This commentary was originally published by The Diplomat.

New United Nations Special Envoy for Myanmar Julie Bishop faces what seems to be an impossible mission. Even setting aside the long history of failed U.N. envoys to the country, the current situation is not at all welcoming to a would-be foreign peacemaker. The Myanmar military, in addition to being xenophobic, misogynistic, dishonest, and brutal, is by nature uncompromising and absolutely committed to maintaining political power. This is true even in the face of significant resistance gains, a worsening economy, and a severe humanitarian crisis.

For its part, the broad resistance – and arguably the population at large – is dead-set on removing the military from power and unlikely to accept anything short of that. In addition, despite improved inter-group communication and broad unity on the goal of ousting the military, its various elements represent a host of different interests, and there is no one person who can speak for all or even most of those interests.

There is no foolproof path to success for Bishop, but past experience and an analysis of the current Myanmar situation suggest an approach that includes the following elements.

First, recognize that – at least for now – there is virtually zero chance that any envoy will be able to (a) persuade the military to reduce violence or (b) bring the parties to the table for serious dialogue on a potential compromise deal. Myanmar now is a zero-sum situation; there is no compromise to be had and pushing one will do little more than alienate everyone involved. The best hope for an environment that would allow for genuine dialogue/negotiations would be for the military to be weakened to the point that it seriously begins to seek an exit strategy. That has not yet happened.

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Second, Bishop should use the interim period to put herself in the best possible situation to be helpful should that inflection point be reached. That would involve first talking at length with credible experts on Myanmar, most of whom should be Myanmar people. The next step would be to very carefully begin to develop relationships with key players – in the military, the resistance, and among other political and civil society players.  The emphasis here is on “very carefully” because the junta will use any visits/meetings as photo ops to confer legitimacy, which will undermine the envoy’s standing with the resistance and the broad Myanmar population.

Bishop should insist that any meetings not be photographed. If that proves impossible, any meetings/photos with the generals need to be matched in a timely way with similar events with the National Unity Government and other resistance officials. Bishop’s public appearances and media engagements should be limited and restrained, though she likely will need to “clarify” any meeting readouts from the junta.

Third, as Morten Pedersen noted in a recent article for the Lowy Institute, Bishop can use her discussions with the broad resistance to encourage further coordination and development of a shared vision, along with work toward a more detailed blueprint for any future transition. There is less to do with the generals, frankly, though encouraging them to think of a realistic exit strategy might have some limited value (mostly among officers other than the top one or two generals).

Fourth, Bishop can use her position to push the United Nations as well as Myanmar’s neighbors and other interested parties to review and rethink their approach on humanitarian assistance. To date, the U.N. and the neighbors have largely played by the junta’s rules, and in doing so have both conferred legitimacy on it and ensured that most of the assistance does not reach those who truly need it. Bishop will have the standing and the clout to insist on a more creative approach. Key will be her discussions with the Thais, who have generally backed the generals but under Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin seem to be more open to new ideas than in the past.

Finally, Bishop would do well to coordinate and exchange ideas with key regional players, including current Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Special Envoy Alounkeo Kittikhoun, including before any visits to Myanmar. These players have had limited influence to date but could play important roles if and when the situation changes and there is a genuine need for regional and international support for negotiations and a potential “deal” to end the crisis. Again, such a deal is very unlikely – or if it somehow happened would not be durable – until and unless the military is desperate enough to make massive concessions, which means patience will be a necessity.

This Q&A originally appeared in Al Jazeera. 

Southeast Asian nations are stuck in “troubling divisions” over Myanmar’s coup crisis and China’s expansionism in the South China Sea, according to Scot Marciel, a veteran United States diplomat.

And the former US ambassador to Indonesia and Myanmar, who has just published the book Imperfect Partners: The United States and Southeast Asia, argues the US should use this time not to focus on countering Chinese influence in the region, but instead to prioritise its own engagement efforts.

Washington should focus “more on showing itself to be a consistent, reliable, trusted, and good partner across the board”, Marciel told Al Jazeera.

Imperfect Partners is a hybrid of personal memoir and foreign policy analysis of relations between the US and Southeast Asia, based on Marciel’s decades-long diplomatic career.

Joining the State Department in 1985, he was the first US diplomat to be posted to Hanoi since the Vietnam War. His career took him across the region, from witnessing the People Power revolt in the Philippines to responding to coups in Thailand and the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar.

Marciel retired from the foreign service in 2022 and is currently an Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at Stanford University’s Walter H Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Al Jazeera spoke to Marciel about his book and regional politics.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Al Jazeera: Imperfect Partners covers different countries in Southeast Asia over an extended period. The Philippines and Vietnam are strengthening their relations with the US, while Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos appear to be firmly in China’s orbit. Are divisions in Southeast Asia deepening amid big power rivalry?

