This op-ed by Donald K. Emmerson first appeared in The Jakarta Post.

Above all, Trump wanted to be a winner. History granted his wish. He is the first president in the 245-year life of his country to have been impeached twice. By that standard, he won the title of America’s Worst President (AWP)—worse than any of the 44 presidents who preceded him.

AWP rhymes with 'gawp,' and that’s what he also wanted: to be stared at, talked about, catered to, the center of fawning attention, unforgettably present, dominating the news, astride the world in which the news is made. He wanted applause. His ravenous insecurity—narcissism—inflated his ego to continental size. In effect, in his authoritarian imagination, the “extremely stable genius” that he called himself deserved to be the indispensable “me” in “America,” without which the country’s name and the country itself would crumble.

The roars and chants of Trump’s crowds slaked his thirst for veneration. But they imprisoned him in his “base.” By satisfying his craving to be idolized, they gave him no reason to convince the unimpressed. How much more gratifying it must have been for him to bask in mass flattery at rallies than to engage in the difficult business of persuading the uncommitted. That would have taken assets he lacked: empathy, knowledge, intelligence, and a willingness not to lie.

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So how could Americans have elected such a demagogue? Trump was corrupt but charismatic. He broke the rules. He said whatever was on his mind. He appealed to the streak of individualism in American culture. He ran his campaign and his presidency as a mass entertainment featuring a lone patriot fighting a “deep state” controlled by globalist elites. Especially in rural areas between Silicon Valley and the Boston-to-Washington corridor, millions of white Americans felt threatened by the transfer of jobs from physical toward mental labor in a computerized society whose racial make-up was increasingly non-white. Globalization fed those anxieties. Trump stoked them. He promised to end them and “make America great again.”

Joe Biden defeated Trump in both the popular vote and the Electoral College—respectively by 4.4 and 13.7 percent. Biden’s margins were narrower than one might have wished, given the blatant flaws in Trump’s character, including the 30,573 false or misleading claims that he made during his presidency as tracked and noted by The Washington Post . The egregiousness of his behavior is, however, a double testament to America’s democratic system: to its failure to select a less despicable leader, yes, but also to its success in providing the lawful framework within which his desperate effort to stage what in Latin America would be called an autogolpe or “self-coup” could be and was overcome.

On 1 February 2021, watching television at his 126-room estate in Palm Beach, Florida, ex-president Trump would have learned of the coup in Myanmar and might have envied Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. Both men had been banned by Facebook for inciting violence in their respective countries—Trump in 2021, the general in 2018. Both had suffered defeats in elections held just five days apart in 2020—3 November in the US, 8 November in Myanmar. Both had rejected the voters’ verdict, claiming fraud. But whereas Trump’s frantic and deadly effort to subvert the US election and retain power failed, Min Aung Hlaing’s self-coup has succeeded, at least for now. The general quickly seized full power despite his party’s massive embarrassment at the polls in November, Aung San Suu Kyi’s party having won 83 percent of the available seats. In contrast, Trump could not reverse his exit from power despite a far slimmer margin of electoral defeat. To the extent that the ex-president was even aware of the difference, it could have fanned what angry envy of the general he may have felt.

Trump failed mainly due to the checks and balances that generally call government to account in America. Min Aung Hlaing succeeded in no small part thanks to the checks and balances in the bank accounts of the generals who have compromised Myanmar’s transition to democracy and helped make it the second most corrupted country in Southeast Asia (after Cambodia) as measured by the Corruption Perceptions Index.

Among the many reactions to the Burmese coup, several stand out for their courage and creativity. UN Secretary General António Guterres was unequivocal. "It's absolutely unacceptable,” he said, “to reverse the result of the elections and the will of the people.” Presumably speaking on behalf of the UN, its secretariat, or himself, or all three, he went further: "We'll do everything we can to mobilize all the key actors of the international community to put enough pressure on Myanmar to make sure that this coup fails." 

This notable response came from Indonesia’s former foreign minister Marty Natalegawa: “Deafening silence in the face of assaults against democratic principles [has] increasingly become the norm,” he said. He urged ASEAN to “demonstrate its relevance: It must speak urgently for the respect of constitutional process and rule of law in Myanmar, and call for the immediate release of those unlawfully detained.”

