Myanmar’s redemptive revolution: constituent power and the struggle for sovereignty in the Nwe Oo (Spring) Revolution

Counter-revolutionary violence

In February 2021, the regime relied on the police to suppress opposition, from March, the military. Both used lethal force against peaceful, unarmed protestors. The first known serious casualty was 19-year-old Mya Thwe Thwe Khine, shot in the head at a protest in the capital Naypyidaw on February 9th. Activists and politicians were arrested and routinely tortured to death in custody. This includes former NLD member Zaw Myat Lynn whose tongue was melted, teeth were missing and facial skin was peeling when his family were called to identify his corpse the day following his arrest (Human Rights Watch, 2022). Striking workers were subject to extrajudicial executions, including a teacher whose head was cut off and impaled atop his school’s gate (The Irrawaddy, 2022). Authorities desecrated the graves of deceased protestors and took family members of activists on the run hostage. A ‘deadly new phase’ of the violence began in March, when military units linked to war crimes and crimes against humanity were deployed to cities nationwide, equipped with semi-automatic weapons, sniper rifles and machine guns (Amnesty International, 2021). Hundreds of peaceful protesters were massacred across the country, including an inordinate number of head shots by snipers and marksmen, indicating their intent to kill, not disperse. The bloody brutality reached a crescendo on March 27th when the military marked Armed Forces Day by slaughtering over 100 peaceful protestors in more than 70 locations (Data for Myanmar, 2022a).

Counter-revolutionary violence extended beyond the cities. Airstrikes targeted civilians, medics and schools in the east and the north. Rocket propelled grenades, artillery, mortars and helicopters were used to decimate bastion towns in the west. Villagers were massacred and villages burnt to the ground in the central plains as the military sought to eliminate opposition with a scorched earth strategy likened to that of Japanese Imperial Army: burn all, kill all, loot all (Davis, 2021). Calls were made for the junta to be formally designated as a terrorist organisation for tactics including public torture and executions, and planting landmines under the bodies of civilians they had killed and detonating them when family and friends returned to recover their bodies (Special Advisory Council for Myanmar, 2021a: 1). By June 2023, at least 3,600 people had been killed for opposing the coup regime, including 282 children. Over 1,400 children had been detained, at least 142 of whom were tortured, subjected to beatings, stabbings and mock executions (United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2022). Over 70,000 homes have been destroyed in regime arson attacks, and over 3 million people have been displaced (Data for Myanmar, 2023; United Nations in Myanmar, 2024). Millions more will live with trauma for the rest of their lives.

Yet despite the brutality, over three years later the people of Myanmar still stand resolutely opposed to military rule. The civil disobedience movement has endured, peaceful protests still occur daily and cities and towns across the country have been brought to a standstill during ‘silent strikes’, all demonstrating widespread refusal to return to normalcy under a military regime (Data for Myanmar, 2022b). Rather than forcing people into submission, the intensity, brutality and scope of the violence galvanised revolutionary resolve and spurred a nationwide uprising, forcing the regime to extend its declaration of a state of emergency for four years. Lives, livelihoods and loved ones have been committed to a shared revolutionary goal: extirpating the military from Myanmar’s politics once and for all.

Post-independence (1948-1962) and direct military rule (1962-2011)

Myanmar’s modern political order came into being through colonial subjugation, a hasty process of decolonisation and multiple struggles for national liberation throughout and since. The British introduced the nation-state form to the territory that now circumscribes Myanmar’s multi-ethnic and multi-national polity in the mid-19th century. Anti-colonial struggles for self-determination grew, culminating in the Saya San rebellion of 1930–1932. Ethnonational rebel movements with diverse claims to parts of Myanmar emerged as a result of militarised and violent identity formation processes during colonial rule and the Second World War, including a Burmese nationalist movement that was anti-colonial but ethnically exclusive (Brenner, 2019: 2; Thawnghmung, 2011: 3-12; Walton, 2008: 8). Various ethnic demands for autonomy were not resolved prior to independence in 1948 but representatives of some nevertheless agreed to form the Union of Myanmar based on principles of popular sovereignty, equality for all people and full autonomy in ethnic areas. Myanmar’s first constitution of 1947 failed to live up to this promise and a unitary system was imposed instead (Walton, 2008). The post-independence state was captured by an ethnocratic Burman elite (Brenner, 2019: 2), leaving borderland areas ‘outside the mainstream of the new nation-state’, (Banerjee, 2016: 413) marginalised and invisibilised by territorialisation and sovereignty making of Burma and its neighbours (Ferguson, 2021). Failed promises and unfulfilled expectations about the future of ethnic regions compelled several ethnic organisations to launch armed revolutionary struggles to protect their political autonomy, including the Karen in 1949, the Shan in 1958 and the Kachin in 1961. As a peaceful nationwide movement for federalism gathered pace, the military launched a coup in 1962, ostensibly to unite a factitious post-colonial state. Coup leader General Ne Win tried to build a strong party-state autonomous from the military and searched for a political ideology to give it legitimacy, but this order was never successfully institutionalised and the military’s first attempted revolution from above ultimately failed. The means – a state centred on the military – nevertheless endured (Nakanishi, 2013). A bloody military crackdown against a pro-democracy uprising in 1988 led to the collapse of the military’s party and another military coup. Its successor was trounced in a multiparty election in 1990 by the National League for Democracy, which secured 80 per cent of parliamentary seats. Shocked by the defeat of their new proxy, the military ignored the results, ushering in 21 years of direct military rule.

