On Monday, 1 February, Myanmar’s military ended the country's decade-long experiment with democracy by launching a coup against the most popular political party, the National League for Democracy (NLD),  and its leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

 

Now Myanmar’s people are on the streets, demanding the release of their leaders and the restoration of the 2020 election results. Many are also calling for the country’s 2008 constitution to be annulled and rewritten, as it explicitly acknowledges the military’s leading role in Myanmar’s politics. The military has responded with violence and used all means at its disposal to quash the protests, including the killing of protestors. 

 

But away from the news headlines what exactly is going on in Myanmar? How are we to understand the events that began when the military tanks rolled in front of the parliament on 1 February 2021? 

Myanmar’s political history is complex. There is no shortage of explainer videos, timelines and quick primers, but for those who have not been following the story closely over the years, it can be difficult to get a handle on what is going on.

 

Here at the State of Power podcast we examine the ways coercive military power functions, how it mutates, how it is connected to other forms of power that shape the world around us. To help us understand events in Myanmar, we reached out to today’s guest on the program. 

 

Sai Sam Kham is an activist and scholar who left Myanmar in 2019 to begin his PHD studies in Land politics, food systems and climate change linked to Myanmar, at the Institute of Social Studies in the Hague. Before he left his home country, Sai Sam was the executive director of Metta Development Foundation, an NGO that focuses on assisting communities that have been ravaged by years of internal conflict.

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Image Source: Ninjastrikers/Wikimedia

Music: Aztec Sun Band/ In the name of everyone. 

 

We live in an age of empire and resistance - a shifting geography of global power. The military, political and financial support of one country, the US, above all others has allowed a small country - Israel - to commit genocide in Gaza, to the horror of the vast majority of people worldwide. The US military, its corporations, its digital giants, its banks, and its culture continue to dominate globally.

Yet at the same time, US-led imperialism has never felt more fractured and resisted. The heavily-resourced US army has been forced out of Afghanistan and was recently expelled from Niger. Nations such as Nicaragua and South Africa are taking powerful former colonial countries to court. Other international institutions, long seen as vehicles for exporting or enforcing US-led neoliberalism, such as the World Trade Organisation have seemingly run out of steam. The US is also increasingly isolated globally: Brazil, China, India, Russia and other nations are directly challenging its hegemony, and the US' dysfunctional democracy is less and less cited as a model by other countries. There is a growing popular sense that the post-Cold War neoliberal globalised order is in crisis.

Is US hegemony really fading? Does any other nation, including China, pose any real challenge to US power, let alone offer a political or economic alternative?  Has the heralded hope of a BRICS bloc collapsed amidst its contradictions?  What would it take to build a more equitable and just new international political and economic order?

In this episode, to properly examine where geopolitical or geoeconomic power lies today – and how it is being exercised and how that might be changing, TNI's Nick Buxton speaks to  Adam Tooze, and Walden Bello. 

Adam Tooze holds the Shelby Cullom Davis chair of History at Columbia University and serves as Director of the European Institute. In 2019, Foreign Policy Magazine named him one of the top Global Thinkers of the decade.

Walden Bello is a TNI associate and author of more that 20 books,  a human rights and peace campaigner, academic, environmentalist and journalist who has made a major contribution to the international case against corporate-driven globalization.

History in Action Part 1 delves into the founding of the Transnational Institute (TNI) and its origins with the Institute for Policy Studies. We look at the roots of TNI in opposition to the Vietnam War and other global liberation movements. We explore TNI's evolution and its sustained resistance against neoliberal ideologies, its tragedy with the assassination of Orlando Letelier, and its early work on debt, food and alternatives.

