Paved By Good Intentions
Insight Myanmar18 Des 2025

Paved By Good Intentions

Episode #451: Marte Nilsen, senior researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, joins the podcast to explore Aung San Suu Kyi’s central role in Myanmar’s political life. Drawing on decades of research across Myanmar and Thailand, she also reflects on Norway’s complex engagement with Myanmar—from early solidarity movements and reform-era optimism to today’s challenges of diplomacy, reversals, and rebuilding.

Norway’s involvement began in the wake of the 1988 uprising and Suu Kyi’s 1991 Nobel Prize, when exiles and NGOs forged ties across the Thai border. The devastating Cyclone Nargis in 2008 highlighted the capacity of local civil society, prompting Oslo to expand support in that direction. Then when President Thein Sein launched reforms in 2011 and Suu Kyi contested the 2012 by-elections, Norway began engaging state institutions more directly again. Suu Kyi’s NLD triumphed in 2015 and 2020, though ethnic groups criticized her Bamar-centric focus, and her stance the Rohingya crisis posed a very serious dilemma for Western nations otherwise wanting to support the country’s democratization process. The 2021 coup, of course, ended the reform era.

Nilsen stresses that Myanmar’s current junta bears no resemblance to the military of 2010, back when foreign nations were willing to deal with the junta. Today, it is widely seen as a desperate, illegitimate regime that is waging war on its people. She rejects any notion that the 2025 elections could be free or fair.

In the end, Nilsen insists that while outside solidarity and support matter, “the changes on the ground, it comes from the Burmese people.”

Episoder(523)

The Train Wreck Ahead

The Train Wreck Ahead

Episode #501: “There were events going on in the world that I really cared about,” says investigative journalist Emanuel Stoakes as he reflects on the path that eventually drew him into reporting on M...

13 Mar 1h 55min

A Second Renunciation

A Second Renunciation

Episode #500: “If my story offers anything, I really hope that it offers permission to question sincerely, to grow beyond structures that once served us and to hold both gratitude and discernment at t...

12 Mar 1h 59min

The Fire Next Time

The Fire Next Time

Episode #499: Paul Vrieze, a Dutch journalist and PhD researcher specializing in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution, has observed the country’s political trajectory for over 15 years. Drawn to Myanmar’s open...

10 Mar 1h 14min

An Undisciplined Democracy

An Undisciplined Democracy

Episode #498: Caleb, a research coordinator with the Myanmar-based research group Myanography, argues that participation in the military’s 2025–2026 election functioned less as a democratic exercise t...

9 Mar 1h 29min

Returning to the Source

Returning to the Source

Episode #497: “This is my life. Life is so precious, and I need to take responsibility for what I’m doing,” says Oliver Tanner, a long-term meditation practitioner and Buddhist scholar whose PhD focus...

6 Mar 2h 19min

Let the Circle Be Unbroken

Let the Circle Be Unbroken

Episode #496: Jak Bazino, a French novelist with more than a decade of lived experience in Myanmar, discusses his novel Breaking the Cycle as an attempt to make sense of the country’s Spring Revolutio...

5 Mar 1h 19min

Maple Leaf Diplomacy

Maple Leaf Diplomacy

Episode #495: Mark McDowell, a Canadian foreign service officer and former ambassador in Yangon from 2013 to 2016, traces Myanmar through a set of mismatches between how the country is narrated abroad...

3 Mar 2h 32min

A Clockwork Election

A Clockwork Election

Episode #494: “Any one, any countries, any government, who recognize the results of this elections, they are made a fool by the junta!” Myay Thet is a co-founder and leader of a Myanmar nonprofit rese...

2 Mar 1h 20min

Populært innen Politikk og nyheter

giver-og-gjengen-vg
aftenpodden
lydartikler-fra-aftenposten
forklart
aftenpodden-usa
popradet
stopp-verden
i-retten
dine-penger-pengeradet
fotballpodden-2
det-store-bildet
rss-gukild-johaug
nokon-ma-ga
hanna-de-heldige
rss-ness
aftenbla-bla
e24-podden
rss-dannet-uten-piano
grasoner-den-nye-kalde-krigen
frokostshowet-pa-p5