 Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining the United States Institute of Peace for the launch of the Myanmar study group report. My name is Elise Grande, and I am the president of USIP, which was established by the US Congress in 1984 as an independent, nonpartisan national institution dedicated to preventing, mitigating, and helping resolve violent conflict abroad. At the request of Congress, the administration are on its own initiative. The USIP convened study groups to explore complex US security and foreign policy challenges. The Myanmar study group was established last March to help support US policy towards Burma, following the coup and imposition of a ruthless military regime. The study group has brought together nine leading specialists of Myanmar and Asian affairs and held consultations with key stakeholders, including in Myanmar. In addition to facilitating the study group, USIP has commissioned research, organized roundtables, and compiled and edited the report. The study group is launching its report one year to the day when the Burmese military seized power and deposed the country's elected leadership. It's been a very tough year in Myanmar. The military has arrested nearly 12,000 people and killed over 1,500. More than 400,000 people have been displaced by what is clearly a civil war. Heroic nonviolent action continues in the face of the military's violence, but armed resistance is spreading across the country. The crisis in Myanmar directly challenges US interests and values. It's a test of our promise to support democracies and defend human rights. The crisis presents an opportunity for the US to demonstrate its commitment to diplomatic engagement and a rules-based international order. To date bilateral action has had limited effect. If we hope to change the trajectory of the conflict, these efforts must be intensified and we're going to need more coordinated action with our partners and allies in the region. We are joined this morning by Jason Tower and Priscilla Klap from USIP, both of whom facilitated the Myanmar study group, along with three other distinguished members of the study group, Ambassador Derek Mitchell, President of the National Democratic Institute and former US Ambassador to Myanmar, Dan Twiney, President of the International Republican Institute and Professor Kristina Fink of George Washington University. Jason, I'm very pleased to hand over to you. Thank you, Lisa, and good morning to all participants that are on the call. My name is Jason Tower and I'm the Country Director for USIP's Myanmar program. I'd like to start off just by adding my thanks to all members of the Myanmar study group for the time, effort and thoughtfulness that they put into this process, which ultimately enabled the report that we're launching here this morning. The report is really a product of their combined efforts and USIP was blessed to have this group of experts as part of this process over the past months. I'd like to just say a few words this morning about some of the key findings of the report, particularly with respect to some of the shared analysis that came out regarding where things stand. Before I do that though, I just had a few announcements for all participants that are on the call here this morning. First of all, just wanting to let participants know that we do have the chat box up at this point. So it's possible to put in questions or comments. Please do identify yourself if you do put questions or comments into the chat box. And then also just wanting to let all participants know that the report, the full report as well as the executive summary of the report are now both available on USIP's website along with a lot of other commentary and analysis and reports relevant to Myanmar and particularly to the post-coup period. But you can find all of that at www.usip.org. So going back, I'd like to just highlight a few of the key findings from the report. And again, encouraging all listeners to have a look at it on our website. First of all, and this is with respect to I think what is the key topic and the focus of the conversation here today, US policy. The Myanmar crisis directly challenges the values that are the real foundations for US foreign policy, democracy, human rights, rule of law, prosperity and security. For this reason, the US simply cannot afford to neglect the tragedy that's unfolding in Myanmar today. Secondly, and as Lee has already alluded to, violence in the country has descended into full-scale civil war with fighting spreading across all parts of the country, large numbers of what are being referred to as people's defense forces or members of the opposition to the coup who have taken up arms and fled to the ethnic areas. These groups of people's defense forces are now operating in parts of the country that have really not witnessed violence in Myanmar's contemporary history, including in the Burma heartland. So we really are in the midst of a tragic civil war situation. Third, some of the powerful ethnic armed organizations, especially in the Burma borderlands have expanded their influence and control and defiance of the military over the past months. This has been enabled, particularly as the junta continues to lose ground and also because the junta simply lacks any form of legitimacy within the eyes of the population. So one key finding of the report, as we'll probably get into a little bit deeper in the conversation here today, is that the EAOs and their non-civilian authorities are increasingly critical to the solution of the process and there's a need to enhance dialogue and conversations with them. Fourth is that the anti-coup movement is highly diverse while the national unity government formed by the deposed lawmakers while it enjoys still strong popular support. The overall movement, consisting of the people's defense forces, the civilian disobedience movement, civil society, other political parties and the ethnic armed organizations still lacks unity and struggles to get onto the same page. So this is another area also, which is really critical looking into the future. Is it possible to build more of a coalition to build more solidarity amongst members of the anti-coup movement? Fifth, the military has used unspeakable violence against the population and it's clear now that it's going to stop at nothing to advance its economic interests and