Bangladesh: A US Coup with Profound Geopolitical Repercussions – OpEd
15:45 19.08.2024 (Updated: 12:59 20.08.2024)
© AP Photo / Rajib Dhar
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Military coups, Counter-coups, assassinations, treachery… the history of the young 53-year-old Bangladesh has more intrigue than a Shakespeare novel. While the repercussions of all the drama have been restricted to South Asia so far, the recent coup has direct involvement of the US.
Now, the regime-change will have profound impacts on geopolitical power balance and military strategies in the region. China and Myanmar will be affected; and the US-India relations will likely suffer, as India’s national interests and sphere of influence are imperiled. This is a complex issue, so let’s break it down into several topics.
Why target Bangladesh?
Bangladesh is a country of 170 million – larger than Russia, Japan or Germany. And it’s strategically located right next to India. While the US has encircled China in the east, the US has no presence in the south. Moreover, the Bay of Bengal region is close to the Malacca Strait and can be theoretically used to disrupt China’s trade. See map below:
Bangladesh
© Photo : NormanEinstein
Ideally, the US would like to use Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia to control the Malacca Strait and contain China. However, all those ASEAN countries have refused to be America’s geopolitical pawns, and have explicitly told the US to take a hike in this matter.
The next best option for the US is to build bases in the Andaman Nicobar Islands, which overlook the Malacca Strait. These islands, of course, belong to India, which has also staunchly refused to allow foreign military bases in its soil.
What is next for the US empire? Myanmar, as you can see in the map above. Here, the US worked very hard to court the nation. Once upon a time, the US even managed to give the leader – Aung San Suu Kyi – the Nobel Prize. But when she slowly changed her mind and leaned towards China, the West revoked her Nobel Prize. How petty!
Myanmar has immense strategic importance for China. Why? Because Myanmar provides a vital escape route for Chinese trade (see red arrows on the map above) – as an emergency plan, in case Malacca Strait gets shut down.
China has spent a lot of money on infrastructure in Myanmar and is working on a deep-sea port – as part of the “string of pearls,” which also includes Sri Lanka. The Myanmar military and the political class have definitely shifted towards China over the past few years.
Thus, having lost all its battles in the region, the US had one last target: Bangladesh. Specifically, the US wants to build a military base in the Saint Martin Island of Bangladesh. Hence the coup.
Why target Prime Minister Hasina?
Hasina was the PM of Bangladesh for a total of 20 years – including the last 15 years. Her father – Sheikh Mujibur Rahman – was the founding father of Bangladesh. He was assassinated, along with much of his family. Hasina survived only because she was on vacation in Europe. She then spent many years in India before returning to Bangladesh. She has also survived four assassination attempts over the years.
The person who was convicted of trying to assassinate her in 2004 – Tarique Rahman – has been living in London for the last sixteen years. He is also the acting chairman of BNP, the opposition party, which is now poised to rule Bangladesh. This reveals how the West has taken a clear position in the internal affairs of Bangladesh.
Hasina’s biggest geopolitical “crime” – according to the US – was to embrace strategic autonomy. Her government was equally friends with India, Russia, China and the US.
In 2016, Bangladesh joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Since then, China has spent tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure projects, loans and aid in Bangladesh. Hasina also enhanced defense cooperation with China – she bought a couple of Chinese submarines and built a naval base with China’s help.
Hasina also invited Russia to build a nuclear power reactor in Bangladesh; and when the US threatened sanctions, she used Chinese yuan to pay Russia. Overall, in just 14 years of Hasina’s rule (from 2008 to 2022), the GDP of Bangladesh grew a whopping 360% – from $100 billion to $460 billion.
Along with that, Hasina wanted to join BRICS. If all those “crimes” were not enough, she refused to let the US build military bases in Saint Martin Island.
In summary, she welcomed neutrality and the multipolar world with too much enthusiasm, which was unacceptable to the US Empire.
How the coup threatens India
In summary, a pro-India government in Bangladesh has been replaced by a pro-Pakistan regime.
When Bangladesh got independence from Pakistan in 1971, not everyone was in favor of it. The people, who opposed separation from Pakistan, created the Bangladesh National Party (BNP), which has been the leading opposition to Hasina and her party (Awami League) for decades. (Interestingly, the US also vehemently opposed Bangladesh’s freedom movement in 1971 and even threatened India with a naval fleet, which was repelled by the USSR).
Thus, it is not surprising that Pakistani officials have had many kind words about the protesters in the last couple of weeks. Pro-Hasina groups have repeatedly called the protesters “razakars,” a sort of derogatory word to describe the pro-Pakistan movement.
Plus, the opposition party (BNP) is aligned with Jamaat-e-Islami*, which is classified as a terrorist group by India, Russia and others.
In addition, while Hasina was a secular Muslim who protected Hindus and other minorities, the BNP and its allies such as the Jamaat-e-Islami are quite anti-Hindus. The cynical Western media is desperately playing down the atrocities committed against Hindus in Bangladesh, since the US needs the narrative of “freedom and democracy.” This situation is very similar to how ethnic Russians in Ukraine have been facing violent persecution for the last decade, but the US completely ignored it.
There is a possibility that a large number of Hindus may flee Bangladesh and cause a refugee crisis in India.
Moreover, Bangladesh shares a staggering 4000 km of border with five Indian states. Thus, if the new government in Bangladesh allies with Pakistani intelligence and Islamist terrorist/extremist groups, India could face serious problems.
