"Myanmar’s recent reversion to outright military rule has ended a brief and tentative experiment with electoral democracy and restored the country’s status quo ante as a junta-run dictatorship. While international condemnation grows around the putsch, Myanmar is not alone in a region where the armed forces continue to play outsized political roles. While Southeast Asia’s militaries are deeply enmeshed in politics, their political authority could soon grow as the region teeters towards a potential conflict in the South China Sea and as internal strife simmers in various locales. Southeast Asian states spent US$34.5 billion on defense in 2019, up 4.2% from 2018, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) think tank. A report last year by SIPRI’s Siemon T. Wezeman found that military spending by the ten ASEAN states increased by 33% between 2009 and 2018, “significantly more than the global increases [in] military spending or the growth in most other regions and subregions.” Thailand has seen two military coups in the past 15 years, in 2006 and 2014, both against the democratically elected governments of the Shinawatra siblings. Thailand is now ruled by the military-civilian hybrid government of Prayut Chan-ocha, the junta leader who took charge in 2014. He faces mounting street-level resistance among protesters who question his democratic legitimacy..."