The post-1988 period

The 1988–1990 period had many of the ingredients of a negotiated revolution (as noted by Garton Ash, 2009; Lawson, 2005) but is viewed in retrospect as a failed revolution owing to internal military cohesion, its willingness to use violent force to suppress peaceful demonstrations, splits within the democratic opposition and refusal of neighbouring countries to isolate the regime (Lintner, 1990; Nakanishi, 2013). The uprising was also principally framed with reference to culturally salient ideas of the Bamar-Buddhist majority and did not successfully unite struggles for democracy with ethnonational struggles for self-determination in the periphery (Jordt et al., 2021: 21). Its failure convinced some that constitutionalism and gradual reform was the only remaining viable path for change, offering the military a second opportunity to try to impose a military-dominated order from above between 1988 and 2021. Myanmar’s second constitution was suspended during the 1988 coup, so a third was drafted by participants handpicked by the military between 1993 and 2007. Junta chairman and commander in chief General Than Shwe sought to ensure the military-dominated politics for at least 50 years following his retirement in 2011 by institutionalising a ‘discipline-flourishing multiparty democracy’; succeeding, for a while (2011–2021), where Ne Win had failed.

A raft of economic and political reforms initiated from 1991 allowed the military to cultivate an auxiliary capitalist class and ethnic militias dependent on military patronage for profit, integrate into global circuits of capital accumulation, further entrench military power in the economy, expand, modernise, enrich themselves and fracture ethnic movements (Nakanishi, 2013: 298). Reforms linked to ceasefire negotiations helped co-opt ethnic rebel leaders through collaborative exploitation of borderland areas, reinforcing hierarchical and extractive relations with ethnic areas, central state territorial expansion and centralisation of political-economic power. Several ceasefires, such that with the Kachin between 1994 and 2011, allowed ethnic movements to further develop sophisticated quasi-states with parallel governance systems, generate revenues and deliver public goods in areas liberated from central control (Brenner, 2019). They were unsustainable due to lack of political engagement from the central government, which again failed to meet expectations regarding political dialogue and constitutional reform, but nevertheless laid groundwork for a structural condition of contested areas of control that enabled the Nwe Oo Revolution (Anderson and Sadan, 2016: 4, 29; Jolliffe, 2017).

The period of electoral rule (2011–2021)

The internationally lauded ‘transition’ began in 2011 when the military ceded some control over day-to-day state administration to a nominally civilian government under its 2008 constitution, introducing a diarchic system reminiscent of the colonial system in which the military assumed the role vacated by the British (Soe Lin Aung and Campbell, 2016). Although accompanied by considerable social, economic and political transformations, behind lofty rhetoric of national reconciliation was a process of national reconsolidation under the military instead (Sakhong, 2014: 206). The period can be understood as an attempted passive revolution, through which the military sought to institutionalise its political and economic interests, co-opt formal political opposition, subvert demands for more radical change and retreat from direct political engagement while maintaining existing class rule (Soe Lin Aung and Campbell, 2016).

