India, Dec. 28 -- Some news does not merely inform, it sounds a warning bell. The recent words of Kim Aris about his mother, Aung San Suu Kyi, "For all I know, she could be dead," do more than capture a family's anguish. For those of us who have served on India's northeastern frontier, they mark something far graver, the final collapse of state authority in Myanmar. History and physics are unforgiving. When a state disintegrates, its shockwaves do not respect borders. Today, those shockwaves are no longer approaching, they are already breaking against India's eastern flank.

While global attention may be drawn to the junta's announcement of elections, but from the vantage point of Itanagar, Guwahati, Aizawl, or Imphal, as it should be for...