control. There's really no situation under which the people will be able to accept any form of military rule or military involvement in politics. As such, we really see dialogue as something that is not on the table at this point and efforts to engage the military in dialogue have largely been manipulated by the military as a means of trying to present a veneer of legitimacy as it continues to use violence to establish control in country. Finally, the international community has responded with alarm but the collective response has been ineffective and this is largely due to the fact that China and Russia have blocked consistently strong collective action at the UN and in other multilateral bodies and because ASEAN remains highly divided over the direction of the response and over the role that the military should play both in the future of the country also in terms of whether or not the military should be involved in the solution. Our three initial panelists this morning will drill down further into some of these key findings as well as highlighting some of the recommendations of the report for US policy. Each of our distinguished panelists will have up to 10 minutes to explore some of these issues and highlight some of the additional findings of the report as well as key recommendations that were brought out in the report and we'll then at that point open things up for a question and answer as well as a broader dialogue. So I'd like now to hand things over to our first distinguished panelist, Ambassador Derek Mitchell, you have the floor. Well, thank you very much, Jason and good morning, afternoon, evening for those of you watching here. First of all, I just wanna say thank you to Jason and his team, this really is an outstanding report, a really excellent report and I wanna congratulate USIP. I was myself honored to be part of this with some great colleagues, some of whom are on this panel here, but a number of people who are committed to supporting the people of Myanmar in the face of this continued brutality, injustice and utter destruction that we've seen over the past year. There is a lot going on in the world right now, but we must keep Myanmar in the light and on our radar screen. In a year of coups, as we at NDI have been noting, people have been noting it was a year of coups, Myanmar was the first, but perhaps still the most brutal, destructive and ultimately pointless. And I would say that Myanmar is important, not just for those who love the country and despair over its lost potential once again at the hands of a brutal corrupt junta. And I know many of you out there watching are those who have invested so much and put your heart and soul into this country over so many years, but there's much at stake with the emergence of a failed state of a civil war at the crossroads of Asia. It will affect all neighboring countries and beyond. Every one of the region has an interest that the destruction end and that the country finally get on a path to lasting peace, which requires an inclusive dialogue at some point. I agree with the finding that now the dialogue would not be credible because this military is not interested, but at some point there will require a fully inclusive dialogue that the country has desperately needed for so long, for decades, ultimately an end to the military's role in politics and democracy. Now, instead over the last year, of course, there's just been, the situation's been disastrous. At least it went through the situation there. The country is in a free fall economically and as a society with thousands dead and hundreds of thousands of more displaced and maybe 10,000 imprisoned and the healthcare situation, law enforcement, schooling of all deteriorated. And clearly, I think anyone who would observe this will see that the junta has miscalculated, the military miscalculated as usual. They always think that they're smarter than the rest and they can win an election when they're not popular or that they can do what Thailand did in 2014 and get away with it. And unfortunately, they never question their own decisions. Once they do something like that, they just keep going and they're now willing to destroy the country in order to save themselves, which creates, as Jason said, a really tragic situation right now. The irony is the military always have said that they seek to ensure national unity. And in fact, I would say over the past year, they have done that. They've united the whole country against them. And that includes in particular young people. You've seen young people take through the streets and women who have now, those who tasted a new possibility for themselves in the country over the past decade and now refuse to go back to the way it used to be. And it's led to a mass civil disobedience movement. I just seen it today where people said, I'm just not gonna come out. We're not going to contribute to this status quo by the military and demonstrate that the junta does not control the country, but they have not consolidated power. And that in fact is the case a year later, they have not controlled the country and not consolidated power, which has led, as Jason said, to a full scale civil war and the organization of these people's defense forces to defend themselves really in their own defense. They tried peaceful street demonstrations that was met with wanton violence. So now they're defending themselves and their communities all over the country. And the other thing that I think is healthy about this is it's a movement that certainly continues to, some people continue to see a leader in a single individual, but actually the movement overall is beyond any single individual, which is healthy in a sense, that this has to be about everyone together and that even the majority of them are appearing to understand the plight of minority national nationality populations. At least that's a start. But the problem is, as stated by Jason, it's still not united. It's not clear who is or can serve as a unifying leader. As always, they're united against the military, but they're not necessarily united with a common vision for the country, aside from general principles of federalism, perhaps, and maybe human rights. Guns and violence are proliferating and that's once it's out of the box, it's tough to put back in the box once a crisis ends. So we're in for a period of extended hardship. It's