After boycotting the 2010 elections to oppose the 2008 constitution, the NLD later adopted a reformist tack aimed reforming the state from within. They won 86 percent of contestable seats in the 2015 election and were allowed to form a government in 2016. For the first time in Myanmar’s post-independence history the military respected the results of a free election, assuming they had constrained the ability of civilians to fundamentally change the political structure and laid the groundwork to return to power with a veneer of legitimacy over the long term. Constitutional negotiations broke down in 2018 and the military vetoed proposed changes submitted to parliament in 2019. Hopes that the NLD might be able to reinvigorate peace talks with ethnic armed groups were also frustrated. The military controlled the process and used it to extend their modus operandi of divide and rule along two fronts. Not all groups were included, and those that were had to sign ceasefire agreements as a precondition to political dialogue. Meanwhile, the military continued fighting non-signatories and used development and occasional armed offences against signatories to erode their territories (Bertrand et al., 2022). In addition, tensions grew between the NLD and ethnic movements due to the chauvinism of Bamar political elites. Both wanted to reform the 2008 constitution, but the NLD prioritised democratisation over federalism, failed to address numerous ethnic grievances related to equality and autonomy, and regularly sided with the military against ethnic groups, particularly the Kachin, Rakhine, Rohingya, Shan and Mon (Nyi Nyi Kyaw, 2019: 6). Suu Kyi and her party further alienated many erstwhile supporters by taking a hard-line approach to criticism from students, peasants and journalists, leading many to view her as imperious and authoritarian, embracing a form of Buddhist-Bamar royalism as a queen-like figure wont to offer spiritual solutions to political problems (e.g. Callahan, 2017). She nevertheless retained considerable domestic support and her government did manage to challenge the military’s stranglehold over the country’s basic law, raising the prospect of further democratic reforms to the state. Her popularity and staunch support for the NLD at the polls may be explained by the perception that they were the only force capable of effectively challenging the armed forces’ dominant role in national affairs.

In sum, the military has been the main obstacle to popular struggles for a more horizontally and vertically integrated political order, national politics has been preoccupied with resisting or placating it for over 70 years, and predominantly peaceful transformation attempts have failed. Genuine reconciliation between the centre and the periphery has been undermined by ethnocentrism and majoritarian chauvinism, geographically limited aspirations of ethnonational forces, and the military’s ability to divide and rule through superior force. The trajectory of the Nwe Oo Revolution has been determined by the need to transcend these limitations.

Rupture

Behind the pretext of electoral irregularities, the 2021 coup can be interpreted as the military’s response to their second failure to secure hegemony in a social formation they had crafted since independence. By abruptly terminating the prospect of gradual change, the coup shattered the terse and fragile settlement imposed on the country by the military and exposed the reformist path as non-viable, leading to the collapse of authority at the centre that launched the country into a generalised crisis transcending its basic law. Oppositional forces used the moment of revolutionary liminality to ensure lessons were learnt from previous uprisings, rebellions and military-dominated processes of reform, and engaged in strategic collective action to forge a revolutionary situation that might surpass them. As with the Arab Spring, this was driven by new social classes that had emerged during earlier socio-political transformations, conscious of their own agency to effect social change, acting on their own initiative and aspirations for democracy and social justice, primarily composed of the younger generation, ethnic movements and women (Jordt et al., 2021; Khosrokhavar, 2016; Said et al., 2015). The Civil Disobedience Movement was instigated by medical workers who had volunteered for a national cause during the pandemic, the general strike was catalysed by predominantly female garment workers who had become increasingly militant to protect their livelihoods with the influx of foreign investment (Ko Maung, 2021), amplified and shaped by ethnic, feminist and civil society activists engaged in resistance and movement-building during the ‘transition’ (Hedström and Olivius, 2022; Vrieze, 2022) and fortified by students, who have long acted as a revolutionary catalyst in Myanmar.

Revolutionary forces successfully framed an emergent collective subjectivity committed to inclusive value-ideals, transforming the revolution’s social base and trajectory. Anti-coup protestors initially sought the release of detained leaders and the restoration of the NLD government but became more radical over time, calling for the 2008 constitution to be scrapped and a federal democratic union to be established in its place (Prasse-Freeman and Ko Kabya, 2021). Protests were used to amplify subaltern voices and push oppositional forces in an anti-authoritarian, anti-racist and anti-sexist direction, calling for an end to not just military rule but all forms of dictatorship. For some, particularly among youth and ethnic nationalities, the coup merely exposed the ‘illusion’ of democracy during the period of electoral rule (Kyaw Hsan Hlaing, 2021; Karen News, 2021). Revolutionary forces explicitly rejected ethno-national value ideals, severing the Buddhist-Bamar nationalist narrative that had exerted a hegemonic sway over state-society relations, including earlier uprisings in 1988 and 2007, substituting it with an inclusive democratic ideology based on popular sovereignty, federal democracy and the principle of collective leadership (Jordt et al., 2021: 2). This ensured that the revolution appealed to a broader multi-ethnic nationwide constituency, was less reliant on individual leaders like Suu Kyi and reduced the risk of it being co-opted, neutralised or taken hostage: all shortcomings of previous uprisings.

