"Observers of Myanmar’s coup like to draw parallels to the 1988 student uprising that catapulted the current generation of Myanmar’s democratic political leaders onto the political stage. “In 1988, Myanmar was a poor and isolated country in the middle of a political and economic crisis,” former student leader Myo Thant told the writers. “Our student uprising was much better prepared, unlike today when people were surprised by the coup. But still we failed.” The military government could then portray itself as defending law and order, and it still had a constituency to rely on beyond its ranks. The February 1 coup, by contrast, was a naked power grab by the top military leadership – toppling a popular government. The regime’s brutal campaign of psychological warfare on its citizens put the lie to their claims that it was just stepping in as caretakers to facilitate fairer elections in a year’s time. Today, the junta’s constituency is its crack military units and a narrow economic elite of crony capitalists. They have nothing to win in a repeat election, however rigged. The Civil Disobedience Movement’s resistance has been spontaneous, decentralized and diverse. It has mobilized hundreds of thousands of protesters, the labor movement and ethnic minorities to shut down parts of the country quite effectively. Myanmar’s banking system, always feeble, looks close to collapse. With banking havens for the junta’s finances, namely the US and Singapore, restricting capital flows, the Biden administration’s freeze on $1 billion of Myanmar’s US-held assets and an ongoing national boycott of military-affiliated businesses, the junta’s finances are being squeezed. All this definitely means the junta’s strategy of carrying on with business as usual has gone out the window and makes large-scale violent escalation likely..."