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Bangladesh and the Changing Global Rivalry: An Inside-out Appraisal

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South Asia in Global Power Rivalry

Part of the book series: Global Political Transitions ((GLPOTR))

Abstract

Are Asian “powers” punching above their weight in global power rivalry? This chapter assesses South Asia-related Chinese and Indian activities within the context of waning U.S. interests and influence. Using a concentric-circle interest appraisal, with Bangladesh representing the “innermost” location, the volume assesses Chinese, Indian, and Myanmarese dynamics at the “mid-stream” level, with both the United States and Latin America serving in the “outermost” arena. It interprets Bangladesh’s “sine qua non” Indian relations, China’s historical Bengal “footprints,” Rohingya refugee influx, South Asian Belt Road “encirclement,” Bangladesh-China gender ready-made garments impacts, as well as comparative Chinese-Indian-U.S. and Asian-Latin relations through various international relations theories. Among the findings: largely liberalist explanations do better than realist or mixed alternatives, with China accenting the liberalist, India the realist; China is found with global hegemonic instruments and mindset; and how Bangladesh’s “outward” orientation contrasts with the “inward” U.S. counterpart portrays the latter’s backseat, indirect role.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Gary J. Bass, The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide (New York, NY: Vintage, 2014); B.Z. Khasru, Myths and Facts: Bangladesh Liberation Wars: How India, US, China and the USSR Shaped the Outcome (Kolkata: Rupa, 2010); and Richard Sisson, War and Secession: Pakistan, India, and the Creation of Bangladesh (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991).

  2. 2.

    Nicolas Griffin, Ping-pong Diplomacy: Secrets Behind the Game That Changed the World (New York, NY: Skyhorse Publishing, 2015); and Wu XuewenWang Junyan, The Outstanding Diplomat: Zhou Enlai: Ping-pong Diplomacy and China-U.S. and China-Japan Relations (Beijing: Communist Party of China Press, 2013).

  3. 3.

    Antara Datta, Refugees and Borders in South Asia: The Great Exodus of 1971 (London: Routledge, 2012).

  4. 4.

    Rehman Sobhan, “Food Politics and Famine in Bangladesh,” Working Paper, Development Research and Action Programme (DERAP), Chr. Michelson Institute, 1979.

  5. 5.

    Thomas W. Wolfe, The SALT Experience (Pensacola, FL: Ballinger Co., 1979).

  6. 6.

    Allan Kronstadt, Pakistan-U.S. Relations (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service, 2012).

  7. 7.

    Pran Chopra, Before and After the Indo-Soviet Treaty (New Delhi: S. Chand & Co., 1971).

  8. 8.

    Wenxian Jhang, Ilan Alon, & Christoph Lattman, eds., China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Changing the Rules of Globalization (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

  9. 9.

    Atul Sharma, and Saswati Choudhury, eds., Mainstreaming the Northeast in India’s Look and Act East Policy (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

  10. 10.

    Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Menlo Park, CA: Addison-Wesley, 1979).

  11. 11.

    Ankit Panda, “Pompeo’s Indo-Pacific speech: Geoeconomics on a shoestring,” The Diplomat, July 31, 2018, from: https://thediplomat.com/2018/07/pompeos-indo-pacific-speech-geoeconomics-on-a-shoestring/, last consulted August 29, 2018.

  12. 12.

    Thomas S. Wilkins, “Japan’s alliance diversification: A comparative analysis of the Indian and Australian strategic partnerships,” International Relations of the Pacific 11, no. 1 (January 2011): 115–55.

  13. 13.

    Tom Paine, “Criticism of China by Malaysia’s Mahathir resonates around East Asia, and with Beijing,” South China Morning Post, August 28, 2018, from: https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/asia/article/2161487/criticism-china-malaysias-mahathir-resonates-around, last consulted August 29, 2018.

  14. 14.

    Term popularized by Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (Washington, DC: Public Affairs, 2005).

  15. 15.

    “‘Accord’ of Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh” is the grouping created by European ready-made garments (RMG) importers after the 2013 Rana Plaza incident, while “‘Alliance’ for Bangladesh Workers’ Safety” is its U.S. counterpart, established at the roughly the same time, with both seeking RMG factory and labor reforms in Bangladesh.

  16. 16.

    Action Aid, Three Years Post Rana Plaza: Changes in the RMG Sector, A Preliminary Report (Dhaka: April 2016).

  17. 17.

    From index mundi: https://www.indexmundi.com/factbook/compare/china.india/demographics, last consulted August 29, 2018.

  18. 18.

    Jim O’Neill, “How the ‘next 11’ countries could power the world economy,” Barron’s, April 28, 2018, from: https://www.barrons.com/articles/how-the-next-11-countries-could-power-the-world-economy-1524873600, last consulted September 9, 2018; and Reem Heakal, “What is an emerging market economy?” Investopedia, August 17, 2017, from: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/03/073003.asp (last consulted September, 2018).

  19. 19.

    Keeping the Chinese practice, the last name is placed before the first throughout the volume.

  20. 20.

