Editor’s Note: Stimson’s Myanmar Project seeks a variety of analytical perspectives on issues relating to Myanmar’s civil war, domestic politics, foreign relations, and other topics. Thitinan Pongsudhirak is professor at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Political Science and a senior fellow at its Institute of Security and International Studies in Bangkok. He is an expert on ASEAN and international relations across Southeast Asia.

By Pamela Kennedy, Deputy Director, East Asia Program

More than five years after Myanmar’s military coup, ASEAN confronts a different conundrum from what it faced in 2021. The bloc’s Five-Point Consensus (5PC), agreed to personally by Min Aung Hlaing in April that year, was intended to reduce violence, enable humanitarian assistance, and promote an inclusive political dialogue brokered by an ASEAN envoy. None of these objectives have been achieved. Thanks to China’s regime-saving intervention in a virulent civil war, Myanmar’s military under junta chief Min Aung Hlaing has soldiered on and is trying to convert its survival at home into acceptance abroad.

What Myanmar has undergone is essentially a delayed fait accompli. The February 2021 coup initially looked unlike the military takeovers of 1962 and 1988 because it nearly unraveled. A nationwide uprising sprang up organically and evolved into an armed resistance led by the National Unity Government (NUG), People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) and motley but seasoned Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs). By late 2023, particularly after Operation 1027, Myanmar’s military was losing territory and appeared close to being toppled by the resistance coalition.

The resistance, however, failed to translate battlefield gains into a coherent and bold political takeover. By mid-2024, anti-regime forces controlled more than half the country and could have declared an alternative government, but the NUG remained weak in leadership, visibility, and organizational reach. EAOs and especially PDF units in the country’s heartlands fought effectively but pursued overlapping rather than unified objectives. The resistance evidently did not lack courage or legitimacy and support among the Myanmar people. The problem was its inability to turn military momentum into political authority capable of supplanting military rule.

China initially waited out the civil war to see which side would come out on top. Beijing had maintained contacts with all sides, including the NUG. But once it concluded that the resistance coalition could destabilize Myanmar without taking power and providing a central authority to deal with, China prioritized order and stability. Concerned about fragmentation along its frontier and threats to Chinese investments, pipelines, and trade routes, Beijing brokered ceasefires and pressured key ethnic armies — the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) — within its orbit to pull back and return territory. Combined with Russian arms, military conscription, and continued extractive resource revenues, the junta under the State Administration Council was able to regroup and regain its footing.

The military-controlled elections of December 2025 and January 2026 sealed this putschist fait accompli. Neither nationwide nor competitive, the bogus polls excluded the National League for Democracy party, which won landslide elections in 2015 and 2020 only to be dissolved after the coup. The polls thus complicated and exacerbated rather than mitigated or resolved the political crisis induced by the coup. Instead, they institutionalized it and converted the military’s overthrow of an electoral mandate into the appearance of a civilian-led government, as Min Aung Hlaing stepped down as military commander-in-chief to become president, replaced in the high command by his crony generals.

Contemptuous of democratic legitimacy, Min Aung Hlaing used the sham elections as a procedural façade which he could leverage to gain international acceptance. Since assuming the presidency in April, he has visited India, China, Laos, and Thailand. On August 17 he departed for Russia, his fifth foreign destination as president. The diplomatic offensive is aimed not merely at bilateral recognition but at eventually restoring Myanmar’s standing internationally, including its contested United Nations representation and its place at ASEAN’s top table.

The Thai government’s giddy reception of Min Aung Hlaing on August 6–7 — and its subsequent welcome of Myanmar’s new military chief for his first foreign visit two weeks later — was particularly consequential, as Thailand is a founding member of ASEAN and Myanmar’s most exposed neighbor. Bangkok described its policy as “calibrated re-engagement,” pointing to cross-border trade, energy, migrant labor, refugees, narcotics, scam networks, and collateral damage from the civil war. Although Thailand’s bilateral interests are undeniable as it shares a long border with Myanmar, practical engagement for Bangkok should not have featured a red-carpet reception, honor guard, and business summit aimed at raising bilateral trade to $12 billion. Border coordination, energy flows, humanitarian contacts, and security cooperation could continue without conferring political rehabilitation. The distinction between engagement and endorsement matters because Min Aung Hlaing personally agreed to the 5PC and subsequently betrayed it, while violence he triggered has resulted in more than 100,000 deaths.¹“More than 100,000 killed in Myanmar since 2021 coup, monitor says,” France 24, July 1, 2026, https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20260701-myanmar-mourns-as-post-coup-conflict-death-toll-hits-100-000.

What followed the Bangkok visit is instructive. Rather than responding to re-engagement with concessions, Min Aung Hlaing actually hardened his position and struck a defiant tone. Tantamount to a slap in the face, Myanmar’s authorities rejected the continuing need for an ASEAN special envoy and resisted ASEAN pressure concerning Aung San Suu Kyi, whose prolonged detention and concocted jail sentence after the coup remain a testament to the democratic mandate overturned in February 2021. Myanmar’s pro-military legislature has also criticized the 5PC as interference, essentially giving itself the upper hand over ASEAN’s position.

It was one thing for the Lao government to recognize Min Aung Hlaing, but Thailand’s follow-up embrace set the tone for the rest of the bloc. Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines have stuck to the 5PC and shunned the widely condemned coup maker at leaders-level meetings.  As the incoming ASEAN chair next year, Singapore has been particularly adamant on excluding Min Aung Hlaing unless and until he abides by ASEAN’s consensual agreement. But owing to Thailand’s ill-considered and short-sighted maneuver, ASEAN now faces an existential tight rope, not between isolation and engagement, but the conditions and steps in between. Eventual engagement of Myanmar is unavoidable, but at issue is how and when. Myanmar remains an ASEAN member state, and its conflict generates humanitarian, economic and security consequences far beyond its borders. Five years of excluding Min Aung Hlaing from ASEAN summits have not ended the civil war. But neither should ASEAN conclude that failure of the 5PC means the grouping should give up its conditions and sanctions on a junta leader who has robbed democracy from his own people and killed thousands of them to rule by force.

The issue is the terms, sequence, and levels of re-engagement. ASEAN should use its upcoming review neither to reaffirm the 5PC nor to discard it. The framework should instead be recalibrated into measurable benchmarks, such as reduction of air strikes and attacks on civilians, humanitarian access and assistance, on-the-ground outreach by an ASEAN envoy to all major parties, unconditional visitations with Aung San Suu Kyi and other political detainees, and an inclusive dialogue involving the military-backed government, EAOs, PDFs, and the NUG.

ASEAN should also distinguish functional engagement from political rehabilitation. Humanitarian assistance, border management, anti-trafficking cooperation, and economic contacts can proceed without automatically restoring Min Aung Hlaing to ASEAN leaders’ summits. His exclusion remains one of the few collective sources of ASEAN leverage. Giving it away before a change of attitude and good faith would reward the very non-compliance that necessitated the exclusion. Regardless of Min Aung Hlaing’s backings from Delhi, Beijing, and Moscow, ASEAN needs to hold its own line to maintain the strategic autonomy that is integral to its DNA²ASEAN DNA comprises strategic autonomy, internal and regional peace, and national economic development – how founding fathers envisioned it in its formative years. and necessary in its central role in promoting peace and security in Southeast Asia.