In the days immediately following the coup, ASEAN’s Bruneian secretary general said nothing about it, preferring to remain, in the Indonesian expression, “silent in a thousand tongues.” Speaking for ASEAN as its current chair, however, Brunei’s government did at least encourage a “return to normalcy in accordance with the will and interests of the people of Myanmar,” noting that the group charter’s called for adherence to “democracy, the rule of law” and “human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

As for ASEAN’s next chair, Cambodia, its strongman Hun Sen did speak, but only to say that "Cambodia does not comment on the internal affairs of any country at all.” Hun Sen’s restraint made historical sense. Had Cambodia’s old despot chosen to criticize Myanmar’s new despot, observers could have noted that Min Aung Hlaing had only done what Hun Sen himself had bloodily accomplished in 1997 by seizing full control over Cambodia in a self-coup of his own that had enabled him to become the longest-serving prime minister in the world.

Critical Southeast Asian voices, unconstrained by look-the-other-way diplomacy, have been heard. The chairman of the ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, Charles Santiago, has urged ASEAN to send a high-level delegation to Myanmar to tell Min Aung Hlaing that his coup “violates ASEAN principles and the ASEAN charter” and is “not acceptable.” “If Myanmar does not turn around,” he added, “there should be proceedings to expel Myanmar out of ASEAN.”

Who is better positioned to deal with this crisis than ASEAN’s largest and debatably least authoritarian member country? It was Indonesia’s Natalegawa who patched up ASEAN’s consensus after Hun Sen damaged it on China’s behalf in 2012. And it is Natalagewa who believes, with the Myanmar coup in mind, that “at this critical juncture for the region, Indonesia must demonstrate its leadership within ASEAN.”

Indonesia’s president Jokowi, rather than trying to rally the region against the coup, will likely continue to focus on domestic economic growth. Not to mention the existential priority that COVID-19 also warrants on his agenda.

So why not task Natalegawa with a damage-control trip around the region comparable the one he took with some success in 2012? He could start with fact-finding in Myanmar. He could then explore an intra-ASEAN understanding that would reassert the core democratic values in the ASEAN Charter while lessening, if possible, the chance that Myanmar will revert to entrenched and fully authoritarian rule. That may be a lost cause. But nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Although Donald Trump is no longer in office, America is still not safe from Trumpism. But America’s system—democracy—is working as it should. Is ASEAN really a dictators’ club? Or does it, too, when threatened from within, have a system that can at least manage and minimize the damage that is, in Myanmar as I write this, being done?

The past few months have been the strangest time. It was additionally peculiar for me in that, since I was learning remotely in China, most of my classes took place from midnight to morning. Sitting in front of my laptop each night while the world slumbered around me was difficult. But I also remember the way, from time to time, glimmers of conversations on zoom would absorb me entirely and make me forget I was alone and in the dark. Having met those wonderful people saved me from the coldness of seclusion, and made my quarter so much better:’) 

-2024, ALICE

I thought online college would be a disaster, but luckily, I was wrong. The teaching teams made lots of efforts to accommodate to the challenges in online instruction, so the learning experience was still of great quality despite being a different format. Moreover, the communities are amazing! My classmates and the student orgs I joined, especially the Gaieties team, always made my day in the past quarter. Can't wait to continue my journey at Stanford! 

-2024, SHAWN

This was definitely not how I expected college to start. The empty abyss of those Zoom squares with cameras off, those awkward moments of silence in breakout rooms, those bookmarked school events I didn’t attend: all things that made up my first quarter in college scream “human_interaction == 0”. Added on to my FOMO was the decreasing motivation to talk to people online. Therefore, when I went to Beijing to see my friends for the first time, I felt relieved. “They went through the same struggles I did.” I thought, “I’m with them.” There is a silver lining after all. 

-2024 RACHEL

I always thought that waking up at 5:00am would be the biggest challenge of online learning. But that becomes trivial when I face the real challenge --- lack of partnership. I remember the many hours stuck on a coding problem, alone; the many days spent looking for online studying buddies who could match my time zone; the many weeks of struggle to keep myself energized by my sheer curiosity of knowledge. It is at the freshman in-person gathering in Beijing that I truly feel my draining energy become to restore by the laughter, compassion, and wittiness of my classmates. It is people who makes Stanford attractive. 