Scot Marciel: There are certainly some troubling divisions within Southeast Asia, but I wouldn’t necessarily attribute them primarily to the US-China rivalry, and I don’t see a division within ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] between a pro-China and a pro-American group.

What we’re seeing is all the countries of Southeast Asia wanting to have good relations with China and the US. Some will lean more one way than the other, depending on the issue and the time, but they’re also working very hard to bolster their relations with other countries such as Japan, Australia and India.

The divisions are concerning when it comes to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the situation in Myanmar, and the South China Sea, which may have some relationship to the US-China rivalry. But that rivalry isn’t the cause of the South China Sea tension.

Al Jazeera: The US and Vietnam upgraded their relationship to a comprehensive strategic partnership recently. This represents a massive change from several decades ago when Ho Chi Minh’s regime and the US were fighting each other in the Vietnam War. You were the first US diplomat to work in Hanoi since the end of the Vietnam War. Could you tell us more about what it was like back then?

Scot Marciel: I arrived in Hanoi in August of 1993. We still didn’t have diplomatic relations. But we, over the previous handful of years, had begun talking. The Vietnamese, after the fall of the Soviet Union, which they had depended on, were looking to diversify their relationships but also build economic partnerships because they had begun their economic reform efforts.

For the US, it was more about healing the divisions from the war. At the end of the Cold War, the US wasn’t looking at it so strategically, but we were very interested in getting Vietnam support for a Cambodian peace process.

When I first arrived, Vietnam’s reforms had been under way for only a few years. It was still quite poor but you could feel the energy in the country. You could see lots of little shops opening up. During those early days, we were trying to build basic trust after the war by working on issues that were in effect legacies of the war, such as accounting for missing Americans.

The economic relationship began to develop rapidly after those early years, and that in my view has driven the relationship ever since. Very quickly it became a trade and investment relationship and broadened to include health, climate change, a little bit of security and so on. The upgrade to a comprehensive strategic partnership has a significant economic component, with both countries seeing an opportunity for Vietnam to play a bigger role in global supply chains.

Al Jazeera:  You were ambassador to Indonesia. Indonesia’s presidential election will take place soon, in February next year. What’s at stake in the upcoming election in terms of geopolitics and what the US is watching?

Scot Marciel: Indonesia’s transition to democracy is one of the more underappreciated stories of Southeast Asia. It’s truly a remarkable achievement.

If you look back at the Soeharto years, and then in 1998, and the next several years, they marked a very turbulent transition to democracy, but the transition has held up and deserves a lot of admiration.

The elections next year will hopefully reinforce that democracy. The Indonesians have run good elections, very transparent and fair, with high voter turnout.

In terms of geopolitics, one never knows for sure. But there appears to be a consensus in favour of what Indonesians call a free and active foreign policy. They’re not going to suddenly align with any major powers. I think Indonesia will continue to play a very strong, independent role within ASEAN and within the broader world, and will still speak with their very own Indonesian voice on regional and global issues.

Al Jazeera: Laos is taking over the ASEAN chairmanship in 2024. What do you expect to change regarding the South China Sea and Myanmar under the leadership of Laos?

Scot Marciel:  ASEAN member states agree on a lot of issues but also disagree on some important ones, including the South China Sea, where the disagreement is mostly between those who have claims and those who don’t and therefore don’t want to pick a fight with Beijing.

I’d be surprised if Laos would lead a major change regarding the crisis in Myanmar. ASEAN doesn’t really know what to do. Even under Indonesia’s chairmanship, with all due respect, the bloc didn’t do all that much. There’ll unlikely be anything dramatic under Laos.

Laos may be more inclined to engage with the State Administration Council than Indonesia. I assume bringing the Burmese junta back to ASEAN’s top political meetings is a decision of the whole ASEAN, instead of the chair. Laos could certainly take a trip to Naypyidaw and talk to the generals, but that – while unfortunate – wouldn’t change much on the ground.

Al Jazeera: How have China’s diplomacy and behaviour changed during your decades-long diplomatic career? The US appears keen to counter China’s influence in Southeast Asia.

Scot Marciel: When I started in the mid-80s, China wasn’t a big factor in Southeast Asia. It was in the early days of Deng Xiao Ping’s reforms and kept a relatively low profile. It was also coming out of that era when Beijing backed communist insurgencies in Southeast Asia. For more than 20 years beginning in the late 1980s, China increased its engagement and economic ties with all the Southeast Asian countries.

From around 2008 onwards, we started seeing China shifting from a charm offensive to being a little bit more muscular in its diplomacy, particularly in the South China Sea. In recent years, Chinese diplomacy could be quite assertive and even aggressive – throwing its weight around.

China’s influence has increased significantly. That’s a fact. I think there’s an unfortunate tendency to worry about China because it has influence, as opposed to worrying about specific Chinese behaviour that is problematic, such as in the South China Sea.

