Japan, the \\\'Asian NATO\\\', in the Bay

Bangladesh and Japan have enjoyed better than cordial relations from the very start: when China and the United States took the side of Pakistan during our war of independence, Japan avoided the fray, permitting relations to flower after 1971. From that angle, Shinzo Abe's September 2014 visit was as much a logical step as it was a concerted drive to upgrade those relations. Why suddenly?

The explicit answer has much to do with China's dramatic rattling of the superpower pecking order, which adopted a serious anti-Japan undertone following Abe's December 2013 Yasukuni Shrine visit ("to pay respect to the [World War II] dead," he explained). While South Korea and Taiwan were also offended by that ultra-nationalistic action, Abe's Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD) sought bilateral Asian defence agreements along China's perimeter with Australia, India, and the United States from 2007. Abe hoped to extend partnership to Indonesia, the Philippines, South Korea, and Vietnam as well. China calls it the "Asian NATO," but behind the "stick" surfacing along Bay of Bengal shores, the plentiful "carrots" interest us more.

Abe's "Broader Asia" policy approach hopes to align with democracy-subscribing Asian countries against a communist giant (inheriting a successful Cold War formula), while the "no sacred cow" liberalisation flank behind Abenomics (the other flanks being straight-forward monetary easing and fiscal; stimuli), meshes with the U.S. Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that not only intrudes upon China's southern and eastern perimeter, but also excludes China.

To make all of these functional, Abe has formally apologised to many Southeast Asian countries that Japan either invaded or threatened up to World War II (a first-timer in Japan), and pursued a string of juicy economic agreements and long-term assistance. Bangladesh fitted in nicely, not from wartime memories, but by claiming democracy, hugging India, bridging Southeast Asia, and, at a time of economic renewal amid the demographic time-bomb, expanding investment opportunities.

Of course, pushing the China-alert argument too far would be imprudent. In 2012, for example, both China and Japan traded almost a trillion-dollar worth of goods and services, with China still the largest Japanese export market and destination of 11 per cent of its foreign investment (or 7.0 per cent of China's total inflows). The acerbic 2012 Senkaku/Diaoyo island conflagration in the East China Sea sharply reduced Japanese investment in China owing to violent anti-Japanese protests, while Chinese tourists also avoided Japan, where they were the biggest spenders. Recovery on both fronts suggests no immediate battle-cry between the two for now.

Japan has also publicly stated its Bay of Bengal engagements which are also not China-baiting nor even a scramble with China for infrastructural jackpots. Yet, Matarbari was a twin-sided project of which Japan will pay $3.7 billion, operating through Shumitomo Corporation and Marubeni (the controversial corporation was awarded the Bibiyana, Haripur, and Bheramara power projects, worth a total of 1,200 MW amid complaints of governmental favouritism, but this was before it was penalised by the U.S. government for bribery earlier this year).

JICA (Japanese International Cooperation Agency) will take up the funding for the 1,200-MW project, alongside building Bangladesh's first sea-port (Chittagong, Mongla, and Khulna are all river-ports), mostly to absorb imported coal from Japan's QSD partners in Asia. Though it has been blown up as a direct challenge to any Chinese sea-port built in Sonadia some 25 km away (in the same collection of islands off Cox's Bazar), China has held back from commitment. Japan's Sonadia interest dates back to 2006, when Pacific Consultant International undertook a feasibility study, while China first floated its interest in 2012. Again, no casus belli; but obviously climate change or El Niño has not alone raised Bay temperatures this year.

More to Japan's credit, JICA has signed up to create Dhaka's first mass rapid transit-way (MRT) by 2019. This is only the first of three phases involving the construction of 20.1 km of a metro-line worth $2.8 billion, ironically, with the Delhi Metro organisation as a consultant.

With both Japan and India tip-toeing across Bangladesh with huge infrastructural inducements, crystallising our positions helps. First, we need those infrastructure facilities desperately. Second, both Indian and Japanese enthusiasm may easily lose their glow, the former, for example, by any sudden change of government in Dhaka, the latter by failing to find signs of future dividends, and both by rising social costs within Bangladesh, unless we get so carried away as to not have pre-emptive plans. Third, widening our export markets, to Japan, particularly, would be most consistent, plausible, and exploratory, making Japan's Bangladeshi investments more meaningful. Finally, accenting India and Japan keeps our Chinese interest balanced without losing sight of the larger market awaiting us in China, or China's pregnant interest to opening up other energy-plants and sea-ports for us. Japan's security-driven "Broader Asia" should become our economic playground. Since many contending countries can help us with solar energy (China, the European Union, India, Japan, and the United States), our "Broader Asia" interpretation should, like Japan's, keep pathways leading out of Asia.

Do we have ample political and economic hats to rotate? The answer might be influenced by more endogenous vectors than exogenous, another reason why opportunity, like Hollywood's immortalised postman, may not knock twice.

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

 [email protected]