-2024 DAVID

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This article was originally written by Melissa De Witte on behalf of Stanford News.

As Monday’s coup in Myanmar demonstrates, democracy is often fragile and subject to setbacks, says former U.S. ambassador to Myanmar and Stanford visiting scholar, Scot Marciel.

Here, Marciel discusses how in a country like Myanmar (formerly Burma), which was under military rule from 1962 to 2011, establishing a democracy takes time. Despite democratic reforms over the past decade, the military in Myanmar has held onto a considerable amount of power, said Marciel, noting that it is difficult to build not only a representative parliament but other democratic institutions including an independent judicial system, a fair police force and a free press.

While Monday’s coup is a major setback in Myanmar’s fight for democracy, Marciel said that there are many people in the country who will do what they can to restore their elected government and build the foundations of democracy.

Marciel is a visiting scholar at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), Stanford’s hub for interdisciplinary research, education and engagement on contemporary Asia that is run under the auspices of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Marciel served as U.S. Ambassador to Myanmar from March 2016 through May 2020. From 2010 to 2013, Scot Marciel served as U.S. Ambassador to Indonesia.

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What do people who have not spent extensive time studying or living in Myanmar need to know about its history to better understand Monday’s coup?

A couple of things. First, as historian Thant Myint-U has written, Myanmar is an unfinished nation, in the sense that the diverse communities that make up the country have never truly solidified as a unified nation. The country has been in near-constant conflict, mostly between the majority Bamar ethnic group and the many ethnic minority communities that inhabit much of Myanmar’s border areas. Second, the military staged a coup in 1962 and ran the country for nearly 50 years before allowing some movement toward representative democracy beginning in 2011-2012. So the military has long been a dominant force in the country, and – even after the reforms of the past decade – retained substantial power.

Is there anything that is often misunderstood about its history and its people?

In the West, many people have tended to view Myanmar mostly through the prism of a struggle for democracy between the military and the civilian opposition, led by Aung San Suu Kyi. That is a critically important part of the story, for sure. Perhaps equally important, however, has been the struggle of the many ethnic minority communities for equality, a degree of autonomy, and respect for their own histories, cultures and languages. This struggle has produced widespread conflict, significant human rights abuses, and large numbers of refugees and displaced people for decades.

What are some of the difficulties in establishing, and maintaining, democratic rule in a country like Myanmar?

First, persuading the military to give up power, depart from politics, and play a more appropriate role in the country. Second, it is very difficult to build the institutions of democracy, including not only parliament, but also a strong, independent judicial system, an effective and fair police force, and respect for the critical role of civil society and the independent media. In Myanmar, another essential aspect is to shift from historically centralized rule to a federal structure that would allow the various communities across the country to have more of a say in how they are governed.

As ambassador to Myanmar, what was it like working with not only the country’s policymakers but also its people? What did you learn from them about how democracy is established? And how did those experiences shape your perspective?

In Myanmar, I met so many people, all over the country, from many different walks of life, who had sacrificed and continued to sacrifice to try to build democracy and respect for human rights. Some operated at the national level, others at the local level. It was a good reminder that democracy isn’t just imposed from the top; it requires careful building at the community and state level, with intensive involvement by the various communities. It also takes time and, as we have seen this week, is often fragile and subject to setbacks. In other words, it is a long-term effort that requires persistence, courage, and participation by large numbers of people. Establishing a democracy is a lengthy, painstaking effort that can be upended, particularly if the armed forces are politicized and pursue their own agenda.

Is there anything else you would like to add? 

This week’s military takeover constitutes a major setback, but the story of Myanmar’s struggle for democracy is not over. Many people there will continue to do what they can to restore elected government and build, brick by brick, the foundations of democracy.

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) has broadened its fellowship and funding opportunities to support Stanford students working in the area of contemporary Asia. The Center introduced these expanded offerings in response to the harsh impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on student’s academic careers and their access to future jobs and valuable work experience, and in recognition of the critical need to make the field of Asian Studies more diverse and inclusive.

APARC’s diversity grant aims to encourage Stanford students from underrepresented minorities (URM) to engage in the study and research of topics related to contemporary Asia and U.S.-Asia relations, including economic, health, foreign policy, social, political, and security issues. The grant, which was first announced in June 2020, is now an ongoing offering. APARC will award a maximum of $10,000 per grant. Current  Stanford undergraduate and graduate students in the URM category from any major or discipline are eligible and encourage to apply.

