In 1988, student activists in Myanmar were protesting the military-dominated government of Gen. Ne Win. At some point, a rumor took hold that the U.S. Navy would be sending a ship to support them. One protester, who decades later still preferred not to give his name, said that he chartered a boat of his own to go greet the Americans. Others in Yangon, convinced of coming U.S. support, dug bomb shelters and printed signs to welcome the American GIs. Needless to say, the U.S. military never came. The boat that many expected was likely the USS Coral, passing nearby on a routine voyage.
But although the United States never sent a battleship in support of Myanmar’s democracy, over the coming decades, U.S. policymakers emerged as consistent, if imperfect, advocates of it. Up through 2024, Republican and Democratic administrations consistently used sanctions, refugee programs, Voice of America broadcasting, and other tools to weigh in on the side of those fighting for freedom.
In 1988, student activists in Myanmar were protesting the military-dominated government of Gen. Ne Win. At some point, a rumor took hold that the U.S. Navy would be sending a ship to support them. One protester, who decades later still preferred not to give his name, said that he chartered a boat of his own to go greet the Americans. Others in Yangon, convinced of coming U.S. support, dug bomb shelters and printed signs to welcome the American GIs. Needless to say, the U.S. military never came. The boat that many expected was likely the USS Coral, passing nearby on a routine voyage.
But although the United States never sent a battleship in support of Myanmar’s democracy, over the coming decades, U.S. policymakers emerged as consistent, if imperfect, advocates of it. Up through 2024, Republican and Democratic administrations consistently used sanctions, refugee programs, Voice of America broadcasting, and other tools to weigh in on the side of those fighting for freedom.
Now, however, much of this support has been curtailed. Instead, the Trump administration appears to be laying the groundwork to cooperate with the military regime in a—likely unsuccessful—bid for rare-earth minerals. A number of entrepreneurs have emerged in the gray space between business and diplomacy, all seeking to help broker a deal between U.S. President Donald Trump and the junta. As one of them told Foreign Policy, “This is Shark Tank.”
In the early 1990s, Myanmar advocacy emerged emboldened from the success of the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa. Amid the optimism following the end of the Cold War, Washington passed several rounds of sanctions, starting in 1997, that stopped almost all imports from Myanmar and U.S. investment in the country. At the same time, a group of U.S. funded media, human rights groups, and humanitarian organizations began collaborating with activists and practitioners in Myanmar and the diaspora. In doing so, they nurtured a pro-democracy bloc that continued for decades.
In the 2010s, advocates celebrated as Myanmar transitioned to a quasi-civilian government. New investment increased, and the country developed a robust garment sector, often seen as the first phase of a developing economy. Labor unions were legalized, underground media openly established news rooms in Yangon and elsewhere, and high-profile political prisoners were pardoned.
When then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited in 2011, it signaled to many in exile that it was safe to return. Posters of Clinton and pro-democracy politician Aung San Suu Kyi embracing were displayed in store fronts and National League for Democracy offices around the country. Visits from other icons of the liberal order followed, including famed political scientist Francis Fukuyama and U.S. President Barack Obama.
By the mid-2010s, however, Washington was also seeing the limitations of democratization. Wars for ethnic autonomy raged in Kachin and Rakhine states, and a genocide drove 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh. And the problems would only continue. In 2021, the military overthrew the elected government. A mass uprising followed, led by supporters of the ousted National League for Democracy. At the same time, ethnic armed organizations made significant advances. Their efforts were bolstered by new recruits from the Bamar majority; money from the diaspora; and a tacit greenlight from China, which supplies weapons to many sides of the conflict.
During this time, Washington redirected aid to Myanmar’s border regions. Media funded by grants from the United States helped to document and broadcast the fight against the junta. Washington also helped thousands of activists escape harm’s way, either through refugee resettlement programs, securing safe houses, or granting them temporary protected status in the United States. Toward the end of the Biden administration, Washington was talking to actors in nonregime areas in an attempt to help further support their cause.
Under the second Trump administration, Washington’s policy has undergone a radical shift. Trump has dismantled the programs that were at the core of U.S. humanitarian support and democracy promotion in Myanmar, while also firing many of the civil servants with expertise on the country.
“The new administration cut the foreign assistance budget dramatically, but it had been partially restored when I departed Myanmar in January,” said Susan Stevenson, the former head of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Yangon. Still, the damage remains severe.
When the U.S. Agency for International Development was effectively dismantled, the already meager food rations at refugee camps were stopped, and local clinics were immediately shuttered, leaving refugees who relied on them for medicine to die. Voice of America and Radio Free Asia went dark, further limiting the amount and quality of reporting on the conflict. The administration also ended legal programs that protected migrant workers from Myanmar in Thailand’s manufacturing sector.
