Myanmar’s former commander in chief now calls himself President, following January elections widely condemned as fraudulent. His fitful transformation from generalissimo to civilian statesman extends even to awkward attempts at bonhomie. He confesses to loving golf—he plays off an 18 handicap—though a bad back has lately kept him from the fairway.
Min Aung Hlaing may have swapped his uniform for a silken longyi sarong, but the barracks instinct to conceal, deflect, and command remains firmly in place. “Some of my responses didn’t directly touch upon your questions, but I hope they were still useful,” he offers after our hour together.
For neighbors, engagement is born of necessity: Myanmar is not only the world’s top producer of methamphetamine and opium, but also the nerve center of a global “scamdemic” that loots unsuspecting bank accounts to the tune of $15 billion annually. “The situation in Myanmar is having a global impact,” says Jeremy Douglas, deputy director of operations at the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. “It’s off the charts, and the region needs to intervene before it gets worse.”
Students play on a naval gun at the Defense Services Museum in Naypyidaw.Yet the reputational stakes of cozying up to Min Aung Hlaing may eclipse these riches. The Southeast Asian nation of 55 million, formerly known as Burma, remains racked by civil war between forces loyal to his government, ethnic rebel groups, and a National Unity Government (NUG) spawned from the ousted administration of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains in detention. Today, Min Aung Hlaing controls less than half of Myanmar’s total landmass.
The conflict has so far claimed more than 100,000 lives, displaced 3.6 million people, and sent countless others fleeing across Myanmar’s borders. Troops under Min Aung Hlaing’s command stand accused of torching villages, massacring civilians, and committing sexual violence, while fighter aircraft and drones have targeted schools and temples. U.N. investigators have accused him of genocide, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. He denies wrongdoing.
Fulsome engagement will “infuriate a large portion of the Myanmar population,” says Scot Marciel, U.S. ambassador to Myanmar from 2016 to 2020. “But I don’t think Trump and company care.”
Devotees pray and make offerings at the Shwedagon pagoda in Yangon.“It’s hard to ascribe a clear strategy for China in Myanmar,” says Drew Thompson, a former U.S. defense official now at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “It’s contributed to instability by not creating a preponderance of power in any one place.”
A revised Myanmar policy is far from a priority for the U.S. “There would have to be some tangible economic benefit to really bother,” says Marciel. Min Aung Hlaing has enlisted influential people to make that case; lobbyist Roger Stone—a Trump confidant—is being paid $50,000 a month to help “rebuild” relations with D.C., according to official filings.
Yet engagement would also erase much of America’s moral authority in the region. Min Aung Hlaing isn’t shy in his hope that America First nativism offers him a lifeline: “It would be ideal if the U.S. could cooperate with us in fostering the peace, stability, and development essential for our people to successfully realize a fully democratic state.”
Those traditions are on full display a short drive from Min Aung Hlaing’s office, where Myanmar’s Defense Services Museum sprawls across 600 manicured acres. Buses of schoolchildren streaked with golden thanaka paste—a traditional sunscreen and beauty adornment—clamber over decommissioned fighter jets, tanks, and anti-aircraft guns.
A vendor sells vegetables on a street in Mandalay.Waitresses clean a table at a cafe in Mandalay.
Min Aung Hlaing’s formative environment was Ne Win’s military machine—an institution that regarded itself as sole guardian of unity, sovereignty, and political order. “The military is an integral part of the nation,” he says, “and military personnel and their families are a part of the people.”
It was a strange moment in Myanmar. The old junta run by another military dictator, Senior General Than Shwe, was nominally stepping back, easing censorship, and releasing political prisoners, including Suu Kyi, who eventually assumed executive power as state counselor. Min Aung Hlaing presented himself as a professional soldier supporting a carefully managed transition. He cultivated foreign military relationships, met diplomats, and posed with monks. The once taciturn officer increasingly behaved like a politician.
Yet civilian control was a mirage: the 2008 constitution guaranteed a quarter of legislative seats for the military, which also nominated the ministers of defense, home affairs, and border affairs. Reform unfolded inside a constitutional cage. Civilian leaders could redirect spending toward schools and hospitals, but they could not restrain the generals, overcome weak institutions, or decentralize power. “There was still a military mindset that Burma is a victim, and the perpetrators are always invidious foreigners,” says Turnell. “The international economy was an arena of threat rather than opportunity.”
Attacks on security posts by Rohingya militants the next year prompted counterterrorism “clearance operations” that saw hundreds of villages burned amid accusations of mass executions and rape. More than 700,000 fled across the Bangladeshi border, while a U.N. fact-finding mission conservatively estimates up to 10,000 were killed. An International Criminal Court prosecutor sought Min Aung Hlaing’s arrest for crimes against humanity, while a separate Argentine warrant also accuses him of genocide. “We have not committed any such acts against the Bengalis in Rakhine state,” he says. “Our actions were strictly limited to safeguarding our country’s sovereignty. Our conscience is entirely clear.”
Peanut farmers working on their plots in Mandalay.A local family visits a shopping mall in Mandalay.Yet Suu Kyi’s performance also angered Myanmar’s top brass, who deemed her defense lukewarm after she raised the possibility of courts-martial for military transgressors. “It was the wrong strategy,” says Aung Zaw, a former student activist and founder of the Thailand-based magazine The Irrawaddy. “She was seen as defending the regime at the Hague, but then the military also weren’t happy.”