In the long term, if India-US relations worsen, the US could use Pakistan and Bangladesh to harass India from two sides. Remember that during the 1980s, the US trained the Mujahideen and Kashmiri separatists and supplied weapons, which destabilized Kashmir. The US also has a long history of arming Islamic terrorists over the decades – Libya and Syria being the recent examples.
The US has no permanent friends, only permanent interests.
Why US-India relations are souring
“We are not true allies; our interests are not fully aligned,” – USA to India.
The deterioration of the US-India relationship over the last year has been stunning. After all, late last year, Biden tweeted the following: “The friendship between the United States and India is among the most consequential in the world. And it's stronger, closer, and more dynamic than ever.”
So, what happened?
Bottom line: Both India and the US were disappointed in what the relationship could achieve. India was hoping that it could become the “next China” with the help of the US and its allies – Europe, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, etc. And that did not happen. India’s manufacturing did not take off; and India’s dependence on China has only grown more rapidly since 2020 (when COVID was supposed to have made the world decouple from China).
On the other hand, American elites had hoped that India would become an ally – i.e., a vassal who would agree to American demands 100% of the time. The US had two reasons to be so hopeful:
The successful Indians immigrants in the US would be able to persuade the Indian government’
The enormous American control over Indian media in India will shape the public opinion
Alas, but for cultural, political and pragmatic reasons, India was not able to ditch Russia or allow US military bases on Indian soil or agree to go to war with China.
However, the American Empire is not used to countries saying, “No.” Thus, the US warned India that there is no such thing as strategic autonomy, and then proceeded to overthrow the democratic government in Bangladesh.
The big mistake that the US might be making is to push India into the arms of China. Imagine if Russia, China and India work together! That will be the end of American influence in Asia.
How the US orchestrated the coup
By early 2021, US media started writing negative articles about Hasina, and started calling her a “dictator and her government a “regime.” That world always means that the US is going to try a “regime change.” For more than two years, the US media has been demonizing PM Hasina, including the Time magazine putting her on the cover page. The propaganda was consistent, whining about “authoritarianism” or the need for “free and fair elections.”
In Dec 2021, Biden had a “Democracy Summit,” but refused to invite Hasina.
For the next two years, various US officials – including infamous Victoria Nuland – flew to Bangladesh and met with the opposition party. Donald Lu, who orchestrated the soft coup in Pakistan two years ago, also came to Bangladesh and met with the opposition leaders. The US ambassador to Bangladesh played a prominent role in the coup, and swiftly left the country a few days before the coup ended.
The US has been grooming college students in Bangladesh for years. Dhaka University gets a lot of funding from the US — especially the political science department, which is the hotbed of radicalism. Most professors there also have gotten their doctorates in the US, UK, or Canada. Thus, through money and ideology, these educators become the “useful idiots” for the American empire.
The NED also funds numerous NGOs in Bangladesh. All these people are brainwashed about democracy, freedom, transparency, justice etc., which they will not enjoy under the new regime either. The bright college students with leadership skills will get jobs with the NGOs, where they may earn a few hundred dollars a month – more than the media wage in the country. Thus, such kids will work very hard to spread the American ideals, recruit other students, and organize protests.
The truly talented students will get scholarships to study in the West. Take Yunus, the new leader of the interim government in Bangladesh. He got the Fulbright scholarship to study in the US back in the 1970s.
Yunus was such a perfect student that he went on to develop strong relations with Western elites such as Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates and Tony Blair. Yunus even got the Nobel Prize for peace and the Congressional Gold Medal, which is the highest civilian award of the United States.
In 2007, Yunus went to the US embassy in India and told the Americans that he was planning to run for office. In essence, he was seeking the blessing and help from the US. That patronage system eventually paid off this year, when just two days after Hasina was ousted, Yunus was made the leader of the interim government.
By the way, there is no country in the world where a bunch of students can simply riot and replace their leader. A regime change cannot be accomplished without the blessing of the police, military and media at the highest levels. And that requires enormous sophistication and vast sums of money, which are the forte of the US.
The color revolutions are the velvet gloves over the iron firsts of imperialism. If the US simply orchestrated a military coup – like it did during the Cold War era – there would be a lot of outcries from the rest of the world. Thus, training and radicalizing a few thousand students and using them to stage violent protests help camouflage the American subversion of the establishment institutions in the targeted country.
This is why Alan Weinstein, the founder of NED, confessed in an interview in 1991: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
Conclusion
The managers of the American Empire are on autopilot. The “blob” simply keeps moving forward according to the plans laid a long time ago. These self-appointed exceptionalists don’t have a reality feedback loop to comprehend that global domination is not possible or that a multipolar world is emerging.
Decades ago, they decided that they would expand NATO and conquer Russia. So, they keep doubling down on Ukraine and pushing the conflict towards a nuclear war. They dreamed of a Greater Israel and conquest of the Middle East about a century ago, so they will pursue that goal now regardless of the cost. They want to contain China, so they will do whatever it takes, even if it means antagonizing good friends like India. Thanks to American hubris, the possibility of an India-China-Russia alliance is growing every day.
The globalist blob will continue to be a clear and present danger to humanity, including the American people, until it is totally defeated. And that momentous occasion is not far away.
* Terrorist organisation banned in Russia
