Post-colonial identity and power politics. The case of Myanmar's civil war

Abstract

Burma was integrated into the Japanese empire after more than a century of British colonial rule. Since obtaining independence in 1948, Burma has experienced a permanent state of internal strife, insurgencies, civil war, and military dictatorships. Myanmar started transitioning to liberal democracy in 2008, and after the 2015 general elections, it seemed that the process would create a modern functional state. The 2021 military coup reignited the flames of a brutal civil war, including the ongoing Rohingya genocide. The paper aims to explain the leading causes of failure to produce a stable democratic nation-state and end the cycle of violence. How can we expect the ongoing civil war to end, and what will be its consequences? Are there other outside relevant political actors that can influence the outcome? The methodology is linked with the realist constructivist and path dependence theories. The historical narrative, speech analysis of key political figures, and quantitative measurements of ethnicity and religion suggest that the root cause of the problem is that Myanmar was created as an artificial colonial state without taking into account any local or regional specificity.