The Coup in Myanmar: What Happened and What’s Next
VIEW EVENT DETAILSAsia: Beyond the Headlines
Monday’s military coup in Myanmar strikes a massive blow to the country’s already fragile and at times unstable top-down democratic transition, and creates a much more tenuous situation for the people of Myanmar — of all ethnicities and religions. Many of the country’s senior-most elected leaders from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy remain in detention, after the Commander in Chief of Myanmar’s military Min Aung Hlaing declared the election was fraudulent and took control of the country through a constitutional measure of the military’s design.
This joint program of the Asia Society Policy Institute and Asia Society Culture as Diplomacy initiative will explore what led up to the coup and what may lie ahead. Speakers will discuss parallels and divergences from the country’s past coups and military crackdowns; how the past decade of normalizing international relations, open internet and information, and international commerce may create different outcomes for the country; how other countries —such as the U.S., China, and ASEAN nations fit into the picture; and more.
SPEAKERS
Scot Marciel served as U.S. Ambassador to Burma/Myanmar from March 2016 through May 2020. Prior to serving in Myanmar, Ambassador Marciel served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asia and the Pacific at the State Department, where he oversaw U.S. relations with Southeast Asia. From 2010 to 2013, he served as U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia. Prior to that, he served concurrently as the first U.S. Ambassador for ASEAN Affairs and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Southeast Asia from 2007 to 2010. Ambassador Marciel is a career diplomat with 35 years of experience in Asia and around the world. In addition to the assignments noted above, he has served at U.S. missions in Turkey, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Brazil and the Philippines. At the State Department in Washington, he served as Director of the Office of Maritime Southeast Asia, Director of the Office of Mainland Southeast Asia, and Director of the Office of Southern European Affairs. He also was Deputy Director of the Office of Monetary Affairs in the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs. Ambassador Marciel is currently a Visiting Scholar, Visiting Practitioner Fellow on Southeast Asia, for the 2020-2021 academic year at Stanford University’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.
Moe Thuzar is a Fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute’s Regional Socio-Cultural Studies Programme. She also co-coordinates the Myanmar Studies Programme. She was previously a lead researcher at the ASEAN Studies Centre at ISEAS. She joined ISEAS in 2008, after spending 10 years at the ASEAN Secretariat coordinating regional cooperation in social and human development. One of her first projects after joining ISEAS was to document in real-time ASEAN's coordination of the humanitarian response to Myanmar in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in May 2008. A former diplomat, she is researching the socio-cultural underpinnings of Burma’s Cold War foreign policy for her PhD at the National University of Singapore, and spent the 2019-20 academic year as a Fox International Fellow at Yale University’s MacMillan Center.
Debra Eisenman (moderator) is Managing Director of the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI), where she leads and oversees projects on development, governance, sustainability, and security challenges throughout Asia, with a particular focus on Myanmar. She has over 15 years’ experience working on programs focused on political development and youth engagement. In June 2018, after taking part in five years of U.S.-Myanmar track II dialogues, she authored the ASPI report, Reconciling Expectations with Reality in a Transitioning Myanmar.