A Crowded Room: India's Confused Struggle Against Chinese Influence in Myanmar
On 1 June 2026, Min Aung Hlaing arrived in New Delhi as Myanmar's president. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Droupadi Murmu received him with full state honours. Five years after his coup plunged Myanmar into civil war, and months after an election widely dismissed as a sham, the general was being treated as a legitimate head of state.
The visit was meant to show that India remains central to Myanmar’s future, but it also revealed how crowded the room has become. China has long held the best seat: it arms the junta, shields it at the UN Security Council, and keeps its own channels open to the ethnic armies along its border. Russia supplies much of the military's air power.
Now Washington is circling too. In July 2025, Reuters reported that the Trump administration was hearing pitches on how to reach the heavy rare earths mined in Kachin State, minerals that feed China's near monopoly on processing. One proposal, advanced by Adam Castillo, a former head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Myanmar, envisaged Washington brokering an arrangement between the junta and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), which controls key mining areas, while working with India to process the minerals for eventual shipment to the United States. The proposal remained exploratory, and an Indian government official told Reuters that such a supply chain would require years of infrastructure development.
Fourteen months later, the talks are real. On 15–16 September 2026, US officials led by Michael Vance, Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research, met Min Aung Hlaing in Naypyitaw, the highest-level contact between Washington and Myanmar's military since the coup. The stated aim was to free Castillo who was arrested on 11 June 2026 on breach-of-trust charges linked to his time as president of the American Chamber of Commerce. But the discussions also covered scam centres targeting Americans and, crucially, access to Myanmar's heavy rare earths. A second round, again led by Vance, followed in Tokyo in early October, though its agenda has not been confirmed.
The State Department had already put its intentions in writing. Its Integrated Country Strategy for the US Mission to Burma, approved on 31 August 2026, two weeks before Vance landed in Naypyitaw, sets the embassy's priorities through 2030. It ties US support for peace talks directly to creating opportunities to access Myanmar's 'bountiful rare earth resources', and to building an environment for US investment 'over other regional actors'. Rare earths are no longer just a pitch circulating in Washington; they are written into official strategy.
None of this yet amounts to a minerals deal. The deposits lie largely in territory held by armed groups fighting the junta, and any attempt to divert supply from China faces steep political and logistical obstacles. Still, the direction of travel is clear: Washington has ease sanctions on junta-linked individuals and companies, not long after Castillo's initial pitch, and its new strategy treats Naypyitaw as a government to work with rather than a regime to isolate.
A record of reversals
India's Myanmar policy has always moved in sharp turns. In 1988 it backed the pro-democracy uprising that the military then crushed. When that failed, and China moved in with arms and trade, New Delhi reversed course. By the mid-1990s, under its Look East policy, it was courting the same generals it had previously condemned.
Bertil Lintner, who has covered Myanmar for four decades, describes the logic as opportunism rather than principle. India is a democracy, he notes, but it has never tried to export democracy. It backed the 1988 movement because it hoped to end up on the winning side against China. When that bet failed, it chose to engage with the military instead.
Modi's Act East policy, launched in 2014, promised more. Its flagship, the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project linking Kolkata to Myanmar's Sittwe port and on to Mizoram, was agreed in 2008 and remains unfinished. The India-Myanmar-Thailand Trilateral Highway has missed deadline after deadline. Lintner calls Act East more slogan than substance.
The 2021 coup produced the same hedging. India voiced concern but kept its ties to the junta, while quietly sending observers in a private capacity to meet ethnic armed groups. This mirrors China’s strategy of working all sides, which has turned them into a veritable king maker in the region. However, this is only possible thanks to how deeply entrenched China is through various infrastructure projects and weapons shipments which India can’t hope to match.
The rare earth gambit
Castillo's plan had three parts. Washington would broker a self-governance deal between the junta and the KIA, India would process the minerals, and the finished product would flow to the United States. The wider package discussed in Washington reportedly included easing sanctions and tariffs and appointing a special envoy. Competing proposals were also presented, and Castillo himself is unlikely to be a central player in any future negotiations. His significance lies partly in the access his proposal gained: Michael Vance was the official who brought it to the administration's attention.
In 2025, these were pitches, not adopted policy. The State Department’s strategy suggests the core logic has since been absorbed. It commits the embassy to facilitate at least three multistakeholder forums that produce agreements on ‘fiscal federalism and territorial demarcation’, and states plainly that this will open access to rare earths and help combat scam centers. It then calls for close coordination with regional partners, including the Asia Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and the United States).
