Description
While the civil-war spillover literature documents the burden on neighbouring states, it tells us far less about the mechanisms that cause that burden to compound or the interests that allow the conditions producing it to persist. This paper argues that the answer lies not in geographic proximity or structural contagion alone, but in the interests of outside powers with infrastructure and resource stakes in the conflict zone, who benefit from managed instability. When those powers selectively engage with warring factions rather than push for a negotiated settlement, the incentive for coordinated resolution vanishes, leaving conflict-adjacent host states to absorb the accumulating costs. The paper develops a three-stage framework to trace this dynamic: geopolitical competition creates a permissive environment for conflict protraction; this in turn sustains transnational conduits - displaced population recruitment, ethnic kinship networks, and narcotics-arms flows - that progressively narrow the host state's strategic options. The framework is applied to Myanmar's post-2021 civil war and its consequences for Bangladesh, drawing on semi-structured interviews with foreign ministry officials and military officers conducted in 2026. The paper contributes an account of how structural interest misalignment converts localised spillover into a compounding strategic predicament, with particular relevance for small states navigating great-power competition.