As Myanmar’s military regime regains the strategic initiative in the civil war and seeks to normalize its relations with other Southeast Asian countries, the EU faces the politically difficult reality of having to restore ties with the junta.
Key takeaways:
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Backed by China and Russia, the Tatmadaw has regained the strategic initiative in the civil war and is likely to survive as Myanmar’s de facto ruler.
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The EU missed its window to recognize the National Unity Government or support the resistance, which could have had a meaningful impact on the conflict.
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The junta might be on the way to recognition, but the EU still has tools at its disposal, including working with critical ASEAN members, such as Timor-Leste, to continue pressure on the regime.
The National Uprising
While Myanmar’s civil war has not started after the last military coup in 2021, as many ill-informed international outlets keep on claiming, the coup was certainly a key event. It terminated the systemic transformation of Myanmar (2011-2021) and provoked unseen resistance of the Bamars, the largest ethnic group, to the rule of the Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s army. The society responded to the coup by staging mass protests, the Spring Revolution. Tatmadaw responded by increasing violence. When the non-violent way failed, the resistance turned to armed struggle.
The homegrown Bamar-led domestic armed guerrillas and military militias, the People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) loosely coordinated by the National Unity Government (NUG), a shadow government formed in September 2021, declared war on the regime, effectively staging a national uprising.
However, this did not take place in a vacuum. The civil war in Myanmar, which started in 1948, never ended, making it the longest-running conflict in the world. Initially, the civil war consisted of two major centrifugal forces: communist rebellion and, since 1949, the ethnic insurgency—initially mostly Karen, later joined by almost all ethnic minorities, known as Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs). The former one, an intra-Bamar conflict, simmered until 1989; the latter one never ended, becoming the new normalcy in many, if not most, non-Bamar parts of Myanmar.
The new stage of the civil war post-2021 produced a messy landscape: a patchwork of local clashes, coupled with changing zones of relative stability, insecurity, and chaos throughout the country. This can be divided into two theatres of war: first, the continuation of the ethnic civil war from 1949 between the Tatmadaw and the EAOs. Geographically speaking, this war continues in the ethnic peripheries of Myanmar, mostly in the seven ethnic states, though with varying intensity. Secondly, the post-2021 struggle between the Tatmadaw and the Bamar PDFs’ national uprising added a new dimension to this multilayered, complex civil war. For the first time since 1989, the Tatmadaw faces a Bamar military contender for power.
China moves in
Initially, in 2021-2023, the strategic picture was somehow typical for the decades-long civil war in Myanmar: the Tatmadaw was too strong to be beaten, yet too weak to crush all its opponents. But this changed in 2023, after the October 1027 operation by the Brotherhood Alliance of the three EAOs in which the Tatmadaw suffered a humiliating defeat in the borderlands with China. The resistance followed up in 2024 by taking over key locations in Chin (Paletwa), Shan (Lashio), and Mandalay Division (Mogok), capturing most of Rakhine state, and – for a moment – even seizing Myawaddy, the gateway to Myanmar from Thailand. The Tatmadaw was hit hard, losing the strategic initiative, and facing the most serious challenge to Bamar central government since 1949. Many in the resistance and the West believed the victory was around the corner.
It was not to be. Tatmadaw withstood punches and regained Myawaddy. More importantly, it secured a key foreign backing, the Chinese one.
After the coup, Beijing was wary. It did not like the putsch, yet it did not criticize it either. China distanced itself from the conflict, and waited for the dust to settle, just like most neighbors and ASEAN countries did. Given the West’s policy of sanctioning and isolating the Tatmadaw, it left the Min Aung Hlaing regime with only one true political ally: Russia. But Moscow is too far away, and since 2022, too preoccupied with its war against Ukraine to seriously influence the civil war in Tatmadaw’s favor. It was only once China chose sides that it made a difference.
While Beijing’s shift in favor of the Tatmadaw was gradual, it became clear by 2024. The People’s Republic of China closed its borders to the EAOs, thus cutting their supply routes, exercised pressure on the EAOs, including even putting one ethnic guerrilla leader under house arrest, all done to force concessions upon the resistance. Quite successfully, as the resistance was forced to diplomatically relinquish some militarily hard-won locations, such as Lashio or Mogok. Simultaneously, Zhongnanhai legitimized the Tatmadaw regime by allowing Min Aung Hlaing to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, and Beijing followed up by legitimizing the 2025/26 fake elections.
Back to post-1988
One did not need to wait long to see the results. Supported by China and Russia and fuelled by the masses of enforced conscripts, the Tatmadaw has been regaining ground since 2024. It retook some key locations (Falam and the Mandalay-Myitkyina highway), regained the strategic initiative and pushed the resistance onto the defensive.
While much of the country remains to be recaptured by the Tatmadaw, and not all is lost for the resistance, the dynamics are clear. Tatmadaw is winning, the resistance is losing, and the hope of toppling one of the world’s worst military regimes is waning.
The most likely scenario now is the repetition of the post-1988 story. Back then, the society staged its spectacular 8888 revolution. It was bloodily pacified, so many protestors went to the jungle and joined the ethnic guerrillas’ struggle against the junta. Hopes were high, but ultimately the Bamar resistance lost (only the EAOs remained in the ring). It took the generals a while, but the military regime finally secured external legitimacy, first regionally in the 1990s (China, India and ASEAN membership in 1997) and then globally in the 2010s, despite its poor human rights record, Western sanctions and international isolation.