APARC also invites Stanford Ph.D. candidates specializing in topics related to contemporary Asia to apply for its 2021-22 predoctoral fellowship. Up to three fellowships are available and the application deadline is May 1, 2021.

In addition, APARC continues to offer an expanded array of research assistant internships. The Center is currently seeking highly motivated Stanford undergraduate- and graduate-level students to join our team as paid research assistant interns for the spring and summer quarters of 2021. Applications for spring 2021 research assistant assignments are due on February 22, for summer 2021 assignments on March 8.

Stanford e-Oita is an online course for high school students in Oita Prefecture in the southwestern island of Kyushu, Japan, that is sponsored by the Oita Prefectural Government. Launched in fall 2019, it is offered by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE) in collaboration with the Oita Prefectural Board of Education.

On January 8, 2021, Stanford e-Oita students were treated to a lecture by Sumire Hirotsuru, a professional violinist who was born and raised in Oita Prefecture. After graduating from Oita Uenogaoka High School, Hirotsuru attended and graduated from Harvard University and The Julliard School. She has performed with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silkroad Ensemble, and as a soloist at major venues in the United States and Japan, including Carnegie Hall, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Suntory Hall, and at the Beppu Argerich Music Festival in Oita. After graduation from The Julliard School, Hirotsuru started her own company in New York City where she manages her own music promotional business. She is currently living in Japan.

Hirotsuru’s talk was titled “Sumire’s Journey in the U.S. and Japan.” While sharing thoughts on her upbringing in Oita, she had invaluable advice to the students like encouraging them to think about their strengths and the importance of balancing academics and extracurricular activities, in her case, practicing the violin. While introducing a typical day at Harvard, she emphasized the importance of building community in formal settings (e.g., through classes and musical practices and performances) as well as informal settings (e.g., having meals in her dorm with friends with diverse interests).

Since completing college, she has published several books. While sharing one of her publications, she underscored the critical importance of time management and setting benchmarks to reach one’s goals. She engaged students in thinking about a 2021 new year’s resolution and considering what needs to be achieved by June 2021, and even thinking about what needs to be done daily to meet their resolution.

Setting benchmarks resonated with Stanford e-Oita Instructor and fellow Harvard alumna, Kasumi Yamashita. Yamashita commented, “My e-Oita students were inspired by Sumire, who shared her personal journey from her hometown of Oita to the world stage. There’s a tendency to look outward and far away for new experiences but Sumire showed them how change can start in their own backyard. She talked about a cross-cultural program that she co-founded called ‘Summer in JAPAN,’ where Harvard undergraduates are invited to Oita to teach workshops and engage with Japanese students from many countries in English. It was one way that she brings her global experiences back to Oita, which is something I encourage my students to do.” Hirotsuru noted that she was inspired to begin Summer in JAPAN in Oita because she didn’t have any resource like that when she was growing up in Oita. “That was definitely one of my motivations to start a program like this.”

The emphasis on goal setting inspired a student to ask Hirotsuru about her current goal as a violinist. Hirotsuru replied that she aspires “to reach more people through music because right now, I feel like… classical music is often considered the music of people who have money… and access to concert halls. But I would like to bring my music to many people who are not only rich… I think music is something really important when you’re growing up.”

Hirotsuru’s talk also prompted one of the student musicians—a flutist of her high school brass band—to ask how Hirotsuru managed to balance both academics and violin practice. Hirotsuru responded by sharing, “You have a capacity of more than 100 percent… I think that you can put your effort completely on academics and flute at the same time by managing your time very efficiently.” Yamashita hopes that this lesson will be one that students will embrace far into their futures.

Reflecting on her experience with the students in Oita, Hirotsuru noted the following, “I was impressed by the students’ active participation in class—even through Zoom, I was able to see how their eyes were filled with excitement and passion for the future. I truly believe that there will be more opportunities for the students to expand their perspectives from Oita and beyond, as long as they keep their minds open.”

SPICE is grateful to Oita Governor Katsusada Hirose whose vision made this course possible. SPICE is also appreciative of Teacher Consultants Keisuke Toyoda and Hironori Sano for their unwavering support of Stanford e-Oita.