At the same time, thousands of refugees who were set to be resettled to the United States will no longer be able to. There is now a visa ban on Myanmar, while nearly 4,000 of its nationals in the United States were put into limbo when Trump refused to renew their temporary protected status.
When asked about changes in policy, a State Department spokesperson said via email that the “United States remains committed to supporting a path of peace and stability for the people of Burma.” To this end, the spokesperson added, “We continue to call for tangible measures to de-escalate violence, the release of political prisoners, a conducive environment for the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and dialogue between all parties and affected groups involved in the conflict.”
Meanwhile, as the United States turns away from its humanitarian commitments, the Defense Department is increasing its budget for the recovery of rare-earth metals. Contractors for the department are facing a Jan. 1, 2027, deadline to remove Chinese rare earths from their supply chains.
This, in turn, has focused renewed attention on Myanmar, which is one of the world’s main sources of many such elements. And now, with career civil servants out of the way, new actors are beginning to take center stage.
One member of the Washington business community, who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation at work, described the administration’s approach: “Before, the operation was based on liberal pomposity, in the sense that if I don’t like you and you are not pure, the way I punish you is that I don’t talk to you. Now, we will talk to everybody. This is Shark Tank, and everyone is pitching.”
The former head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Yangon, Adam Castillo, has been integrating himself with the MAGA movement and pitching Vice President J.D. Vance’s office. Castillo runs a security firm and has said in a recent book that during his time in Myanmar, he underwent a transformation from “unemployed veteran” to “an entrepreneur leading a forgotten people in a country at war.”
In an email to Foreign Policy, Castillo dismissed those who have traditionally played a role in U.S.-Myanmar policy. “These think tankers are as useless as they are pompous,” he said. “Myanmar should be one of those sources for our [critical mineral] supply chain as there are so few in the world.” To these ends, he advocates “engagement with the Tatmadaw,” Myanmar’s military.
Yet many of these traditional actors remain skeptical. “Sourcing critical minerals from Myanmar is more of a pipe dream than a realistic proposition,” said Stevenson, the former head of mission at the U.S. Embassy. The problem, she said, is that “many of the rare earths of interest to the United States are in nonregime areas.” Even extracting minerals in “quasi-regime-held areas” would involve “very severe logistics challenges” as well.
“Once the minerals are extracted, you need to transport them through both regime and nonregime areas, with multiple checkpoints, each requiring a payment. People accustomed to bringing goods overland from Thailand told me, ‘We used to pay one person at a checkpoint, and now we may have to pay eight,’” Stevenson said.
On top of all this, the armed groups involved in extracting the rare earths receive weapons, technology, and other assists from China. This makes it very unlikely that they would want to sell their minerals to the United States. And even if Washington were to offer them a better deal, China has a lot of levers that it could pull to stop them.
Brock Pierce isn’t deterred by these challenges. He is also “being tapped” on the question of critical minerals in Myanmar. “When people can’t figure out who to send, they send me into the arena,” Pierce said in a phone interview from the Tampa International Airport.
Pierce was a child actor—most famous for his role in The Mighty Ducks—who subsequently left acting and struck it big in cryptocurrency. His forays into development work include an attempt to turn Puerto Rico into a “Puertopia,” by investing in a number of high-profile ventures that the New York Times reports have become “mired in legal disputes.”
“I’m focused on the American mineral and energy nexus, whose initials make the acronym AMEN,” Pierce said. “[Myanmar] is an important place, and I have enough of a history of working with China that I can address the issues. Hopefully, we can do things to address the humanitarian crisis and solve the strategic things like critical minerals.”
Self-described “dirty trickster” Roger Stone has also joined the mix, accepting $50,000 a month from Myanmar’s military government to “rebuild” relations between the United States and the junta. Among other things, Stone is credited with pioneering modern lobbying in the 1980s and, more recently, participating in the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021.
It is difficult to know how much of an impact Stone’s lobbying has. Stone said he “politely decline[d]” Foreign Policy’s request for a comment. Trump, for his part, famously told the New Yorker that “Roger is a stone-cold loser. He always tries taking credit for things he never did.”
It remains to be seen whether Washington will actually succeed in improving relations with the junta, much less moving rare-earth minerals. But it’s clear that the race to do so is already in full swing, and people are already making money off it. Remarkably, the shift in U.S. priorities does not seem to have stopped Myanmar’s opposition from looking toward Washington for help. In Stevenson’s words: “Democratic opposition groups have not given up on the United States. While they may see us as unreliable and may be disappointed in the extent of U.S. action, they still see the United States as their best chance.”
