International responses to the situation in Myanmar during September were complex, revealing multifaceted approaches.
On one hand, a country like the United States is targeting the arms procurement network of the military junta that seized power, while on the other, a powerful neighboring country like China continues its military technology and economic cooperation with the military junta.
On one hand, a country like the United States is targeting the arms procurement network of the military junta that seized power, while on the other, a powerful neighboring country like China continues its military technology and economic cooperation with the military junta.
International responses to the situation in Myanmar during September were complex, revealing multifaceted approaches. On one hand, a country like the United States is targeting the arms procurement network of the military junta that seized power, while on the other, a powerful neighboring country like China continues its military technology and economic cooperation with the military junta.
This latest US sanction aims to cut off a critical source of revenue for North Korea. However, the US government’s reference to the military junta in its statement describes it as the Myanmar military junta that overthrew the elected Myanmar government and seized power on February 1, 2021.[1]
Nevertheless, this action exposes the military junta’s unlawful collaboration with international pariah states like North Korea, as it faces difficulty in legally acquiring weapons from the international community. These sanctions will likely make it harder for the military council to access international banking and financial transfers. The junta will have to find other ways to pay for weapons, potentially increasing costs for the military junta. The sanctioning of key brokers and companies will obstruct and delay the military council’s chain of weapon and military equipment procurement. Furthermore, this measure undoubtedly serves as a strong warning that other companies and individuals from other countries involved in arms trade with the military council could also face US sanctions.
In this situation, there are still countries rolling out the red carpet and actively supporting the military junta that seized power. China is the most prominent among them. Just this September, the military coup leader Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing, as well as the newly appointed Prime Minister of the State Administration Council, former General U Nyo Saw, and the Minister of Defense, General Maung Maung Aye all visited China. This marks the highest point in relations between Nay Pyi Taw and Beijing in over four years since the coup. General Maung Maung Aye’s trip to Beijing on September 19 included meetings with Chinese military technology companies to discuss technical cooperation on military equipment such as drone production, electronic warfare, and air defense technology.[2]
This technological cooperation will not be used to protect the people but will instead be used to more effectively oppress and kill the public, such as in the bombings of schools in Thabeikkyin [3] and Kyauktaw townships. Therefore, contrary to the will of the people of Myanmar, China is openly providing technical and weapon assistance to the military junta, while the US, though not directly, is imposing sanctions on individuals connected to the junta. However, the analysis concludes that the US needs to focus more on addressing the issue in Myanmar.
Translated from RICE Weekly Peace Analysis
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[1] U.S. Department of the Treasury, September 25, 2025: Treasury Targets Arms Trafficking Network and Financial Facilitators for DPRK Weapons Programs. https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0264
[2] CINCDS, September 21, 2025: နိုင်ငံတော်လုံခြုံရေးနှင့်အေးချမ်းသာယာရေးကော်မရှင်အဖွဲ့ဝင်၊ ကာကွယ်ရေးဝန်ကြီးဌာန ပြည်ထောင်စု ဝန်ကြီးဗိုလ်ချုပ်ကြီးမောင်မောင်အေး ဦးဆောင်သည့် ကိုယ်စားလှယ်အဖွဲ့ ပေကျင်းမြို့ရှိ စစ်ဘက်နည်း ပညာဆိုင်ရာ ကုမ္ပဏီများသို့သွားရောက်ကြည့်ရှုလေ့လာ။ https://www.cincds.gov.mm/niungngntteaalunkhunrenngaekhmsaayaarekeaamrngaphaiwng-kaakyrewnkiitthaan-pnnytheaangcu?d=1
[3] Myanmar Now, September 8, 2025: သပိတ်ကျင်း ကျေးလက်စာသင်ဝိုင်း ဗုံးကြဲခံရပြီး ကလေး ၁ ဦးသေ၊ ကလေးများအပါအဝင် ၇ ဦး ဒဏ်ရာရ။ https://myanmar-now.org/mm/news/67561/
