BANGKOK -- On Dec. 15, the Myanmar Air Force unveiled two Russian Su-30 fighters during a ceremony to celebrate its 75th anniversary. The jets, the first of six ordered in 2018 and delivered earlier this year, are twin-engine two-seaters suited to air-to-air missions, but the 1980s design is expensive to operate and is of limited use in the sort of counterinsurgency operations Myanmar conducts.
The ceremony highlighted the cozy ties between two governments -- essentially, two strongmen -- responsible for military actions with some of the farthest-reaching implications in the post-Cold War era. Both committed acts that undermined the peaceful world order and disrupted supply chains; both devastated economies; and both divided the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as never before.