A broad coalition of oppositional groups was built to organise and shape the political forms emerging to challenge the coup regime, including a coalition of pro-democracy and pro-federal ethnonational forces. Ethnic civil society actors were pivotal in this process, influencing and negotiating with various political actors to build a broad and inclusive alliance while pressuring co-ethnic leaders to condemn the coup and refuse cooperation with the military council. This was predicated on a platform of revolutionary change, underlining long-standing opposition to the 2008 constitution by both (Kachin News, 2021; Khin Khin Mra, 2021; Vrieze, 2022). Ethnic rebel leaders have long been deeply dependent on the conferral of legitimacy by nonelites (Brenner, 2019), and political forces from the centre needed ethnic movements in the periphery for protection and effective resistance. The obscene violence used by the military to try to enforce its rule meant that even most Bamar among the NLD’s base came to refuse to accept it (even if only begrudgingly) as a legitimate institution, ² and patience with intra-elite compromise under its auspices had been exhausted. Being subjected to the same horrific brutality for weeks that people in the borderlands have been subjected to for generations helped generate a newfound empathy for the histories and experiences of non-Buddhist and non-Bamar that had been absent and precluded genuine reconciliation between centre and periphery in the past (Sadan, 2016: 6).

The trajectory of the revolution was decisively altered by the nationwide massacres on the 27th March 2021, galvanising national solidarity and compelling anti-coup forces to take up arms for survival and effective resistance. Armed revolt began in Chin State, then Sagaing, when residents formed the Tahan Civil Defence Force and the Kalay Civil Army, fortified their protest camp, fought back against a military onslaught and held their position for 10 days, inspiring others across the country (Frontier Myanmar, 2021). A public letter sent on the 28th March by the General Strike Committee of Nationalities to leaders of ethnic armed groups called on them to ‘collectively protect the people’ standing up against military oppression and injustice. This resonated with some, including ethnic Shan leader General Yawd Serk whose response was: ‘ethnic armed groups and the protestors now have a common enemy and we need to join hands and hurt those that are hurting the people’ (Jagan, 2021). A similar sentiment was later expressed by Padoh Saw Taw Nee of the Karen National Union, who claimed the military’s atrocities had made the peoples of Myanmar ‘become one flesh and blood’ (The Irrawaddy, 2023).

Formative power

The constitutional politics of the revolution provides further evidence of the emergence of a nationwide constituent power and that the Nwe Oo Revolution can be understood as a constitutive revolution of the integrative type. Mass mobilisation sharpened contradictions between two fundamentally incompatible visions of Myanmar’s social and political order: one in which the military imposes itself as successors to the monarchy deposed by the British, invoking supreme power to command based on an ideology of ‘karmic kingship’ (Jordt et al., 2021), another aimed at belatedly realising popular sovereignty based on integrative and inclusive ideals of equality, justice and self-determination. A diverse social base has been transformed through the process of competitive mobilisation, uniting against the military with the aim of fundamentally restructuring the political order and its legal basis and broadening access to state power for citizens in a federal democratic state. The revolution thereby holds the promise of completing past pro-democracy uprisings and ethnonational struggles for self-determination, opening the possibility of a different kind of future for the peoples of Myanmar not preoccupied with placating or resisting its irredeemable armed forces.

As with the Arab revolutions, this has been a revolution from below in which an organic democratisation process is underway (Akar Hein and Clapp, 2023), in pursuit of emancipation through socio-political transformations that resignify rather than repudiate the nation (Said et al., 2015: 13, 234, 237). Committees, councils and coalitions were formed in the days and weeks following the coup to organise and resist. Dozens of strike committees were established nationwide by protest leaders, coordinating under the General Strike Coordination Body. Local communities established People’s Administrative Bodies at neighbourhood, village and ward levels in predominantly ethnic Bamar areas across the country and co-ethnic consultative councils were formed in ethnic states to provide political leadership for parallel administrative and governance mechanisms that have long operated under the authority of ethnic armed organisations (Arnold and Jolliffe, 2022; Naw Show Ei Ei Tun and Jolliffe, 2022). Local administrative structures of self-government based on traditions of mutuality have sprouted across the country since (Akar Hein and Clapp, 2023).