unfortunate to say, there's no silver bullet to ending this crisis. I don't think anybody would say any single thing will make the difference. The key is keeping that opposition together or making sure it pulls together, promotes unity in the country, but ultimately it's a matter of changing the junta's calculations. That the defeat or will have to come from the junta itself dividing somehow or someone within the military or a mass within the junta have decided that they cannot achieve their objectives on the current course, that this was a mistake, that their interests are not being addressed this way, they're actually being hurt and somehow it has to come from within. We are seeing defections, but certainly not in large enough scale and not yet a fundamental division within the military, perhaps that will grow over time, given that many thousands of foot soldiers are the ones being put in harm's way for a corrupt leadership. They don't, the corrupt leadership, they really have no particular loyalty to and that cares little about them. Nonetheless, the junta continues to import advanced weapons so they can more efficiently kill their own people and that's who they are. They really, I wouldn't even call them a military anymore, they're basically thugs in uniform because they're not defending the country, they're simply murdering the future, the hopeful future of the country. But the question is, how do you change their calculation? It's a hard thing. I think there's been attempts, but the lack of a unified effort internationally has hurt that effort. But changing their calculation for a start, you go after what they care about. They care about their money, they care about their weapons, they care about their authority, their control, they care about their family's access to schooling and healthcare and such and they do care somewhat about their reputation. Countries have to get out of their policy comfort zones and get more creative. And what we've seen over the past year, largely has been everyone going back to their traditional corners. The US and the EU go to sanctions, necessary but not sufficient. ASEAN goes to engagement. Japan, India and to a lesser degree, Korea moved to sort of economic and political, maintaining their economic and political positions in the country, particularly vis-a-vis China. China, of course, wants to preserve its privileged position, wants to keep the US and the West down, if not out, in what it considers its sphere of influence. And Russia, of course, never misses an opportunity to profit from tragedy, selling weapons to anyone who will buy and always supporting dictators, kind of like a vulture coming in to pick at the wounds of a country. So again, there may be no silver bullet to changing the hunters' calculations, but everyone can do more and they have to do that together. But ultimately, we cannot flinch in standing with the Myanmar people. And we must help them work together. We must all do our part to help them build trust and unity from within, whether it's through the NUCC or the NUG, the National Unity Government and otherwise. No one should recognize this junta, least of all ASEAN, but all should not recognize them or give them space at the table. And that includes ASEAN or a place in their banks and their hospitals, in their schools. And I would add one more thing. I wouldn't mobilize, and I'm not seeing enough of this, mobilizing regional militaries in defense diplomacy. About a year ago, there was a chat, a Chief of Defense Forces statement that I thought was a very good move. It was a single step where the region's defense institutes came together, the military leaders came together and said, this is not the kind of thing that we would respect. This is hardly a military that earns our respect or deserves a place at the table that sees its mission as killing its own people. And I think the top of the the junta wants that respect and it cares most about the voice of others in uniform, not so much those in pinstripe suits. So more of that I would like to see. And maybe there's more that can be done through our own Department of Defense in the United States and others. But in the end, I mean, you have to say, it's hard to see how this ends, but it must, again, we must stand with the people through it all. They're not giving up, neither should we. And a failed state in the heart of Asia is absolutely in no one's interest. So I know even more can be done. I will stop here and let others sort of provide their perspectives, but I just want to provide a little bit of my own thoughts on where things stand and what the international community might do to try to change the military's calculation beyond all odds. We're not seeing it yet, but we must all keep faith and keep hope going forward. So thank you very much for the opportunity, Jason, and congratulations again. Thank you so much, Derek. And thanks again, both for those very insightful remarks, but also for joining the study group and helping to make this report possible. I think the point on thinking through how tools such as defense diplomacy might be more effectively utilized is something that's particularly important to explore. Like to turn next to Daniel Twining, who is our second speaker of the session. Daniel, the floor is yours. And again, thanks very much for being here with us this evening and for your contributions to the Myanmar study group. Thanks, Jason. Thanks to you and Priscilla and the whole team for the excellent work. I'm really looking forward to hearing from our experts here coming up and to the conversation. Let me just flag for the audience four of our key findings and then four of our key recommendations just to set the table here following on from Ambassador Mitchell. First is that the perpetrators of the coup really quite seriously misjudged the determination of the majority of the civilian population who bought into the free and open country that had been developing for the decade before the coup. The military made a bad miscalculation and is now faced with a country that is in many ways ungovernable. It has managed to unify core elements of the country that have never been unified before in resistance to its rule. That means that there is no effective governance in Burma at the moment despite the military's very brutal and severe repression deploying extreme forms of violence. We should also