Exclusive: Myanmar’s Dictator Wants to Rebuild Ties With the West

First came the mirror. Before Min Aung Hlaing enters the room for his first Western media interview since seizing power in a 2021 coup d’état, aides maneuver an ornate Rococo revival looking glass into place for preening. Then come requests for his portrait: light him from the left, the better to disguise a thinning hairline no longer hidden beneath an olive cap.

Myanmar’s former commander in chief now calls himself President, following January elections widely condemned as fraudulent. His fitful transformation from generalissimo to civilian statesman extends even to awkward attempts at bonhomie. He confesses to loving golf—he plays off an 18 handicap—though a bad back has lately kept him from the fairway.

Yet the makeover has limits. The geniality fades when questions turn to human rights, narcotics trafficking, or sanctioned relatives. Even his birthplace remains classified. “I used to revisit my township very often, so if you can carefully watch the news, you can figure out where I’m native,” he says cryptically.

Min Aung Hlaing may have swapped his uniform for a silken longyi sarong, but the barracks instinct to conceal, deflect, and command remains firmly in place. “Some of my responses didn’t directly touch upon your questions, but I hope they were still useful,” he offers after our hour together.

Obfuscation is a curious tactic for someone fixated on ingratiating himself with the international community. While his coup was widely condemned, Min Aung Hlaing has now ruled Myanmar for five years, and there is a growing realization that he is going nowhere. He has now been welcomed on official visits to nine nations, and while autocracies like Russia and China might warrant an eye roll, trips to broadly democratic Thailand and India indicate a wider thaw.

For neighbors, engagement is born of necessity: Myanmar is not only the world’s top producer of methamphetamine and opium, but also the nerve center of a global “scamdemic” that loots unsuspecting bank accounts to the tune of $15 billion annually. “The situation in Myanmar is having a global impact,” says Jeremy Douglas, deputy director of operations at the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. “It’s off the charts, and the region needs to intervene before it gets worse.”

The quandary facing Western powers is whether to follow suit. Myanmar is also among the world’s most resource rich nations, boasting vast deposits of jade, copper, coal, teak, gemstones, tin, and gold. And it is the world’s third largest producer of heavy rare earths—arcane materials over which Washington and Beijing continue to spar.

Yet the reputational stakes of cozying up to Min Aung Hlaing may eclipse these riches. The Southeast Asian nation of 55 million, formerly known as Burma, remains racked by civil war between forces loyal to his government, ethnic rebel groups, and a National Unity Government (NUG) spawned from the ousted administration of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains in detention. Today, Min Aung Hlaing controls less than half of Myanmar’s total landmass.

“Our strategy has been expanding our territory and providing necessary social welfare and essential services,” says Duwa Lashi La, acting President of the NUG. “We also protect the public from the junta’s attacks.”

The conflict has so far claimed more than 100,000 lives, displaced 3.6 million people, and sent countless others fleeing across Myanmar’s borders. Troops under Min Aung Hlaing’s command stand accused of torching villages, massacring civilians, and committing sexual violence, while fighter aircraft and drones have targeted schools and temples. U.N. investigators have accused him of genocide, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. He denies wrongdoing.

While the Biden Administration rhetorically backed the NUG, U.S. President Donald Trump has anchored foreign policy in transactional interests. On June 25, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Michael DeSombre noted that Washington is “very open to working with all stakeholders” to combat “mass displacement and trans-national crime.” Last year, the Trump Administration withdrew sanctions on several junta allies amid a Myanmar policy review that looks likely to advocate revived ties. It has already ended temporary protected status for nearly 4,000 refugees. “It is safe for Burmese citizens to return home,” then Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in November. 

Fulsome engagement will “infuriate a large portion of the Myanmar population,” says Scot Marciel, U.S. ambassador to Myanmar from 2016 to 2020. “But I don’t think Trump and company care.”

As ever, a key driver is countering the growing clout of China, which covets Myanmar’s resources as well as strategic access to the Bay of Bengal. But Beijing’s approach has been scattergun: it considers Suu Kyi an “old friend,” yet has supplied rebel forces as well as backing Min Aung Hlaing—a diplomatic fudge critics say underscores the perils of replacing a values-based U.S. approach with a transactional, Chinese-led regional order.

“It’s hard to ascribe a clear strategy for China in Myanmar,” says Drew Thompson, a former U.S. defense official now at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “It’s contributed to instability by not creating a preponderance of power in any one place.”

