Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing visits Bangkok as part of an ongoing diplomatic push; the Philippines’ growth slumps; and a school shooting puts Thailand’s gun culture in the global spotlight.

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s Southeast Asia Brief.

The highlights this week: Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing visits Bangkok as part of an ongoing diplomatic push; the Philippines’ growth slumps; and a school shooting puts Thailand’s gun culture in the global spotlight.

Min Aung Hlaing in Bangkok

Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing visited Bangkok last week, part of an ongoing and successful diplomatic push following sham elections held in 2025-2026 and his own inauguration as president in April.

The visit to Thailand follows an official visit to India from May to June, China in June, and Laos in July. It marks the latest phase in Thailand’s continued normalization of relations with Myanmar. Sharing a 1,500-mile border with the country, Thailand’s foreign minister has said they need to be realistic in their dealings. (But not everyone is on board.)

The trip is also part of the push for Myanmar to normalize relations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which has excluded Myanmar’s leaders from its summits since the 2021 coup. Thailand has been a key backer of this push. In July, it hosted an informal meeting between Myanmar’s foreign minister and ASEAN foreign ministers.

The joint statement issued by the two country’s foreign ministries included a laundry list of topics. These included more cooperation against transnational crimes, including drug smuggling and scams; cooperation against transboundary pollution such as haze and water pollution; a push to boost bilateral trade to $12 billion; and memorandums of understanding on labor, tourism, and space.

With the exception of tourism and space—the former peripheral given the civil war, the latter fanciful—these are all important issues for Thailand. Transnational crime affects Thai citizens. Water pollution linked to rare-earth mining in Myanmar is poisoning its most important rivers. And some 4 million citizens of Myanmar work in Thailand.

Whether this meeting will have any real effect, though, is doubtful. Myanmar is making a show of cracking down on some issues such as scams. Its parliament recently voted to impose the death penalty for those who coerce people to work in scam centers.

But many of the damaging activities take place in areas controlled not by the military government but by Myanmar’s multitude of armed groups. Here, I am told, the Thai military has done its own quiet outreach with limited success.

On ASEAN normalization, Myanmar has made progress. Thailand pledged in the joint statement to support Myanmar’s “full and........

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