just flag here that resistance is becoming more sophisticated even as the military cracks down. Second finding to flag is really how the violence has descended into full-scale civil war. As Lee Scrumday mentioned, more than 400,000 people displaced. Despite this, the best way to understand this conflict I would argue is not simply as a civil war because of course the pro-democracy community is organized and remains active and remains committed to a democratic future. So while the junta has overseen the collapse of basic administrative functions, there is an alternative out there. Finding three is really that the anti-coup movement of course it is very cross cutting includes a range of ethnic and religious minority organizations and non-regime aligned armed groups. It has unfortunately failed to unify fully in part because of residual distrust between the National League for Democracy, the former ruling party, aspects of civil society as well as ethnic minority communities. So there is increasing youth activism. There is increasing collaboration with ethnic organizations and others of a kind we had not seen previously but there's still more work to do on the unity front. And four, I think this finding is important, Derek alluded to it, the danger of malign foreign influence in light of the crisis in Myanmar. The report reads, the report signals that the junta's dependence on China's political and economic support presents Beijing with a golden opportunity to secure one-sided agreements that will harness Burma to its southwestern provinces. The report also highlights the role of Russia as stepping in to serve as a key security partner to the junta, including selling more than $2 billion worth of weapons to it since the coup. Russia's posture has strengthened China's interest by ensuring that China is not isolated in being the only great power supporting the junta. So those are some of the several findings. Let me just move quickly to the recommendations and I'm just gonna flag a couple key ones. First, as Priscilla and I have discussed, many of these recommendations, frankly, are not for governments. Many of them, of course, we'd like the U.S. government to act on, but many of them are for U.S. and international civil society, NGOs, and others to really help push that there is a broad role for civil society in moving Myanmar to a more democratic future. And that's largely because of the very developed civil society inside Myanmar that continues to be under so much pressure. So first, from a government perspective, of course, I think we agree that the U.S. should work with partners to pressure the coup regime and its military and financial enablers. Second, we should support efforts to strengthen trust and unity within the democracy movement. The national unity government and other democratic bodies serve an important role. They delegitimize the military's political authority and do provide an alternative. I mentioned the increased solidarity among a majority and minority populations across the country, cutting across lines of ethnicity, religion, gender, and age. It's unprecedented, but there still remains a lot of work to do to create a shared vision of the country's political future. There is very strong will by all the people of Burma to resist military rule and establish a more inclusive and resilient democratic system, but getting there is going to be difficult. Third or four quick recommendations to flag is really for the international community to work with partners to lay the groundwork for a civilian-led nation. That includes supporting efforts by the democracy movement to develop a transition plan that is resilient to another military power lab or other explosions of violence. And that, of course, means pro-democracy stakeholders must come to a consensus on a vision for the future of the country. And finally, going back to where I started here, the vital importance of supporting change agents inside the country. Coup leaders made a bad miscalculation. The majority of civilian population refuses to return to military dictatorship to relinquish the freedoms that they had gained. The coup has triggered a revolution in Myanmar that makes impossible the restoration of the pre-2011 order. The seeds of democracy have unquestionably taken root among the younger generation who are willing to pay with their lives to keep that flame of freedom and democratic progress alive. So the United States has a very important role to play in supporting these change agents, including through flexible assistance to civil society groups operating inside and outside the country, as well as through forms of humanitarian aid that can address the crisis in the country without empowering the government. Thank you, Jason, congratulations. Thank you so much, Daniel, for those remarks. And I particularly appreciate the point on needing flexible support for civil society, which is something that has come up both in our own MSG discussions, but also in some of the conversations that we had with different stakeholders on the ground. So making sure that we're able to provide forms of assistance that will keep civil society safe, but also give them the flexibility they need. Like to move next to our third distinguished speaker, Professor Kristine, I think you have the floor. Thank you, Jason. And I'd also like to thank you and Priscilla and everyone at USIP for doing such an incredible job in bringing us all together as a study group, bringing in so many participants from on the ground and putting this report together. And it's an honor to be here today. So I'd like to also make a few points and then highlight some of the recommendations from the report that haven't been mentioned so far. So the first is that what we've been talking about the fact that, you know, the entire country is not completely united in terms of working together against the regime, despite the fact that they all oppose military rule. I would like to say that I think it is extremely impressive that so many people have come together and sometimes we forget that. I mean, it's not really realistic to expect necessarily that everybody would join together in terms of both nonviolent resistance and armed resistance. And there are certain reasons why certain groups may be sitting this out for the time being, but it doesn't mean that they're completely off the page and might