On Feb. 1, 2021, a convoy of black military vehicles rolled through Naypyidaw to detain top NLD leaders. Suu Kyi was sentenced to 33 years (now reduced to 18) on charges ranging from corruption to illegally possessing walkie-talkies. “I have been extremely lenient toward her,” Min Aung Hlaing says with a straight face. “We made every possible effort to prevent the situation from reaching this point.”
The coup is best understood as a reaction to a regime losing control. According to a leaked 2004 military dossier, the junta engineered reforms to hedge against Beijing’s overbearing influence and leverage Suu Kyi’s freedom to win Western trade, aid, and diplomatic legitimacy. But the generals miscalculated the public’s fierce devotion to “The Lady,” whose popularity proved fundamentally incompatible with the military’s absolute power. Myanmar’s military also has sprawling business interests spanning banking, mining, gems, construction, manufacturing, tobacco, tourism, transport, telecoms, and real estate. Reforms threatened this gravy train.
Devotees at the Māravijaya Buddha shrine in Naypyidaw.
But in Myanmar, a defiant Gen Z refused to submit. Millions joined nationwide general strikes, doctors and teachers walked off the job, and young citizens formed the People’s Defense Forces (PDF), bringing armed resistance from rural borderlands into urban strongholds. The military responded with summary executions, mass arrests, and airstrikes. By late 2023, three ethnic armed groups launched Operation 1027 in the country’s northeast, overrunning more than 200 military outposts. Analysts openly predicted the regime’s collapse, and rumors of an internal military revolt circulated.
Yet Min Aung Hlaing’s ultimate salvation came from Beijing, which was initially angered by his power grab and refused early requests to meet President Xi Jinping. To save face, Min Aung Hlaing instead flew to Moscow. “Whenever we have faced crises due to our political situations, Russia has consistently supported us,” he says.
A panicked Min Aung Hlaing pivoted to full cooperation with China, handing over the scam bigwigs as well as tens of thousands of lowly fraudsters. In response, Beijing has entered a cautious détente, welcoming Min Aung Hlaing to Beijing, strong-arming rebels into cease-fires, and supplying military hardware—all on the strict condition that he safeguard Chinese economic assets and rein in criminal syndicates.
Locals inspecting stones at the jade market in Mandalay.Potential buyers and sellers at the jade market.
Myanmar’s lopsided reliance on China glitters in plain sight at Mandalay’s jade market. Each morning, heavily tattooed Burmese traders lay conflict-zone stones across folding tables for Chinese merchants to probe with flashlights. Once cut and polished, the jade is sold to buyers across greater China, often via TikTok and RedNote.
It’s not just Chinese traders feeling the pinch, with total cross-border trade plunging by around half since the coup. That decline stokes frustration not only with the government but also the NUG, amid growing fatalism toward the prospect of meaningful change. “The PDF are gangsters,” says one dad of two in Mandalay. “Now we must pay money to both the government and rebels. They should stop fighting. Democracy is best, but stability is better than war.”
But across this social chasm the great unifier is animus toward Min Aung Hlaing; a mere mention of his name will elicit a sneer, headshake, or crimson jet of betel spit. Outside the country, people are more explicit. “He’s a clown,” says Mon Mon Myat, the biographer. He’s the “worst of all Myanmar’s military dictators,” says U Gambira, a prominent monk and activist. “People are disgusted by him,” says Aung Zaw, the journalist.
Locals at a park underneath a canopy of trees inside the Mandalay palace's compound.
Min Aung Hlaing is pitching sanctions relief as a win-win, dangling carrots to coax the international community back to the table. An earlier bilateral agreement to repatriate the Rohingya is dependent on rolling back legal challenges, he says. Otherwise, “it becomes an impossible situation for us to resolve.” A potential amnesty for Suu Kyi “depends on her,” he says, though suggested that could change if “grounds for reconsideration emerge on our part.”
Such demands would be dead on arrival in an era governed by values-based foreign policy. Today, they may find a market. “The key thing to understand is, whether you engage with the military or not, their behavior will not change,” says Marciel. “That said, isolation has limited value as well.”
As global powers weigh strategic leverage against democratic ideals, Myanmar’s people remain trapped in a grim deadlock—a despot that cannot conquer, a resistance that cannot win, and foreign capitals reluctant to tilt the scales. The tragedy of Myanmar is not just that it burns, but that every player can feed the flames, while none can build a nation from the ashes.
Hence then, the article about exclusive myanmar s dictator wants to rebuild ties with the west was published today ( ) and is available on Time ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Exclusive: Myanmar’s Dictator Wants to Rebuild Ties With the West )
Also on site :
- Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions and Universal Film Team With American Cinematheque and Beyond Fest for ‘No Drama’ Initiative (EXCLUSIVE)
- VMAs Producer Van Toffler on Nirvana & George Michael Tributes at 2026 Awards and Why the VMAs Are Best at Their Most ‘Age, Genre & Color Blind’
- ‘America’s Got Talent’ 2026 Finale Moves to New Time Slot Tonight: Here’s How to Watch