global security initiative

On February 1st 2021, the Tatmadaw, or Myanmar military began a coup d’etat against the democratically-elected government, which was led by the National League for Democracy (or NLD) just before elected officials from the November 2020 elections could be sworn in. Since then, Myanmar has been largely controlled by a military junta, who continue to struggle against multiple ethnically-aligned armies dispersed throughout the country. Some countries in the region have refused to recognize the junta, but the People’s Republic of China called the coup simply a “major cabinet reshuffle” and accelerated their military trade with the junta while decrying Western sanctions on the country as escalatory measures, even going so far as to veto a security council resolution condemning the coup alongside Russia. 

China’s approach to relations with Myanmar since the coup have been evolving swiftly, especially since the recent Operation 1027, a large offensive staged by the ethnic armed forces coalition known as the Three Brotherhood Alliance on October 27th 2023. The losses by the junta during the operation revealed their control of the country to be more tenuous than Beijing might have expected and exemplify the complex factors going into China’s decision-making approach to the conflict. 

For this episode, host Bonnie Glaser is joined by Jason Tower, the country director for the Burma program at the United States Institute for Peace. Tower has over 20 years of experience working in conflict and security issues in China and Southeast Asia, including analysis on cross-border investments, conflict dynamics, and organized crime in the region. He worked previously in Beijing and is a former Fulbright research student and Harvard-Yenching fellow. 

Timestamps

[02:07] China’s Interest in the Myanmar Conflict

[05:48] China’s Engagement with Parties in Myanmar

[12:48] Impact of China’s Brokered Ceasefires 

[20:30] Credibility of China in Southeast Asia

[25:15] Myanmar in the US-China Relationship

Van sat down with China watcher Carla Freeman (US Institute of Peace) to explore this thing Xi Jinping announced last year called the “Global Security Initiative,” which turned into a larger discussion about how China thinks about security and international order generally. The catalyst was a piece she wrote with Alex Stephenson. We get into: What China’s “relational” thinking about world politics really means in practice; How Chinese security thinking affects the global South; How US choices affects Sino-Russian ties; How Made in China 2025 looks in hindsight; The aspects of international order China likes most; and more!

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[1:51] Beijing’s Objectives

[5:43] China’s Vision for the International Order

[8:49] GSI’s Relation to US-China Competition

[10:45] "Meat and Bones" over Time

[14:47] “Indivisible Security”

[16:37] India and Others' Perspectives on GSI

[21:27] Sino-Russian Alignment: Implications for China’s Global Security Governance Ambitions?

Over the last few months, the Indo-Pacific has seen a flurry of activity. China launched the Global Security Initiative and its foreign minister Wang Yi embarked on a tour of the Pacific Islands. More significantly, Beijing inked a security agreement with the Solomon Islands that sent shockwaves across the region. Around the same time, the Quad held its second in-person summit in Tokyo, and the United States ushered in a series of regional partnerships including the Indo-Pacific Economic Forum and I2U2. All the while, the war in Ukraine has continued to cast its shadow on the region.

In this episode of Interpreting India, Vijay Gokhale joins Srinath Raghavan to discuss the recent developments in the Indo-Pacific. What is the significance of China’s actions, and how are they being perceived by other countries in the region? What are the implications of the growing U.S.-China competition in the Indo-Pacific? And finally, how are India-China relations being impacted by a deepening partnership between Russia and China? 

Episode Contributors

Vijay Gokhale is a non-resident senior fellow at Carnegie India. He retired from the Indian Foreign Service in January 2020 after a diplomatic career that spanned thirty-nine years. He has served as both the foreign secretary of India (from January 2018 to January 2020) and as India’s ambassador to China (from January 2016 to October 2017). He has worked extensively on matters relating to the Indo-Pacific region with a special emphasis on Chinese politics and diplomacy. He is the author of Tiananmen Square: The Making of a Protest and The Long Game: How the Chinese Negotiate with India.

Srinath Raghavan is a nonresident senior fellow at Carnegie India. His primary research focus is on the contemporary and historical aspects of India’s foreign and security policies.

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