By Dr Abdul Rahman Zafrudin @ Ko Ko Gyi

ASEAN’s Myanmar peace efforts remain stalled, and only strategic leverage—like tariffs and rare earths—might ignite real movement, especially if Trump’s agenda aligns with a ceasefire push.

The recent ASEAN summit once again echoed the hollow refrain of the Five-Point Consensus, a diplomatic chant that has become a broken record. Despite repeated declarations, the junta in Myanmar remains unmoved, and the humanitarian crisis deepens. The international community—UN, US, EU—has largely retreated into rhetorical support, unwilling to invest resources where profit is uncertain. As one Myanmar teaching warns, “It is like trying to squeeze the cow’s horns, hoping to get milk.”

In physics, work is calculated as the product of force and Displacement (distance) in the direction of the force, expressed by the formula W=FXD

• W = Work done
• F = Force applied
• d = Displacement (the distance an object moves)

FOR ASEAN’s Myanmar Peace plan “W” Work done is NIL as there is NO POSITIVE RESULT (i.e.DISPLACEMENT according to the sciantific Physics formula). Because we cannot count the hundred of times repeats of “Five Point Consensus” and conferences as WORK DONE, as long as Junta refused to comply. These are just “F” without “D” displacement at all.

Let me explain the physicist’s theory: Work (W) = Force (F) × Displacement (D). ASEAN’s forceful statements and summits may seem energetic, but without displacement—without actual movement from the junta—there is no work done. The peace process is stalled in neutral gear.

ASEAN’s approach resembles a confused driver of an automatic car, fumbling for a keyhole that doesn’t exist. The junta’s leadership is the dashboard without ignition. ASEAN needs to stop searching for nonexistent mechanisms and instead apply pressure where it matters.

ASEAN should just apply on the brake pedal on CHINA and PUSH the “TRUMP” button, to ignite Myanmar CEASE FIRE and PEACE.

That pressure lies in tariffs and rare earths—two economic levers with global resonance. Rare earths, essential for electronics and defense, are a strategic asset. Tariffs, especially those negotiated with the US, can be wielded to incentivize or penalize behavior. During the summit, ASEAN leaders agreed that tariff deals with Washington should not harm member economies—but what if they could be used to help Myanmar’s peace?

Here’s where Trump’s agenda could be pivotal. Known for transactional diplomacy and economic leverage, Trump might be persuaded to link trade incentives to China with Myanmar ceasefire conditions. If ASEAN can push the “Trump button”—appealing to his strategic instincts and economic interests—there’s a chance to ignite real movement.

But fuel is needed. That fuel is coordinated economic pressure, not just from ASEAN but from global partners. Tariffs targeting junta-linked industries, restrictions on rare earth exports, and conditional trade benefits could form the petrol for peace.

In short, ASEAN must stop chanting and start driving. The car won’t start without ignition, and ignition won’t happen without pressure. Tariffs and rare earths are the tools. Trump might be the spark. But ASEAN must first decide: does it want to move, or just keep pressing the accelerator in park?

This ancient teaching from the Māgha Deva’s admonition is a brilliant satirical reflection on misguided effort—especially apt for ASEAN’s repetitive but fruitless approach to Myanmar’s crisis.

“Milking the Bull’s Horn”

“The man who wants milk ties a cow to a post and keeps squeezing her horn, believing milk will come from it.”

Commentary: This metaphor ridicules the absurdity of effort without understanding. ASEAN keeps “squeezing” the junta’s hardened stance, expecting peace to flow—without realizing they’re pressing the wrong part of the beast.

“Fire from a Firefly”

“The man who wants fire catches a glowing firefly at night, puts it in dry straw, and blows on it—hoping it will ignite.”

Commentary: ASEAN mistakes superficial glow for real heat. The junta’s occasional gestures—like ceasefire talks or prisoner releases—are mere flickers, not flames. Yet ASEAN keeps blowing, hoping for ignition.

“Rice from Chaff”

“The man who wants rice keeps pounding empty husks, thinking rice will emerge.”

Commentary: ASEAN’s Five-Point Consensus is like pounding chaff. Without substance—without junta compliance—it’s just noise and dust. No rice, no results.

Final Teaching from Māgha Deva

“No matter how persistent or energetic the effort, if it lacks wisdom, it yields nothing.”

Commentary: ASEAN’s efforts are not lacking in repetition or manpower—but in insight, courage, and strategic leverage. Without wisdom, even the most vigorous diplomacy becomes vanity.

မာဃဒေဝ ဆုံးမစာထဲက လူ့ဗာလတွေဖြစ်နေတယ်။

“နွားမနို့ရည်၊ ချို၌တည်ဟု၊ ကြိုးရှည်များလျား၊ တိုင်ချည်ထား၍၊ ရိရှားပန်းလျ၊ ညှစ်လှည့်ထသို့ –

(နွားနို့လိုသောယောက်ကျားသည် နွားမ၏ဦးချို၌ နွားနို့ရှိမည်ဟုယူဆလျက် နွားမကိုတိုင်တွင် ကြိုးနှင့်ချည်ကာ နွားမဦးချိုကို မနားမနေညှစ်သကဲ့သို့)

ရောင်ဝါထွန်းမြူး ပိုးစုန်းကြူးကို မူးတူးမင်ထင်၊ ကယ်ကောင်းထင်၍၊ တောက်ရှင်နိုးနိုး၊ မှိုက်ကောက်ရိုးဖြင့်၊ မှုတ်ကြိုးသံပ၊ လက်မချသို့ –

(မီးလိုသောယောကျ်ားသည် ညအခါ အလင်းရောက်မှိတ်တုတ် မှိတ်တုတ်ဖြင့် ပျံသန်းနေသော ပိုးစုန်းကြူးကိုဖမ်းပြီး ကောက်ရိုးခြောက်ထဲထည့်ကာ မီးမှုတ်သကဲ့သို့)

ဗာလအစစ်၊ သူမိုက်ညစ်လျှင်၊ ဆန်ဖြစ်စေကြောင်း၊ ဖွဲကိုထောင်းသော်၊ ပန်းညောင်းကာမျှ၊ ဆန်မရသို့ –

(ဆန်လိုသောယောက်ျားသည် ဆန်ရမည်ထင်ပြီး စပါးခွံဖွဲကို အကြိမ်ကြိမ် ထောင်းနေသကဲ့သို့)

မာဃဒေဝ

အလုပ်လုပ်ရာတွင် မည်မျှပင် ဇွဲ လုံလ ဝိရိယကြီးမားပြီး အကြိမ်ကြိမ် ကြိုးပမ်းစေကာမူ ညဏ်ပညာမပါသောကြိုးစားမှုသည် အချည်းနှီးသာဖြစ်၏။