John Kerry\'s Dhaka visit

M. Serajul Islam from Maryland, USA | Published: September 02, 2016 00:00:00 | Updated: September 01, 2016 21:38:07

Reports and analyses in the media about the just concluded 9-hour-long visit of the US Secretary of State John Kerry to Dhaka have been written and made largely without proper understanding of why John Kerry came on his trip to South Asia.
The reports and the analyses that wanted to favour the present government stated that there have been many positive takes for it out of the visit. These reports highlighted John Kerry's visit to the Bangabandhu Museum at Road No 32 (old), Dhanmandi as one positive take because it underlines the fact that the United States views him as a world leader. These reports also stated that John Kerry's positive tweet about the economy was a clear support for Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government.
The media reporters and analysts who followed Kerry's visit and wrote on it have apparently missed many more important issues. John Kerry is on the way out with the administration of President Barack Obama after the November 08 election. Therefore, he could not have come to Dhaka with any plan related to the politics of Bangladesh. In fact, given the nature of politics in the country, any sensible conclusion about the visit should have been that he did not come to Dhaka to prop either the Awami League (AL) or favour the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
John Kerry in fact visited Dhaka to pursue issues in Bangladesh that are connected to the other important reasons why he came to South Asia. In New Delhi, he with his colleague the Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker met their Indian counterparts in the second Strategic and Commercial Dialogue. Apart from the two US Secretaries, representatives of 12 US agencies have taken part in the Dialogue. The Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar is expected to visit Washington this week to continue the strategic dialogue.
In the evolving US-India strategic relations, Bangladesh has become important to both not for its domestic politics but becauseÂ Â of other issues, particularly, an initiative that the US and Japan have floated to contain China in the Bay of Bengal. It is called the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD) "under which the U.S.-Japan (offensive) alliance aims to involve Australia and India in the naval containment of expanding Chinese power. QSD is in essence NATO for the Pacific and Indian Ocean battle theatre."
Earlier, during his visit to Australia in 2011, President Obama and then Australian Prime Minister JuliaÂ Gillard had discussed the important issue of security in the Pacific and in that context, the 'expansionist' policies of China was identified as the main threat to US-Australian interests in the Pacific.
John Kerry came to Dhaka primarily to pursue the security interests of the US, India and perhaps those of Japan and Australia against Chinese 'intrusion' into the waters of the Bay of Bengal.
The United States and India have lately been worried about recent Chinese overtures to Bangladesh. There has been a flurry of important visits from China to Bangladesh that included that of the Chinese Defence Minister. And now the Chinese President Xi Jinping will be visiting Dhaka in October.
In fact, before visiting Dhaka, Secretary Kerry had spoken of the need for encouraging Bangladesh not to allow China any presence in the Bay of Bengal. There was also fear in New Delhi that Bangladesh, following PM Hasina's visit to Beijing in 2014, would allow China to construct the Sonadia deep sea port and tie a strategic "string of pearl" around India's neck having helped construct a deep sea port in Gwadar in Baluchistan and two such ports in Sri Lanka. That fear had disappeared after New Delhi talked with Dhaka but has reappeared again with the new top-level Chinese visits to Bangladesh.
Hence, John Kerry came to Dhaka with the mission to contain China's strategic presence in the Bay of Bengal, an issue in which it is on the same page as India. Bangladesh has thus emerged as an important country in the strategic plan of these two powers with Japan and Australia. In fact, India's interest to contain China in the Bay of Bengal has meanwhile enhanced with some of the old and dormant secession movements in the Seven Sisters once again showing signs of re-emerging.
John Kerry visited Dhaka to also impress upon the Bangladesh government about US's ideas about the global fight against terrorism that it shares with India like the way it shares with it, its concerns on Chinese strategic presence in the Bay of Bengal. John Kerry reiterated once again that the recent acts of terrorism in Bangladesh have links to ISIS or inspiration from ISIS, a claim that the Bangladesh government had earlier contested and dismissed. In this context, John Kerry had advised the Bangladesh government a few months earlier that the way to stop ISIS from gaining a foothold in the country would be to restore democratic space in the country.
John Kerry thus visited Dhaka to primarily further US's security interests that are fundamentally the same as those of India. Therefore, he did not pursue the issue of lack of democratic space while he met the Bangladesh Prime Minister notwithstanding his earlier interest in this issue. He nevertheless listened to the BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia raise the issue; its relation to the need for fresh elections and the rise of ISIS-influenced terrorism in the country. John Kerry listened to the BNP leader but chose not to respond. He, however, favoured the BNP at least in one way. The BNP leader is no longer the leader of the opposition. The meeting of John Kerry with the BNP leader was arranged by setting protocol aside.
The writer is a former Ambassador.
ambserajulislam@gmail.com