What Myanmar coup means for Biden’s pro-democracy vision

Promoting democracy and exercising global leadership are core, value-laden elements of President Biden’s foreign policy vision. Both are being challenged by the military coup in Myanmar.

The weekend military coup that deposed Myanmar’s elected government and landed democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi under arrest poses an early test for President Joe Biden’s vow to buttress the world’s democracies against a rising authoritarian tide.

The United States played a critical role in the Southeast Asian nation’s emergence a decade ago from a half-century of military rule and international isolation.

When the country returned to nominally civilian rule in 2015, the U.S. hailed Myanmar, also known as Burma, as an example of how persistent and coercive diplomacy could team up with a fervent local population to deliver a transition to democracy.

But in the wake of the Feb. 1 coup, Mr. Biden may find there is not much, beyond a reimposition of sanctions and coordinated international condemnation, the U.S. can do to deter a military leadership that never fully relinquished power.

That does not mean Mr. Biden’s vision of a renewed commitment to supporting democratic growth is a waste of time and resources, some international experts say, but rather that political transition – especially from military rule – is almost always prone to setbacks.

“This is another instance of something we’ve seen repeatedly in the past, namely that entrenched militaries have a very hard time giving up power,” says Thomas Carothers, a leading authority on international support for democracy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. He cites Egypt and Thailand as other examples.