Castillo's plan had three parts. Washington would broker a self-governance deal between the junta and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), India and other strategic partners would process the minerals, and the finished product would flow to the United States. The wider package discussed in Washington reportedly included easing sanctions and tariffs and appointing a special envoy.
The plan's weakness is the KIA itself. Since October 2024, when it captured Chipwi and Pangwa in northeastern Myanmar near the Chinese border, the KIA has controlled the heartland of Myanmar's heavy rare earth mining. That revenue funds its war as well as fills its generals' pockets, and the mines are its strongest bargaining chip with Beijing and anyone else who wants access.
A settlement would require the KIA to surrender much of the leverage it has gained through years of fighting a military it has opposed since 1961. The previous ceasefire, signed in 1994, collapsed in 2011, after a period in which the junta expanded its control over valuable natural resources in Kachin State. The KIA’s demands for greater autonomy were never resolved, and the distribution of resource wealth remained contested. There is little reason to assume that the foundations for a durable settlement are stronger today. As Lintner argues, the KIA has no ambition to march on Mandalay or replace the junta nationally; its objective is to secure control over Kachin State, not to subordinate itself to the military.
This history presents a fundamental problem for rare earth investment. Mines, processing facilities and transport infrastructure require long-term stability and substantial capital commitments. The assumption that shared revenues would secure lasting cooperation rests on an overly optimistic economic logic: it presumes that the junta will prioritise the mutual gains of commercial development over its political and military objectives. The 2021 coup, which precipitated a devastating economic crisis, illustrates the risks of treating the military as a predictable economic actor. Moreover, much of the junta's claim to legitimacy rests on its assertion that it alone can preserve Myanmar's territorial integrity and maintain order. Accommodating the KIA's demands for autonomy could therefore challenge not only its control over resources, but also its claim to be the country's indispensable governing authority. A settlement that unravels within a few years could leave investors with stranded assets, disrupted supply chains and infrastructure exposed to renewed fighting.
These risks now attach to stated US policy, not just a former chamber president's pitch. The strategy sets July 2030 as its target for a peace agreement: less than four years to resolve a conflict that has outlasted every previous ceasefire.
What Washington has written down
Asked where the Trump administration now stands, Castillo pushed back against the minerals narrative in messages to me: ‘People, especially reporters, need to stop exaggerating the Trump administration’s engagement with the Myanmar government as some grand strategy to secure rare earth minerals or whatever other geopolitical theory they want to connect the dots around.’ He then added: ‘And then there is the bigger issue: peace. Myanmar is not ready for peace, let alone a meaningful ceasefire. Without peace, there is no stability. Without stability, how can Myanmar expect global markets, particularly Western investors to have any confidence in the country? Even if you put aside the financial restrictions, currency controls, and regulatory barriers, where is the incentive to invest?’
His second point, however, is borne out by the Integrated Country Strategy's own logic. Everything is sequenced behind peace: a ceasefire first, then a federal settlement, then access. The commercial ambitions are also modest. The embassy aims to secure at least three deals worth more than $5 million each and to triple US imports by the end of 2030. It concedes that hard-currency shortages and import licensing are crippling US businesses. These are not the numbers of a bid to break China's grip on rare earths.
The State Department's own strategy makes Castillo's first point harder to sustain. Rare earths are not a reporter's inference; they appear in the document, tied to the peace process and to outcompeting 'other regional actors'. Another goal commits the embassy to countering China's influence and 'counter malign actors'. This is not a grand strategy, but it is more than journalists connecting dots.
What the strategy leaves out is just as revealing. It does not mention the coup, the election, the restoration of democracy, political prisoners or the National Unity Government. Its counterparts are 'Burmese authorities' and 'Naypyitaw decision makers'. Several of its goals depend on the junta's cooperation. First, a law enforcement agreement against scam centres. Second, repatriation of Myanmar nationals who overstay US visas, whose overstay rate on business and tourist visas the document puts at 38 per cent in fiscal 2024, the highest of any nationality. 'President Trump's Peace Agenda' has replaced the democracy framing that defined Washington's response in the years after 2021.
The strategy also aims to reduce divisions among opposition groups ahead of nationwide talks, explicitly to increase US influence. In other words, Washington is attempting the same all-sides approach that Beijing has perfected, cultivating the junta while positioning itself as broker to the armed groups. Unlike Beijing, it has no border, no weapons pipeline and no infrastructure footprint to back it up.
The meetings should not be overstated, but at the very least the administration wants to keep the door open. US engagement is also a way of unsettling Beijing and contesting it wherever possible. The relationship between the junta and China is deeply strained, and it is no secret that the generals, despite their reliance on Beijing, are trying to reduce it.
