Let's compare Myanmar situation to Afghanistan in late 1970s:
Thailand would be taking the role Pakistan had during Afghan jihad against Soviets, with US as their backers. Just as Pashtun officers in Pak were sympathetic to their ethnic cousins across the Durand Line, soo too are some Thai ethnic officers in their military also sympathetic to ethnic cousins across the border in Myanmar.
China would be in a comparable position as USSR was, backing the Myanmar central govt - but one key difference is that China is also backing some of the rebels too. The more pragmatic Chinese are neither proffering nor imposing Marxist-Leninist-Maoist dogma on local Myanmar groups the way the Soviets rigidly were in Afghanistan, and the Chinese are instead pragmatically willing to deal with everybody.
India would be in the position of Iran, not able to significantly affect events in the country to its northeast, except beyond supporting some local warlords near its border. Although, India is not quite as backward as Iran was during Afghan jihad years, and Pak's Munir seems to not want to play the role Saddam did in distracting his eastern neighbor Iran by declaring war on them.
So US won't have a cakewalk here, because there is no religious jihad factor to bring in petro-dollars, nor are Thai leadership so easily able to defy their largest trading partner China, the way Pak stood against Soviet Union. There is no Thai version of Zia ul-Haq, just as there is no US version of CIA director William Casey.
And of course there is no anti-China hawk in Washington to take the role of Zbigniew Brzezinski the anti-Soviet hawk.
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