The US should focus less on countering China, because China’s going to be there and countries are going to want to have the relationship, and more on showing itself to be a consistent, reliable, trusted and good partner across the board.

I think the US in general has done that, but not always with the consistency that the region would like to see. It’s been lagging on the economic side, most notably by pulling out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. So Washington should focus on improving its own efforts in the region, rather than countering China.

Al Jazeera: Thai journalist Kavi Chongkittavorn brought up the US Burma Act in a column and warned of a ‘mini proxy war’ in Myanmar. Is this based on a misunderstanding about the Burma Act?

Scot Marciel: With all due respect to my good friend Kavi, I don’t see the Burma Act or anything else that the US is doing is in any way stoking a proxy war. Between the US and China, only one of the two countries is providing weapons to one party in this conflict, and it’s not the US.

America has offered rhetorical and diplomatic support, as well as humanitarian aid to the people of Myanmar. After all, we have to remember the people of Myanmar overwhelmingly don’t want the military to be in power. This is a horrific junta that has no popular support. The US very much sympathises with and supports the people of Myanmar, but it’s not providing weapons.

The Myanmar crisis is not at all about the US and China. It’s about what’s going on inside Myanmar and the Myanmar people saying, ‘We’ve had it with the military. We need to get them out once and for all.’ I think they’re right about it. It’s unfortunate that so many countries are not supporting them, with some neighbours even supporting the junta.

I do fear that the Burma Act may have led some in China to worry excessively that the resistance was some US-backed group, and that misunderstanding led Beijing to be more supportive of the junta.

China enjoyed perfectly good relations with a democratically elected government under Aung San Suu Kyi. If and when democratic forces return to power in Myanmar, they will want to have good relations with China, too. That makes sense. So Beijing doesn’t need to worry about the resistance being a US proxy and should not see the crisis there as a US-China matter.

The Burma Act expresses support for the restoration of democracy and offers the possibility of nonlethal assistance but not weapons. This is about people who have been brutalised by a horrific military for decades saying, ‘Enough. We want to restore our own power’. They’re not doing this at anyone’s behest.

Al Jazeera: Russia has kept a very high profile and gone further than China in backing the Burmese junta, such as recent talks about supporting the regime’s ambition to develop nuclear energy. Is Moscow’s behaviour in Myanmar and other parts of the region troubling?

Scot Marciel: We can see every day in the news what kind of destructive power Russia is and its support for the Burmese junta reflects that attitude: It is an absolutely, completely amoral and unprincipled foreign policy, and an opportunity to sell weapons.

Moscow is also seeking to expand its influence, although I don’t think it’s ever going to be very influential in Myanmar. It’s creating chaos and suffering. Myanmar is the most extreme case. Russia still has some influence in Vietnam and Laos due to a historic legacy of past support.

Compare this with China. Beijing could play a more helpful role in Myanmar’s crisis because the instability isn’t in China’s interest and any democratic government that takes power will likely want to be on good terms with Beijing. But there’s no hope for Russia as long as Putin is in power.

In February 1986, Scot Marciel was driving home after midnight and went past what he assumed was just another protest near military facilities in downtown Manila. The gathering, less than a year into his first overseas assignment with the Foreign Service, turned out to be the early days of the Philippine People Power revolution, leading to the end of the Ferdinand Marcos regime. This was just one of several times during his 35-year career in the State Department that Marciel would find himself witnessing historic moments in Southeast Asia and in the U.S. relationship with the countries of the region.

That illustrious career includes being the first U.S. diplomat to work in Hanoi since the end of the Vietnam War and serving as the first U.S. ambassador for ASEAN Affairs and as U.S. ambassador to Indonesia and Myanmar.

Marciel, Oksenberg-Rohlen Fellow at FSI and affiliated with APARC, has distilled his experiences and observations into his new book, Imperfect Partners: The United States and Southeast Asia (Shorenstein APARC/ Rowman & Littlefield, 2023). In it, he offers his on-the-ground account of the ups and downs of critical U.S. relationships in the region — focusing on the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia — and examines the role of ASEAN and China’s influence in Southeast Asia.

To mark the book’s release, we talked with Marciel about recent events in the region and his views on how the United States should approach Southeast Asian countries in the context of China’s efforts to sow closer ties with them. Watch the conversation:

A Return to the Philippines

The Philippines under President Ferdinand “Bong Bong” Marcos, Jr. is now allowing U.S. forces expanded access to four of its bases. Marciel, who first met Marcos, Jr. as the provincial governor of Ilocos Norte in 1985, expressed some surprise at the Philippine president’s rapid shift to strengthen the country’s alliance with the United States. He noted, however, that even in the last year of the Duterte presidency, which frequently was at odds with the United States, there was some recognition in the Philippines that the relationship with China wasn’t bearing the fruit that had been anticipated. Marciel also pointed out that the deal with the United States does not mean Marcos has abandoned China: he is still working on keeping the relationship with Beijing healthy and visiting Japan, another important partner.

