In June 2026, former Myanmar Tatmadaw leader and current head of the new administration, Min Aung Hlaing, paid his first state visit to India in his first foreign visit following the military-run elections in December 2025-January 2026. During the five-day visit, he held meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other senior officials, discussing the entire gamut of bilateral relations, including trade, connectivity, maritime security, rare earths, and cyber security. For India, extending the red carpet to Min Aung Hlaing after the election signals a gradual shift from its wait-and-watch approach toward directly engaging with and further legitimizing the new administration.
This visit was soon followed by the QUAD Foreign ministers meeting in New Delhi. The QUAD member states have all followed different strategies toward Myanmar following the 2021 coup, but share common interests, including countering Chinese influence, securing alternative critical minerals supply chain, and dismantling cyber scam compounds operating from Myanmar. As a neighbor of Myanmar deeply implicated in its stability and security challenges, India could build on these issues of interest among its Quad partners to shore up its own evolving approach to Naypyidaw.
What Shapes Contemporary India-Myanmar Relations?
Since the 2021 military coup in Myanmar, India’s Myanmar policy has been characterized by strategic ambiguity. On the one hand, New Delhi has maintained cautious yet pragmatic diplomatic relations with the Tatmadaw on key issues like border security and connectivity, with high-level meetings on the sidelines of multilateral gatherings, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit last year. On the other, Delhi has shied away from openly supporting the broader democratic movement led by the National Unity Government (NUG) and various ethnic armed organizations (EAOs). Until Min Aung Hlaing’s visit, India was carefully monitoring the evolving balance of power between the Tatmadaw and the EAOs on ground, especially in bordering states like Rakhine, Chin, and Sagaing, as well as in Kachin state.
The subtle shift of New Delhi’s Myanmar strategy toward more open engagement appears to have three broad drivers. First is the question of the durability of the military regime in Naypyitaw. Five years after the 2021 coup, the NUG is still not able to form a unified umbrella movement capable of challenging the Junta. Although multiple EAOs came together earlier this year to form an inclusive and ambitious group called the Steering Council for the Emergence of a Federal Democratic Union (SCEF), it remains uncertain whether it will evolve into a cohesive political movement. Moreover, the decision by two powerful EAOs, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and Ta’ang National Liberation Army, to enter into Chinese-mediated talks with the Junta in late 2024 and the subsequent signing of ceasefire agreements in January and October 2025 respectively reinforced New Delhi’s perception that the military regime will be in power for the foreseeable future.
Given extant instability on the ground and the ever-present specter of competition with China, India might find value in looking to other partners to advance issues of mutual interest with Myanmar.
Second, New Delhi has increasingly realized that maintaining a diplomatic distance from the Junta since the coup had created enough space for China to deepen its political, economic, and military influence in Myanmar. Beyond its traditional phaw pauk, or fraternal, relationship with the military, Beijing has long maintained ties with several EAOs, particularly those operating along the Sino–Burmese border. Following the 2021 coup, these relationships became increasingly important as China sought to safeguard its strategic and economic interests. The extent of Beijing’s influence and leverage became particularly evident after the launch of Operation 1027 by the Three-Brotherhood Alliance in October 2023, which was reportedly a response to pressure from China to crack down on cyber scam compounds in northern Shan State. As the junta suffered successive battlefield setbacks, Min Aung Hlaing repeatedly sought Chinese support to contain the EAOs in Northern Shan and Rakhine states; the handover of Lashio township by MNDAA to the Junta following the Chinese-brokered ceasefire demonstrates the extent of Beijing’s expanding leverage with both the military and EAOs. Growing concerns in India over China’s influence were reflected in the Indian Foreign Secretary’s recent statement that disengagement with the Tatmadaw only produces a “vacuum” that other countries “go on to fill to India’s detriment.”
Lastly, the crisis in Myanmar presents an immediate neighborhood challenge that has direct implications for New Delhi. This includes the growing influx of refugees into India’s Northeast states like Mizoram and Manipur. According to official estimates, Mizoram is currently hosting around 30,000 Myanmar refugees while several thousands have sought refuge in Manipur. Though these numbers remain far lower than the 90,000 Myanmar refugees that Thailand is hosting and more than a million Rohingya refugees hosted by Bangladesh, their impacts are quite significant for relatively under-developed and resource-constrained border states.
More worryingly, the border region of the Indo-Myanmar border has also been a safe haven for India’s Northeast insurgent groups. In the past, the Indian government and the Tatmadaw launched operations along the border region to dismantle insurgent camps. However, the political turmoil following the coup and particularly after Operation 1027 has created space for several Indian insurgent groups to re-establish bases across the border and use them as a launchpad to attack Indian security forces. The latest instance was on March 26, 2026, when the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Khaplang (NSCN-K-YA) attacked an Assam Rifles convoy in Changlang, Arunachal Pradesh. Further complicating India’s security calculus are reports alleging that the Myanmar military has relied on Indian insurgent groups operating along the border to support its own operations to regain territory lost following Operation 1027. This means that some of the very groups that pose a threat to India’s sovereignty may have been seen by the junta as tactical partners.
In this light, New Delhi’s engagement with Min Aung Hlaing in June is the confluence of several trendlines in the region. It also serves as a direct channel to communicate India’s security red lines and ensure that India’s border security concerns are considered. However, given extant instability on the ground and the ever-present specter of competition with China, India might find value in looking to other partners to advance issues of mutual interest with Myanmar.
Finding Common Ground
Within a month of Min Aung Hlaing’s visit, New Delhi hosted the eleventh QUAD Foreign Ministers Meeting. The worsening political situation in Myanmar and its implication on regional security was on the agenda, where the member countries, including the United States, Australia, Japan, and India, called for dialogue between all parties and affected groups involved in the conflict.
