Even as the Myanmar Army deploys drones and artillery to defend its last two strongholds of Sitwe and Kyauk Phyu in the breakaway Arakan province, it is moving ahead with plans to hold elections in the country this winter, a gesture as surreal as it is strategic.

The attempt to conduct elections as Myanmar’s generals wield guns to stifle a winter of discontent may seem paradoxical – but then the illusion of democracy has always been an attractive cloak which juntas around the world had sought to craft in their bid to gain legitimacy.

The army, which calls itself the Tatmadaw, controls roughly half the nation’s landmass. The other half is a patchwork of rebel fiefs, warlord-run territories, and gray zones where power shifts with the seasons. Whole regions—Rakhine, Kachin, Chin, and northern Shan—exist beyond Naypyidaw’s reach. Even the junta’s own bureaucrats quietly admit that in many districts, there will be no polling booths, no voters, and no pretense left to maintain.

Since independence, Myanmar’s history has followed a cruel pendulum swing: brief bursts of democracy punctured by long intervals of barrack rule. The National League for Democracy won in 1990 and again in 2015 and 2020, only to see its victories erased and its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, dragged once more into isolation. The coming 2025 elections promise nothing new. A quarter of parliamentary seats remain constitutionally reserved for men in uniform; the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party will contest without fear or competition.

The outcome, as always, is foregone.

Country of Shattered Maps

What was once a single State now resembles an archipelago of armed sovereignties. The Arakan Army holds sway over Rakhine’s ports and trade routes; the Kachin Independence Army dominates jade country in the north; the Chin, Karen, and Mon militias run their own micro-republics along the borders. To the east, the United Wa State Army—one of the world’s best-equipped insurgent forces—operates as a near-Chinese protectorate, complete with its own currency, checkpoints, and airstrips.

Each territory governs, taxes, and fights in its own name. The junta’s rule, confined largely to the plains and cities, survives through coercion and exhaustion. Fear, not faith, binds what remains of the state.

Myanmar’s chaos has become an international commodity. Beneath its battle-scarred soil lie vast deposits of rare earths and critical minerals—the same materials that power electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, and precision weapons. Control over these mines is now a proxy for geopolitical influence.

Beijing understood this early. For decades, it has woven itself into Myanmar’s infrastructure, politics, and war economy. Chinese companies dominate the extraction of jade and rare earths in the north, often in collusion with local militias. The junta relies on Chinese aircraft, artillery, and digital surveillance systems to maintain its grip, while Beijing operates twin oil and gas pipelines connecting the Bay of Bengal to Yunnan—strategic arteries that bypass the chokepoint of the Malacca Strait.

Just 55 km from India’s Andaman and Nicobar Command, on the Coco Islands, Chinese radar and signal posts now peer across the eastern Indian Ocean. Expanded runways and listening facilities have turned this tropical speck into a forward observation deck aimed squarely at India’s maritime underbelly.

China’s genius lies in ambiguity: it supports both the junta and its enemies. By cultivating ethnic militias like the Wa, Kokang, and Mongla groups, Beijing guarantees leverage no matter who governs Naypyidaw. The result is a dual structure of control—official dependence from the generals, and informal loyalty from the rebels.

The West, busy with its own strategic chessboard, can do little. Sanctions have crippled Myanmar’s formal economy but left the military unshaken. ASEAN remains divided, half-paralyzed by the fiction of “non-interference.” Russia, sensing opportunity, has become the junta’s arms supplier of choice.

In this geopolitical void, the generals trade partnerships like currency: Moscow for weapons, Beijing for cash, ASEAN for respectability—and, increasingly, New Delhi for balance.

India’s Tightrope

For India, Myanmar is not a morality play but a borderland test of strategy. The two countries share a 1,600-km frontier that cuts through some of the most fragile terrain in South and Southeast Asia. Insurgencies, narcotics trade, and refugee flows blur the line between domestic and foreign policy.

New Delhi’s aims are pragmatic: protect its Northeast, safeguard projects like the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Corridor, and contain Chinese encroachment along the Bay of Bengal. Over the past two decades, India has refined a policy of “measured engagement.” It once championed Suu Kyi’s democracy movement, only to later court the generals—recognizing that idealism without access only empowers Beijing.

That balance, however, is fraying. Since the 2021 coup, Myanmar’s civil war has redrawn the map of control. India now deals not only with Naypyidaw but with the ethnic administrations that actually command the borderlands. In Mizoram and Manipur, India has provided quiet humanitarian relief to refugees fleeing airstrikes. In the Kachin and Chin regions, it has explored discreet contacts with local groups to secure trade routes and intelligence.

There have even been exploratory talks about sourcing rare earths from rebel-held zones—an act not of rebellion, but realism. For India, engagement below the radar may be the only way to stay above the chaos.

If Myanmar’s land war is messy, its maritime future is more alarming. China’s quiet militarization of the Coco Islands could tilt the regional balance. Radar and signals intelligence from those outposts allow Beijing to monitor Indian naval deployments, missile tests, and even space launches.

For India, the response must be twofold: strengthen maritime surveillance, and broaden regional partnerships. Integrating the Andaman and Nicobar Command with Thailand and Indonesia’s littoral networks could create an early-warning arc across the eastern Indian Ocean. Satellite tracking, undersea sensors, and coordinated patrols would be India’s most effective reply to any future encirclement.

Rethinking Connectivity

Myanmar also tests India’s imagination. The much-touted land corridors linking India’s Northeast to Southeast Asia—through Kaladan and the India-Myanmar-Thailand highway—remain mired in conflict zones and bureaucratic inertia. A bolder alternative may lie in reviving the old Stilwell Road, built during World War II to connect Assam to Yunnan through northern Burma.

Reconstructing it today would be far more than an engineering project; it would be a statement of intent. The road could offer India strategic depth, new trade routes, and a channel for engagement with multiple ethnic authorities who control the territory it traverses. In a landscape where connectivity equals leverage, rebuilding Stilwell could redefine influence in Asia’s most contested frontier.

The convergence of instability in Myanmar, fragility in Bangladesh, and external meddling by China and Pakistan threatens to form a volatile arc along India’s eastern flank. The challenge for New Delhi is not to pick sides in Myanmar’s internal war but to manage outcomes—to stay present, relevant, and nimble while others overreach. Because when the last ballot is counted, Myanmar will likely look the same: weary, divided, and ruled by men who mistake fear for order. The generals will call it normalcy; the world will call it tragedy.

For India, the real choice is not between junta and democracy, but between passivity and pragmatism. In the great shadow play stretching from the hills of Kachin to the waters of the Bay of Bengal, the stakes are neither moral nor symbolic. They are strategic—the contest for influence, access, and the power to shape the Indo-Pacific’s most volatile frontier.

(The writer is a senior Indian journalist and geopolitical analyst. Views expressed are personal)