Burmese generals have long sought to defend themselves from imagined external threats, masking their intense paranoia with a military shield
ARMED ethnic insurgents pose little threat nowadays to the Burmese regime, but that doesn’t deter the generals in Naypyidaw from continually strengthening their military capacity and spending the country’s precious foreign reserves on more sophisticated weapons, such as jet fighters, an air defense system, naval ships and short and medium-range missiles.
Analysts generally agree that the junta’s modern military arsenal is ill-suited for combating guerilla warfare in a mountainous jungle, but is more realistically intended as a defensive shield against an external threat.
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Burmese troops march in Resistance Park in Rangoon in 2005 to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Armed Forces Day. (Photo: Reuters) |
When Gen Maung Aye visited Moscow in April 2006, he told Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov that Burma wished to order more Russian-made MiG-29 jet fighters (in addition to the 12 it had already secured), as well as 12 secondhand MI-17 helicopters. According to sources, Maung Aye asked the Russians to sell Burma the aircraft at “friendship prices.”
At the same time, the deputy chief of Burma’s armed forces also expressed a desire to build a short-range guided missile system in central Burma with assistance from Russia. And the wish list did not stop there.
The Russian military was asked to provide training in the manufacture of guided missiles and to supply a “Pechora” air defense system—a Russian-made, surface-to-air anti-aircraft system.
Unless the regime believes the Karen National Union and other armed ethnic groups are planning to take their insurgency to the skies, it is clear that Naypyidaw envisaged a potential threat from a foreign power.
Most analysts concurred that the Burmese regime—unlike the North Korean government under Kim Jong-il—did not have the capacity, or desire, to obtain nuclear weapons.
That was until 2007, when word leaked that Burma had contracted Russia’s federal atomic energy agency, Rosatom, to help build a 10-megawatt nuclear reactor in central Burma.
Naturally, Burma claimed that its quest for nuclear energy was not weapons-related. In fairness, the junta had come clean in January 2002 when then-deputy Foreign Minister Khin Maung Win declared that Burma’s “interest in nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is longstanding,” dating back as far as the 1950s.
However, the regime has offered little or no transparency in its development of the nuclear reactor and dissidents in exile charge that the regime seeks to build a nuclear weapon.
In recent years, the junta has been actively enlisting North Korean advice on missile technology, and during his acquisitive trip to Russia, Maung Aye pressed his hosts for expertise in developing a nuclear reactor. He also suggested that Naypyidaw send students to Russia to study nuclear science.
Let’s be frank and clear—Burma does not face an external threat today, nor does any foreign country intend to invade Burma in the foreseeable future.
So, why are the generals in Naypyidaw so paranoid?
Maung Aung Myoe, a Burmese scholar who has specialized on the Burmese armed forces, or Tatmadaw, says in the recent book, “Building the Tatmadaw,” that since it came into power in 1988, the military leadership has frequently reviewed its existing defensive strategy and moved to modernize the country’s military capacity.
“This probably reflected the fear of direct invasion or invasion by proxy,” wrote Maung Aung Myoe. “The state-owned media had cited from time to time the presence of a US naval fleet in Myanmar’s [Burma’s] territorial waters during the 1988 political upheaval as evidence of an infringement of Myanmar’s sovereignty.”
The regime was also concerned that foreign powers might help insurgents on the border to develop formidable armies that would challenge the regime in Rangoon. From that fear a new doctrine and military strategy was formed, and the molding of a “people’s war” was pursued.
The concept of “people’s war” was first touched upon by Gen Aung San in 1947 and was taken up as a doctrine by Gen Ne Win after he led a military coup in 1962.