These grassroots organisations have been accompanied by new political mechanisms at the union level. The Committee Representing the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) was established by 378 MPs-elect (76%) on the 4th of February 2021 when they swore themselves in the compound in which they were confined to discharge their responsibilities as lawmakers in-waiting. In consultation with representatives of Myanmar’s ethnic nationality organisations, political parties and civil society, and acting as the legislative pillar of the elected government, the CRPH drafted the Federal Democracy Charter to lay the groundwork for the development of a new constitution to replace the 2008 constitution, which they declared nullified by the coup. ³ Part 1 was released at the end of March 2021, and the National Unity Consultative Council (NUCC) and National Unity Government (NUG) were formally established under its aegis. The aim is for the NUCC to act a union-wide national consultative body and platform for political dialogue, originally comprised of a coalition of 33 organisations including ethnic revolutionary organisations, political parties, Spring Revolutionary Forces and state/ethnic-based consultative committees. The NUG is an executive pillar of government, comprised of 16 ministries with 31 ministers appointed by member organisations of the NUCC, accountable to Myanmar’s elected parliament (the CRPH) and the NUCC. The NUG is dominated by CRPH/NLD politicians but has a compelling claim to de jure legitimacy based on their 2020 electoral mandate and is exercising the functions of a de facto government following a roadmap set out in the Federal Democracy Charter. While the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma was established after the 1988 uprising, this lacked the unity, organisation and inclusivity of the NUG/NUCC, had less impact domestically, enjoyed less popular support, gained little international recognition, with most leaders ending up in exile. Many NUG/NUCC leaders remain inside Myanmar in liberated areas.

Counterforce

These alternative institutions have been made possible by counter-institutions developed in tandem to defend the population and open political space for the resistance, including civilian militias and a coalition of ethnic armed groups. The military’s intransigence and brutality mean that a successful revolutionary outcome requires seizing the state from its self-professed guardians by force. Cognisant of the fact that a steadfast commitment to non-violence failed to topple the military in 1988, and in the absence of effective external pressure to induce a peaceful resolution, revolutionary forces bolstered themselves domestically. Civilian militias were formed across the country and alliances built with established armed groups. Several provided shelter for activists, striking workers and politicians fleeing the crackdown and accepted thousands of young men and women from the cities who wanted to undergo military training to fight back. The NUG announced the formation of the Peoples Defence Force in April 2021 with assistance from allied ethnic armed groups. The long-term goal is to serve as a forerunner to a Federal Union Army, a multi-ethnic armed force to replace the sit-tat and subject to civilian control. In the short term, the aim was to unite and lead civilian militias that were emerging and engage in guerrilla war.

By October 2022, an estimated 65,000 PDF troops had enlisted, organised into 300 battalions, with 30,000 additional Local Defence Force personnel. Militias developed homegrown capabilities including sniper rifles and automatic weapons, improvised explosive devices, mortars and weaponised drones, supported by 70 workshops manufacturing rudimentary weapons, weapons purchases on the black market, clandestine transfers from ethnic armed groups and weapons captured from attacks on security forces (Ye Myo Hein, 2022). A ‘peoples defensive war’ and Myanmar’s ‘second struggle for independence’ was declared by the NUG in September 2021 and joint commands were established with allied armed forces to coordinate armed struggle under a single chain of command. Plans to upgrade this to an offensive war and strengthen and expand alliances with other ethnic armed groups were announced in late 2022 (National Unity Government of Myanmar, 2022). Following years of relentless armed resistance in Sagaing, Magwe, Chin, Karenni, Karen and elsewhere, Operation 1027 was launched in October 2023 by a coalition of ethnic forces in the north, moving beyond guerrilla tactics to capture military bases, towns and trade routes. Wave by wave, military successes in northern Shan were followed by campaigns in Rakhine, Kachin, Sagaing, Bago, Karen, Karenni, Chin, Mandalay, Naypyidaw and Pyin Oo Lwin. Although groups like the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front cooperated with ethnic armed groups and engaged in armed struggle after 1988, armed resistance in the Nwe Oo Revolution has been much more widespread, organised, co-ordinated, self-reliant, resilient and ultimately, successful.

Internal contradictions

The NUG asserts that it is the only and legitimate government of the Republic of the Union of Myanmar and that the CRPH and the NUCC are the political representative bodies of its citizens. ⁴ All three cooperate under the Federal Democracy Charter, giving legal form to shared aims. The charter outlines several progressive guiding values and principles, including commitments to democracy, equality and self-determination. More importantly, it stipulates that sovereignty will be devolved to various member states in a future federal democratic union, positing that constituent states and the people that inhabit them are the ‘original sources of sovereignty’ (CRPH, 2022: Part 1, Chapters 4 & 5). A roadmap distinguishes between interim and transitional phases of the revolution, focused on overthrowing military dictatorship during the first, followed by the establishment of a new permanent federal democratic constitution with elected governments at various levels during the second. In the interim, revolutionary forces have contributed to the collapse of a credible and legitimate central state. The coup regime has no constitutional or democratic legitimacy and has been unable to assert effective control (Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar, 2023). Its leadership is besieged in Naypyidaw, clinging to the vestiges of power and relying on superior airpower to keep the resistance at bay and punish civilians that support it. Diverse forces are uniting behind the goal of exorcising the military from the political affairs of the country once and for all and federal democracy has emerged as a platform of consensus embracing majority Bamars and ethnic nationalities (Aung Kaung Myat et al., 2023). Revolutionary forces have agreed to a constitutional framework that has potential to completely reinvent Myanmar as a state/country/nation through an emergent bottom-up federalism (South, 2021).