The gamble is whether engagement could tease Myanmar from China’s orbit and achieve more than years of condemnation has. Sanctions, the argument goes, have not prevented foreign firms from operating in the country, nor would they block U.S. companies from re-entering. Under this real-politik, Washington’s demands would be concrete: lower tariffs on American goods, curb scam networks targeting Americans, and deny China access to critical infrastructure. Political reform, meanwhile, would be back-burnered.

A revised Myanmar policy is far from a priority for the U.S. “There would have to be some tangible economic benefit to really bother,” says Marciel. Min Aung Hlaing has enlisted influential people to make that case; lobbyist Roger Stone—a Trump confidant—is being paid $50,000 a month to help “rebuild” relations with D.C., according to official filings.

“I’d be very surprised if the U.S. doesn’t re-engage with the junta,” says Jonah Blank, a Southeast Asia analyst and former Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer. “None of the things that held back previous administrations, like human rights or democracy promotion, mean a thing.”

Yet engagement would also erase much of America’s moral authority in the region. Min Aung Hlaing isn’t shy in his hope that America First nativism offers him a lifeline: “It would be ideal if the U.S. could cooperate with us in fostering the peace, stability, and development essential for our people to successfully realize a fully democratic state.”

The last phrase hangs awkwardly here in the capital Naypyidaw, a labyrinthine citadel built by the military in 2005 to insulate itself from unrest. “There are various forms of democracy,” Min Aung Hlaing says with a thin smile. “There is American democracy, there is European democracy. I will ensure that Myanmar achieves a democratic system that truly aligns with our own culture, customs, and traditions.”

Those traditions are on full display a short drive from Min Aung Hlaing’s office, where Myanmar’s Defense Services Museum sprawls across 600 manicured acres. Buses of schoolchildren streaked with golden thanaka paste—a traditional sunscreen and beauty adornment—clamber over decommissioned fighter jets, tanks, and anti-aircraft guns.

The Myanmar military’s suffocating political role calcified after General Ne Win staged a coup in 1962. Min Aung Hlaing was 5 at the time, growing up in the northern city of Mandalay. He says he wasn’t always keen to attend school, “but my mother made absolutely sure that I did.” This inculcated a love of literature, he says, but after attending university in Yangon, he abandoned his law studies to pursue a military career, gaining admission to the elite Defence Services Academy on his third attempt in 1974.

Min Aung Hlaing’s formative environment was Ne Win’s military machine—an institution that regarded itself as sole guardian of unity, sovereignty, and political order. “The military is an integral part of the nation,” he says, “and military personnel and their families are a part of the people.”

Former classmates recall an average cadet of below—average charm—a reserved, disciplined, and politically cautious officer who accumulated influence through institutional loyalty, bureaucratic persistence, and the careful management of military elites. His profile rose in 2009 when he led a campaign to subdue ethnic insurgents in the Kokang region along the Chinese border. The offensive ended a two-decade cease-fire and sent some 30,000 people fleeing into China. While the episode angered Beijing, it burnished Min Aung Hlaing’s leadership credentials and spurred successive promotions.

It was a strange moment in Myanmar. The old junta run by another military dictator, Senior General Than Shwe, was nominally stepping back, easing censorship, and releasing political prisoners, including Suu Kyi, who eventually assumed executive power as state counselor. Min Aung Hlaing presented himself as a professional soldier supporting a carefully managed transition. He cultivated foreign military relationships, met diplomats, and posed with monks. The once taciturn officer increasingly behaved like a politician.

When Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide in 2015, President Barack Obama lifted all remaining U.S. economic sanctions. The country Suu Kyi inherited had been hollowed out by half a century of dysfunction. Southeast Asia’s richest economy upon independence in 1948, Myanmar had become by some metrics its poorest—its banks insolvent, bureaucracy broken, and corruption endemic. Suu Kyi tapped Australian economist Sean Turnell to help reverse that decline. Reforms curbed inflation and deficits, opened the country to investment, and expanded micro-finance to 6 million borrowers, overwhelmingly women.

Yet civilian control was a mirage: the 2008 constitution guaranteed a quarter of legislative seats for the military, which also nominated the ministers of defense, home affairs, and border affairs. Reform unfolded inside a constitutional cage. Civilian leaders could redirect spending toward schools and hospitals, but they could not restrain the generals, overcome weak institutions, or decentralize power. “There was still a military mindset that Burma is a victim, and the perpetrators are always invidious foreigners,” says Turnell. “The international economy was an arena of threat rather than opportunity.”

