The last three years of U.S. foreign policy in South Asia have not been very favorable, with three revolutions and three major partner leaders fleeing to save their lives from Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, and now Bangladesh. Less than a year after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled to the UAE in August 2021, Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, too, narrowly escaped protesters demanding democratic reforms, accountability for national funds, and massive socio-economic reforms. 

Now Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s fifteen-year reign ended on August 5, 2024; she fled to New Delhi, meeting with Indian national security advisor Ajit Doval on arrival. The State Department was cautiously balancing the bilateral relationship despite Hasina’s record of arresting opposition leaders, torturing dissidents, holding fraudulent elections, and mismanaging funds to support her party, the Awami League (AW). Earlier this year, Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu visited Bangladesh and called for free and fair elections, an increased economic partnership, and an overall “reset” in U.S.-Bangladesh relations by exploring tangible ways to integrate the country into the U.S. Indo-Pacific policy. 

But now, amid the “Bangla-Spring” revolution, the key questions are: As an interim caretaker government takes shape with Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus at the helm, what are the challenges to U.S. geopolitical interests? More importantly, how will the new Bangladesh impact the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy? 

A Glance at U.S.-Bangladesh Relations

This Spring, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary Afreen Akhter commented that Bangladesh is an important strategic partner and the ongoing Annual Partnership Dialogue is a crucial platform for advancing Washington-Dhaka relations. At the time, she wasn’t thinking beyond key bilateral policy priorities. Bangladesh’s stability and economic prosperity are essential for economic, military, humanitarian, climate, and security policy priorities as a geostrategic partner. In response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the U.S. coordinates with India, UAE, and Saudi Arabia to create one of the largest interconnected commercial corridors from South Asia through the Middle East to Europe. Washington is investing in Bangladesh’s role in energy and trade, countering terrorism and peacebuilding operations, and is actively involved in Indo-Pacific operations. 

Since the former East Pakistan gained independence in 1971 with a brutal loss of over two hundred thousand lives, the United States has aggressively sought to befriend Bangladesh to decouple its ties with the USSR, minimize the spread of communism, deflate Stalinist and Maoist political groups, prevent an alliance with China, and cultivate a relationship that emphasizes development, trade, military, and educational investments. Nestled between India and Myanmar, with China’s borders only 1,100 miles away, Senator Ted Kennedy and President Gerald Ford pressed for the United States to maintain close ties with Bangladeshi civilian and military leaders. During the past fifty years of military coups and assassinations in Bangladesh, the United States stayed the course with military leaders Khandaker Mushtaque Ahmed, Ziaur Rahman—who was hosted at the White House by Jimmy Carter—Hussain Muhammad Ershad, Abu Saleh Nasim, and Moeen U. Ahmed, to name a few. 

Khaleda Zia (in power 1991–1996; 2001–2006), the widow of former military strongman Ziaur Rahman and leader of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), increased U.S. ties by broadening trade and military exercises. She hosted Bill Clinton, the first U.S. president to visit Bangladesh. Unfortunately, in 2007, she was overthrown in a bloodless coup and later imprisoned by Hasina’s government for seventeen years for corruption, sedition, and misusing charity organizations. The State Department country report stated that these charges lacked evidence and it was a political ploy to remove Zia from the electoral process. 

Since the Obama administration, the United States has annually partnered in these areas: the Global Climate Change Initiative, the Global Health Initiative, and USAID’s programs on Feed the Future’s food insecurity projects to increase crop yields. Other USAID programs include promoting health and education, skills training for women and youth, empowering women with entrepreneurial training, and cultural and educational exchanges. The State Department has worked closely with the Bangladeshi government on international narcotics control and law enforcement, human rights, worker’s rights, supporting Myanmar Rohingya refugees, nonproliferation, anti-terrorism, and increasing controls over the financing of terrorist groups.

In 2013, the U.S. and Bangladesh signed a Trade and Investment Cooperation Forum Agreement (TIFCA) to focus on bilateral trade and investment relationships and to ascertain challenging areas. According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (OTR), the U.S. goods exports to Bangladesh in 2023 were $2.3 billion, with imports at $8.3 billion. Bangladesh’s U.S. foreign direct investment (FDI) was $575 million in 2022. Bangladesh has had a steady GDP growth in the past two decades. After China, Bangladesh is the world’s second-largest exporter of ready-made garments, with a value of $42 billion in 2022, accounting for 80 percent of the country’s exports. For the past five years, Americans have been interested in developing trade and investments in the natural gas reserves based in the Bay of Bengal off Bangladesh’s coastline.

