Bangladesh, April 20 -- Myanmar is no longer a failing state—it is a state that has already fractured, giving way to a dangerous landscape of competing authorities and collapsing sovereignty. What is unfolding is not merely political instability but a profound structural breakdown. The recent move by Min Aung Hlaing to install himself as president has been widely portrayed as a consolidation of power. In reality, it reflects the opposite: a symbolic attempt to mask a rapidly eroding grip on the country.

For much of the past three years, international analysis has remained anchored in an outdated assumption—that a central authority in Naypyitaw still meaningfully governs Myanmar. That assumption no longer holds. The country ha...