Kudos to all of you who had “Coup in Myanmar” on your “Unexpected Foreign-Policy Challenges for the Biden Administration” bingo card. If nothing else, the latest military takeover there confirms a point I made a few weeks ago: Foreign policy is a realm of constant surprises, and no global leader can anticipate everything that might occur on their watch.
That said, leaders do get to decide how to react. And the good news here is that events in Myanmar do not require much in the way of a U.S. response. The coup is far from a salutary development, but the military’s decision to reject the landslide victory by the National League for Democracy in the November 2020 elections and to detain members of the civilian government—including nominal leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has now been charged with some comically obscure violations—does not impinge on vital U.S. interests or require dramatic action.