not participate in the future. So I think we wanna focus on the positives and work with what we have and see how that can be expanded and deepened. Why are these divisions there in the first place? I think it's important to just briefly go back to the independence period when there was the promise and in fact the constitutional guarantee of federalism as well as democracy. And both of those were eroded under military rule. And that's why today we have the twin struggles of both a struggle for ethnic rights and a degree of autonomy in the ethnic states, as well as a struggle for democracy. I think the challenge has been that in some cases for ethnic Bama people, the majority, when they fought for democracy, they've tended to think about that in terms of majority elected rule and not necessarily been inclusive enough of ethnic political rights, which has made some ethnic people feel that really their only recourse is to kind of hunker down and focus on rights in their own states and autonomy over their own states. So bringing these two struggles together, these two aspirations together is really essential to establishing a sustainable peace and an inclusive polity and national identity. Nevertheless, as I said, many groups across the political and ethnic spectrum have found common cause. And I think when we think about the consequences for the ethnic armed groups who have brought in people from the democratic movement, the degree to which the military regime has targeted them as a result, I think we really ought to extend our sympathy and support to everybody in the ethnic minority areas. Some of the ethnic armed groups have taken in not only the elected politicians who fled, but also soldiers who've deserted, police who've deserted, civil servants who don't want to work for the military regime, as well as student activists and others. And as was mentioned earlier, many of those people initially had dedicated themselves to nonviolent resistance, but because of the repressive nature of this regime, they just unbridled brutality of this regime against civilians. Some have felt compelled to take up arms and the ethnic armed groups have supported them in that. At the same time, the ethnic armed groups have provided space for the national unity government, which is primarily made up of elected politicians, mostly ethnic Bama, but this grouping has also become more inclusive, bringing in ethnic minority representatives to include both women and younger people. And it's a very interesting and promising platform for developing inclusive policy together. Although I would say that the tendency toward authoritarian decision making is still a challenge within this body that needs to be overcome. One other promising point that I'd like to highlight out of all of this kind of sadness about the coup and the misery that's ensued is the fact that many ethnic Bama people have come to understand that what they heard in the past about crimes against humanity, against the Rohingya and against the ethnic armed groups, but also ethnic civilian politicians and civilians, they had dismissed because the military told them it's not true and they accepted what the military said. And that's really changed as people have experienced in their own communities in central Myanmar, the extent to which the military is willing to burn down entire villages, massacre whole groups of villages, villagers, et cetera. And so there's much more sympathy and willingness to try to understand the ethnic perspective and experience at this moment. And I think that that's extremely helpful and it needs to be built on. To some degree, that has been recognized through the writing of a federal democratic charter by a number of political and ethnic groups that included youth activists, politicians and many others. So that too, I think offers a lot of promise for the future that needs to be built on. So along those lines, I'd like to highlight a couple of recommendations. One is that it's critical to support the intellectual talent that has emerged across the ethnic spectrum in Myanmar over the past 10 years. There are incredible people who are in civil society organizations, who are running think tanks, who are techies, who are entrepreneurs and all of them deserve our support and the ability to be able to continue their studies and their work. And so providing sanctuary or facilitating sanctuary, whether that's in the region or in the United States, as well as scholarships and other types of funding is really essential to keeping this brain trust alive and able to contribute to the future of the country. Also, Derek and Daniel have talked about, supporting dialogue and reconciliation efforts in order to ensure that this movement really can both overcome military rule, but also be able to put together a government and a polity that can survive successfully in the future. And I wanna highlight again, the important role the United States and USIP can play in that. And that doesn't mean telling people what to do, but helping provide the floor, helping facilitate, provide the funding, et cetera to ensure that there's space, time and some technical support to enable those dialogues to move forward and succeed. And I'd also like to highlight the importance of humanitarian assistance. So we know that the military regime has been disinterested in seeing the population survive, really. I mean, they're very unwilling to cooperate with international organizations that are willing to provide COVID vaccines to the population as a whole. And also they have been blocking the provision of food assistance to areas where devastation has been wrought by the Civil War. So everything that the United States can do to support those organizations who can work on the ground, whether that's coming in across borders, working in the border areas or in parts of central Myanmar is really essential to ensuring that the people of Myanmar actually survive this terrible period of crisis in their country. Thank you. Thank you, Christina. And thanks again for your contributions to the Myanmar study group. Just to amplify, I think the US needs to focus also on long-term solutions, one of which is really keeping that brain trust that you mentioned alive and providing that ongoing support to people who are thinking about the future of the country and who are working to find long-term solutions and to be a