    Tahmima Anam, “Under the shadow of terrorism in Dhaka,” The New York Times, August 9, 2017, from: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/09/opinion/under-the-shadow-of-terrorism-in-dhaka.html, last consulted August 29, 2015.

  21. 21.

    Ibrahim Hossain Ovi, “Policy reforms must to encourage new investment,” Dhaka Tribune, June 18, 2017, from: https://www.dhakatribune.com/tribune-supplements/business-tribune/2017/06/18/policy-reforms-must-encourage-new-investment, last consulted August 29, 2018.

  22. 22.

    From Larisa Zabrovskaia, “The character of Japan-China relations since the earthquake of 2011,” Acta Asiatica Varsovienca, no 26 (2013) from: http://www.iksiopan.pl/images/czasopisma/aav/aav26.pdf (last consulted March 26, 2019).

  23. 23.

    So as not to mix names of theories with common terms, they will all be italicized in the volume.

  24. 24.

    Waltz, op. cit.

  25. 25.

    Han J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948).

  26. 26.

    Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2012); and Ted Hopf, Social Interpretation of International Politics: Identities and Foreign Policies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002).

  27. 27.

    Barry Buzan, An Introduction to the English School of International Relations: The Societal Approach (London: Polity, 2014).

  28. 28.

    Catherine Twomey Fosnot, ed., Constructivism: Theory, Perspective, Practice (Teacher’s College Press, 2005); and Hopf, “The promise of constructivism in International Relations theory,” International Security 23, no. 1 (Summer 1998): 171–200.

  29. 29.

    Stephen Brooks, “Dueling realisms,” International Organization 51, no. 3 (Summer 1997): 445–77. Pitching the offensive version is John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York, NY: Norton, 2001), while the defensive argument is forwarded by Tang Shiping, A Theory of Security Strategy for our Time (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); and ———, “The security dilemma: A conceptual analysis,” Security Studies 18, no. 3 (October 2009): 587–623.

  30. 30.

    Shiping dubbed China’s entry into global political rivalry as representing offensive realism, but he posits, over the past decade, that there seems to be a shift toward the defensive. See Tang Shiping, “From offensive to defensive: A social evolutionary interpretation of China’s security strategy,” China’s Ascent: Power, Security, and the Future of International Politics, eds. Robert Ross and Zhu Feng (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), ch. 6.

  31. 31.

    Vivek Chadha, “Low intensity conflict in India: An analysis,” Strategic Analyses 29, no. 2 (April 2005): online, from: https://idsa.in/strategicanalysis/VivekChadhaLowIntensityConflictsinIndiaAnAnalysis_skjha_0405, last consulted August 30, 2018. Journal published by the Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses, India.

  32. 32.

    Maninder Dabas, “Here is all you need to know about ‘Strings of Pearls,’ China’s policy to encircle India,” June 23, 2017, from: https://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/here-is-all-you-should-know-about-string-of-pearls-china-s-policy-to-encircle-india-324315.html, last consulted August 30, 2018.

  33. 33.

    Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays (Bel Air, CA: FQ Classics, 2007).

  34. 34.

    John Locke, Second Treatise of Government (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1980).

  35. 35.

    Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, with Selected Variants from the Latin edition of 1688 (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1994).

  36. 36.

    Stephen D. Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982).

  37. 37.

    Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston, MA: Little Brown, 1977).

  38. 38.

    David Mitrany, A Working Peace System (Quadrangle Books, 1943).

  39. 39.

    Ernst B. Haas, Uniting for Europe: Social, Political, Social and Economic Forces, 1950–1957 (Terre Haute, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1958).

  40. 40.

    Jeremy Rifkin, The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World (New York, NY: St. Martin’s, 2013); and ———, The Zero Marginal Society: The Internet of Things, Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 2015).

  41. 41.

    James Barrat, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era (New York, NY: St. Martin’s, 2015).

  42. 42.

    For more on this point, see Joseph S. Nye, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York, NY: Public Affairs Publishers, 2005).

  43. 43.

    Charles P. Kindleberger, World in Depression, 1929–1939 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1973), 291–308.

  44. 44.

    Stephen D. Krasner, “State power and the structure of international trade,” World Politics 28, no. 3 (April 1976): 317–47.

  45. 45.

    Robert Gilpin, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation: The Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1975).

  46. 46.

    Joanne Gowa, “Rational hegemons, excludable goods and small groups: An epitaph for hegemonic stability theory?” World Politics 41, no. 3 (April 1989): 307–24. Also see Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984).

  47. 47.

    Isabelle Grunberg, “Exploring the ‘myth’ of global hegemony,” International Organization 44, no. 4 (Autumn 1990): 431–77.

  48. 48.

    James N. Rosenau, Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Exploring Governance in a Turbulent World (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

  49. 49.

    Robert Gilpin, U.S. Power and the Multinational Corporation (New York, NY: Basic Books, 1975), ch. 1.

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  1. Independent University of Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh

    Imtiaz Hussain

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Hussain, I. (2019). Bangladesh and the Changing Global Rivalry: An Inside-out Appraisal. In: Hussain, I. (eds) South Asia in Global Power Rivalry. Global Political Transitions. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7240-7_1

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