APRSA 2026 : Where Next for Myanmar ?

More than four years after Myanmar's military seized power in a coup, the country remains bogged down in one of Asia's bloodiest and most complex civil wars. For New Zealanders watching the conflict from a distance, it may be tempting to see it as a distant tragedy, if they see it all, given the scant attention currently paid by the New Zealand media.

The reality is quite different, as the on-going failure to resolve the Myanmar crisis is quietly reshaping regional security across Southeast Asia in ways that impact affect trade, migration, organised crime, and the credibility of the very institutions New Zealand relies on to keep the Indo-Pacific stable.

A new strategic assessment by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) lays out the problem in fairly stark terms: the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) - the ten-country group that is the region's primary multilateral forum, has failed to mount a coherent diplomatic response to the crisis. And the longer it drifts, the worse the consequences become.

A Road Map. But No Driver

ASEAN's formal framework for addressing Myanmar is known as the Five-Point Consensus (5PC), agreed upon in April 2021. It calls for an end to violence, the opening of dialogue among the warring parties, and the appointment of an ASEAN Special Envoy to oversee the process. On paper, it is a reasonable starting point. In practice, it has been less than effective.

The central problem seems to be structural, in that ASEAN rotates its chairship and its associated Special Envoy role every year. This means that each new chair inherits a complex conflict, spends some time getting up to speed, and then hands over to the next country at the ASEAN summit. There are only six or seven months for actual diplomacy.

The results have been predictably inconsistent. Cambodia's 2022 chairship prioritised engagement with Myanmar's military junta, ignoring opposition groups including the exiled National Unity Government (NUG).  Indonesia's 2023 chairship took a more inclusive approach, quietly engaging all sides and convening opposition groups in Jakarta and Bali. Laos reversed this in 2024, dropping the practice of hosting consultations altogether. Malaysia, as 2025 chair, resumed Indonesia's approach and went further, with Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim personally raising the issue internationally, although Malaysia only met with opposition groups on four occasions over the entire year.

It’s no way to run a dialogue process, as it requires opposition groups to constantly re-establish themselves with each new envoy, and with one-to-one relationships lost at the end of the cycle.

Indonesia has reportedly offered an opportunity for yet more talks in early June.

The Tatmadaw coup leader‑turned‑president Min Aung Hlaing continues to work to break Myanmar’s isolation, using his new civilian title to press for a return to full participation in ASEAN, which continues to bar him from attending its summits.

Thailand’s Fractured Role

IISS analyst Morgan Michaels is among those who point to Thailand as the one country that could actually shift the needle on this enduring issue. It shares a 2,400-kilometre border with Myanmar and has more at stake in the conflict than any other ASEAN member.

Myanmar still supplies 13% of Thailand's gas, and Thai state-owned company PTT Exploration and Production holds majority stakes in two major offshore gas fields.

Millions of Myanmar nationals work in Thai industries. Cross-border trade, while volatile and often black-market, is economically significant for both countries.

Thailand also has insights no other ASEAN member can replicate: deep, long-standing relationships with virtually every significant player in the Myanmar conflict. The Royal Thai Army maintains channels with local Tatmadaw commanders. The Royal Thai Armed Forces Headquarters has a direct hotline to Myanmar's capital, Naypyidaw. Thai political parties, both the ruling Pheu Thai Party and the opposition People's Party, have cultivated ties with different factions of Myanmar's opposition. The northern Thai city of Chiang Mai has in the last five years become a hub for Myanmar researchers, media organisations and activists, as well as some senior opposition figures who live and work there.

To the IISS, this logically makes Thailand the ideal convening ground for talks, but in practice, Thailand's response has been regarded as inconsistent.

Between 2023 and early 2026, Thailand rocked through four governments, each responding differently to the crisis. The Prayut Chan-o-cha government essentially recognised the junta and continued normal engagement. The Srettha government then attempted a more creative approach, developing a humanitarian ceasefire plan with the Karen National Union (KNU), which quickly collapsed.

The Paetongtarn Shinawatra government then effectively handed Myanmar peacemaking to former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who conducted behind the scenes talks  before Paetongtarn herself was removed from office in August 2025 following a court ruling related to a leaked phone call about a border conflict with Cambodia.

That conflict with Cambodia , which escalated into a five-day border war in July 2025 and a more destructive round of fighting in December, further distracted Bangkok from Myanmar at a critical moment.

The current Thai government, led by PM Anutin Charnvirakul has focussed more attention on the Myanmar issue, extending work permits and legalising employment for hundreds of thousands of displaced Myanmar nationals.

He's also drawn criticism internationally and at home, for appearing to legitimise Myanmar's recent elections, and engaging with the junta in a more bilateral way then many in ASEAN are comfortable with.

Beyond the human cost of the war itself, the Myanmar crisis is generating security threats that reach well beyond the country's borders, and this is where the stakes become most relevant for the broader region including countries like New Zealand that operate in and engage with Southeast Asia.

Myanmar has become the world's leading producer of methamphetamine, with production surging since the 2021 coup. Large quantities continue to flow through Thailand and on into the wider region.

Myanmar has also become the epicentre of Southeast Asia's cyber-scam world. Criminal groups operate with impunity in ungoverned areas along Myanmar's borders, and many of the Kiwis receiving calls from their “bank” are being contacted from Myanmar. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that these scam operations cost the region between $US18 billion and $US37 billion in 2023 alone. The human trafficking dimension is also significant, with people being are smuggled across borders, and then forced to operate scam centres.

ASEAN's Credibility on the Line

For New Zealand, which has long supported ASEAN's central role in Indo-Pacific security architecture, the deeper concern is what the Myanmar coup reveals about ASEAN's capacity to manage serious regional crises.

ASEAN’s inability to mount a sustained, coherent response to the Myanmar conflict has created a vacuum that China has moved to fill. In 2025, Beijing brokered two ceasefire agreements in Myanmar, one granting de facto authority over a major border area to a non-state armed group. China has also reportedly discouraged some ethnic armed organisations from participating in ASEAN-led talks. The parallel peace process Beijing is building with the Tatmadaw and select opposition groups risks entrenching divisions that will make a more inclusive settlement involving Myanmar’s various ethnic groupings that much harder to reach.

The just-released IISS analysis argues that ASEAN should move to establish a semi-permanent office in Bangkok to co-ordinate its Myanmar response, staffed by a Special Envoy with a mandate longer than the current one-year cycle.

The logic is sound: no other ASEAN capital can match Bangkok's proximity, relationships, and institutional knowledge of the conflict, and of Myanmar.

But making it work would require ASEAN members to overcome significant political obstacles - including Thai domestic politics, perceptions of a slight bias toward the junta, and ASEAN’s traditional reluctance to interfere with member internal affairs.

Whether ASEAN rises to that challenge matters not just for Myanmar, but for the credibility of regional institutions across the Indo-Pacific.

Based on just-released analysis by Morgan Michaels, Research Fellow for Southeast Asian Security and Defence at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), published in the 2026 Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment.

Asia Media Centre