part of that dialogue process. So that support is also critical. We have now roughly 15 minutes for questions and discussion. There's already more than a dozen questions that have come in from the audience. So I'll go ahead right to picking up a couple of these so that we're able to hopefully bring in some thoughts on a number of different questions and comments that are coming from the audience. I'll start with this one and this goes really to the whole panel. Are there any significant cleavages for gaps that you see within the junta or Tatmadaw that are beginning to emerge? And are there ways that the US or others could exploit those potential gaps that might be identified within the Tatmadaw to support a transition back to democracy? Who is that to? Oh, it was actually to the panel, but feel free to go ahead and take that one on if you'd like to. Yeah, Christina or someone. It's hard to see from here. I'm not on the ground. None of us are there to see and we don't have a lot of insight that others might have into those dynamics. As I stated earlier, that there are certainly defections at various levels. There's anecdotal evidence that there is unhappiness within various parts of the military institution. But there's no sense. There's no evidence now of a fundamental cleavage where it matters, which is at the very senior most levels are within the elites and the military. And amongst the active operators within the country themselves who operate their regions as almost their own fiefdoms, military fiefdoms. So in the absence of that kind of cleavage, the kind of rally around the institution mode that they typically take. I mean, and the fact that there's a lot of coercion done, a lot of warnings that are given and control over the rank and file and others throughout the hierarchy that you'd better do this or your families will be at risk. Everything will be at risk. They have, it seems like they have pretty firm control. So, I mean, we can see over time whether that changes and whether you put real turn the screws on what they care about, which is their family members or they just find that their personal safety is at risk somehow. So I don't have any particular angle that would work in that case. Thanks, Derek. I'm not sure if any of the other panelists wanted to respond to that question or to add additional points. Not that we'll have one additional presentation towards the end from USAP's Priscilla Klopp as well, but Priscilla, feel free to jump in with any of the questions here. So moving ahead, we'll take a second question from the audience and that is, how is Washington looking at divisions within ASEAN around Myanmar and is the Myanmar situation impacting US relations with ASEAN? I'm happy to defer to the experts, Jason, but I think people are very disappointed by the role that Cambodia in particular has played in light of the Cambodian chairmanship. And it's of course awkward because Hun Sen himself is an authoritarian supported through foreign malign influence from China who has taken a very different course from the Burmese junta, but who himself brooks no democratic political descent or opposition. It's really not in Cambodia's interest to be aligned with this pariah state in Southeast Asia. It's not at all in Cambodia's interest to be aligned, much less ASEAN's interest. It's a crutch for ASEAN for Cambodia to assume this position at a time when Cambodia has had a successful run of economic development, the Burmese junta is in the process of destroying the economy of Myanmar. And so we know that there's a lot of frustration within ASEAN. We know that there's also frustration in the United States government because of course the president would like to more fulsomely engage with ASEAN as part of an Indo-Pacific strategy. So the crisis in Burma is weakening both ASEAN and the ability of ASEAN to work with the United States and other international partners. Jason, could I just add a point? Please do Priscilla, go ahead. I think that ASEAN needs to be very careful but it doesn't allow their differences to destroy their ability to work with regional problems. Right now that is happening. The regime has, as you've said yourself, succeeded in doing more harm to ASEAN than ASEAN has done to the regime. So, I mean, ASEAN is the organization in the region that most of us would turn to to help with this but right now they're not in a position to help because they're so divided over this. And I think that the stronger leaders of ASEAN need to really sort of pull up the bootstraps of the organization and make it more effective in this. Certainly not propping up the regime. Having this kind of a government in the middle of ASEAN is not in the interest of its future. Thanks. I just, can I just chime in as well? Yes. I'm going to be a little bit more glass half full on this. I think we have to think about the starting point. If we think about ASEAN and the fact that they have had this principle that everything has to be decided by consensus and yet it's an association of countries that contains a lot of authoritarian governments and really it's been remarkable to see the degree to which ASEAN has come out and challenged the regime during the last year. And I'd like to particularly note Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia and the efforts that they've made to really try to push for a strong position on Myanmar. It's unprecedented. And so I think we do want to continue to support and congratulate those leaders who have taken that position and see how we can work with them further to strengthen what ASEAN is doing with regard to Myanmar. Thank you. I can agree with that, Kristina. Thank you. Thank you both. The next question actually was flagged for Kristina. So I'll direct this question to you. Functioning democracies need an effective civil service. Do you think that there are ways that the U.S. can support the civil service in Myanmar thinking about the needs of democracy in the future? That's an excellent question. You know, the NLD was working on civil society sorry, civil service reform in the last years of its administration. And they had appointed some people who were trying to really rethink the whole training process for the civil service. And I think that that is something that actually could be worked on now even before the change happens because they were really struggling to kind of