photo credit : Official White House Photo by Adam Schutlz
THE Biden administration is back in Dhaka, raising many eyebrows. It had Bangladesh’s politics in its grasp, leading to the January 7 general election. The US ambassador Peter Haas had become a folk hero to most Bangladeshis for pursuing democracy and human rights focused on a general election acceptable to all. They were hopeful that democracy would return because the world’s only superpower had spoken and India which supported and sustained the Awami League’s one-party rule since 2009 would not oppose the United States. The Awami League was very apprehensive.
The free, fair, and peaceful election did not occur. Instead, January 7 saw the distortion of a general election in every sense. The Biden administration suddenly lost its appetite for democracy and human rights. It closed its eyes as the AL regime locked the central office of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and jailed 25,000 of its leaders and activists, including the party’s secretary general, and held the surreal election. The Biden administration also failed to act upon the fear that it had created in the Awami League and members of the civil bureaucracy and law enforcement agencies that if they failed to hold a free, fair, and peaceful general election, there would be consequences. The economic sanctions it threatened have not come either.
Ambassador Donald Lu, the assistant secretary of the Bureau for South and Central Asian Affairs at the US state department and a principal architect of the IPS and the other participants acknowledged India as an indispensable US ally for the strategy that explained the Biden administration’s sudden loss of appetite for democracy and fair elections in Bangladesh. The acknowledgement surprised most Bangladeshis because ambassador Haas and US delegations that visited Dhaka leading to the Bangladesh election had kept this information secret, thus, misleading the Bangladesh Nationalist Party which would have prepared itself better if it knew that the United States backed India on the election. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party has, therefore, been betrayed.
Ambassador Lu correctly stated at the USIP event that Sri Lanka was out of the woods. His statement that China was responsible for Sri Lanka’s debt trap was, however, contestable. Several writers have written in recent times what a John Hopkins University study in 2022 found that ‘contrary to critics’ narratives… there were no Chinese debt-to-equity swaps, no asset seizures, and no “hidden debt” regarding the Hambantota port issue.’ The ambassador’s view that India would be of great help to Sri Lanka’s maritime security considered China a threat. South Asians, however, know that US strategists in Washington appeared not to know that Sri Lanka’s security concerns have historically been from across the Palk Strait and not China.
Ambassador Lu’s views on the Maldives were perplexing. He described the Maldives not as a tiny nation because of its small population but as a huge one spread in the Indian Ocean. He felt that the island nation had limited resources and capabilities to ensure sovereignty over the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean for which it needed to embrace the IPS and India’s assistance because of its surveillance expertise and defence capabilities. He alluded towards Chinese hegemonism to make the case for the IPS and India in the Maldives.
The Maldives is now in the Chinese camp. President Mohamed Muizzu assumed office in November through an ‘Out India’ movement and the promise to send Indian troops back after 15 years amid charges of ‘big brother’ and ‘bullying’ against it. Ambassador Lu’s case for India to the new Maldives government was, therefore, strange. His plea to allow India and the west the same access to the Maldives as China to allow the Maldivians to choose freely what the others had to offer was also strange. China achieved its present position in the Maldives diplomatically and fairly amid India’s growing unpopularity and the US accusations of Chinese hegemonism without evidence against it.
The United States has a history of bad choices in foreign affairs of creating hopes in countries abroad and abandoning them like hot potatoes as soon as its interests are over. Pakistan is a prime example. The Biden administration named India as its indispensable IPS ally at a time when India has conflicts with most South Asian countries. A ‘Boycott India’ campaign has begun in Bangladesh like the ‘Out India’ movement in the Maldives. The movement has significant potential because most Bangladeshis believe that India’s ‘all eggs in the AL basket’ foreign policy keeps the Awami League in power. They also believe that they will never gain their political, democratic, and human rights if India does not change this inexplicable foreign policy. The US thus missed its best chance of establishing the IPS credibility for connecting the Indo-Pacific through democracy and human rights by insensitively backing India in Bangladesh.
The United States has also faced serious setbacks with the China containment policy of the Indo-Pacific Strategy because of India. India’s problems with the rest of South Asia have been a major reason for China’s massive strides in South Asia. The United States is also failing badly in Myanmar in containing China. Its dependence on India is not helping it either. The current situation in Myanmar where the civil war between the military junta or the Tatmadaw and the ethnic rebels that started in 1948 has become extremely intense in recent months with the military junta or the Tatmadaw for the first time in Myanmar’s history is on the run.
The rebels of Myanmar bordering India and Bangladesh — the Arakan Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army — have united strongly under the Three Brotherhood Alliance. The rebels in the rest of the country have united under the National Unity Government’s armed wing, the People’s Defence Force. It is fighting the Tatmadaw as loosely structured resistance cells with potentially game-changing effects. According to credible sources, the Tatmadaw now controls only 40 per cent of Myanmar.
The United States adopted the National Defence Authorisation Act in December 2022 which incorporated the Burma Act 2022 and can now arm the rebels. The National Democratic Alliance Army has, however, not yet given the United States any leverage in Myanmar’s rapidly intensifying civil war. India has always supported the central government/Tatmadaw on its stand that the internal conflicts of Myanmar are its domestic affairs. The Myanmar provinces bordering India have turned into a minefield that could eventually give China a stranglehold in Arakan, a land route to the Bay of Bengal and a strategic nightmare for its north-eastern states in case Myanmar breaks under the impact of the ongoing civil war.
China is the best-placed external stakeholder in Myanmar. Its two-tier policy of conducting foreign policy has allowed Beijing to remain close to the Tatmadaw and the Chinese Communist Party with the rebels that many suspect it arms. It is close to democratic forces led by the shadow National Unity Government. Thus, China is, literally, in a ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ situation in Myanmar. Bangladesh is caught between the hard rock and the sea. It does not want the civil war in Arakan to escalate which would discourage the one million Rohingyas in Bangladesh from returning while forcing the remaining Rohingyas feeling to Bangladesh.
IPS strategists in Washington need their feet in Myanmar to further the strategy. India cannot assist, but Bangladesh can. According to the grapevines, the Biden administration wants Bangladesh to fight its proxy war in Arakan which is why the Americans have reappeared in Dhaka. It is, however, a US wish that is unlikely to find favour with the Bangladesh armed forces. It would also be their patriotic duty against a proxy war should the US request one. A proxy war for the US in Arakan would bring Bangladesh a fresh influx of the Rohingya and other ethnic refugees and security concerns beyond its power to control.
Postscript: The Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States is failing in South Asia and Myanmar because of the historically poor choice of friends of the United States, failure to understand people and politics outside its backyard and habitual failure to keep promises. It is time that the US finally saw South Asia through its prism and not India’s.