However, despite recent gains, progression to and completion of the transitional phase remains uncertain. The military maintains internal cohesion and is unlikely to seek a negotiated exit. For their part, revolutionary forces have been weakened by past actions of the NLD and intransigence and chauvinism of NLD figures in the CRPH, reflected in internal tensions over sources of legitimacy and relations of power. Some want the NUCC to function as a people’s assembly that would appoint the NUG, but NLD leaders have been opposed, reluctant to recognise the legitimacy and sovereignty of ethnic armed groups, clinging instead to electoral legitimacy derived from their position in the ancien régime (South, 2021: 448; Vrieze, 2022: 9). Part 2 of the Federal Democracy Charter, drafted by the CRPH, reinforced NLD claims to authority and was released before agreement was reached with coalition partners, damaging trust. While several of Myanmar’s most powerful ethnic armed groups joined the coalition early on, others declined or remained aloof due to fear of junta retaliation or lack of trust in the NLD (Vrieze, 2022). Notwithstanding involvement of ethnic forces that had not previously declared an allegiance, those that launched Operation 1027 have not explicitly subscribed to the Federal Democracy Charter, and disagreements between the NUG, NUCC and other revolutionary forces persist. Bamar PDFs have been disappointed by lack of material support from the NUG, NUCC membership has shrunk, the CRPH walked out of the People’s Assembly in January 2024, and the NUG did not even show up. Most glaringly, the Rohingya have remained subject to violent oppression by revolutionary forces and the sit-tat.

In short, new forms of constituted power need to be even more inclusive, integrative and effective. Nevertheless, without denying institutional shortcomings, internal contradictions, or diverse revolutionary aims and interests, the trajectory is clear; placing undue emphasis on divisions, tensions or incidental setbacks risks reinforcing their perceived intractability and ignoring the fact that Myanmar’s society has been transformed. Most importantly, how another social class fracture – a shared commitment to overthrowing praetorian class rule – now predominates. Numerous surveys find massive, widespread and increasing support for revolutionary forces, across all segments of society. Despite shortcomings of the NUG and NUCC, support for the former remains high even in ethnic areas, citizens oppose an ethnically fractured political landscape, and a majority support armed revolutionary struggle (e.g. Blue Shirt Initiative, 2024; International Growth Centre, 2023; Jap and Liu, 2024). NUCC stakeholders recognise it to be a foundational principle for the future of the country that cannot be allowed to fail and are strongly committed to it functioning as a unifying force (Institute for Strategy and Peace-Myanmar, 2022).

The politics of sovereignty

In a seminal work, Stephen Krasner (1999) argued that sovereignty has four distinct attributes: (a) international legal sovereignty as regards international recognition, (b) Westphalian sovereignty as the principle of non-interference, (c) domestic sovereignty as the ability of a state to maintain a monopoly on violence and (d) interdependence sovereignty as a government’s capacity to control intra-border movements. Commentary on Myanmar has focused on the first (attribute a). Broad consensus is that the SAC has not fulfilled the criteria for de jure recognition under international law and that the NUG enjoys a better claim (e.g. Special Advisory Council for Myanmar, 2021b), that neither has been able to exert effective control (attribute c), and that the junta may eventually prevail as the de facto authority if the revolution fails. The fact that authority has been contested led some actors to follow conservative diplomatic policy of recognising states rather than governments (Jessup, 1931) due to shortcomings of competing claims as regards attribute a. ⁷ Motivated by the perceived need to uphold the norm of Westphalian sovereignty (attribute b), the rationale is that ‘foreign recognition of a leader or entity may amount to interference in internal affairs, in violation of that State’s sovereignty’ (Special Advisory Council for Myanmar 2021b: 4). Yet this policy has not been followed consistently, particularly by neighbouring states and United Nations agencies, leading to creeping normalisation of the coup regime (Justice for Myanmar, 2023). As a result, the dominant framing merely provides an excuse for inertia, allowing feckless states and international organisations to engage in the charade of ‘alibi diplomacy’ (Kausikan, 2021) under the pretext of ASEAN centrality, buying the junta time to try to ‘annihilate’ its opponents (Al Jazeera, 2022).

In addition to being practically pernicious, the dominant framing is conceptually shallow because it assumes sovereignty to be a property of a state. Krasner called this the ‘principle of autonomy’ (1999: 82): a state’s supposed freedom to do as it pleases within its territory (attribute b). This fetishises the concept of sovereignty by treating it in abstraction from the social relations in which sovereign power is embedded.

