"Abstract: This article explains cross-border uses of force against ethnic armed groups along Myanmar’s bloody borders with China and Thailand. I trace the history of Burma’s ethnic disputes, its state-society relations, and the “modernization” of its military doctrine to understand how its state-building enterprise can shape the use of force along a state’s frontier. I treat each of the border regions as distinct subcategories to highlight variation in the micro-dynamics as well as types and conditions under which the use of state-orchestrated violence occurs. First, I point to the role of greater state-building – extractive, coercive, etc. – and how it influences the use of force along border regions. Second, I explore the modernization of Burma’s military and evolution of its doctrine – this includes early efforts by the tatmadaw’s post-1988 shift toward a more conventional counterinsurgency strategy. An implication of my theory is that more peaceful relations between states perversely can create the conditions for more cross-border violence, as there are greater opportunities for states to either “pool” border security or outsource the use of force to proxies or paramilitary forces.....Introduction: The world’s longest civil war rages on in the frontiers of Myanmar between a government historically dominated by its military and several bands of ethnic rebels, many of them seeking self-rule.1 At the same time, a number of other insurgencies, including one against a Muslim minority, the Rohingya, continue along Myanmar’s other frontier regions. Even as Myanmar begins to democratize, there has been little to no let-up in the violence along its periphery. To understand Myanmar’s use of force against these groups, one must understand the complicated origins of its military rule, its fitful attempts at state-building and shifts in its threat environment, both internal and external. This article posits that the Myanmar’s approach to counterinsurgency and application of force is a function of two simultaneous processes: First, the state under military rule has carried out aggressive state-building along its frontier as a way to further consolidate its boundaries, alternating between the use of local paramilitary forces and its own armed forces to quell these border regions, while purposely not eradicating these groups given that the military benefits from some level of a threat to legitimize its control.2 Simultaneously, Myanmar’s military (or tatmadaw) seeks to profit from cross-border trade (timber, jade, opium, etc.), both licit and illicit (see Lintner, 1999; Meehan, 2011). As a result, it has vacillated between military coercion and political accommodation as a means of bringing order to its frontiers while also enhancing its economy, capacity and legitimacy. To this day, these areas, hilly, remote, rich in natural resources and ethnic hodgepodges, have proved difficult to control and bring into the political fold. Second, Myanmar’s civil-military relations have gone through a series of institutional crises and challenges to the regime’s authority. Together with shifts in its threat environment, this has spurred on a modernization of its military doctrine (Maung Aung Myoe, 2009, pp. 16–46). During the first years of postcolonial rule (1948–1958), Myanmar’s military posture was based largely on fear of external invasion from China (ibid., p.11). Over the next few decades (1958–1988), its doctrine congealed around the threat of the country’s internal insurgency and ethnic armed actors along the periphery. Following 1988, military doctrine focused almost exclusively on modernization, as external threats took on renewed attention and the armed forces shifted towards a more conventional warfare stance (ibid., p. 11). Interestingly, its use of force against ethnic armed groups, even across borders into neighbouring states, would become more routinized as the military modernized itself after Ne Win stepped down in 1988. Part of this modernization process was to consolidate its borders and reduce the threat these groups posed while simultaneously guarding its border against conventional threats. The tatmadaw would rely increasingly on local border patrols, some of them comprising ethnic armed factions it was previously fighting. It was a counterinsurgency policy that mixed co-optation with coercion. Myanmar’s military rules over a fragmented society. The tatmadaw itself is riven by elite divisions, yet still rules as a leviathan-like entity. It views itself as a ‘modernizing’ force, despite claims to the contrary.3 The case of Myanmar reveals how military rulers, insulated from public opinion, perceive of state and non-state threats along its periphery, and how this perception shapes its military doctrine, at a time of rapid state-building. Its use of force is manifested by the centre’s exertions of greater control—economic, political and cultural—over its upland periphery.4 Despite greater civilian control, the government still retains a strong praetorian composition, which explains its aggressive use of force along its frontier (Ben-Eliezer,1997). Externally, despite relatively peaceful relations with its neighbouring states, and despite greater civilian control, Myanmar has taken a largely offensive approach to counterinsurgency, one that mixes conciliatory gestures to co-opt armed actors with the application of brute military force. This article argues that the peripheral threat is necessary for the tatmadaw’s claims to institutional authority and legitimacy, as well as for the military to profit from the booming economy along the border. The implications of my argument are that the state should have little incentive in seeing these areas become completely pacified and so will continue to wage a border war that mixes conventional counterinsurgency with political accommodation. This article proceeds as follows: First, I examine the country’s historical background of ethnic war, looking at the postcolonial roots of the conflict. Then, I discuss its early attempts at state-building, placing Myanmar in the larger literature. Next, I situate my case study in the broader literature on civil-military relations and explore the historical evolution of its military, how its military doctrine has evolved, and specifically its use of cross-border force against rebels in Thailand and China. I conclude with a recap of my theory.....Background of Ethnic Conflict in Myanmar: Myanmar is strategically located in Southeast Asia, wedged between two more powerful state rivals, China and India.5 It is a nation hemmed in by a horseshoe of hill country, ethnically diverse, impoverished and constituting what James Scott has referred to as a ‘negative space’ (Scott, 2009). The highlands of Kachin state along the northern Chinese border provide insurgents with a natural canopy to evade being targeted (Tucker, 2000). Likewise, the jungles between Myanmar and Thailand, rich in lumber and lucrative teal, are some of the world’s thickest. As John Seabury Thomson noted in 1957, ‘[The] topography of the country and its isolation from trade routes tended to make the [Burmese] people look inward rather than outward […]’ (Thomson, 1957, p. 269). That shapes the country’s view of itself in the wider region as well as its own poorly defined borders and helps explain why the country currently faces no fewer than a dozen armed ethnic conflicts. Besides the ethnically dominant Burman, which constitutes over two-thirds of the population, the government officially recognizes 135 distinct ethnic groups. Virtually all of the ethnic groups can be carved up further into various subgroups. The categories still in use today were mostly derived by the British administrators and missionaries, who made perceptions-based differentiations mostly based on a group’s language and culture. As one British official noted in 1931, ‘[S]ome of the races or tribes in Burma change their language almost as often as they change their clothes’ (Smith, 1991, p. 34). Interpreting Myanmar’s history by delineating it into various political-ethnic groups is problematic, if only because of these groups’ complex identities and overlapping cultures.6 Myanmar retains some of the strictest citizenship laws, which in theory require proof of ancestry present in Myanmar before arrival of the British in 1824. This has typically been a ploy to discriminate against non-Buddhist minorities, like the Rohingya, a Muslim minority not considered citizens of Myanmar (Tang, 2013)..."