Since the 2021 coup, QUAD members have followed different approaches toward Myanmar. Japan and Australia have completely refrained from maintaining any diplomatic engagement with the military regime while calling for an end of violence and return to democratic governance. The U.S. has sanctioned the Myanmar military and military-linked companies under the Burma Act while also providing support to many Myanmar refugees. Under the new Trump administration, though, Myanmar appears to have become a lower strategic priority within the broader U.S. foreign policy agenda. This shift was reflected in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s decision to terminate the ‘Temporary Protected Status’ in November 2025, citing “notable progress in governance and stability” in Myanmar and the country’s planned national elections.
Nonetheless, QUAD members share several common challenges regarding Myanmar policy. The most pertinent issue is the proliferation of scam centers operating from Myanmar, with all the member countries having experienced the impact of these transnational cybercrime networks. The grouping has repeatedly flagged this issue since its Foreign Ministers meeting in 2024. For the U.S. and Australia, the primary impacts have been financial losses through online fraud originating in Southeast Asia, including Myanmar, amounting to an estimated USD $10 billion combined; for India and Japan, most of the victims were lured by fake IT and digital marketing. According to the Indian government, over 2,168 Indians have been rescued from Myanmar since 2022, the majority of whom were trafficked and forced to engage in cyber scam operations.
Another area of cooperation lies in countering growing Chinese influence in Myanmar. While each QUAD member views China through a different strategic lens, all have a common interest in limiting Beijing from further consolidating its political, economic and strategic leverage in Myanmar. For the United States, countering Chinese influence in Myanmar forms part of its broader strategic competition with Beijing across the Indo-Pacific. Moreover, all QUAD member countries have equal concerns of China’s port access in the Bay of Bengal and the broader Indian Ocean region. This challenge becomes all the more acute for India given its international land and maritime boundary with Myanmar. Beijing has already invested in multiple infrastructure projects including the Kyuakphyu port and the Special Economic Zone on the Bay of Bengal under its China-Myanmar economic corridor (CMEC). Moreover, discussions on extending the CMEC towards Bangladesh, if realized, could further strengthen China’s connectivity footprint in the Bay of Bengal and pose strategic challenges to India’s own connectivity initiatives, such as the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project and Sittwe Port.
Finally, as global competition over rare earth elements intensifies, reducing dependence on China’s monopoly over the global supply chain has become a shared concern for all QUAD members. This was made clear in the newly formed Quad Critical Minerals Initiative Framework, which aims at securing and diversifying supply chain for rare earth minerals. However, Myanmar’s growing contribution in China’s supply chain remains overlooked. In 2025 alone, China imported over 82,000 tonnes of unrefined REE from Myanmar’s Kachin reserve areas, which accounted for approximately 53 percent of its total rare earth imports. Much of this extraction occurs in Kachin and northern Shan States, where Chinese companies maintain a significant presence.
For India, whose Northeast provides the closest geographical access to Myanmar’s mineral-rich regions, such cooperation could strengthen supply chain resilience, support domestic manufacturing ambitions, and gradually reduce dependence on Chinese-controlled rare earth processing, even as the security situation in northern Myanmar remains contested.
To truly diversify global critical mineral supply chains, the Quad should prioritize investment in downstream processing and refining capacity outside China while also exploring alternative sourcing arrangements from resource-rich countries like Myanmar where feasible. Given China’s entrenched role in Myanmar’s rare earth value chain, its control over rare earth processing technology, and long-standing commercial ties with the EAOs controlling many of the mining areas in Kachin and northern Shan State, meaningful diversification will be difficult and is unlikely to be achieved in the near term. Nevertheless, the growing strategic interest of countries such as India and the United States in Myanmar’s rare earth sector underscores the importance of gradually reducing dependence on Chinese-controlled supply chains over the long term. For India, whose Northeast provides the closest geographical access to Myanmar’s mineral-rich regions, such cooperation could strengthen supply chain resilience, support domestic manufacturing ambitions, and gradually reduce dependence on Chinese-controlled rare earth processing, even as the security situation in northern Myanmar remains contested.
What Lies Ahead
As long as a political crisis persists in Myanmar, it will generate cross-border transnational challenges that will impact the broader Indo-Pacific. For India, engaging with the new administration in Myanmar is a pragmatic recognition of political realities. However, such engagement should not come at the expense of overlooking the domestic situation in Myanmar, especially along the border region, where continued military airstrikes are further aggravating an already fragile political situation. New Delhi continues to maintain a channel of communication with relevant stakeholders, including the Junta and selected EAOs operating in the border region. While much of this engagement has remained discreet, India has consistently reiterated its support for a Myanmar-owned and -led political resolution, encouraging dialogue among all relevant stakeholders and calling for de-escalation of the conflict and supporting an inclusive political solution. Such approaches will help India to protect its long-term strategic and economic interests.
Within this broader approach, greater collaboration with Quad members can serve as an additional platform through which India can advance its strategic interests while addressing common challenges stemming from Myanmar’s political crisis. Quad members already share concerns about transnational cyber scam issues, critical mineral supply chain resilience, and Chinese influence. Issue-based cooperation in the Indo-Pacific could enhance the Quad’s relevance while supporting India’s broader objective of maintaining stability and strategic space in its immediate neighborhood.
Views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the positions of South Asian Voices, the Stimson Center, or our supporters.
Also Read: Myanmar’s Planned Elections Risk Breeding More Resentment
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Image 1: Narendra Modi on X
Image 2: Narendra Modi on X