The road to India
The KIA has increasingly sought to consolidate control over strategic transport routes in Kachin State. During its 2024 offensive, it captured numerous junta positions along the Myitkyina–Bhamo highway and seized Sumprabum in May, strengthening its control over movement through northern Kachin and its ability to disrupt junta logistics.
Yet territorial gains have not eliminated the KIA’s military vulnerabilities. It relies on domestic arms manufacturing and networks with other ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) to obtain weapons, ammunition and equipment. Although these networks sustain its war effort, their supplies are not always reliable, and the KIA lacks the advanced weaponry needed to counter the junta’s air superiority. Its dependence on external supply networks therefore remains a strategic weakness.
China occupies a central but complicated position in this relationship. The KIA’s headquarters at Laiza lies close to the Chinese border, and cross-border trade provides access to essential supplies. However, this does not translate into unrestricted Chinese military assistance. Unlike the United Wa State Army, which has reportedly received substantial Chinese weapons, the KIA has relied heavily on its own manufacturing capabilities and wider EAO networks. Beijing’s relationship with the KIA is further complicated by the group’s support for anti-junta resistance and its opposition to Chinese efforts to stabilise the border on Beijing’s terms.
This tension became apparent during the KIA’s campaign for Bhamo. In July 2025, Reuters reported that China threatened to suspend purchases of rare earths from KIA-controlled territory unless the group abandoned its offensive, while offering expanded cross-border trade as an incentive to withdraw. The episode demonstrated how Beijing could use the KIA’s dependence on trade and mineral revenues to constrain its military ambitions.
India could potentially fill part of this strategic gap. The KIA’s domestic production and EAO networks cannot fully compensate for its dependence on cross-border supplies or its inability to neutralise junta air power. India might offer alternative logistical connections or, potentially, military assistance, although there is insufficient evidence that New Delhi is currently supplying the KIA with weapons.
The KIA has also appeared to be looking west. In an interview I conducted with Bertil Lintner, he said that trusted sources had told him that, after capturing Sumprabum, the KIA began constructing a road towards the Indian border, reportedly with Indian knowledge. I have been unable to independently verify the road’s existence, route or construction date through satellite imagery or published reporting; Indian collaboration therefore remains speculative.
In practice such a corridor could diversify the KIA’s external connections and reduce its vulnerability to Chinese pressure. It could also serve India’s interest in securing heavy rare earth elements (HREEs) from KIA-controlled mining areas. Reuters reported in September 2025 that India was exploring access to rare-earth samples from these territories following Chinese export restrictions. If such commercial ties expanded, protecting the infrastructure needed to transport minerals could become a shared concern. However, Indian interest in rare earths does not establish an intention to arm the KIA, and a road towards India would not itself prove military cooperation.
A corridor capable of carrying heavy rare earths would face formidable engineering challenges across mountainous terrain, as well as monsoon damage and the threat of junta airstrikes. The central question is whether India might use commercial engagement and infrastructure connectivity to diversify its access to strategic minerals while developing closer ties with the KIA. The evidence establishes overlapping interests and Chinese economic pressure, but whether these will produce Indian security or military assistance remains an open question.
The junta dead end
India's courtship of the junta has its reasons. Myanmar is India's land bridge to Southeast Asia, and Act East depends on passing through it. But the junta is bound to China in ways India cannot undo. Beijing is its largest trade partner, its shield at the UN, and the power that can push ethnic armies on its northern border to stand down.
The generals resent this. Lintner notes that they have never forgotten China's past support for the Burmese Communist Party and the Wa, and that they distrust Beijing deeply. India hopes to exploit that resentment. But resentment is not the same as choice, and New Delhi has little to offer that could replace what China provides.
Washington's strategy offers India a possible way in. It names the Quad, which includes India, among the partners the United States will coordinate with on Myanmar. Yet the role on offer is defined in Washington. The strategy measures success in US deals, US imports and US influence over 'other regional actors', a category that, read plainly, includes India.
That is India's dilemma in a crowded room. China is entrenched with both the junta and the armed groups. Washington is offering a role, but one built on a peace that is unlikely to hold. India, meanwhile, keeps trying to work every side without committing to any. Unless it decides what it actually wants in Myanmar, it risks becoming the country everyone passes through and no one depends on.
Image courtesy of Prime Minister’s Office Government of India via Wikimedia Commons, ©2026. Some rights reserved.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider St Andrews Foreign Affairs Review team.
