The Burma-Thailand Gas Debacle

Sustainable Weapons Expenditure

As security analyst William Ashton noted in the June 2004 issue of The Irrawaddy, the Burmese government has been on an accelerated arms-buying spree since 2002, which happens to roughly coincide with Rangoon taking delivery of gas revenues from Yadana.

...which enabled Burma to buy some of these (above: MiG-29 bought from Russia: inset: BTR-3U from Ukraine)

Major arms deals with China; eighty 75-mm howitzers from India (with more purchases in the pipeline); radar systems, tanks and 500 armored personnel carriers from the Ukraine; “Nora” self-propelled howitzers and an upgrade to its fleet of SOKO G-4 jets from Serbia; MiG-29 fighters from Russia and unspecified cargoes arriving from North Korea. The various, mainly Eastern European, mainly state-owned arms companies that Burma has recently started doing business with, don’t generally demand much cash upfront; but they want to be confident that clients are capable of servicing their debts. The purchases show no sign of slowing. Next year Rangoon’s gas earnings are set to more than double to more than $250 million.

The question begs asking: why is one of the world’s poorest countries spending most of its foreign exchange on guns, and what does it propose to do with them? Fight its neighbors?

Burma’s historic enemy is Thailand. The armed forces of the two countries have had occasional skirmishes and there are areas along their long common border where sovereignty is disputed.