Winning by Process Jacques Bertrand, Alexandre Pelletier, Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung
08/2022
eBook
Winning by Process asks why
the peace process stalled in the decade from 2011 to 2021 despite a
liberalizing regime, a national ceasefire agreement, and a
multilateral peace dialogue between the ...state and ethnic
minorities.
Winning by Process argues that stalled conflicts are
more than pauses or stalemates. "Winning by process," as opposed to
winning by war or agreement, represents the state's ability to gain
advantage by manipulating the rules of negotiation, bargaining
process, and sites of power and resources. In Myanmar, five such
strategies allowed the state to gain through process: locking in,
sequencing, layering, outflanking, and outgunning. The Myanmar case
shows how process can shift the balance of power in negotiations
intended to bring an end to civil war. During the last decade, the
Myanmar state and military controlled the process, neutralized
ethnic minority groups, and continued to impose their vision of a
centralized state even as they appeared to support federalism.
The people of Myanmar were struck by three major human rights
disasters during the country's period of democratization from 2003
to 2012: the 2007 Saffron Revolution, the aftermath of Cyclone
Nargis ...in 2008, and the 2012 Rakhine riots, which would evolve into
the ongoing Rohingya crisis. These events saw Myanmar's government
categorically labeled as an offender of human rights, and three
powerful Southeast Asian member states-Indonesia, Thailand, and
Malaysia-responded to the violations in very different ways. In
each case, their responses to the crises were explicitly shaped by
norm conflict, which may be understood as a tension between
international and domestic norms. Their reactions were compelled by
a need to address conflicting domestic and international
expectations for norm compliance regarding human rights protection
and non-interference in internal affairs.
In Norms in Conflict: Southeast Asia's Response to
Human Rights Violations in Myanmar, Anchalee Rüland makes
sense of state action that occurs when a governing body is faced
with a circumstance that is at once in line with and contrary to
its own governing policies. She defines five different types of
response strategies to situations of norm conflict and examines the
enabling factors that lead to each strategy. Domestic norms are
known to evolve as a country's values change over time yet Rüland
argues that the old and new norms may also coexist; knowledge of
the underlying political context is crucial for those seeking a
solid understanding of state behavior. Norms in Conflict
challenges the conventional understanding of the logic of
consequences in determining state behavior, advancing
constructivist theory and establishing a provocative new
conversation in international relations discourse.
On 1 February 2021, under the command of General Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar's military initiated a coup, apparently drawing to a close Myanmar's ten-year experiment with democratic rule. State ...Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint were arrested along with other elected officials.Mass protests against the coup ensued, led by Gen Z youths who shaped a values-based democratic revolutionary movement that in character is anti-military regime, anti-China influence, anti-authoritarian, anti-racist, and anti-sexist. Women and minorities have been at the forefront, organizing protests, shaping campaigns, and engaging sectors of society that in the past had been relegated to the periphery of national politics. The protests were broadcast to local and international audiences through social media.
"Set in the South and Southeast Region, this book attempts to analyze the implications of both genocides perpetrated on the unarmed Rohingya minority community in Myanmar, and the geopolitics of the ...powers of the region that deter the resolution of this festering problem. The book highlights the helplessness of the UN system to take any punitive actions against the perpetrators i.e. the security forces of Myanmar given that China, India and Russia, who are taking the side of Myanmar for geopolitical reasons. They have exercised their vetoes at the UNSC to such an action. The book describes the key players in this region, their interests, compulsions and imperatives, and covers different strategies launched by the United States, China, India, Japan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar that tend to stall the resolution of the process or even refusing to take back the Rohingya refugees-1.1 million of them including children and women-now languishing i
The City and the Wilderness recounts the journeys and
microhistories of Indo-Persian travelers across the Indian Ocean
and their encounters with the Burmese Kingdom and its littoral at
the turn of ...the nineteenth century. As Mughal sovereignty waned
under British colonial rule, Indo-Persian travelers and
intermediaries linked to the East India Company explored and
surveyed the Burmese Empire, inscribing it as a forest landscape
and Buddhist kingdom at the crossroads of South and Southeast Asia.