A nadir was reached in 2016 with military operations that the U.S. subsequently deemed genocide against the Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim minority concentrated in Rakhine state. Myanmar denies the Rohingya constitute an Indigenous ethnic group, commonly referring to them as “Bengalis” and portraying them as interlopers from Bangladesh.

Attacks on security posts by Rohingya militants the next year prompted counterterrorism “clearance operations” that saw hundreds of villages burned amid accusations of mass executions and rape. More than 700,000 fled across the Bangladeshi border, while a U.N. fact-finding mission conservatively estimates up to 10,000 were killed. An International Criminal Court prosecutor sought Min Aung Hlaing’s arrest for crimes against humanity, while a separate Argentine warrant also accuses him of genocide. “We have not committed any such acts against the Bengalis in Rakhine state,” he says. “Our actions were strictly limited to safeguarding our country’s sovereignty. Our conscience is entirely clear.”

Min Aung Hlaing had an incongruous ally in Nobel laureate Suu Kyi, who took the remarkable step of defending Myanmar’s military at the Hague, where she urged the bench to “bear in mind this complex situation and the challenge to sovereignty and security.” The international community was aghast and stripped her of numerous honors. “She was desperately trying not to rock the boat,” says Mon Mon Myat, a former democracy activist and Suu Kyi biographer.

Yet Suu Kyi’s performance also angered Myanmar’s top brass, who deemed her defense lukewarm after she raised the possibility of courts-martial for military transgressors. “It was the wrong strategy,” says Aung Zaw, a former student activist and founder of the Thailand-based magazine The Irrawaddy. “She was seen as defending the regime at the Hague, but then the military also weren’t happy.”

That animosity exploded in November 2020 when the NLD won another landslide. While the Carter Center rated the process “very good” or “reasonable” at 95% of observed polling stations, Min Aung Hlaing alleges rampant fraud, calling it “one of the most disgraceful elections in democratic history.”

On Feb. 1, 2021, a convoy of black military vehicles rolled through Naypyidaw to detain top NLD leaders. Suu Kyi was sentenced to 33 years (now reduced to 18) on charges ranging from corruption to illegally possessing walkie-talkies. “I have been extremely lenient toward her,” Min Aung Hlaing says with a straight face. “We made every possible effort to prevent the situation from reaching this point.”

What really drove Min Aung Hlaing to seize power dominated discussions among officials in squalid detention. “We talked about it a lot,” says Turnell, who spent 650 days in custody. “There was certainly a part of the military that didn’t want any loosening of the sort under way.”

The coup is best understood as a reaction to a regime losing control. According to a leaked 2004 military dossier, the junta engineered reforms to hedge against Beijing’s overbearing influence and leverage Suu Kyi’s freedom to win Western trade, aid, and diplomatic legitimacy. But the generals miscalculated the public’s fierce devotion to “The Lady,” whose popularity proved fundamentally incompatible with the military’s absolute power. Myanmar’s military also has sprawling business interests spanning banking, mining, gems, construction, manufacturing, tobacco, tourism, transport, telecoms, and real estate. Reforms threatened this gravy train.

It is also true that Min Aung Hlaing was facing mandatory retirement when he seized power in 2021. One regional envoy also pointed to how Trump had normalized complaints of voter fraud amid his own election defeat just five days before Myanmar’s ballot. Moreover, Thailand’s generals had staged a coup seven years earlier which, after a period of protests and civil disruption, had been begrudgingly tolerated.

But in Myanmar, a defiant Gen Z refused to submit. Millions joined nationwide general strikes, doctors and teachers walked off the job, and young citizens formed the People’s Defense Forces (PDF), bringing armed resistance from rural borderlands into urban strongholds. The military responded with summary executions, mass arrests, and airstrikes. By late 2023, three ethnic armed groups launched Operation 1027 in the country’s northeast, overrunning more than 200 military outposts. Analysts openly predicted the regime’s collapse, and rumors of an internal military revolt circulated.

Min Aung Hlaing responded with ruthless efficiency. He purged disgruntled brass hats, imposed forced conscription for young adults, and implemented a devastating “four cuts” strategy—severing resistance forces from food, funding, intelligence, and recruits, by burning villages and leveling contested zones. Volker Türk, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, warned such collective punishment “may constitute crimes against humanity and war crimes.”

Yet Min Aung Hlaing’s ultimate salvation came from Beijing, which was initially angered by his power grab and refused early requests to meet President Xi Jinping. To save face, Min Aung Hlaing instead flew to Moscow. “Whenever we have faced crises due to our political situations, Russia has consistently supported us,” he says.

