Myanmar’s Endless Turning Points

Myanmar is often described as home to the world’s longest civil war, and in its course the country has produced more “turning points” toward peace than perhaps any other country—at least if one believes the many headlines that have heralded this progress.

Most recently, wishful thinking has centered on the successes of the Brotherhood Alliance’s Operation 1027, launched by ethnic armed organizations in October 2023, which prompted from observers sometimes triumph and sometimes despair.

Since Burma’s independence in 1948, every generation of diplomats, political analysts, journalists, and military observers has declared that the tide had finally turned—only to be proven wrong