figure out who should be doing this, what a new curriculum should look like for civil service training and recruitment. The NLD actually had laid out a lot of plans that are worth being implemented. For instance, introducing things like criteria for jobs and what is promotion evaluated on? What are the criteria for promotion? What are your job responsibilities? All of these things are actually not laid out in the civil service as it stands. You know, in the past, the civil services function was primarily a law and order function. They were kind of the stick or the security arm or the monitor of the population for the regime. And under the democratic governments, there was an effort to try to make the civil service actually be functioning for the development of the people. So really trying to move the civil service in that direction through the codes that are in place, the training curriculum that's in place. All of those things can start now. Thank you. Thank you. We have another question that has come in and this one is for Daniel. So civil society activists are increasingly seeing violent tactics as legitimate within the Myanmar context. Are there any recommendations for U.S. policy and for the U.S. government when it comes to navigating this issue in terms of support for civil society? So I guess the first thing to point out is that many of the groups, including in the previous period before the decade long opening, many of the groups, including ethnic armed organizations, of course had political wings that were nonviolent. And so the role of the international community, including U.S. NGOs and the U.S. government is to support nonviolent civil society groups, right? I mean, we should also point out again, Russia and others are arming the junta to the teeth. The junta is using weapons of war against unarmed and defenseless civilian populations. It's not the role of U.S. civil society groups to support armed resistance in Burma or anywhere else, but it is a response to the junta's crushing of a peaceful democratic system that many Burmese peaceful activists who previously would not have given a thought to taking up arms are taking up arms. That's a reflection on the junta and its failures in radicalizing a substantial segment of the population. And it's really unfortunate. Thank you, Daniel. And then a question has come in, I think for Ambassador Mitchell. What can be done to support resistance fighters in areas that have become liberated in country to ensure that they're able to be supportive of humanitarian norms and ensure that there's not harm to civilians in areas that they've liberated? Boy, that's a difficult question, but there have been a lot of people over the years, excuse me, who have been engaged with the ethnic darn organizations and others in Burma to assist them on how to operate within humanitarian standards. But, you know, when you give people guns and you just send them out and say, you know, people are brutalizing you and you must fight back, it's hard, you're not going to get well-trained, well-organized forces. You're gonna get lots of people who are simply, you know, loosely trained and just shooting at will. And I think, I don't know how you do that. You certainly can't do that in an official way. But if there are those who are on the ground, maybe those who have been trained in that, maybe some of the ethnic armed organizations or others on the ground who have gone through that kind of discipline, who can explain why and how you have a fairly well-functioning defense force that truly defends rather than perpetrates and adds to the injustice and the violence, the wanton violence in the country, that's the best way. And again, I think building some of that unity, some of those connections to those who have been fighting for a while and have been thinking in these terms might be the best way to assist those now who are traumatized. And, you know, of course, the whole country has been traumatized for decades, but a new generation has now been traumatized. And the ability of those who have gone through that and tried to defend themselves with weapons to try to counsel them and how to deal with the trauma in as constructive a way as possible, even if they feel they have to take up arms and their own defense is maybe the best way to try to maybe try to shape the future. Which, again, when you throw arms around like that, it's hard to put that back in the box, but we have to do the best, I think, with what we've got. But I just add a point, Jason. Please, and the next question is also for you, Priscilla. Okay, we've seen within the opposition itself concern about possible unbridled violence by its own forces on the ground because it's a very disunited people's defense force around the country. They're all organized at the local level. And so there's no one really controlling them. But I think those who are fighting for freedom in the country need to remember that at the end of this battle, there will be accountability of many different forms. And so they have to bear this in mind as they approach the question of violence. Accountability will come whether they like it or not. Thank you. Thank you, Priscilla. And the question that was flagged for you, how to bring some of the US partners such as India and Japan more on board with putting pressure on the junta, particularly considering that they've already expressed their intentions to work with the junta. Well, I think that we have to recognize their traditional approaches to diplomacy. Both India and Japan have always worked with both sides here. But they have both been more on the side of the democratic forces because they are democracies themselves and they are partners and allies of the United States. We have strong ties with both countries, particularly Japan. Japan in a way has been able to do things that the US cannot do. So we can't look at all of their actions as simply motivated by Japan itself. In some cases, they have been working in concert with the United States, particularly in the way that they've approached development in Myanmar because they have been forcing international standards on development projects there, setting a very good example for China because China is the elephant in the room. And the NLD government took advantage of the Japanese standards that with the Thilewa development, for example, to force Chinese investment