The facts
The United States has opened direct talks with Myanmar’s ruling military junta, a sharp break from its long‑standing condemnation of the regime’s genocide and coup. In 2017 Marco Rubio signed a letter with 20 other senators urging “strong multilateral sanctions” on senior Burmese military officials responsible for gross human‑rights abuses against the Rohingya. Since the 2021 coup that ousted Aung San Suu Kyi, the conflict has killed about 100,000 people, displaced 5 million and left 16 million in need of urgent aid, according to the UN. Earlier this year Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research Michael Vance travelled to Naypyidaw, ostensibly to secure the release of a US citizen but also to discuss access to Myanmar’s rare‑earth minerals. The Trump administration is reportedly weighing the lifting of sanctions to obtain those minerals, a move that has shocked other Western allies. Roger Stone, a convicted felon and Trump ally, has begun lobbying for the Myanmar regime.
Our take
Holy fucking shit. The moral compass of the Trump administration has spun so far off‑course it now points straight at a pile of rare‑earth rocks. After years of preaching about the Rohingya genocide and the 2021 coup, the US is now sending Michael Vance to kiss the boots of the very generals we once called murderers. The reason? Neodymium, dysprosium, the stuff that makes our missiles smarter and our phones flashier. In 2017 Rubio and a handful of senators demanded sanctions on those same officers; today the same administration is flirting with lifting those sanctions to get a slice of the mineral pie. It’s a cynical bait‑and‑switch that turns human‑rights rhetoric into a profit‑driven gamble. Roger Stone, fresh from a prison sentence for lying to Congress, is now lobbying for the junta, turning blood‑stained politics into a business venture. The US isn’t chasing national security so much as trying to out‑shovel China in the rare‑earth sandbox, even if it means partnering with militia‑controlled mines in a war‑torn state. This gives the junta a propaganda victory: American officials walking hand‑in‑hand with the perpetrators of genocide, proof that the West will trade conscience for copper‑coloured rocks. The message to Myanmar’s resistance is crystal clear – your fight for freedom is secondary to the glitter of minerals beneath your soil. The United States has become a grifter at a resource‑extraction flea market, haggling over the price of its own soul. What a pack of dickheads.