The generals weathered all these challenges and remained at the helm. Now, probably the story will repeat itself (in the best, or worst Marxist logic: as a farce), as the Min Aung Hlaing regime is already legitimized by China, Thailand and India, and others (Malaysia) are on the line. Sooner or later, ASEAN will restore its full ties with Tatmadaw, making virtue out of necessity. And this will put the EU in a very uncomfortable position.
The halfway: The EU’s stance
The EU’s initial reaction to the 2021 coup was strong condemnation. Just like other Western nations, the EU and its member states did not recognize the junta and downgraded their diplomatic missions. However, the EU did not recognize the NUG either, although several Western politicians engaged with NUG officials. Symbolically, the European Parliament and the French Senate passed resolutions supporting the recognition of the NUG. But such a move never happened.
At the same time, the EU and other Western countries supported Kyaw Moe Tun, the Burmese Permanent Representative to the UN, who had been nominated by the Suu Kyi government before the coup and remained loyal to the toppled government (famously renouncing the coup publicly during the UN General Assembly session). Since then, the Tatmadaw generals unsuccessfully tried to both replace and kill him, but he survived. This would not have been possible without Western support, since Western countries, especially the United States, officially recognized him. Even China did not help the Tatmadaw, finally reaching a quiet compromise with Western countries: Kyaw Moe Tun was to stay, but keep a low profile.
On the economic front, the EU reintroduced sanctions. Initially, in March 2021, these were quite symbolic (sanctions on individuals only), but they soon became more substantial in June 2021, and especially in February 2022, on the first anniversary of the coup. The most important was the sanctioning of the Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), which occurred a month after Total and Chevron decided to terminate a lucrative cooperation with MOGE. This was a strong political decision, as MOGE accounted for around 50% of Myanmar’s foreign currency earnings from Burmese gas. Sanctioning MOGE was intended to cut off one of the military’s major sources of revenue. This decision, alongside other measures, meant that the newest sanctions were unprecedented in scale and much harsher than those imposed in the 1990s and 2000s. They dealt the Tatmadaw a severe blow. But they did not destroy it politically.
What the EU could have done was to diplomatically recognize the NUG or support the PDFs militarily to help overthrow the junta. The window of opportunity for this opened in late 2023 after the 1027 operation and remained open for roughly one year. While this is purely speculative, one might imagine that such recognition would have boosted the resistance and depressed the Tatmadaw, and it might have played a role in many Tatmadaw officers’ decision to switch sides—a countercoup or other intra-regime dynamics was the resistance’s best chance to win the war.
Hard choices for ASEAN and the EU
We will never know whether this could have been the missing element in overwhelming the military regime. However, the EU stopped in its policy toward Myanmar halfway. And once the window of opportunity closed by autumn 2024, when it became clear that China supported Tatmadaw, the new reality set in.
The EU remains publicly highly critical of the junta. In a European Parliament resolution adopted on 27 November 2025, the parliament reiterated its support for ASEAN’s diplomatic efforts to resolve the matter, including ASEAN’s Five-Point Consensus of April 2021, with 519 votes in favor. However, this friendly, diplomatic language cannot hide the fact that many European politicians and members of parliament view ASEAN’s mediation efforts as inadequate. ASEAN’s influence on the regime, though, is in fact limited and illustrates the institutional weaknesses of the association, notably its strict consensus principle and non-interference into domestic affairs.
Timor-Leste, though, puts these principles to the test, as the newest ASEAN member takes a strong political stance against the junta. It has clearly voiced its concerns about human rights violations – not only before joining ASEAN but even since its admission. It thereby goes well beyond the carefully drafted ASEAN statements. In the past, the Timorese president and ministers have met with NUG ministers. In retaliation, Myanmar had expelled Timor-Leste’s charge d’affaires in 2023. The junta even aimed to block Dili’s admission to ASEAN until the very last minute in October 2025. Eventually, it agreed to Timor-Leste’s membership, as Dili promised not to allow the NUG to operate on Timorese soil.
However, Timor-Leste broke new ground in ASEAN, as in February 2026, its judicial authorities initiated unprecedented criminal proceedings against Myanmar’s military junta and Min Aung Hlaing, alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity. This action marks the first instance of an ASEAN member initiating judicial proceedings against another member state.
Although such conduct is novel within ASEAN, particularly for a small, economically weak, and newly admitted member, it reflects Timor-Leste’s history of struggle for independence and subsequent democratization. Timor-Leste is widely regarded as the Southeast Asian country with the strongest democratic credentials and therefore enjoys internationally strong credibility in promoting human rights.
The EU should diplomatically support Timor-Leste’s efforts to pressure ASEAN to more actively resolve the crisis in Myanmar. This, however, will cause a backlash from other ASEAN members, in particular, as the new quasi-civilian government in Naypyidaw aims to normalize its relations with ASEAN. Even though ASEAN as a bloc has so far neither recognized the recent election nor the new government, there is increasing internal pressure to do so. Notably, Thailand, which has close relations both with the regime and the opposition, is interested in supporting Myanmar’s “return to ASEAN”. Thailand, which shares a 2,400-kilometer-long border with Myanmar, is severely impacted by an influx of refugees and transnational crime and, thus, has a strong domestic interest in strengthening formal dialogue channels with the quasi-civilian government.
If ASEAN coalesces around a strategy of normalizing relations with Myanmar and that approach proves effective in the medium term, the EU may face a difficult choice: recognize Min Aung Hlaing’s regime or risk straining its ties with ASEAN by supporting Timor-Leste’s values-based policy toward Myanmar.
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