Your task is to get Myanmar to be in the better state that it is right now in OTL.
Perhaps consider partitioning the country? The multiethnic state doesn't exactly seem to be working out for them.
This should really not be the way people think of as the solution to every multiethnic problem. Division leads to a weaker economy and thus less political stability.
Myanmar has already been fighting a 60+ year civil war with strong indications of ethnic cleansing on the part of government forces. The situation you're talking about isn't a hypothetical, we've already reached that point.And a truckload of more conflicts as (now independent) warlord statelets fight brutal wars over which of them should get the tiny hamlet (5 houses, population: 10) with a 50%-50% ethnic distribution.
Well I do admit that Myanmar does have remarkable political stability currently for what it is (again, they survived the 60+ year war), the situation is still kind of fucked up.This should really not be the way people think of as the solution to every multiethnic problem. Division leads to a weaker economy and thus less political stability.
Perhaps consider partitioning the country? The multiethnic state doesn't exactly seem to be working out for them.
Perhaps consider partitioning the country? The multiethnic state doesn't exactly seem to be working out for them.
One: the 1988 protests very nearly succeeded in ousting the military regime. Had it done so, the next couple of decades may well have gone far better. It will likely be a messy transition, but the state would have stood a decent chance of becoming a stable, developing democracy by today. It could have happened if Aung San Suu Kyi had been willing to work with the self-proclaimed interim government of former civilian PM U Nu.
Two: avoid the 1962 Burmese coup. Again, Burma will still have internal splits and problems, but India shows these can be managed. It would have avoided the isolation and repression of the Ne Win years and the state could well have developed more normally.
A third possibility, but one that I'm less familiar with is that maybe if Aung San and his cabinet hadn't been assassinated.