US Re-engages Myanmar's Junta, Leaving the EU's Diplomatic Boycott Under Strain

Since September, American diplomats have sat down twice with representatives of Myanmar's military-backed government. The talks, led on the US side by State Department representative Michael Vance, reportedly took place first in Naypyitaw and then in Tokyo earlier this month. It is a quiet reopening of contact with a leadership that Washington, like Brussels, had kept at arm's length since the February 2021 coup.

The American agenda is specific. Washington wants action on online scam centers, and it wants the release of Adam Castillo, an imprisoned American businessman. It is also reportedly interested in access to Myanmar's rare-earth resources, a market currently dominated by China, the United States' rival.

Washington is not alone. Several Southeast Asian governments have renewed direct diplomatic contacts with Myanmar's military leadership. ASEAN had taken the unprecedented step of excluding the generals from its highest-level meetings after they failed to carry out the bloc's 2021 peace plan, but that stance is showing cracks. Thailand, Myanmar's neighbor, has voiced growing frustration at the lack of progress toward ending the civil war. Last week Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow welcomed the American engagement and suggested ASEAN members would hold substantive discussions on Myanmar's future at their summit in Manila next month.

The generals are also pushing outward. In September, military chief Min Aung Hlaing, who became president after the 2025/2026 election while the military kept control of the political system, gave Time magazine his first interview with a major Western publication since the coup. On October 22, Burma Campaign UK, a London-based rights group, accused the British government of a "significant shift in approach" after the Foreign Office hosted Win Zeyar Tun, charge d'affaires of Myanmar's military-controlled embassy in London, at an ASEAN diplomatic gathering days earlier. Intelligence Online reported this month that Khin Thidar Ay, the regime's charge d'affaires in Brussels, has sought contacts with European politicians, among them Czech MEP Ondrej Dostal of the European Parliament's delegation for Southeast Asia.

The EU, for its part, has held its line. After the coup it suspended direct financial assistance to the government, imposed targeted sanctions and sharply cut diplomatic engagement. The sanctions now cover 105 individuals and 22 entities tied to the military, and in April they were extended for another 12 months. Brussels still funds humanitarian aid for displaced communities and Rohingya refugees, and supports civil society groups. It has not withdrawn Myanmar's preferential trade access, citing the risk to workers, mostly young women in the garment industry. Bilateral goods trade reached about €4 billion ($4.46 billion) last year, up from €3.4 billion in 2019.

An EU spokesman told DW the bloc "continues to uphold its policy of non-recognition" of the military regime given ongoing violence against the population. He said the EU is closely monitoring the discussions between the United States, Japan, ASEAN countries and others and Myanmar's rulers, and that it backs ASEAN's Five-Point Consensus, which remains not fully implemented. The war the coup set off has killed an estimated 100,000 people, and UN data show more than 4 million internally displaced.

Kristina Kironska of Palacky University Olomouc, an expert on EU policy toward Myanmar, sees little reason for Brussels to follow Washington. She says the US appears to be pursuing narrow interests, and notes that the most important rare-earth mining is no longer in military hands but controlled by rebels such as the Kachin Independence Organization in Kachin State. Abandoning principle for a transactional approach, she argues, would damage EU credibility. Yet she concedes that isolation "has achieved relatively little," and says the real question is whom to engage and on what terms.

The risks run both ways. If others deepen ties with the generals, the EU could become marginal to talks on Myanmar's political future. But closer engagement could strain its relations with the democratic opposition and ethnic resistance groups, many of which hold substantial territory. Sabe Soe of the NGO Burma Centre Prague frames the choice as staying a credible defender of democratic change while keeping a meaningful voice in negotiations. Options include keeping sanctions on military leaders and their businesses while expanding diplomacy through ASEAN and the UN, tying any easing to humanitarian access and political freedoms, or pursuing economic engagement in resistance-administered areas.

For now Brussels shows little appetite for a rethink. The ASEAN summit in Manila next month is the next test of whether that holds.