Although there is some Philippine civil opposition to the renewed presence of U.S. forces, Marciel believes that the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) will provide an opportunity for a “more modern and equal partnership,” and hopefully one that can supplant memories of the U.S. colonial history in the Philippines.

Southeast Asian Charm Competition?

As concern continues to rise about a possible invasion of Taiwan by the People’s Republic of China, some have questioned the effectiveness of the U.S. capability to compete with China, particularly in terms of a diplomatic offensive. Marciel responded to a recent New York Times article on U.S. and Chinese efforts to “woo” Indonesia. As China continues to seal trade deals in Southeast Asia, some of which are part of its Belt and Road Initiative, we asked whether the United States can compete with China’s free-flowing cash.

Marciel, taking a step back, cautions that “Indonesia is not a prize to be won,” and that we should not be “scoring diplomatic relations like a sporting event” when we look at improving ties with the countries of Southeast Asia. Indonesia, for example, has a long history with the Non-Aligned Movement, so while it attempts to attract foreign investment, it will resist aligning with any one major power. China tends to offer attractive investment packages with minimal conditions, but “you can’t always count on those investments to happen,” notes Marciel, and even when they do, there can be issues with corruption, as well as social and environmental consequences. The United States tries to put together investments that consider issues like labor and the environment, but Marciel believes that “sometimes we aim a little high” and the conditions make U.S. offerings less attractive.

The Continuing Crisis in Myanmar

We spoke with Marciel just after the second anniversary of the 2021 coup in Myanmar. He began his term as U.S. ambassador to that country in 2016, just before Aung Sang Suu Kyi’s new government was about to take office. As he puts it, it was a time of “euphoria,” not only in Myanmar but also in terms of U.S. hopes for democracy there. It turned out to be a difficult four years for Myanmar and Marciel, as the Rohingya crisis repeatedly erupted and the Myanmar military reacted with violent operations that drove hundreds of thousands of Rohingya out of Myanmar. As Marciel relates in his book, he soon found that even using the word “Rohingya” in U.S. embassy statements could create a diplomatic crisis.

Even with the horrific Rohingya genocide, Marciel cautiously notes that by 2020, when he left the country, most people in Myanmar had more opportunity and freedom under four years of a democratically elected government—the Rohingya themselves being the obvious exception. But in 2021, the “military coup basically eliminated that hope and opportunity.”

Marciel doesn’t hold much hope for an end to the coup anytime soon, but he does see at least one “positive development” over the last two years. During the worst of the Rohingya crisis, many in the majority Bamar community did not believe the reports of massacres, or even worse, did not care. But now, after two years of military rule, “more and more Myanmar people are explicitly recognizing the legitimate grievances and the suffering of many of the ethnic minority populations, including the Rohingya, over the past years, and [there is] some recognition that they were fed a lot of propaganda for a long time about what was really happening.”

Establishing Relations with Vietnam

One of Marciel’s great success stories is the normalization of U.S. ties with Vietnam. It was an improbable success with any number of obstacles likely to prevent it from happening, not the least being the debate about the fate of U.S. prisoners of war and servicemen reported as missing in action. Saigon fell in 1975, and yet in 1995, just 20 years later, diplomatic relations were restored and the U.S. embassy opened in Hanoi.

According to Marciel, it took patience, pragmatism, but also the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. No longer able to rely on Soviet help for their economy, the Vietnamese became more open to work with the United States, particularly on POW-MIA issues, allowing Vietnamese imprisoned in re-education camps to flee the country, and withdrawing Vietnamese forces from Cambodia.

Marciel sees the U.S.-Vietnam relationship today as a “good-news story” that shows the degree of progress that can be attained when two countries are willing to be rational and work together. The United States still has significant concerns about human rights in Vietnam yet “both sides have agreed to talk about that issue, but not let it define or limit the relationship excessively.”

How the United States Can Improve Relations in Southeast Asia

When pressed for a prescription on what the United States can do to further improve its relationships with the countries in the region, Marciel said, “In brief, show up and engage consistently, with humility, and with a focus on the countries that we’re talking to, not on China, because what they’re looking for, for the most part is, ‘Can we count on the United States being a long-term partner?’”

By ensuring the reliability of the partnership, countries in Southeast Asia have more freedom of maneuver, and they can, if necessary, be more capable to “make decisions China might not like.” The flip side of that—the failure to show up at presidential and high governmental levels, like what happened during the Trump administration—means “you’ve undone all the good that you had done in previous years by investing in those relationships.” The price of isolationism, of neglecting U.S. diplomatic relations in Southeast Asia, is that those countries lose confidence in the United States as a reliable partner.