A great game across prosaic Bay of Bengal

The Brahmatputra-Gangetic delta is not the Central Asia of the 19th Century, when rivalry between Great Britain and Tsarist Russia prompted Halford John Mackinder's Heartland thesis: that whichever country controlled East Europe controlled the Eurasian "heartland", the "world islands" of Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the Americas and Australian "outlying island". More popularly known as "the great game," the rivalry faded under 20th Century developments, which also disembowelled Mackinder's geo-strategic view. Yet, does the 21st Century posit a milder "great game" across the far more prosaic Bay of Bengal?

Bangladesh does not have any serious rivalry with any contending global powers. Yet,  since many  have been eyeing the Bay of Bengal/Indian Ocean, Bangladesh's opportunity to reap non-military harvests should not be lost. Our most significant post-1971 goal of infrastructural development should lead us to squeeze every Bay concession to a contending power for extra infrastructural mileage. Through this 10-part series (every Tuesday and Friday), how Bangladesh can successfully punch above its global weight is reduced to its infrastructural wherewithal, and thereby a foreign trade-off between the economic/technological cookies we seek from partners jostling with economic, military, social, or environmental agendas. How we navigate this web might not ultimately differ from how the motley Afghani groups prevented regional and European powers from prevailing in that "great game".

Whereas this article lays the playground and players, we will notice in the next 9 that many of the country's infrastructural needs lie at the interstices of dormant or emergent rivalries: China-Japan and China-India among the dormant, China-United States, India-Japan-the United States, and China-Russia-Pakistan axes in the emergent, energizing all sorts of spoilers in-between, such as Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and, if we take one false step, ourselves too. Littered with the spoiler, challenger, and leadership opportunities we face a full-time job ahead.

Given our meagre material and physical resources, our "great game" seeks no more than reputation enhancement: from a low middle-income entrant to a low high-income aspirant, with appropriate non-readymade garment (RMG) capabilities reflecting evaporating poverty. To rank among the top-25 in economic size is our due given our 200+ mid-21st Century population, but the climb from the 1971 "basket-case" starting-point, through the RMG revolution, only got us into the mid-30 ranking. How do we reach our target from where we are, might depend on who we play with, how we play them amid their rivalries, and what may keep us attractive enough over what will be a long-haul.

China is a current partner but not keen on building a blood-brother relationship; India must reluctantly build that blood-brother relationship now; Japan seeks a serious relationship somewhere between mere partnership and blood-brotherhood, while the United States, much like China, but for different reasons, needs to play the partnership card to stretch future mileage in whatever directions; both the European Union (EU) and western multilateral organizations also want to go beyond partnership, more through universal/multilateral principles, norms, behaviours, and values than self-promoting interests; and multinational corporations, swinging as they do between one-night stands and long-term commitments, sway commensurately with how open the national cookie-jar.

These classifications have been approximated from a number of recent developments and dynamics, much of which will be further spelled out in succeeding articles. In China's global game, for instance, we may be but a cog, but located too close to an emergent Chinese threat, India, for China to ignore. Though China is going out of its way to engage India economically, even their economic growth-rates predict future contestation. China cannot challenge India in the Brahmaputra-Ganges delta without adequate local footings (Pakistan alone is not sufficient). China is our partner over the Padma Bridge, Karnaphuli Tunnel, and telecommunications, but the Sonadia port stalemate paradoxically preserves a necessary power-balance.

Given its own desire to integrate the north-east with the mainland, India embarked upon highway projects with Southeast Asia, to both thwart China's regional policies and keep up with Japan. Courting Bangladesh through the Land Border Agreement, for example, was but a small price to pay for huge future returns from Southeast Asia if those highways can be weaved through Bangladesh into Kolkata and the Indian heartland. Against China's cordial Myanmar relations, which could easily provide China its much-cherished Indian Ocean window, India would be understandably irritated in a very unstable part of its union. We kept the playing-field even by allocating the Padma Bridge to China (since it also helped us swallow the pungent World Bank medicine), while renewing transport infrastructures (trucks, buses, automobiles), and concluding a string of coal-energy project with India. The next article (#2) addresses India.

Japan rekindled some ugly memories by becoming one of China's largest trading partner and investment source. The next article focuses on the land of the rising sun (#3), followed by another on its brewing rival, China (#4). On the brink of a demographic catastrophe, Japan's future safeguards against an awakened dragon prompted Shinto Abe's aggressive "Broader Asia" approach. His Dhaka visit, Matarbari deals on soft terms, and any other bilateral projects would fall within the ring-around-China range that "Broader Asia" seeks. Yet, since Japan contentiously changed its constitution to facilitate overseas militarily actions, if needed, and finding in the process, the United States directly hopping on board with India biding time, we need to draw the line somewhere before the economic turns militaristic.

That takes us to the United States (#5), the largest market in human history and the source of much of our own fortunes (export income, remittances, and, as evident in New York during September 2015, a growing inter-governmental link with where the United Nations, which desperately seeks leaders, like Bangladesh on multiple non-military fronts). Here, we confront a mysterious obstacle in power rivalry: the separation of governmental powers, obscuring many of the reasons why other countries either hate or love the United States. Our "hate" components stem from the GSP (generalized system of [trade] preferences) denial and reluctant U.S. acceptance of the 2013 election, while the several "love" counterparts (especially various principles) constantly struggle to find anchor. Engaging not just the chief executive but also legislators, as well as social and business groups, must be the multi-pronged U.S. entry-ticket, which our prime minister lavishly tapped during her September 2015 New York visit.

We will face more contentious issues with the United States, but the essence of blood-pressure management amid hard-talk keeps the door open, at least if the European Union case is any indicator. We have no choice with the EU, where 60% of our 2014-5 RMG export earnings emanated, but to get down to brass-tacks. Fortunately thus far, the cans of worms being opened here, like environmental protection, educational extensions, and transparency awareness, among others, fall into our areas of strength or need. The article on the EU (#6) takes us away from power-plays, while the next (#7) on Bretton Woods multilateralism alerts us to not let any ailing baby go down with the dirty bathwater.

Infrastructural diplomacy involves corporations. Article #8 elaborates our relations with them, leaving for the next two to collect, collate, and convey our constraints and possibilities, respectively. Bangladesh's rise as a global player arguably depends on this Bay rivalry and infrastructural development trade-off. We should not be worried if this "great game" is quashed the way Mackinder's was, since any glow as a global player would be outshone by the enabling condition of the country moving towards its more cherished goals of a high-income, mid-century developed country. Whether we get there or not depends directly upon our button-pushing skills right now.

The writer is Professor of International Relations, formerly in Universidad Iberoamerica, Mexico City.

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