Let Them Eat Cake

Episode #572: “The government will survive for as long as it can feed the people,” says Christopher Lamb, former Australian Ambassador to Myanmar, distilling what he believes defines the country’s political fate more than any ideology. He reflects on a relationship with Burma that began in the early 1970s, when the generals were drafting a Socialist Constitution and creating a surveillance state, and evolved through the 1988 uprising, which began not as an idealistic revolt but as a desperate reaction to hunger and daily indignities. Years later, he reconnected with Myanmar around humanitarian work in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis in 2008, and then academic engagement in 2013, when he co-founded the Australia–Myanmar Institute as a platform for academic and civil-society exchange Lamb situates Myanmar’s politics within a wider regional frame, drawing on Shan history, federalism debates, geography, and Chinese influence to show why the struggle against the junta cannot be reduced to a simple clash between dictatorship and democracy. He also contrasts the current military leadership with earlier eras, noting that Min Aung Hlaing lacks the ideological projects—whether national unity or the “Burmese Way to Socialism”—that once guided previous generals. Instead, Lamb sees today’s junta as driven largely by personal ambition, with Min Aung Hlaing positioning himself to transition into a civilian presidency through a tightly controlled electoral process. Without this sort of guiding ideology, Lamb believes the regime’s future becomes harder to predict and possibly more brittle. Myanmar remains close to Lamb’s heart. It shaped him as a diplomat, it shaped his curiosity and it shaped his friendships. When asked whether any memory stays with him above all others about the country, he references a remark offered by the senior Burmese official decades earlier over tea: “The government will survive for as long as we can feed the people.”