Myanmar’s military and the garrison state: State-military relations in Myanmar and their influence in the [re]production of violence against minorities
| Date | 01 June 2020 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2057891119880261 |
| Author | Niloy Ranjan Biswas |
| Published date | 01 June 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Research articles |
Research article
Myanmar’s military and the
garrison state: State-military
relations in Myanmar and their
influence in the [re]production
of violence against minorities
Niloy Ranjan Biswas
Department of International Relations, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
Abstract
The article examines the relationship between the state and military in Myanmar to understand the
country’s policies regarding persecution of religious and ethnic minorities in the context of the
Rohingya population of Arakan. The article applies the idea of the garrison state, a concept
originally developed by Harold J Lasswell. It applies a process-tracing approach to understand the
relations between the state and military of Myanmar, by examining primary documents and sec-
ondary literature on the subject. The article argues that Myanmar is a state which is compulsively
concerned about perceived threats to its sovereignty. This real or imagined anxiety translates into
cultural, social and economic attributes, and its policies to [re]produce violence against the
Rohingya minorities of Arakan. These features endorse the idea that militarism is habitually
developed by a garrison state, such as Myanmar, which is reflected in the policies of citizenship and
the construction of minorities. Therefore, violence becomes a continuous tool that is applied by
the state, particularly against the peripheral minorities and other marginalised groups.
Keywords
Bangladesh, garrison state, Myanmar, Rohingya crisis
Introduction
The August 2017 exodus of the Rohingya people of Myanmar can arguably be considered to be
21st-century state-sponsored genocide. As of January 2018, various violent tactics have been used
Corresponding author:
Niloy Ranjan Biswas, Associate Professor of Department of International Relations, University of Dhaka, Dhaka-1000,
Bangladesh.
Email: niloy@du.ac.bd
Asian Journal of Comparative Politics
2020, Vol. 5(2) 158–173
ªThe Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/2057891119880261
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by the military and other state security agencies in Myanmar, forcing around 750,000 Rohingya to
leave their native land, northern Rakhine, and to take shelter in Bangladesh (International Crisis
Group, 2018). Bangladesh has been obligated to offer asylum to the Rohingya population, and it
now ranks fifth in the list of the top refugee host countries in the world (UNHCR, 2018). The plight
of the Rohingyas is related to the evolution and transformation of the state of Myanmar. The
military takeover of the country in 1962 and the denial of citizenship are critical junctures in
Myanmar’s history of state-building which help in understanding the widespread persecution of the
Rohingyas in Myanmar. The Rohingyas have been struggling over the past five decades, in search
of security and an identity. Their legal nationality status was snatched from them and they were
made stateless in their own native land. Later, they were forced to migrate to Bangladesh, Thai-
land, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia. Their fate has been a cycle of acute discrimi-
nation, escape, trafficking, poverty, detention, extortion and deportation (Parnini, 2013).
In this context, it is important to examine the nature of the Myanmar state and its relations with
the military to understand its attitude towards ethnic minorities, in particular the Rohingyas.
Commentators in the early 21st cent ury were cautiously optimist abo ut Myanmar’s return to
democracy and its initiatives for transforming into a civilian state in the near future (Lall, 2013;
Singh, 2013). However, one needs to be curious about how Myanmar’s military has been staging a
comeback in national political discourse. It looked like the armed forces of Myanmar, the Tatma-
daw, had taken a backseat after the government launched its tentative liberalisation process in
2010. However, in practice, evidence shows that the armed forces are still very critical players in
Myanmar. The members of the military kept themselves in key roles of government institutions.
They did not even restrict themselves to explicit uses of the coercive means of the state. The
military’s repression of the Rohingya community in Arakan is a crucial example of its comeback in
the state affairs of Myanmar. Therefore, this article asks a critical question—is Myanmar a garrison
state, which is the antithesis of a civilian state? In this regard, this article analyses how the
Tatmadaw played the role of an influential societal group in order to penetrate military ethos into
the value system at all levels of the state to produce violence against Myanmar’s minorities.
This article applies the idea of the garrison state, a concept originally developed by Harold J
Lasswell (1941). It a rgues that Myanmar is a state which is compulsi vely concerned about perceived
threats to its sovereignty. This real or imagined anxiety translates into cultural, social and economic
attributes, and into its policies to [re]produce violence against the Rohingya minorities of Arakan.
These features endorse the idea that the armed forces are a country’s ideal leader in all parts of its
existence.Militarism is habitually developed by a garrison state,such as Myanmar, which is reflected
in the policies of citizenship, and the construction and deconstruction of minorities. Therefore,
violence becomes a continuous tool that is applied by the state, particularly upon peripheral mino-
rities and other marginalised groups. This is regarded as a norm of the society and state. The study
applies the process-tracing approach to understandthe relations between the stateand the military of
Myanmar, by examiningexisting primary documentsand secondary literature on the subjectmatter.
1
What is a garrison state?
Harold D Lasswell (1941) extensively examined the idea of the garrison state. According to
Lasswell (1941), this is a state that is always compulsively concerned about constructed
“existential” threats to itself. This often turns into an imaginary anxiety with heavy cultural, social
and economic negative attributes. Furthermore, these features highlight that the armed forces are a
country’s ideal leader and the frontrunner to save it from all kinds of threats. Those in uniform are
Biswas 159
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