN Security Council, while also mitigating Myanmar's overdependence on the PRC.

With regard to the drivers and motives that fuel Naypyidaw's constrained yet resilient display of agency, it can be argued that the path-dependency in committing to a nonaligned foreign policy stems primarily from two drivers: the looming strategic uncertainties related to China's role and agenda in the country, as well as Myanmar's peculiar strategic culture, which shaped the approach to foreign policy of several generations of local policymakers, regardless of their civilian or military extraction. The case of Myanmar, in other words, reconfirms the intimate linkage between the concept of agency on the part of small states, and the importance of intangible, unit-level factors that give substance to such prerogative. At its core, the exercise of agency entails the formulation and fulfillment of a set of strategic preferences, which, in turn, are influenced by several variables, starting from a series of overarching external constraints, as for Myanmar's vast power gap vis-à-vis the PRC. However, structural explanations alone are not sufficient to account for the striking variety of trajectories and alignment policies exhibited by small powers around the globe, that often transcend the binary, clear-cut dilemma between balancing and bandwagoning. The inability of conventional theories to capture such nuances thus calls for the employment of a wider analytical toolkit capable of knitting together systemic variables and unit-level attributes, which often tap into ideational and cultural specificities.

In such perspective, the concept of strategic culture successfully complements mainstream analysis based on structural variables and rational choice, inasmuch as it posits that countries express their strategic preferences in the field of alignment policies via a “bounded” decision-making process, or “cognitive milieu” (Johnston, 1995a: 45–46). The latter descends from a multiplicity of sources, including the geography, worldview, historical traumas, political system, and civil–military relations of a given community, which strongly concur in shaping its strategic predispositions and behavioral choices (Johnston, 1995b). As for several other Southeast Asian states, the paramount aspiration that shapes Myanmar's strategic culture and ensuing alignment choices revolves around the preservation of a certain degree of independence and freedom of action vis-à-vis great powers. Such imperative stems to a large extent from the historical traumas generated in the region by Western and Japanese imperialism, which pushed indigenous elites to insulate Southeast Asia from the interferences and diktats of the great powers. Accordingly, it can be argued that the exercise of international agency vis-à-vis more powerful actors embodies, in itself, the fundamental mission for Naypyidaw's relations with the outside world, even in the current scenario marked by a resurging confrontation with the West and the exclusion from ASEAN.

Additionally, it should also be noted that the enduring relevance of Myanmar's unique strategic culture offers key insights into the remarkable consistency of its alignment policies since its independence, despite a volatile political history marked by several shifts between civilian and authoritarian rule. Even after the 2021 military coup, which dashed the hopes of those predicting a decisive break toward isolationism or full alignment with China, Myanmar continues to adhere to its strategic ambivalence. As such, the continuity that characterizes Naypyidaw's approach to great power diplomacy underscores its international agency in two significant ways. First, as it arises from a deeply ingrained geopolitical calculus, aimed at preserving national autonomy while navigating the interests of larger stakeholders, including China and the West. In parallel, such a strenuous commitment to nonalignment also reflects the Tatmadaw's self-image as the beacon of Myanmar's unity against two major existential fears: the country's domestic “balkanization” along with ethnic and religious cleavages, as well as its “satelization” under the exclusive orbit of an external power. For all these reasons, Naypyidaw's future moves on the regional and international stage will most likely conform to the pattern displayed in the wake of the 2021 military takeover, also by means of recurring acts of defiance toward alleged external intrusions that serve the purpose of signaling its agency vis-à-vis the outside world.