Several contributors to the ensuing debate refuted Krasner’s claim that Westphalian sovereignty (attribute b) was ever an aspect of the institutional structure of even the Westphalian world and led to a deeper understanding of sovereignty; specifically, the social bases from which positive legal norms derive their authority, and hence the politics of sovereignty (e.g. Suganami, 2007: 51). Van Roermund (2003: 41), for instance, argued that sovereignty is prima facie incoherent because it signifies both the political power that constitutes the law and the law that restrains that power. There is therefore a necessary unity and agency in any given demos in terms of a reflexive relationship between a constituting power and a constituted power (Bartelson, 2006: 468). The normative force of sovereignty (as a rational defence of attributes a and b) thereby relates to its role as a positive defence for the political autonomy of a given community, not simply a state’s supposed freedom to do whatever it pleases within its territory. Bodinian sovereignty, understood as the power to command, thus derives from a state’s constituted power, itself rooted in the disposition towards it of those over whom it claims authority. The constituted power of a state is therefore itself grounded in the constituent power of a community, which remains the source of a state’s authority. Put simply, sovereignty is the creative, formative power of a people to constitute the political forms of their own existence, and to alter or abolish already constituted forms of political power once they become oppressive and alienated from their constituting origin. Accordingly, the referent object of sovereignty is not simply the state, but a state that exists in a particular relation to the community from which it draws its power and claims authority; the sovereign quality of which manifests itself most clearly in times of crisis (Kalyvas, 2005; Popp-Madsen, 2022: 2).

Although Myanmar’s state has been formally sovereign since independence, it has never been sovereign eo ipso, and certainly not during this revolutionary period. Multiple ethnic rebellions and a nationwide revolutionary uprising have thwarted repeated attempts by the military to authorise itself as the authority and secure acquiescence by force, so this murderous cabal cannot legitimately claim sovereign rights as representatives of Myanmar. The Nwe Oo Revolution represents a generational opportunity for the people of Myanmar to become fully sovereign by establishing this two-way relationship of power, arguably requiring a violent process of destruction (of the sit-tat) and reconstruction through the establishment of new forms of constituted power that reflect the unity and internal differentiation of Myanmar’s emergent constituent power. The NUCC could play such a role if it functions as a constituent assembly that democratically secures and delimits revolutionary forces’ constituent power and should be recognised by international and domestic actors as an emergent political form that best approximates an institutional expression of a sovereign Myanmar during a period of generalised crisis.

The dominant framing also treats the revolution as an internal struggle. This is myopic, because it ignores, for a start: a) that the junta has been kept afloat by lifelines from abroad including trade, weapons, fuel and diplomatic backstopping from Russia, China, India, Thailand and ASEAN; and b) the broader inter-societal implications of Myanmar’s struggle.

Sovereignty is a dynamic concept that entwines politics and law. As a principal ordering principle of the international, it shapes the normative structure of the society of states. As a socially embedded norm, it is reproduced and evolves through practice and social recognition. Although Myanmar’s conflicts will largely be settled, or not, domestically, there is a necessarily international component as regards the broader cultural significance of its constitutional politics due to potentially cascading effects of various outcomes. To wit, should the coup regime prevail by means of a brutally violent campaign of terror against the civilian population, not only does this risk undermining peremptory norms of international society as regards the commission of crimes against humanity in pursuit of sovereign power (as noted by SAC-M, 2021b: 4), but it may also have deleterious consequences for the norm of sovereignty itself: rupturing the mutual implication of constituted power and constituting power, undermining the very basis from which most states claim their power and authority. Alternatively, should revolutionary forces succeed in their struggle to submit institutions of the state to the will of a democratic citizenry, this would represent an important instance of popular forces successfully renewing/establishing a reflexive relationship between constituting power and constituted power, reasserting universalist values in the face of an oppressive reality and unconscionable violence, belatedly achieving something most states and citizens take for granted and redeeming the norm of sovereignty itself: as grounded in the power of a people to constitute the political forms of their own existence, rather than merely a hollow excuse for the powerful to command. This would represent a monumental achievement not just for the people of Myanmar but humanity as a whole.

Hence, by presenting the Nwe Oo Revolution as an ‘internal affair of a sovereign state’, the dominant framing erects a conceptual barrier that erroneously circumscribes and parochialises its real significance. The inherent contradiction is that this allows those professing a commitment to political autonomy (attribute b) to become mere bystanders or even enablers to brutal and dehumanising attempts to suffocate it.

