The recent “coup” and protests in Myanmar are, predictably, presented by the Western media as a situation between military-led tyranny and civilian-led democracy, the standard (default) explanation when it comes to present-day Myanmar. There’s hardly an attempt to look from outside the box, and understandably so, for most journalists writing about Myanmar do not know its recent history, languages or cultures well, or at all.

Yet, to see things from outside the box need not imply taking any particular ideological stance. It is simply a different “angle of vision.” Mine is a historical one, and a recent one at that, with more than sufficient and easily available English-language sources if anyone were interested.

From what I can gather, it is clear that the origins of the conflict has to do with in-fighting between the two major factions in Parliament: those representing the National League for Democracy (NLD), and those representing the Tamadaw parties. But it quickly grew into a larger, mostly urban but “national” issue that goes well beyond the factionalism of Parliament.

What is most interesting to me is the irony in all this. The system the protesters are calling for is the very same one established by the military: The military regime’s “Roadmap to Democracy” articulated in 2004 at the Constitutional Convention that established those principles in the Constitution of 2008, the subsequent elections held in 2010, the final seating of Parliament based on those elections by 2011, and the institutionalization of that structure for the last decade until the present time.

In other words, it is the success of the military regime’s own “Roadmap to Democracy”— so denigrated at the time — that has spawned the scope and scale of today’s broad-based protest. I wonder if the protesters even realize this?

In truth, both sides can claim to have democratized the country.

The current product, which some have called a “disciplined democracy,” is a Burmese version. We may not recognize Burmese democracy, but it does exist, notwithstanding large demonstrations or their violent quelling that happens everywhere from the most democratic (U.S.) to the least (Russia).

The main problem now — and that, too, changes with the political winds — is the honoring of the 2020 election results. The government contends that the several legitimate complaints of election fraud must be first investigated and addressed before it recognizes the outcome with new elections. The opposition dismisses this as an excuse to deny authority to Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD, which claims a huge landslide victory, and that new elections are totally unnecessary and spurious.

The initial peaceful protests have turned into a deadly confrontation with well over 50 casualties, to date. When the protests began, a peaceful solution had been feasible. But as each day passes and violence escalates, that has become more difficult to achieve. Now, one can only hope the situation does not turn into another 1988 when anarchy of the worst kind spread throughout the country. And because in Myanmar, anarchy is feared far more than is tyranny, the continued presence of the military in government as the only effective institution to quell anarchy is a given.

Some often measure “democracy” by the presence or absence of the military in government. That would be a mistake, a false dichotomy created by external sensitivities. For, like it or not, the military has always been (and probably always will be) part of government in Myanmar, a hybrid situation whereby leadership easily moves from military to civilian. The notion of a civilian commander-in-chief of the military is totally anathema to the Burmese reality. And we should consider these realities when assessing the situation in Myanmar today, hopefully tempering unrealistic expectations that someday, a U.S.-style democracy just might emerge from the dusty plains of Naypyidaw.

Michael Aung-Thwin is a professor emeritus of University of Hawaii-Manoa; Myanmar is his special field of research.