Opinion: After Myanmar Coup, U.S. Must Nudge Military To Share Power With Suu Kyi
Charles Dunst (@CharlesDunst) is a visiting scholar at the East-West Center in Washington, an associate at LSE IDEAS and a contributing editor of American Purpose, Francis Fukuyama's new magazine.
Early on Monday morning, tanks, helicopters, soldiers and police officers marched through the streets of Naypyidaw, the capital of Myanmar. Within hours, the military, the Tatmadaw, had seized control of the government — canceling a planned parliamentary session, cutting off Internet networks, shutting down the stock market and commercial banks, taking over the airport and airwaves, and placing under arrest scores of politicians and civil society activists, including Aung San Suu Kyi, the civilian government's de facto leader. The military-owned Myawaddy TV station, citing supposed voter fraud in the preceding elections that Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won handily, soon after" in which Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing would govern for one year.
