Liberal Dreams, Illiberal Ends

Episode #473: “The military was pursuing an illiberal strategy to peace, and Norway became complicit, not necessarily by design, but by its effect, it became a de facto sponsor of a strategy for illiberal peace building by the military.” Kristian Stokke draws on decades of research across Sri Lanka, South Africa, and Indonesia, where Norway’s peace efforts often reinforced state dominance rather than confronting inequality. He argues that Myanmar followed the same trajectory. “Norway became the envoy of the West that went in to test the waters,” he recalls, acting as a diplomatic go-between for Western powers eager to engage Myanmar’s generals. “When we came to Myanmar, it was very clear that Norway’s engagement was interest-based. It was no longer pretending to be just altruistic.” Norway’s involvement, he continues, was driven as much by self-interest as by moral aspiration: “as a diplomat, as an aid donor and as an investor.” He goes on to describe that as a result, the so-called democratic opening of the 2010s was not a genuine transition: “This was not the negotiated transition of South Africa or Latin American countries in the 1980s,” Stokke explains. “It was an authoritarian-led transition to less closed dictatorship or electoral autocracy.” He believes Norway’s peacebuilding “actually undermined the forces for power sharing and democracy,” focusing too much on the state and too little on democratic and ethnic movements. Reflecting on the years since the coup, Stokke laments Norway’s caution: “At times, I find it surprising or unfortunate that they don’t come out in support of those actors who are really at the forefront of the struggle for better democracy in Myanmar.”