Myanmar: 2025 in Review--Is it Hopeless?
- Feb 25
- 5 min read
Updated: Mar 6
The only drama associated with this piece of my writing is that the Editors of the East Asia Forum sent back my second draft that included my responses to comments from two peer reviewers. The Editors wanted me to add hyperlinks in most paragraphs and a provide a list of my sources. I told them I wasn't paid enough to do this and had more important things to do. They gave the job to a junior staff member and the new draft they sent me needed no more than a dozen small fixes. They accepted all of my fixes.
The Editors of East Asia Forum are professors in the Economics Department at ANU in Canberra. EAF started in 2006. It comes out in two forms: an online blog of short pieces, and a quarterly magazine with longer pieces. The magazine is sold widely in bookstores and news stands in Asia. EAF has published a handful of my short pieces over the past 20 years. The most recent long story was a co-authored essay about Indonesia's new capital published in March 2020, seven months after President Jokowi announced the site and before they broke ground. We suggested three keys to success for the project, none of which were followed. The project is looking more and more like a white elephant.
Read the article by clicking here or read it below.
Myanmar without a path to recovery
Published: 17 February 2026
Author: Lex Rieffel | From the Bridge Foundation
In Brief
Myanmar’s three-phase elections beginning in December 2025 delivered a preordained junta-backed outcome while the civil war showed no sign of ending. Opposition hopes of forcing a surrender faded as Chinese pressure on ethnic resistance organisations helped the military regain territory, even as the Arakan Army advanced in Rakhine State. The economy continued to implode, public services deteriorated and humanitarian needs rose. With China backing the junta and ASEAN constrained by non-interference and consensus, Myanmar is left with no plausible path out of conflict.
Myanmar is no longer just a failed state. It is becoming a country with little hope of recovery. The year 2025 offered no convincing evidence that Myanmar will emerge as a peaceful, prosperous and unified country in less than a generation or two.
Some hoped the three-phase elections beginning on 28 December 2025 would usher in a new period of peace and economic progress. This optimism was especially strong among the country’s military rulers, but there is no end in sight to the civil war that began at independence in 1948.
The election that ended on 25 January 2026 produced a preordained outcome, a landslide for the Union Solidarity and Development Party, the party created by the military and grossly favoured during the campaign. Together with the 25 per cent of seats reserved for the military under the 2008 Constitution, the military will be able to enact any new law that enhances its control of the country, including amendments to the constitution.
The biggest political question at the end of 2025 was about the role that Myanmar’s Commander-in-Chief and junta leader Min Aung Hlaing would play in the next government. The possibilities include becoming President, assuming a newly created position above the presidency — like the one created for former state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi after the National League for Democracy victory in the 2015 election — or remaining Commander-in-Chief.
The alternative hope among the opposition was to build on its successes in 2023–24 and bring the military close to surrendering by the end of 2025. Instead, the military was able to regain some of the territory it had lost, primarily because of Chinese pressure on key ethnic resistance organisations (EROs) in northern Myanmar.
The only opposition force to gain substantial territory during 2025 was the Arakan Army. By the end of the year, it was able to operate freely in Rakhine State except in the capital Sittwe and in Kyaukphyu, the terminus of China’s oil and gas pipelines. At the same time, the plight of the Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority worsened. Marginal territorial gains were made by the EROs in Karen, Kachin and Chin states.
A potential organising breakthrough for the opposition emerged in November 2025 with the formation of the Spring Revolution Alliance, a coalition of 19 resistance groups. The alliance’s strategy is to build control of the country from the bottom up. This contrasts with the top-down approach of the National Unity Government, the government-in-exile formed primarily by members of the National League for Democracy who won seats in the 2020 election.
The Myanmar economy continued to implode under the conflict, the self-defeating policies of the junta and the sanctions imposed by Western countries after the coup. While the military is raising enough domestic revenue and hard currency to maintain some semblance of normality in Yangon, the majority of the population struggles to survive. In addition, the March 2025 earthquake caused damage that will take many years to repair, especially in the new capital of Naypyidaw, and environmental damage from widespread, unregulated mining operations reached epic proportions.
According to prominent analyst Richard Horsey, ‘More than 20 million people across Myanmar — over a third of the population — are currently in need of humanitarian assistance, some 3.5 million of them displaced.’ Medical care outside Yangon and Naypyidaw is minimal, with the junta doing nothing to support public health in townships it does not control.
The education system has not recovered from post-coup teacher strikes and student boycotts. Vital policy reforms made in the 2011–2021 period have been reversed. Three out of four youth aged 18–24 are no longer in school or training. Conscription, which started in 2024, has produced an exodus of Myanmar’s brightest young men and women.
State collapse also fuelled the spread of scam centres along the Thailand border, which became the biggest Myanmar story in global news in 2025. They grew to the point that China pressured the junta to demolish some buildings and arrest some leaders. The US government also formed a ‘Scam Center Strike Force’ to shut down these operations and stop their proliferation.
The global context in 2025 compounded Myanmar’s agonies. China, Russia and North Korea continued to provide weapons and military technology to the junta. China also took steps to improve its access to the Indian Ocean and step up the extraction of Myanmar’s natural resources, including rare earths.
Thailand continued to play both sides in the conflict. India supported the junta diplomatically instead of resisting Chinese advances, as it did in other areas. The ASEAN community remained sadly constrained by its policy of non-interference in members’ internal affairs and its decision-making by consensus.
US policy also shifted. In measures that favoured the military junta, the Trump administration banned the entry of Myanmar nationals into the United States in June and terminated Temporary Protective Status for refugees from Myanmar in November.
For the roughly 50 million people living in Myanmar, 2025 ranked among the worst years since independence in 1948. The enduring tragedy is that neither the junta nor the opposition are on a plausible path to ending the conflict and restoring the hope for a better future achieved in the 2011–2021 period .
Lex Rieffel is founder of the From the Bridge Foundation and a former US Treasury Department economist based in Washington, DC, United States.
This article is part of an EAF special feature series on 2025 in review and the year ahead.
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