New Cold War proxy conflict brewing in Myanmar

By any measure, it would be a stretch to say that the United States is currently engaged in a New Cold War proxy war with China and Russia in Myanmar.

But as the conflict between the State Administration Council (SAC) junta and a proliferating array of ethnic and political resistance armies escalates, the rivalry between the world’s two big blocs could yet determine the outcome of Myanmar’s increasingly vicious civil war.

On one side, the US is supporting the anti-coup National Unity Government (NUG) and by extension its affiliated People’s Defense Forces armed groups scattered across the country. On the other, China and Russia are more clearly, although not always overtly, in the junta’s camp.

With its substantial and geostrategically important investments in Myanmar, China has the biggest great power interest in the war’s direction and outcome.

While Beijing is playing both sides of the war — selling military hardware to the SAC and turning a blind eye to Chinese weaponry ending up in the hands of some of the ethnic resistance armies — it clearly doesn’t want the conflict to spiral out of control to the degree it hurts or threatens its in-country interests.

The US, for its part, appears to have refrained from directly providing the various armed groups fighting the junta with weapons and has confined its support to “non-lethal” aid to the NUG, which notably maintains an office in Washington DC.

If the US sought to escalate the Myanmar war into a New Cold War proxy theater, targeting China’s big-ticket interests in the country would be a logical tactic.

Significantly, the many armed groups opposed to military rule have so far refrained from targeting China’s interests in the country, including the gas pipelines that