Compounding these tensions and adding complexity to the country’s politics are contesting narratives of change and legitimacy. Many see a better future via parliamentary democracy, versus others who insist on starting with a negotiated peace settlement premised on federalism. While not necessarily exclusive to one another, they are nonetheless hard to synchronize emotionally and politically across the spectrum of Myanmar society and politics. It is also hard to make them sync in the practical terms of specific near-term reforms. Such tensions raise all sorts of ‘chicken-or-egg’ conundrums, such as whether there should be constitutional reform or decentralization before a peace agreement lays out a federal future, for example.

Amidst these quandaries, it is useful to focus on what is feasible for the country in terms of transitioning to what can be understood as ‘normal’, or at least a trajectory of ‘normalization’, amongst such a disparate range of political and social interests. As Myanmar’s peers of Southeast Asia indicate, ‘normalcy’ could refer to rudimentary control over the state’s territory through consent, being able to provide basic governance and social services, and the ability to grow an economy based on legitimate sources of income that can lift the wider population out of poverty. There may be autocracy and illicit economies present but not enough to result in global condemnation and isolation. With time, it is hoped that the country might even grow a healthier sense of nationalism – i.e. as an ‘imagined community’ — that dissuades widespread insurrection. Perhaps a shared sense of what is normal and a palpable sense of progress towards it is the only way to overcome massive ethnic, religious and social cleavages.

Indeed, as the transition was beginning, The Economist remarked that framed against the violence concurrently unfolding in the Middle East’s ‘Arab Spring,’ Myanmar’s historic flux appeared to be progressing as a “revolution without losers.” Rather than abrupt, seismic change, most stakeholders accepted that gradual evolution was needed from military dictatorship to something else, roughly democratic and market-oriented, and with greater accommodation of the country’s diversity. Simply, it just wanted to be another normal Southeast Asian country, generally trending for the better but with the ups and downs experienced by everybody else. This observation often escaped outsiders looking in, who generally had grand expectations of quick change, be it economic, political or for a peace deal. Domestically, the stark prospects of quick revolution, with winner take all, seemed to have lost their appeal.

Moreover, what seems clear is that within the country there is an immense amount of hope for change but also exceptional levels of pragmatism and patience. Outsiders have tended to romanticize or sensationalize the country, for better or worse. Within Myanmar, more moderated hopes are prominent. It is from a greater sense of these expectations from within Myanmar that the country’s transition should be weighed.

When Aung San Suu Kyi famously said she was just a Myanmar politician rather than a global icon for democracy, it was a plea for acceptance of her relative normalcy as a Myanmar party leader and legislator. Or, it was at least a hope to be left alone to get on with what she wanted to do most – reform Myanmar rather than save the world. Her parameters for what was needed and possible were defined by Myanmar’s 2008 Constitution and her political capital. The global accolades certainly were not turned down, but one would be hard pressed to show that she was driven primarily by achieving global fame. Many Nobel laureates have enjoyed lucrative lives dispelling wisdom around the world, but she chose to stay home. It’s worth remembering that. 

Even the military has its complexes about what it means to be normal. Since its earliest days, the Tatmadaw has gnawed at what could best be understood as an inferiority complex. Shortly after independence, KNU insurgents nearly succeeded in capturing Rangoon and the Kuomintang incursion in 1949 onwards left large parts of the country under foreign control. This deepened a sense of weakness and inadequacy that manifested itself brutally over time as the military undertook autocratic control over the country. More recently, reading its White Paper setting out defense policy, one is struck by the sense of it wanting to shed the toxic abnormality of its modern history and become a ‘professional’ military, at least as it defines one. It’s telling that one of the first reform areas that international agencies succeeded in engaging the military over was preventing child soldiers. Self-respecting militaries simply did not partake in such wretched practices.

More significantly, for the military, an economic rationale for change has been primary: normalcy means economic growth more than anything else. The refrain amongst the country’s elite over the 2000’s that they were “tired of being poorer than Laos” was grating. As that decade had worn on, over-dependence on China and the risks of outright economic collapse in much of the country were more of an existential threat than anything else, and military recognized that.

Perhaps most significantly, the country’s complexes about wanting to be normal extend to its most odious event of recent years. The exodus of the Rohingya in 2017 understandably provoked global outrage. Across the world many were aghast that so much of the country’s leadership and public seemed ambivalent about the plight of the Rohingya. There’s no sense saying otherwise as such sentiments were widely true. Rather, what was striking within the country was the resentment that was universally felt about the term ‘genocide.’

There are few words that have such uniquely negative connotations for a country. It grated across Myanmar’s political spectrum because it placed the country, again, as a global outcast facing scorn around the world. Even for those Myanmar people who saw the Rakhine crisis as the fault of the military, it was hard not to resent the global accusation as it risked superseding all the positive changes that were unfolding.    

The point of this observation is not to condone actors such as the military or lower expectations of positive change by the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi. Instead, it is to highlight the grossly myopic hopes that pervaded international expectations for the country in the early years of the transition until the pendulum swung the other way and the country was wholly condemned for singular issues in Rakhine. All of it was based on perceptions of the exceptional. This was particularly true for the West as they personalized their hopes for the country in Aung San Suu Kyi herself. Her near deification abroad, especially in the West, was ultimately counterproductive for the country. These expectations never could have been met.