Given the ongoing conflicts between the military junta, ethnic armed groups, and resistance forces, what are the biggest security threats facing Myanmar today and how is it affecting regional stability? 

The biggest security threat for the population of Myanmar is the targeted bombing. I don't want to say indiscriminate bombing, because they are targeted bombs. The junta is specifically targeting schools and clinics, and trying to instill fear in the people so that they won't support the revolution. They even bomb IDP camps. There are a lot of internally displaced people, and they live in these camps and still, the junta purposefully bombs them. As a result, a lot of people are fleeing Myanmar illegally in many cases, fleeing to neighboring countries. That creates regional instability, in particular, because there are a lot of public health outbreaks along these routes. They are often undetected and stay under the radar of law enforcement. In the arrival countries, they would unknowingly spread infectious diseases as well as become vulnerable to all kinds of criminal activities that create problems. One such issue is the cyber scam centers that have been recruiting these refugees and creating all kinds of problems, even in the United States. Those cyber scam centers are far-reaching, causing $2 billion worth of damage to the Americans as well. Thus, the damage is not contained within the country and region, but also beyond the region. In other words, even though it’s seemingly an internal conflict, the impact is regional and global. Millions of people have fled to Malaysia, and then to Thailand as well. Thai and Malaysian governments do not count most of them as refugees, but conservatively, an estimated 5 million people have fled into Thailand and about 1 million into Malaysia. In Myanmar’s western neighbor India, it's around 200,000 people. Additionally, many know about the Rohingya crisis, with 1.2 million refugees in Bangladesh. While Myanmar’s immediate neighbors face the direct effect, there's a lot of outflow beyond those countries to other countries as well. 

Given the Arakan Army’s territorial gains and the growing strength of ethnic armed organizations, is Myanmar headed toward full-scale state fragmentation, or is there a path to centralized governance?

The Myanmar people don't want a centralized government anymore. They want more of a federation. If asked, they will say they want a federal democracy rather than just democracy. It's already fragmented right now because the military controls only 21% of the country. All the border areas are managed and governed by the respective ethnic resistance organizations. So, it is somewhat fragmented already and the military junta will never be able to pull it all back together. It is a misnomer, and I think it is also propaganda, that the military junta is needed to prevent Myanmar from becoming a completely fragmented failed state. The centralized governance under the successive military regimes has not been very fair to the ethnic minority people.  They have suffered tremendously from the brutal oppression of the successive Bama-dominated military regimes.  Now, what people want is a federated governance, no desire for an overly centralized government. The people want a system more like the United States.

How can ASEAN move beyond its ineffective Five-Point Consensus and take stronger action against the junta, given internal divisions and geopolitical constraints?

ASEAN will need to find a way to implement the Five-Point Consensus. In order to do that, they may need more of a long-term special envoy focusing sharply on the Myanmar issue. Right now, the ASEAN chair changes every year. When you change the envoy so frequently, the strategy to address the Myanmar problem becomes disjointed because this problem is not solvable within one year of the ASEAN Chair’s responsibility. It would help to have a long-term view and strategy and go beyond just the term of the Chair. Also, ASEAN needs to engage with all stakeholders. They have mainly been engaging with the military junta, but it's not going to work, because right now, as I said, the military controls only 21% of the country. The military junta can't make decisions for nearly 80% of the country now. It would help to engage with all the stakeholders and all the ethnic resistance organization leaders. That's when the ASEAN will get a lot more traction and movement.

It was just announced that the 2025 elections are now delayed, but how does the military junta plan to ensure that these elections are perceived as legitimate? What role is China playing in supporting Myanmar's political transition, and how might this affect the election's outcome and international acceptance? 

It won't be legitimate at all in the eyes of the people, as well as most of the countries around the globe. Just recently, international election monitoring organizations like the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) and Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL) said they will not be recognizing Myanmar elections as legitimate. China is trying to sponsor the elections. Beijing just wants the military to run whatever election that they can, and then they're going to utilize that, and they're going to amplify using the misinformation machine that they have and try to convince the other countries that it has control over to recognize the election. That's what China is going to do because China has been funding a lot of pro-junta media inside Myanmar. It will definitely increase the funding and support for the pro-China media inside the country and in Southeast Asia. 

Regardless of the election's outcome, what are the prospects for achieving lasting political stability in Myanmar?

To achieve lasting political stability in Myanmar, the elections won’t help and will actually make it worse since they will be rigged to ensure the military junta’s win. If such elections occur, people will absolutely instigate a backlash against the military junta even more, because people won't accept the result of the sham elections. The best option is to help remove the most hated military junta because the military junta has been the source of the country’s instability, the source of violence, and the source of division. The military junta’s tactics have been to divide and conquer all the ethnic minority groups for nearly the last 80 years. The best way, if we want stability and for Myanmar to come together, is first to remove the military junta, which is instigating all of that instability, violence, and division. Certainly, no other group (other than the military junta) has the level of firepower to create this level of violence and destruction. The people just have to get the military junta out of the remaining 21% of the country. The resistance coalition forces already have the rest of the country under their respective control. But the military junta is still in Naypyidaw, which is the capital of Myanmar; the international system mostly recognizes whoever holds the capital. The military junta has used the international system to curve out its hold over the country. As we speak, all the resistance coalition forces are moving towards Naypyidaw. As for the Arakan Army (AA), it now controls almost all of the Rakhine state, and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) now controls almost all of the Kachin state. There are also other ethnic resistance organizations that are controlling their own areas.  Border trade routes are now pretty much controlled by these ethnic resistance organizations; the military junta has lost control of most of these important border trade routes. Lasting political stability can only be achieved through federalism, granting ethnic minority regions greater autonomy over their territories and the ability to exercise self-determination while remaining part of a larger federated union.