This chapter seeks to lay the groundwork for a deeper understanding of the factors contributing to instability in Myanmar and thereby ASEAN's security community project. Interdependent with this is an analysis of the “domestic” consequences of instability and the prospects for change. The analysis is further designed to provide some understanding of the linkages between history, instability, ethnic conflict, and human rights abuse within the country. The necessity of this approach also arises from, and is complemented by, the conceptual framework in the previous chapter, which discussed the need for each member of a potential security community to consolidate internally. The successful internal consolidation of Myanmar, in addition to freeing the resources of the state for the purpose of regional integration, would assist in removing any destabilizing transnational factors that have the potential to compromise the comprehensive security of Southeast Asia. Furthermore, the deliberation by this chapter of the internal dynamics of the state, together with the perceptions and actions of its leadership, provides an important understanding of the “interests” of the state “without which, no theory of international relations can be adequate”. Finally, the analysis of Myanmar's internal security environment provides an important background to an assessment (in the final chapter) of the extent to which Myanmar presents an obstacle (both materially and normatively) to ASEAN's security community project.

BURMESE HISTORY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES — AN OVERVIEW

Broadly speaking, Myanmar underwent three historical phases in its embryonic unification as a nation state. In the first phase, parts of Myanmar were inhabited by small settlements as far back as 11,000 years ago. These palaeolithic and pro-neolithic groups settled, in the very least, along the Irrawaddy Valley and the eastern part of the present-day Shan State. In the second phase, and between the first century BC and the ninth century AD, the Pyu, speakers of the Tibeto-Burman languages and followers of Sarvastivada Buddhism, established city-kingdoms at Halingyi, Mongamo, Sri Ksetra, and Binnaka. By the eighth century, Pye, the former capital of the Pyu, had fallen to the Mons, and in the ninth century, the Pyu disappeared from historical records as a discrete people.