Does Myanmar Still Have One Government to Recognize?

Read The Diplomat, Know The Asia-Pacific Much of the world still views Myanmar through a narrow diplomatic lens that cannot encompass the full political complexity of its conflict. Last month, Myanmar’s new military-backed government rejected a request from the Philippines’ Foreign Secretary Ma. Theresa Lazaro to meet with the country’s detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, citing her prison sentence. Days later, Min Aung Hlaing, who led the 2021 coup and anointed himself president in April, traveled to Laos on an official bilateral visit, his first to an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member state since the coup. Although ASEAN itself has not officially recognized the new government, nor accepted the result of the election held in December and January, it still structures every visit and appointment around the notion that the junta is Myanmar’s sole government. That is usually interpreted as ASEAN being cautious, compromised, or slow to react to the situation on the ground inside Myanmar. It instead reflects a diplomatic practice that recognizes one government per territory. Instead of asking whether ASEAN should recognize the military regime, or which of Myanmar’s competing authorities it might recognize instead, a more useful question may be whether looking for one government to recognize is the best or only way to think about the situation. ASEAN’s founding non-interference norm took for granted a settled order of single territorial states protected from outside interference. This was codified as a principle in the 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, but the founders did not foresee a situation in which a member has a contested government. International law distinguishes a state’s existence from recognition of its government. States continue to exist under contested or divided control without losing statehood. Myanmar is not the only case. Somalia has sustained divided control for decades, and Libya has been contested by rival governments since 2014. Afghanistan’s seat at the United Nations has been frozen since 2021. The gap exists in diplomatic practice, which treats a settled state as the default because it is the more common case. The statistics on Myanmar show how the gap has widened. As of mid-2026, the military regime administers a territory covering between a fifth and a third of the country, albeit nearly all the major population centers. This includes areas where it maintains only a military presence with no administration. Beyond this, close to half the country has slid into a form of “warlordism,” with power fracturing into rival centers rather than converging on one single entity. The Arakan Army administers nearly all of Rakhine State, and it maintains its own independent relations with Bangladesh, although the latter states that this does not amount to diplomatic recognition. The junta, the National Unity Government (NUG), and ethnic resistance organizations, whether or not they are aligned with the NUG, are all establishing competing centers of authority, each running their own initiatives in parallel rather than competing to be recognized as the sole government. The NUG’s own claims about how many townships it controls have shifted and been difficult to verify. In March it formed a new coordinating body with four ethnic armed organizations, in an effort to consolidate administrative control. Describing these developments as simply how Myanmar’s politics currently works prompts an obvious objection: armed control of a territory does not automatically confer a mandate to govern it That standard, applied literally, would also implicate the NUG, whose presence on the ground depends on an armed wing, the People’s Defense Force, that it had to build after the coup, just as the junta’s authority depends on the Myanmar armed forces. But the junta’s control and the NUG’s electoral mandate are different types of claims, and neither claim resolves who should be held responsible for what has already happened, nor excuses the actions taken to retain or regain control. Refusing to deal with an armed group does not alter the reality on the ground; it only changes which entity the external actor is willing to call the government. Prospects for a political settlement under the “one government” model remain remote, yet diplomatic interactions are still centered around this framework. Take, for example, the Myanmar seat at the United Nations. Since a decision-making process designed for a single government cannot resolve a case without one, the U.N. Credentials Committee’s inability to choose between the junta and the NUG has simply defaulted to the current occupant. China maintains the most consistent contact with a coalition of the biggest non-signatory ethnic armed organizations. It has not actually accepted the “one government” model and it is unclear whether Beijing even needs a single government to pursue its strategic and economic interests in Myanmar. Instead, China is pursuing local deals with individual armed groups rather than any unified outcome, since groups enjoying real autonomy already have little reason to cede ground in negotiations with Naypyidaw. For instance, the Arakan Army is currently seeking confederal status along the lines of the autonomous Wa State, instead of taking part in a federal union. ASEAN’s stance resets with each rotating chair, and the actions of its members have not converged. Some analysts read the recent visits to Naypyidaw of Thailand and Indonesia’s foreign ministers as a de facto acceptance of the post-election government. At the same time, Singapore continues to withhold recognition while waiting for a government it considers legitimate, as does Timor-Leste, which is also pursuing a war crimes complaint against the junta. Each still assumes Myanmar has one government to recognize, but does not agree which one it is. It seems unlikely that a single government would satisfy each, let alone all, of these positions. India’s approach is different from ASEAN and its members. After President Min Aung Hlaing’s visit to New Delhi last month, India’s foreign secretary said that India’s policy was “not intended to be a commentary on the internal political arrangements” in Myanmar. Before the visit, the NUG had asked India not to receive Min Aung Hlaing, but the government did not respond. China and India extract the function each of them needs from Myanmar’s competing authorities, without waiting for, or requiring, any of them to be recognized as its government. The reality is that there may not be a single approach to engaging with Myanmar. Subscribe today and join thousands of diplomats, analysts, policy professionals and business readers who rely on The Diplomat for expert Asia-Pacific coverage. Get unlimited access to in-depth analysis you won't find anywhere else, from South China Sea tensions to ASEAN diplomacy to India-Pakistan relations. More than 5,000 articles a year. Already have