In a development that has sent tremors through the delicate ecosystem of Southeast Asian geopolitics, the Myanmar rebel factions have apparently folded like a cheap deckchair at a Balmoral garden party. The junta, those chaps who make Kim Jong-un look like a liberal arts professor, have reportedly regained control of key border regions. Naturally, the UK Embassy is now ‘monitoring border security’ with the same intensity I reserve for the last sip of a G&T.
Let us parse this sudden collapse, shall we? The rebels, who had been holding out with the tenacity of a badger in a biscuit tin, have suddenly melted away like butter in a Bangkok heatwave. Was it the rain? The lack of decent British blandishments? Or perhaps they simply realised that fighting a military junta is rather like wrestling a crocodile in a phone box — exhausting, ultimately pointless, and likely to end in a sticky, teeth-filled demise.
The regional stability fears are, of course, the usual hand-wringing nonsense. Every time some minor rebellion fizzles out in a far-flung corner of the globe, the policy wonks come out with their graphs and their ‘long-term implications’ and their relentless optimism that the world will not, in fact, descend into a Hobbesian hellscape. Spoiler alert: it already has. The junta’s victory is not a triumph of order but a victory of the sort of authoritarianism that makes British colonialism look like a particularly aggressive tea party.
And what of the UK Embassy’s monitoring? Ah yes, the noble art of watching from a distance while sipping lukewarm tea and sending very sternly worded memos to the Foreign Office. I imagine the Ambassador, a man whose tie is so tightly knotted it could choke a python, is currently peering through binoculars at the Thai border, muttering about the price of avocado toast in Yangon. Their ‘monitoring’ will no doubt result in a report so dense with diplomatic jargon that it could double as a doorstop. Meanwhile, the junta consolidates power, the refugees pile up, and the world moves on to the next crisis.
The question that gnaws at my gin-sodden brain is this: what does the rebel collapse actually mean for the average British citizen? Absolutely nothing, obviously. But for the sake of the column inches, allow me to pretend it matters. The junta will now have a freer hand to oppress the Rohingya, silence journalists, and generally behave like the international pariahs they are. The region will become more unstable, which means more refugees, which means more right-wing newspapers in Britain running headlines about ‘border crises’ while conveniently forgetting that we armed the junta’s predecessors.
I propose a new foreign policy: replace all ambassadors with barkeeps. They’d certainly be better at reading a room. And instead of ‘monitoring’, they could just pour a stiff drink and call it a day. The gin shortage is the real crisis here, folks. Everything else is just background noise.
So raise a glass to the rebels, wherever they may be. They fought the good fight, until they didn’t. And to the junta: enjoy your victory. It’ll last about as long as a snowball in a sauna. The cycle of rebellion and repression is as inevitable as my mid-afternoon gin and tonic. Cheers.
