Myanmar’s 2021 coup: How military junta institutionalized autocracy through constitutional capture and civil war
Original framing: “Myanmar's Min Aung Hlaing: The general who made himself president” — The Japan Times
Indigenous Karen, Kachin, and Rakhine perspectives on military occupation and resistance; historical parallels to Indonesia’s 1965–66 massacres or Thailand’s 2014 coup; structural causes like the 2008 constitution (drafted under junta supervision) that guarantees military control over 25% of parliament; marginalised voices of Rohingya survivors, ethnic armed organizations, and pro-democracy activists in exile; the role of Buddhist nationalism in legitimizing violence; and the erasure of pre-colonial federalist traditions that resisted centralized rule.
Medium structural omission detected in mainstream coverage.
The narrative is produced by Western and Japanese outlets (e.g., *The Japan Times*) for audiences prioritizing geopolitical stability over democratic accountability, framing the coup as an internal Myanmar affair to avoid implicating global arms dealers or regional powers. The framing serves neoliberal and realist paradigms that depoliticize military rule by reducing it to ‘strongman politics’ rather than a deliberate strategy of resource extraction and population control. It obscures how Western sanctions paradoxically strengthen the junta by driving it into China’s economic orbit, while ASEAN’s non-interference doctrine shields authoritarian regimes from accountability.
The Tatmadaw’s 2021 power grab follows a century-long pattern of military intervention in Burmese politics, from British colonial divide-and-rule policies to the 1962 coup under Ne Win, which established the military’s ‘guardian’ role over the state. The 2008 constitution, drafted under junta supervision, institutionalized military impunity by reserving key ministries (Defense, Home Affairs, Border Affairs) for generals and barring civilian oversight. Parallels exist in Thailand’s 2014 coup, where the military justified intervention as ‘protecting the monarchy,’ and Indonesia’s 1965–66 massacres, where the army used anti-communism to eliminate rivals.
Myanmar’s crisis is not a story of one general’s ambition but the culmination of a century-long project of military state-building, where the Tatmadaw weaponized ethnic divisions, constitutional engineering, and foreign patronage to entrench autocracy.