Cyclone Mocha as a Theater of Power: Competitive State-making in Post-coup, Climate-vulnerable Myanmar

This article by Justine Chambers, Saint Sann Aye, Helene Maria Kyed, Ah Lynn & Nway Kant Kaw published in the Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship examines competing responses to Cyclone Mocha, a category 5 cyclone that devastated Rakhine State (Myanmar) in May 2023, within the context of ongoing political conflict and climate crisis. It analyzes how different state-like actors—including the military’s State Administration Council (SAC), the Arakan Army, and the National Unity Government—appropriated disaster response efforts as manifestations of pluralized state-making during a period of violent rupture following the 2021 military coup. Drawing on digital ethnography of media representations and interviews with affected Rohingya populations, it demonstrates how disaster responses were both materially impactful and inherently performative, functioning as theatrical displays of authority and legitimacy. Despite competing narratives of effective disaster management, the Rohingya people suffered the most yet received the least assistance, while being marginalized and neglected. Theoretically, the article contributes to scholarship that challenges the framing of cyclones as merely ‘natural’ disasters by highlighting how vulnerabilities and responses are embedded in complex social, political, and historical processes. It argues that the politics of climate change in Myanmar exemplifies how disaster responses become sites for competitive state-making, where actors attempt to green their image while maintaining exploitative practices. This case illustrates how climate-related disasters become entangled with existing structures of violence and exclusion within contexts of chronic crisis and contested governance.