The violence of politics

The NUG’s endorsement of armed struggle alongside non-violent resistance further complicated its quest for international recognition and made it harder to access foreign assistance (as noted by International Crisis Group, 2021). Several external actors responded to the announcement of a peoples’ defensive war by calling on ‘all sides’ to de-escalate, refrain from violence and seek peaceful resolution through dialogue. Others have noted that these calls are misguided because the military has proven they cannot be a genuine partner for negotiation (SAC-M, 2021a), and premature, because neither side is interested in talking yet (Dunst, 2021). This section makes a more elemental claim: that they reflect a misplaced faith in the power of non-violent struggle in extremis, exposing a liberal conceit about the nature of politics that is historically and normatively misconstrued.

Violence has been sine qua non of revolutions for centuries, the efficacy of non-violent resistance has declined propitiously since its peak at the turn of the millennium (Chenoweth, 2020), and has long been contested regardless (e.g. Gelderloos, 2007, 2013). Yet the success of predominantly non-violent revolutions in Eastern Europe led to a myopia regarding the exigency of violence in revolutionary struggle. Timothy Garton Ash (2009: 377), for instance, credits the velvet revolutions with ushering in a ‘new genre’ of non-violent revolution reliant on techniques of civil resistance, suggestive of a linear and progressive liberal triumphalist conception of time. Others remain more circumspect. For Lawson (2005), negotiated revolutions were made possible by a particular epoch of world-historical time – the end of the Cold War – and contingent restraint of elites who chose not to use force available to them, neither of which apply to the Nwe Oo Revolution. As noted by Beck et al. (2022: 58, 76, Chapter 3) purely violent or non-violent movements are not the norm, and successful revolutions have been complimented by a range of tactics, violent and non-violent. It is worth emphasising that the incorporation of armed struggle in the Nwe Oo Revolution has not lessened the importance of various forms of non-violent resistance, including the Civil Disobedience Movement, flash strikes, marches in liberated areas, counterpropaganda and defections. To belabour the point, the Arab revolutions demonstrated that people’s empowerment is a necessary by insufficient condition for the collapse of authoritarian regimes, and that non-violence can become a ‘handicap’ when faced with hyper-oppressive regimes that have not already lost the will to fight (Khosrokhavar, 2016).

Normatively, while proponents of civil resistance point out that mass non-violent action can be forceful without the threat of physical violence, holding an absolute injunction to non-violence is a dangerous and conceitful folly. Various scholars (e.g. Mayer, 2000; Negri, 1999) remind us that violence is an objective historical necessity in all polities ⁸ and that ‘we fail to do justice to the existential seriousness of politics unless we realize that it entails the real possibility (but not the necessity) of physical killing at those times when we believe that our very way of life, our existence, is threatened by an enemy’ (Schmitt, cited by Bernstein, 2013: 21). For Benjamin, every juridical contract, founding of a state, or establishment of a constitutional order, rests on violence; forgetting this leads to institutional degeneracy. He wrote:

When the consciousness of the latent presence of violence in a legal institution disappears, the institution falls into decay. In our time, parliaments provide an example of this. They offer the familiar, woeful spectacle because they have not remained conscious of the revolutionary forces to which they owe their existence (Benjamin, 1996: 243-244).

Citing Benjamin’s (1996: 250) claim that the commandment of non-violence ‘exists not as a criterion of judgement, but as a guideline for the actions of persons or communities who have to wrestle with it in solitude and, in exceptional cases, to take on themselves the responsibility of ignoring it’, Bernstein (2013) argues that the ethical demand of non-violence is not incompatible with the claim that there are cases in which violence can nonetheless be justified. This is not to glorify or even sanction its use but to recognise that it may, in some cases, be necessary. Not only as a defensive necessity, as has clearly been the case in Myanmar, but also as a response to extreme injustice and a way to open the space for politics.

In short, the exercise of constituent power and practice of sovereignty requires the possibility of violence. If taken to be more than insincere platitudes or stale diplomatic tropes, criticism of revolutionary armed struggle in Myanmar represents a tacit endorsement of the coup regime as bearer of sovereign power and an effective denial of revolutionary forces’ right to assert popular sovereignty and engage in self-defence. For those who supported Myanmar peoples’ right to peaceful protest and called for a return to democracy and constitutional rule, this woeful spectacle reveals a deep malaise, betraying earlier pronouncements as empty normativism, reflecting a form of institutional degeneracy and hubristic naiveté that bodes ill for the prospects of popular sovereignty in a contested world order. This is a quintessentially liberal conceit: celebrating voluntarist and contractual political forms that constrain power with law and enable public contestation and accountability while forgetting that they have their origins in violence and disavowing those willing to fight for these forms themselves.