to follow the same kind of standards. So we're a half a way away from Myanmar and Japan is much closer and has a much longer history in the country. And so we have to understand that they're not going to parallel US policy exactly and India has also concerns about China, both Japan and India are living in the same hemisphere with China. And so they have to bear that in mind and we need to be understanding of that in the way we manage our relations with these countries and try to encourage them in the right direction. I think both of them can be very, very useful to us as we move forward. Thank you. Thank you, Priscilla. We have time for one last question and this is a question that's posed to our whole panel that's come in actually from a number of different participants. What are seen as the main obstacles to the US building deeper relations with or even recognizing the national unity government? Shall I say something as a former government official? We have a kind of breakpoint beyond which we cannot go and recognizing the national unity government because if we were to do that, it would be the equivalent of breaking diplomatic relations all together and moving out of our embassy in Yangon. And I think that we would rather be present than not present. If we were to break diplomatic relations all together we would have no presence on the ground and we need to keep our presence on the ground. There are many other ways that we can distance ourselves from the regime and we have done that quite effectively and support the NUG. But recognition doesn't work. Now in the case, for example, of Venezuela where we don't have diplomatic relations it was easy to support the opposition and give it recognition. And we have that situation with some other countries but we don't with Burma right now because we do still have a diplomatic presence on the ground and we'd like to keep it there. At any rate, we need to give full support to the NUG short of official recognition and we are certainly doing that now quietly. Does that answer the question, Jason? I believe it does, but Ambassador, would you like to come in? No, I think I endorse that entirely. And I think there's official recognition and then there's pretty substantial recognition effect. We aren't talking to them quietly. We can take that out of the shadows and be more public about it. We can encourage others around the world to do more in concert with the NUG. And what's really important is to ensure that there is no recognition of the junta as well. So it's absolutely right that there are a lot of things that flow from recognizing the NUG. That may be difficult for the US government to do but there's a lot they can do to essentially recognize them as a legitimate representatives of the national will, the national politics of the country, promotes that internationally. You see, of course, Joe Motun at the UN, make sure he remains there in representing the interests of the country and making sure that junta never gets the ability to get a place at the table and legitimized in essence that way. I think that's a pretty substantial contribution to the situation. Thank you. Well, that will conclude the formal question and answer part of our launch program this evening, this morning, DC time. I'd like now to turn to Priscilla Klopp, who will give some concluding remarks. Priscilla, you have the floor. Thank you very much. I think that one important point that comes out of this discussion this morning and that is central to our recommendations is because we're so far removed from Myanmar geographically, we really have to depend upon our alliances, our partnerships, our convening power to organize international cohesion in approaching this problem so that we manage to keep the regime isolated and continue to strengthen that isolation in the first place. Secondly, get humanitarian assistance into the people that are suffering from the conflict, the people who are the object of attacks by the military, where they are being purposely deprived of food and health care and all other, I mean, even their homes are being bombed. And thirdly, to focus on preparations for future restoration of the country and building a new federal system in the country. So that means strong support to the opposition forces and helping guide them through what I consider to be the beginnings of a national dialogue in the country for the very first time in its history, its post-colonial history. It really is very important what the dialogue that's going on within the NUCC and between them and the NUG, even as they're fighting for freedom, these opposition forces are thinking about the future. They're trying to think about what the future government should be and that's a very healthy process. Even if they're not fully united, they are working on it and it didn't happen before. This never happened. It was always subverted by the military. But now that they've rejected the military, they're beginning to have this dialogue and we need to support it. I would also like to thank very much the members of our group. You saw today the kind of expertise and talent, intellectual talent that we had in this group. And I'd like to mention the others who are not here today. First of all, Mary Callahan, who is an internationally recognized expert on the Myanmar military. Bob Conrad, Robert Conrad, who is a professor emeritus at Duke University and an international expert, economic expert, who worked with both the things saying and the NLD governments on economic reforms. Brian Joseph of the National Endowment for Democracy, who has been working on the ground in Myanmar for many, many years. And Minzin, who is the head of the Institute for Strategy and Policy in Yangon, and also a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley. He's a brilliant intellectual force in the country and we enjoy working with him very much. We have for many years. Anyway, we've had an enormous and talented group working on this study and I think it shows the results and I thank you all. Thank you, Priscilla. And adding my own thanks here again both to all of the members of the Myanmar study group are distinguished speakers on the call here this morning as well as to all the members of the audience who tuned in for the session. Thank you very much. And we look forward to welcoming members of the audience back for our next USIP event.