He concluded: “The new location will give the military high command easy access to heavily forested mountainous areas in the north bordering China or India; this is vital for protracted guerilla warfare.”
Maung Aung Myoe noted that Burma’s military leaders seem to have adopted Mao Tse-tung’s maxim that guerillas must be “like fish in water.”
“The guerilla or regular army (fish) has to operate (swim) in the people (water): therefore, the control of the water temperature is important in the success of the people’s war,” he wrote.
Indeed, the move to Naypyidaw and the doctrine behind the junta’s people’s war could have been taken straight from Mao’s interpretations of Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War”: “The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; and the enemy retreats; we pursue.”
If Burma did come under attack, Maung Aung Myoe asserts, Burma’s armed forces would be put to the test, not least because of a lack of training, wartime experience and operational capability.
Evidently, these weaknesses were exposed last year when the Tatmadaw appeared unable to synchronize its army, navy and air force to confront naval aid vessels from the US, Britain and France that had closed in on Burmese waters to deliver humanitarian aid to cyclone victims in the Irrawaddy delta.
In the end, political wrangling resulted in the ships leaving Burma without delivering the aid. But army sources claimed that the regime leaders had mobilized the country’s paltry air force and missile systems around Naypyidaw in preparation for an outbreak of hostilities.
Aware of its limitations, the Tatmadaw has since upgraded and expanded several airfields in central and southern Burma, and the nation’s air defenses have been greatly enhanced by newly procured signals intelligence equipment, according to Maung Aung Myoe.
Whether or not the Burmese junta could rally its forces and effectively coordinate a people’s war, the question remains: why would another country invade Burma?
One answer could be that Burma sits between the world’s two most populous nations—India and China—who are increasingly competing and hungry for energy and natural resources.
China, the regime’s foremost ally, is increasingly looking for access to the Indian Ocean via Burma. China is also building oil and gas pipelines through Burma and developing a deepwater port at Sittwe in Arakan State.
Robert Kaplan’s recent article in Foreign Affairs magazine concluded that Burma and Pakistan are two of the least stable countries in the world.
“The collapse of the junta in Myanmar—where competition over energy and natural resources between China and India looms—would threaten economies nearby and require a massive seaborne humanitarian intervention,” wrote Kaplan.
If Burma slides even deeper into political, economic and humanitarian crises, one could conclude there was a rationality in Than Shwe’s people’s war and a reason for him to be paranoid.
However, if Than Shwe had the vision to steer Burma toward being a stable, strong and prosperous nation, he wouldn’t need to prepare for a people’s war. But then again, it appears that he made his choice long ago.
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