But Asia’s superpower wasn’t going to be embarrassed by an upstart tyrant on its impoverished periphery, especially when junta-connected scammers were brazenly fleecing millions of Chinese citizens. So Beijing began arming the rebels.

A panicked Min Aung Hlaing pivoted to full cooperation with China, handing over the scam bigwigs as well as tens of thousands of lowly fraudsters. In response, Beijing has entered a cautious détente, welcoming Min Aung Hlaing to Beijing, strong-arming rebels into cease-fires, and supplying military hardware—all on the strict condition that he safeguard Chinese economic assets and rein in criminal syndicates.

“We have achieved a certain degree of success [tackling] challenges regarding peace and stability in the ethnic border regions,” says Min Aung Hlaing. “Though some matters are still being negotiated.”

Myanmar’s lopsided reliance on China glitters in plain sight at Mandalay’s jade market. Each morning, heavily tattooed Burmese traders lay conflict-zone stones across folding tables for Chinese merchants to probe with flashlights. Once cut and polished, the jade is sold to buyers across greater China, often via TikTok and RedNote.

Mei Mei, who arrived here from Yunnan province three years ago, says she earns $150,000 annually trading jade online. Yet war has crushed supply routes and trade has plummeted. “Chinese people don’t have much money,” she says. “And the fighting makes it difficult to transport jade here.”

It’s not just Chinese traders feeling the pinch, with total cross-border trade plunging by around half since the coup. That decline stokes frustration not only with the government but also the NUG, amid growing fatalism toward the prospect of meaningful change. “The PDF are gangsters,” says one dad of two in Mandalay. “Now we must pay money to both the government and rebels. They should stop fighting. Democracy is best, but stability is better than war.”

Yet it’s a conflict that will keep rumbling on. Despite losing Chinese backing, the NUG controls enough territory to fund itself indefinitely via taxation and resource extraction. The harder it fights, the tighter Min Aung Hlaing turns the screw on ordinary people. TIME met one 5-year-old girl sleeping rough by a roadside near Mandalay after her father was forcibly conscripted. The well-heeled of Yangon, meanwhile, pay monthly levies to dodge the draft, filling officials’ pockets.

But across this social chasm the great unifier is animus toward Min Aung Hlaing; a mere mention of his name will elicit a sneer, headshake, or crimson jet of betel spit. Outside the country, people are more explicit. “He’s a clown,” says Mon Mon Myat, the biographer. He’s the “worst of all Myanmar’s military dictators,” says U Gambira, a prominent monk and activist. “People are disgusted by him,” says Aung Zaw, the journalist.

Unlike authoritarian regimes in China or Vietnam, Myanmar’s military offers no compelling economic vision. Min Aung Hlaing speaks vaguely about “transitioning from basic raw material production to manufacturing finished goods.” But since his coup, GDP has shrunk 13%, poverty has almost doubled, the kyat currency is 60% weaker, foreign direct investment is down 90%, while inflation averages 20%. “There’s no development focus, which really sets them apart,” says Turnell. “There’s just no vision for the economy except as a vehicle for control.”

Min Aung Hlaing is pitching sanctions relief as a win-win, dangling carrots to coax the international community back to the table. An earlier bilateral agreement to repatriate the Rohingya is dependent on rolling back legal challenges, he says. Otherwise, “it becomes an impossible situation for us to resolve.” A potential amnesty for Suu Kyi “depends on her,” he says, though suggested that could change if “grounds for reconsideration emerge on our part.”

Beneath these overtures lies an enduring paranoia regarding Chinese domination, reviving the same impulse that drove Myanmar’s last, abortive attempt at rapprochement with the West. Though Min Aung Hlaing also stands to benefit personally from any loosening; he and his children have been targeted by the Treasury Department for their business dealings. “I urge the U.S. government to review [sanctions] objectively,” he says.

Such demands would be dead on arrival in an era governed by values-based foreign policy. Today, they may find a market. “The key thing to understand is, whether you engage with the military or not, their behavior will not change,” says Marciel. “That said, isolation has limited value as well.”

As global powers weigh strategic leverage against democratic ideals, Myanmar’s people remain trapped in a grim deadlock—a despot that cannot conquer, a resistance that cannot win, and foreign capitals reluctant to tilt the scales. The tragedy of Myanmar is not just that it burns, but that every player can feed the flames, while none can build a nation from the ashes.