A popular saying goes: when an empire talks peace, it means war. Every time a high-level bilateral meeting between the United States and Bangladesh has come up with messages that both countries are eager to further strengthen their friendship, it has been seen having immediately been followed by additional U.S. pressure on Bangladesh to goad the country into toeing its prescribed policy lines, crafted in tandem with its broader foreign policy agenda, leading to further deterioration of their bilateral ties.
This peculiar pattern has been predominantly being played out over the last couple of years, notably concerning the U.S. sanctions on Bangladesh’s elite security force, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), and some of its former and current officials in December 2021, and the recent U.S. visa curb policy with stated aims to ensure free and fair election due in December 2023 or January 2024. In both cases, a flurry of diplomatic activities had been seen taking place before it was followed by above mentioned escalating U.S. measures. Resultantly, Bangladeshi people have been learning first-hand the true meaning of Henry Kissinger’s famous dictum, “To be an enemy of the US is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.”
With discussion on the upcoming general elections at the center of the agenda, a delegation from the United States, led by the under-secretary for civilian security, democracy, and human rights Uzra Zeya, has recently visited Bangladesh. US Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, Donald Lu, infamously affixed by former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan to his ouster from power, has also accompanied Uzra Zeya. Apart from discussing issues of mutual interest, including human rights, trade, labor rights, and the Rohingya crisis, they discussed “the need for free and fair elections” and reiterated U.S. support and collaboration for “an inclusive, democratic Bangladesh in which all Bangladeshis can thrive.”
Whereas the visit has left an impression, notably across the government circle, that the recent high-profile trip would contribute to bridging the gap between the two partners, skepticism still lingers high across the expert domain. In the aftermath of the visit, the question is hovering in the air whether the just-concluded high level would result in any constructive outcomes toward normalization of already strained relations between the two countries, or, end up with a further uptick in U.S. pressure on Bangladesh, that the current government in Bangladesh alleged as a part of U.S. wider regime change agenda against Bangladesh.
But given the previous pattern persistent over the last several years regarding the Bangladesh-US ties, the latter is more of a potential. And such a presumed proposition warrants the next important question: what are the underlying bottlenecks that have been hindering the bilateral relations from being taken into a trajectory crafted through mutual compromise and consensus?
It is bitterly undeniable that Bangladesh has its own part in the current bilateral wrangling over the country’s peaceful democratic transition through “free and fair” elections. To be fair, the last two elections under the current regime were fraught with myriad allegations, particularly regarding the aspects of electoral inclusiveness and fairness. But, the lens that the Western stakeholders typically use to examine electoral integrity in an emerging global southern country like Bangladesh without taking the country’s polarized election culture, political history, and fragmented politico-economic reality into account also warrants substantial question.
Here in Bangladesh, elections are more than power transition — as is supposed to be the case in the West. Elections here, at the same time, decisively determine the political stability and economic future of the country, given the highly polarized political culture and binary ideological dispositions between the country’s two major political parties — the Bangladesh Awami League based on secular political ideals and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party based on right-wing nationalism with proven leanness to the political Islamism.
With regard to the United States, the major party to the current wrangling, its policing policies with respect to Bangladesh’s upcoming democratic elections also are not immune to wider skepticism, particularly regarding the integrity and true intentions behind its heavy-handed approaches to Bangladesh.
Strong-arming Bangladesh into toeing its prescribed policy positions is part of the Biden administration’s wider external agenda, embracing “democracy and human rights” as the centerpiece of its foreign policy since coming into power. But, the real problem doesn’t lie in policy posture, but rather in the approaches those policies are being executed. The fundamental fault line in the U.S. foreign policy approach, specifically toward the developing countries in the global south, is that it is adamantly fixated on the “liberal illusion” entrenched during its short-lived “unipolar moment” it enjoyed after the collapse of the former Soviet Union in the 1990s.
The global world order is on the verge of a radical transformation, with emerging economies’ tendency to govern themselves free of external assertions and their aversion to the current international order, which excessively favors Western advantages, increasing. But unfortunately, America’s hubristic belief in its bygone capacity to police global events is curbing its ability to comprehend this groundbreaking change. As a result, its foreign policy has become bland, losing its capacity to adapt to the political, economic, and cultural realities, and most importantly, failing to read people’s pulse. America’s recent foreign policy backlash in the Middle East and growing popularity of presumably anti-Western international and regional political and economic organizations have manifested this.
To be true, the current U.S. foreign policy strategy postured on ideological bloc politics is mostly self-serving, designed to confirm and strengthen its hegemonic primacy threatened by the rise of China and other powerful emerging economies. But the United States should remember that great power comes with great responsibility. Desperate to reinstate its global primacy and blind to the diverse set of political realities across the world will only accelerate further pushback against its “democracy vs autocracy” based foreign policy.
It should also remember that the unparallel capacity it once held in engineering or implanting changes in other countries was more to do with its unique ability to read the politico-economic and cultural reality of a country than with the formidable unipolar power it had once enjoyed. Bangladeshi mass people desperately seek that the upcoming elections would be “free, fair and peaceful”. But there are other things that the people of this country care about more than electoral power transitions — political stability, economic emancipation, and the absence of Islamist terrorism, etc.
Ranajit Mazumder is a political analyst and freelance columnist based in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.
