As a partner of Bangladesh's growth, the United States is both necessary and sufficient. It is the largest market in human history, so our access is pivotal to our growth and catalytic to our climb if the stated goal of $50 billion worth of RMG exports by our fiftieth birthday (2021) is to ring true. We also share a neo-liberal embrace, in many ways the tip of a vast value iceberg between the two countries: democracy is a part of it, no matter how defined or measured; so too the preference for moderate Islam over the radical; converging peacekeeping interests, over which, in fact, we take the veteran leader's role against the U.S. neophyte; and, of course, cooperation of all sorts, from education and human rights to security.
From a hostile start 44 years ago, bilateral relations have blossomed, without necessarily concealing dissimilarities or incompatibilities. How to force unity from disparate positions remains a work in progress. Our diverging labour rights positions, for example, illustrate how a mutually acceptable transformation time-table is more difficult to achieve than discuss: a social context impinges upon necessary labour reforms (to determine wage-levels, build associations, and cultivate appropriate ILO-based freedoms) far more directly and comprehensively than it did the United States at any time in its own economic transformation. That social context consists of significant poverty, a protruding patrimonial structure, male domination, and hostility towards unions. It is not only far different from the U.S. social context, but also impossible to replicate overnight in a relationship that carries more inter-governmental anchors than non-governmental or transnational, and thereby seeks short-term solutions over long-haul transformations.
When our democracy interpretations diverged in 2013-4, for example, neither side invoked the historical view, which elevates inherent propensities over meaningless yardstick measurements. Modifying what democracy means for Bangladesh against a credible security overhang is the kind of a temporary retreat from democracy meant to strengthen it. This practice does not differ at all from U.S. departures from its own democratic ideals that also ended up enhancing democracy, as evident in its 1860s Civil War, culmination of the women's suffragette movement in the 1920s, and the 1965 Voting Rights Act to cap the Civil Rights Movement. Given our common interests and what is at stake, resorting to broader interpretive lenses in cases could produce the modus operandi and mutually beneficial outcomes in our bilateral relationship over the long-haul.
Identifying and de-escalating concurrent areas of disagreements must distinguish between the "tactics" being pursued (instruments) and the "strategic" interests (intentions). Whereas the former involves ad-hoc measures, typically for short-term dispensation, the latter gravitates towards shared values, of which free-market liberalism, democratic rights, and security harmony presently dominate. Properly handled, they defuse tension, preserve unity, and elevate hopes.
Nowhere else, in fact, can we currently profit more in such a trade-off than by restoring the general system (of trade) preferences (GSP): if not Barrack Obama, a long list of Republican legislators waits in line to halt any concessions, not necessarily targeting Bangladesh, but a president they have been uncomfortable with. Since we have to weave through the firing-lines, a quid pro approach might serve us better than any sine qua non alternative. Our middle-income priorities include depoliticising labour while ingraining universal labour laws; revitalising dispute settlement that our own lawyers have been sceptical about; pushing transparency until it becomes irreversible; and tackling corruption, the gargantuan beast that every citizen, from a rickshaw-walla to an entrepreneur, confronts with every step to shove under the carpet. That the policy-making "buck" does not necessarily stop at the Oval Office alerts us to work with a traditionally more reluctant foreign policy partner, the Congress, but presenting any meaningful pathway from GSP-denial to its restoration should clinch the deal for us.
Dividends would follow instantly: on his next visit, U.S. Assistant Trade Representative for South and Central Asia, Michael Delaney or his successor, should be left with no choice but to wave the green GSP signal. Ambassador Marcia Bernicat would be able to afford a wider smile, and our own Commerce Minister Tofail Ahmed's sine qua non TICFA (Trade and Investment Cooperation Forum Agreement) stance would dissolve against the new-found incentives. Since TICFA belongs to the "strategic" list, alongside security dialogues and a wide variety of both inter-governmental and non-governmental parleys, disrupting them in a globalising world bottlenecks our expansive imperative and discourages transactional interests of likely traders, investors, and other countries. Irreversibly reforming the entire 16-point GSP agenda gives our exporters more time and relief (the argument that because RMG sales expanded 4.7 per cent during the GSP suspension sends the wrong message to the wrong players at the wrong time: many countries subconsciously follow U.S. positions, so the GSP damage could reverberate beyond the Atlantic, if not during the 4-5 year duration of concluded RMG contracts, then clearly in 10 or 15 years). It also puts us behind the steering wheel of bilateral relations: we would be able to shift attention to our pet areas rather than those of others, deepen existing engagements, instead diverting attention/resources to the issues others raise at to the table, and cultivate a dialogue rather than defection, knowing that no bridge would ever be too far to cross.
These are consistent with the long-list of other uplifting and progressive areas of infrastructure-construction and bilateral cooperation: as an ancient partner, the U.S. Agency of International Development just disbursed $22 million of loans guarantees to manufacturers to install safety measures (notice how the labour-related infrastructure benefits); the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) protects U.S. corporations operating here (the domestic business infrastructure is strengthened), and exposes an opportunity for third-ranked U.S. investors in Bangladesh to overtake top-tiered and second-placed British and Australian investment (helping the domestic corporate infrastructure to build external bridges); and the U.S. Export-Import Bank (EXIP) supports U.S. exporters to Bangladesh by up to almost $250 million (fortifying, again, foreign investment infrastructures, both domestically and within the external context). Tapping such economic infrastructure-boosting measures is impossible when political tensions thwart foundational institution-creation.
Like the 1986 U.S.-Bangladesh Bilateral Investment Treaty has survived, with modifications, for over a generation, contributing as it did to an infrastructural underbelly, it now shares attention with other mutually-engaging higher-end infrastructural efforts. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina did not co-chair a peacekeeping conference on September 28, 2015 that simply dropped from the sky; it was, instead, a follow-up to the Hasina-Joe Biden co-chairpersonship of the same initiative last year. Similarly, the prime minister's Champions of the Earth and ITU (International Telecommunication Union) awards were not just about our recent environment and ICT accomplishments, but examples of long-lasting infrastructural cooperation moving into higher-gear between the two countries already feeling the pangs of climate change.
From economic infrastructural discussions, we must shift in the next article to non-economic arenas, and to the European Union, where the human context overrides the material. The predominantly inter-governmental superstructure of Bangladesh-U.S. relations can profit by adding more of a human measure to statistical considerations (like the GSP 16-point).
The writer is Professor of International Relations, formerly in Universidad Iberoamerica, Mexico City.
 inv198@hotmail.com
Distingusihing strategic from tactical goals with the United States
writes Imtiaz A. Hussain in the fifth of a ten-part write-up on \'Infrastructure-building and diplomacy\' | Published: October 20, 2015 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2024 06:01:00
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