Narrator: Shaun Matsheza

Interviews conducted by: Denis Burke, Daria Gorshenina and Shaun Matsheza

Music: Aleksey Chistilin

Interviews with: Susan George, Cora and Peter Weiss, John Cavanagh, Achin Vanaik, Anthony Barnett, Susan Buck-Morss, Ariane van Buren, Manuel Pérez-Rocha

Archival audio with: John Berger, Isabel Letelier, Orlando Letelier, Eqbal Ahmad, Basker Vashee, Fred Halliday

Find out more about TNI at tni.org

Please consider making a contribution to support our vital work at tni.org/donate

With thanks to the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam

History in Action Part 5 guides us through the multifaceted impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, underscored by increasing corporate power and social injustices—from healthcare privatization and vaccine disparities to the militarization of borders. We talk about green colonialism and the people hijacking the transition to renewable energy for their own profits. We talk about Gaza. Insights from diverse activists and scholars emphasize the need for a collective, just transition and highlight the historical and ongoing struggles for social justice, for international solidarity and for systemic change.

Narrator: Shaun Matsheza
Interviews conducted by: Denis Burke, Daria Gorshenina and Shaun Matsheza
Music: Aleksey Chistilin
Interviews with: Arun Kundnani, Niamh Ni Bhriain, Katie Sandwell, Lucía Bárcena, Walden Bello, Sol Trumbo Vila , Achin Vanaik, Dorothy Guerrero, John Cavanagh, Achin Vanaik, Lyda Fernanda Forero, Manuel Pérez-Rocha, Fiona Dove
Archival audio with: Abir Kopty, Hamza Hamouchene, Susan George

Find out more about TNI at tni.org
Please consider making a contribution to support our vital work at tni.org/donate

With thanks to the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam

History in Action Part 4 talks about the fallout of the financial crises, the rise of new forms of authoritarianism, the new movements that shook the world, and the work against transnational corporate impunity. 

Narrator: Shaun Matsheza

Interviews conducted by: Denis Burke, Daria Gorshenina and Shaun Matsheza

Music: Aleksey Chistilin

Interviews with: Walden Bello, Sol Trumbo Vila , Niamh Ni Bhriain, Achin Vanaik, Dorothy Guerrero, Lucía Bárcena, Martin Jelsma

Archival audio with: Susan George, Howard Wachtel,  Brid Brennan

Find out more about TNI at tni.org

Please consider making a contribution to support our vital work at tni.org/donate

With thanks to the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam

History in Action Part 3 discusses the disastrous war on terror, the rise of China, and the convergence of social movements around the climate crisis, land, and essential public services.

Narrator: Shaun Matsheza

Interviews conducted by: Denis Burke, Daria Gorshenina and Shaun Matsheza

Music: Aleksey Chistilin

Interviews with: Arun Kundnani,  Lyda Fernanda Forero, Jun Borras, Walden Bello, Dorothy Guerrero, Fiona Dove

Archival audio with: Howard Wachtel, Brid Brennan, Satoko Kishimoto, Fred Halliday

Find out more about TNI at tni.org

Please consider making a contribution to support our vital work at tni.org/donate

With thanks to the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam

History in Action Part 2 dives into the 1990s, focusing on the impact of the Cold War's end, the rise of neoliberalism, the emergence of the Alter-Globalization Movement, and the history of TNI's drugs and democracy programme. Key figures and activists explore significant shifts in global politics, the consolidation of U.S. imperial power, and the resistance of social movements: from the rise of progressive alternatives to the struggle against corporate power and neoliberal trade regimes.

Narrator: Shaun Matsheza

Interviews conducted by: Denis Burke, Daria Gorshenina and Shaun Matsheza

Music: Aleksey Chistilin

Interviews with: Susan George, Hilary Wainwright, Walden Bello, Martin Jelsma, Gonzalo Berrón, John Cavanagh, Achin Vanaik, Lyda Fernanda Forero, Manuel Pérez-Rocha, Jun Borras, Fiona Dove

Archival audio with: John Berger, Isabel Letelier, Orlando Letelier, Eqbal Ahmad, Basker Vashee, Fred Halliday

Find out more about TNI at tni.org

Please consider making a contribution to support our vital work at tni.org/donate

With thanks to the International Institute for Social History in Amsterdam

Nearly 75 years after the United Nations called for the abolition of  coca leaf chewing, the world will have an opportunity to correct this grave historic error. The World Health Organization (WHO), at  the Plurinational State of Bolivia’s request,  and supported by Colombia, will conduct a ‘critical review’ of the coca leaf over the next year.

