Myanmar To Go Nuclear?

There has been an unmistakable spurt in development and acquisition of nuclear weapon capabilities by the military junta in Myanmar. Given the level of progress in this regard, it is reckoned by various agencies that this capability would be realised by the year 2014. The media in the Southeast Asian region is rife with insinuations that this project is in progress in active collaboration with North Korea under the aegis of China. Recently at the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Regional Forum Meet at Phuket in Thailand in July 2009, the US Secretary of State Ms Hillary Clinton voiced her concern over reports about military cooperation between Myanmar and nuclear North Korea. This statement should be viewed in the backdrop of the incident wherein a North Korean 2000-tonne freighter ‘Kang Nam-I’, allegedly carrying illegal cargo, and headed for Myanmar, was tracked in June 2009 by a US Navy destroyer USS John S McCain and was forced to reverse course, reportedly at the behest of China. UN Resolution 1874 permits North Korean ships suspected of carrying illegal cargo to be searched. North Korea conveyed that any such move would be considered as an ‘act of war’.

Since the year 2000, there have been reports about North Korean ships offloading construction and other material at Thilawa port in Myanmar. It is intriguing that these activities took place during the period when North Korea and Myanmar had broken off their diplomatic relationship following the bombing of Martyr’s mausoleum in Yangon I 1983 by North Korean agents in an attempt to assassinate the visiting South Korean president, Chun Doo-hwan.

Since the restoration of diplomatic relations in 2008, a Myanmar delegation led by Lt Gen Myint Hlaing, the Chief of Air Defence, followed by another delegation headed by Lt Gen Tin Aye, Chief of the Office of Chief Defence Industries visited North Korea. The composition of these delegations suggests that besides cooperation for procurement and development of conventional weapons, there are aspirations on part of Myanmar to seek assistance in nuclear weapons and missile technology. If it was only conventional weapons, China is well placed to meet its requirements since more than 70 per cent of Myanmar’s military arsenal is of Chinese origin. But as far as transfer of nuclear and missile technologies is concerned, it has been the wont of China to supply them through its proxies like North Korea so as to deflect international opprobrium. Pakistan is one such glaring example.

It is believed that these secret delegations from Myanmar to North Korea had gone to seek further cooperation as part of the tunneling project already underway in a mountain complex (Setkhaya Mountains) in Naung Laing village south-east of Pyin Oo Lwin in Mandalay Division. The offloading of special construction material by North Korean ships on several occasions partially vindicates the belief. It may be pertinent to mention that the Kachin state of Myanmar is rich in uranium, and that uranium is being activated in at least ten locations.

The design of the reactor at Naung Laing, as sources reveal, uses water to provide carbon dioxide used in the cooling loop, and bears resemblance with the reactor at Yongbyon and the reactor in Syria, allegedly constructed by North Korean assistance, and eventually bombed by the Israelis in September 2007.

Other indications regarding Myanmar’s quest for nuclear weapon technology became visible when Pakistan carried out its nuclear tests in May 1998. Myanmar’s Head of State Senior General Than Shwe signed the Atomic Energy Law on 8 June 1998. The timing of this event clearly reveals a strategic pursuit with regard to nuclear technology rather than any benign designs of quest for nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Importantly post 9/11, two Pakistani nuclear scientists, Suleiman Asad and Mohammad Ali Mukhtar took refuge in Myanmar in November 2001 when US intelligence began to investigate the nexus between Pakistan nuclear scientists and the Al-Qaeda. The whereabouts of these two scientists is still unknown.

It was also during this period that Russia, at Myanmar’s request announced its intention to build a research reactor in Myanmar. The agreement with Russia for setting up a 10 megawatt reactor near Magwe in Myanmar was signed only in May 2007 due to financial difficulties. Nevertheless, hundreds of military personnel had been sent to Russia between the year 2001 and 2007 for training in nuclear science and technology. Although Myanmar is signatory to the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it is yet to sign the Additional Protocol thus allowing intrusive inspections of its nuclear facilities and operations by the IAEA.

Myanmar’s nuclear weapons programme characterises the coalescing of its strategic imperatives with an indulgent China. The involvement of North Korea and to an extent Pakistan, for furtherance of China’s regional and global agenda is in keeping with their status as proxy powers of the latter.

However, Myanmar’s determined bid to acquire nuclear capability is ‘not India-centric’ which is apparent from the deployment pattern for it has no fixed defences along the 1463 km long Indo-Myanmar border. In fact, Myanmar clearly desisted from denouncing the Indian nuclear tests in May 1998.

Internationally, the isolation of Myanmar has rendered it into a desperate political and economic situation. Therefore, the nuclear capability in the plausible reckoning of the military junta will invest it with the much needed diplomatic manoeuvre space in the international arena. Nevertheless, China’s patronage and even its admission into the ASEAN as a full member have not mitigated its political and economic problems. The Western world continues to view the Myanmar regime as totalitarian, repressive and regressive. The military regime in Myanmar has also been circumspect about turning into a vassal state of China. However, the regime’s survival compulsions have outweighed other considerations, which China has been ruthlessly exploiting.

The military dispensation in Myanmar, very much like the regime in North Korea is paranoid about being dislodged by intervention, military or otherwise, by the US and its allies. The nuclear weapons capability, the Myanmar regime contends will strategically insulate it against any such design. Thus, Myanmar is pursuing the nuclear course for the very survivability of the military regime. In that it is probably guided by the North Korean example.

For China, a nuclear armed Myanmar will further bolster its strategic encirclement of India—the major challenge to its regional supremacy. In the global context, proxy nuclear states serve as robust strategic pawns in the prevailing unipolar international order.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views either of the Editorial Committee or the Centre for Land Warfare Studies).