Myanmar’s nuclear ambitions could see it becoming a new North Korea

After a string of meetings and agreements with Russia, the military junta of violence-torn Myanmar, led by General Min Aung Hlaing, announced last week it has established a “nuclear technology and information centre” in the country’s commercial capital, Yangon.

The stated reason for its desire for nuclear power is its dire power shortage, something that preceded the military’s coup d’etat in February 2021, but which has since resulted in serial power cuts across the country, further angering citizens already suffering under the regime. 

The concern, however, is the Myanmar military’s long-held — and occasionally vocalised — desire for nuclear weapons capability, a desire stretching back decades into the regime of former dictator Than Shwe.

Digital Myanmar publication The Irrawaddy, which has documented the country’s military for years,  revealed that two decades ago Shwe told his confidant U Thaung, then the nation’s science and technology minister: “Ko Thaung, if possible, do make an atom bomb. [I don’t mind] even if it is just the size of a bael fruit.”

Over the years, the Myanmar military has moved closer to Russia and North Korea. An initial deal with Russia to build a nuclear reactor was struck in 2007, and senior Myanmar leaders visited Pyongyang in 2008.

The program was abandoned under Thein Sein’s quasi-civilian government after Myanmar embarked on its democratic transition in 2011. Under the government of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, Myanmar signed the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 2016.

But since the coup, the military’s nuclear ambitions have been resuscitated. Last year Aung Hlaing visited Russia at least twice, meeting Alexey Likhachev, director general of Russian state energy company Rosatom. The two sides signed memorandums of understanding to cooperate on developing nuclear energy in Myanmar and ​​possibly implementing a modular reactor project in the South-East Asian nation.

This has massive implications for the region. The last thing anybody wants — including Myanmar’s northern neighbour and major investor, China — is another North Korea, this time in the middle of the Indo-Pacific. 

The move should be a wake-up call to countries such as Australia, which are doing their best to ignore the tragedy in Myanmar while going all-in on the conflict in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the seemingly intractable conflict in Myanmar continues to deteriorate. There are ​​17.6 million people who require humanitarian assistance, more than 1.5 million internally displaced, and nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. There is large-scale civil unrest and armed opposition from traditional ethnic-based militias and the newer People’s Defence Forces.

By the end of 2022, more than 2600 people were dead at the hands of the military, and tens of thousands have been arrested and placed in harsh detention conditions. Aun Llaing has extended the military’s emergency rule by another six months, which is likely to delay promised “elections” by August.

The situation appears to be too difficult for Myanmar’s neighbours — and other nations further afield — to handle, and has pulled the ever-weakening Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) into focus. ASEAN has been battered in recent years by having two of its 10 member nations, Cambodia and Laos, become effective client states of China. This is due to their economic colonisation by the Middle Kingdom, with complicity by Laos’ Communist Party and the corrupt dictatorship of Cambodian Prime Minister cum dictator Hun Sen.

ASEAN’s attempts to force the junta into acting on a “five-point consensus” — a plan it agreed to in April 2021 on how to tackle the political crisis — have gone nowhere. Sen, presiding over Cambodia’s chairing of ASEAN throughout 2022, was reported to have “given up” on the consensus.

The ball is now in Indonesia’s court, which heads ASEAN in 2023 (the association annually rotates leadership). As the largest country in the group by population, economy and military, it is seen as more likely to try to make progress. Indonesian President Joko Widido plans to send a top general as a special envoy to Myanmar to talk to its leaders about Indonesia’s democratisation after the collapse of its military government in 1998.

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has also been vocal in the past week, suggesting Myanmar be “carved out” of ASEAN and that its neighbour Thailand — whose military government has close ties to the junta and a deep economic relationship — should do more heavy lifting.

Australia has dragged its feet on Myanmar. The Albanese government took until the second annual anniversary of the coup to place extra sanctions on coup leaders and senior figures that other Western countries had enacted early in 2021. This was despite the November 2022 release of Australian Sean Turnell, an academic and former adviser to deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Indeed, Albanese’s big show of inviting Turnell to Parliament House in December turned quickly from important statement to window dressing when the words were not backed up with action.

China may be key in international efforts to push back against Myanmar’s bid for nuclear power. Unlike Russia, it is highly ambivalent about the dire situation in Myanmar, with billions of dollars in investment to protect it, including its long-desired energy pipeline from the southern province of Yunnan to Myanmar’s oil and gas fields in the Bay of Bengal.

The pipeline runs through the northern state of Kachin, roiled by civil war and home to two of the country’s most powerful militias. It has already been damaged by fighting last year. The addition of any possible nuclear power would surely not be welcomed.

China has also been locked in long-running agreements and has battled with various Myanmar governments over plans to build dams on the Salween and Mekong to harness hydropower — a cooperative effort in limiting environmental damage and creating renewable alternatives that could help provide the country with much-needed energy.

But China has shown little appetite for helping to solve conflicts in which it is not (at least specifically) involved. So action on Myanmar from the rest of the region — including Australia — is sorely needed before we find ourselves with a Kim Jong-un wannabe up the road.