Based on its findings, the WHO may recommend changes in coca’s classification under the UN drug control treaties. The WHO recommendations would be submitted for approval by the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), with voting likely in 2026.  The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) and the Transnational Institute (TNI) will be monitoring the coca review process closely and examining key aspects of the debate. As part of this we are producing a series called “Coca Chronicles”.

The first issue of the Coca Chronicles discussed the current classification of the coca leaf in Schedule I of the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (or its effective ban) and Bolivia’s initiation of the WHO critical review process.

The second issue highlighted three developments during the March 2024 CND session: (1) support for the coca review from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; (2) Bolivia’s call to protect the coca leaf as a genetic resource; and (3) an update on the WHO’s preparations for the review. 

In this third issue, Anthropologist Wade Davis gives us a deep dive into the history and significance of the coca leaf in the Andean Amazon region. 

Wade Davis is a Canadian cultural anthropologist, ethnobotanist, photographer, and writer. He is professor of anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia. He is a multiple award-winning author of more than 25 books, and has done extensive research into coca leaf, among many other ethnobotanic explorations.  

The fossil fuel based energy system has shaped capitalism and our geopolitical order. On the 50th year of TNI's existence, the State of Power report unveils the corporate and financial actors that underpin this order, the dangers of an unjust energy transition, lessons for movements of resistance, and the possibilities for transformative change.

How can we build a Just energy transition in the age of corporate and imperial power? 

In today’s episode, a special accompaniment to the 12th Annual State of Power Report on energy, Nick Buxton speaks to three interesting people who have unique perspectives on this question.

Timothy Mitchell is a political theorist, historian and professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies at Columbia University. In 2012, his book Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil retold the history of energy in the Middle East, showing how oil weakened democracy, fuelled militarism and empire and created a dangerous myth of infinite growth.

Thea Riofrancos is an associate professor of political science at Providence College and a member of the Climate and Community Project, a left-wing think tank. She works primarily on the politics of extraction, particularly in Latin America and the US. Her upcoming book is Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism. 

Ozzi Warwick is the chief education and research officer of the Oilfield Workers Trade Union of Trinidad and Tobago and the General Secretary of the national Joint Trade Union Movement. He is also a founding member of the Trade Unions for Energy Democracy South (TUED South), a new South-led trade union platform dedicated to a public approach to a just energy transition. 

Nick Buxton is  TNI’s Knowledge Hub Coordinator and founding editor of the State of Power report.

Even a global crisis can provide opportunities for fairer, freer and better ways of organising our world. But too often they can simply become moments to further entrench power, hegemony and undue influence. Unfortunately, as history has demonstrated, global policy making has often shifted in undesirable directions because those in power use crises to push their own interests.

Some commentators have made comparisons between the global impact of 911 on public policy, and the impact of the Covid 19 virus, because while the Covid pandemic may be over, just like 911, its impacts still reverberate. And they are likely going to stay with us for some time to come. Covid 19 had a fundamental impact on our economies, on global governance, and global policy making.

Through a series of interviews with experts in their respective fields, TNI Associate, Arun Kundnani, set out to explore all the different facets of the pandemic’s impacts, from the growing role of major Pharmaceutical corporations in global healthcare, to the the response of global governance bodies such as the WHO and the UN, to the part played by Big Tech Companies, the impact on the global debt and on migration and race politics. We had a chance to sit with him and explore his findings, and to see what alternatives are available for us when the next crisis comes rolling in, something which is all but inevitable.

Arun Kundnani is a TNI associate and author of The Muslims are coming, Islamophobia, Extremism, and the Domestic War on Terror. He’s also recently released a new  book, is called What is Antiracism? and Why it means Anticapitalism. 

Related playlist: https://audioboom.com/playlists/4634744-talking-security-with-arun-kundnani 

Link to Arun Kundnani's work: https://www.kundnani.org/