Based on colonial Persian travel books and narratives in which
Indo-Persian knowledge and perceptions of the wondrous edges of the
Indian Ocean merged with Orientalist pursuits, The City and the
Wilderness uncovers fading histories of inter-Asian crossings
and exchanges at the ends of the Mughal world.
Adela Frost wants to do something with her life. When a chance encounter and a haunting dream steer her toward distant Burma, she decides to spend the summer after high school volunteering in a ...Buddhist monastery. Adela finds fresh confidence as she immerses herself in her new environment, teaching English to the monks and studying meditation with the wise abbot. Then there's her secret romance with Thiha, an ex-political prisoner with a shadowy past. But when some of the monks express support for the persecution of the country's Rohingya Muslim minority, Adela glimpses the turmoil that lies beneath Burma's tranquil surface. While investigating the country's complex history, she becomes determined to help stop communal violence. With Thiha's assistance, she concocts a scheme that quickly spirals out of control. Adela must decide whether to back down or double down, while protecting those she cares about from the backlash of Buddhist and Muslim extremists. Set against the backdrop of Burma's fractured transition to democracy, this coming-of-age story weaves critiques of "voluntourism" and humanitarian intervention into a young woman's quest for connection across cultural boundaries. This work of literary fiction will fascinate Southeast Asia buffs and anyone interested in places where the truth is bitterly contested territory.
Myanmar shifted into the centre of international attention in 2011, when the new civilian government took over. Enormous media scrutiny began in 2017 and 2018 after the outbreak of violence between ...Muslim and Buddhist population groups. This book brings together papers presented at the Myanmar Conference 2017, the annual gathering of German-speaking Myanmar scholars. It contains articles concerned with the major issues currently facing development in Myanmar. Topics explored here include Muslims in Arakan (widely known as Rohingya) and how they became foreigners in Myanmar; the economic perspective of everyday life on one side and governmental planning on the other side; Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of the country, and the various challenges she faces as a female politician; and an ethnographic note on how textile production can look in the hinterland of Shan State.
Reforms in Myanmar (formerly Burma) have eased restrictions on citizens' political activities. Yet for most Burmese, Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung shows, eking out a living from day to day leaves little ...time for civic engagement. Citizens have coped with extreme hardship through great resourcefulness. But by making bad situations more tolerable in the short term, these coping strategies may hinder the emergence of the democratic values needed to sustain the country's transition to a more open political environment.
Thawnghmung conducted in-depth interviews and surveys of 372 individuals from all walks of life and across geographical locations in Myanmar between 2008 and 2015. To frame her analysis, she provides context from countries with comparable political and economic situations. Her findings will be welcomed by political scientists and policy analysts, as well by journalists and humanitarian activists looking for substantive, reliable information about everyday life in a country that remains largely in the shadows.
The EU has threatened to suspend Generalized Scheme of Preferences (GSP) status for Myanmar, under which the country's exports can enter Europe without any tariffs or quotas. The official reason ...cited by the EU is a growing concern over human rights violations and issues around labour rights in Myanmar. If this threat were to be carried out, the business sector that will be most affected is Myanmar's burgeoning garment sector, which employs around 700,000 people, most of whom are women.
In The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, Jeremy Yellen exposes the history, politics, and intrigue that characterized the era when Japan's "total empire" met the total war of World War II. He ...illuminates the ways in which the imperial center and its individual colonies understood the concept of the Sphere, offering two sometimes competing, sometimes complementary, and always intertwined visions-one from Japan, the other from Burma and the Philippines.
Yellen argues that, from 1940 to 1945, the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere epitomized two concurrent wars for Asia's future: the first was for a new type of empire in Asia, and the second was a political war, waged by nationalist elites in the colonial capitals of Rangoon and Manila. Exploring Japanese visions for international order in the face of an ever-changing geopolitical situation, The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere explores wartime Japan's desire to shape and control its imperial future while its colonies attempted to do the same. At Japan's zenith as an imperial power, the Sphere represented a plan for regional domination; by the end of the war, it had been recast as the epitome of cooperative internationalism. In the end, the Sphere could not survive wartime defeat, and Yellen's lucidly written account reveals much about the desires of Japan as an imperial and colonial power, as well as the ways in which the subdued colonies in Burma and the Philippines jockeyed for agency and a say in the future of the region.