The U.S.-Bangladesh Dialogue regularly addresses a broad spectrum of issues, including security cooperation, governance, corruption, development, trade, and investment cooperation. The U.S. Counterterrorism Partnership Fund, established in 2016, has provided security assistance funding to allies fighting terrorism, and Bangladesh is a prime recipient. 

Making Sense of India’s Loss of Influence

India was an important ally during Bangladesh’s independence war as it supplied arms, training, soldiers, intelligence, and funding, and it was India’s commander, General J. S. Aurora, who was at the table when Pakistan’s General Niazi officially surrendered on December 16, 1971. Since then, India’s intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), has had a considerable influence in developing and expanding Bangladesh’s military, intelligence, and politics, managing domestic civil unrest and economic growth. In return, India championed global markets for the country. Both countries shared strong diplomatic, military, and trade relations with India’s keen desire to ensure that the neighbor would be a partner in regional and international affairs. India viewed any shifts in Bangladesh’s efforts to reconcile with Pakistan in trade or establish itself along the lines of an Islamic republic as a threat to India. Within Bangladesh, Modi’s BJP party was viewed as advancing a supremacist Hindutva ideology at the expense of Muslims and minorities, which did not sit well with massive anti-Modi protests. 

Both prime ministers, Zia and Hasina, historically cooperated with India to squash rebel groups in India’s northeastern state of Assam and were vigilant against any Myanmar junta’s border transgressions. Despite massive anti-Modi sentiments, Hasina built railways, highways, and infrastructure between India and Bangladesh and recently turned down a Chinese river development project for an Indian Adani Group $1.7 billion coal power plant. 

When Bangladesh set up the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) in 2009, supported by the United States, the tribunal tried and hung individuals accused of human rights abuses during the war of independence. It was Hasina’s Awami League’s way of purging the opposition Islamist party, Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), the largest Islamist political party in the country and ally of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Hasina used the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite unit of Bangladeshi security forces, for extrajudicial killings and kidnappings of opposition parties. 

The combination of structural inequality, food shortages, lack of employment opportunities, privileges for a nepotistic quota system, decades of bias against non-Awami League members, and the brutal fierce crackdown against students contributed to the tipping point of Hasina’s downfall. Hasina’s Awami League’s student wing, the Chhatra League, was heavily involved as informants in hunting down protester leaders for the security forces. With the “Bangla Spring” in full swing, the rage continues against senior AL politicians and institutions that are viewed as regime enablers, such as the police, journalists, bankers, political appointees, and apologist professors in universities. The anger against India is unprecedented, given the historical bilateral ties. 

However, because India is viewed as the unconditional patron behind Hasina’s authoritarian rule, there are genuine anti-India sentiments and, by default, anti-Americanism. The key organizers of the student protests, known as The Anti-Discrimination Student Movement, issued a nine-point plan calling for a total non-cooperation movement until their demands are met. Protesters continue to destroy any statues and murals of the founder, Mujibur Rahman, his daughter, Sheikh Hasina, and other key members of the party from public spaces. India’s loss of influence in Bangladesh means that they are unable to maneuver the interim government’s rebuilding process or reengineer the anti-Indian sentiments. The United States will need to re-design a bilateral relationship with the Bangla-Spring culture and movement in mind. 

Implications for the Indo-Pacific Strategy

When Obama’s National Security Council established India as a strategic defense partner, it envisioned India as a long-term global partner within the U.S. grand strategy in Asia and in the Pacific region. The Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region was a clear signal to China that both the U.S. and India were on the offensive in the Asia-Pacific. 

The Biden Doctrine is centered on advancing the Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) with Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QSD) members Japan, India, Australia, and the United States. The agenda is to foster greater cooperation in maritime, security, economic, and health issues. The IPS will counter, limit, and mitigate China and Russian geopolitical, commercial, and technology transfer to its allies and Western adversaries. Integral to the Biden doctrine is to assert that free market democratic systems based on various freedoms, including individual liberty, are necessary in the global system as opposed to authoritarian governance systems.