Arguments for a New Geopolitical Order

Europe & Asia

COVID-19 has claimed more than 3.81 million lives and infected over 176 million people. It has decimated rich and poor economies alike. Different countries, however, have adopted widely different policies in response to the crisis. The divergence between Asia and Europe is a case in point. As the UK prepares to leave the European Union, it will remain a key player in the global community. Post-Brexit Britain will likely have particular relevance to the subcontinent through post-colonial ties such as the Commonwealth of Nations.The UK holds a respected position in the educational and cultural sectors. It has extensive networks with policymakers and other decision-makers worldwide, including in Bangladesh, where many elites were educated in the UK. As a result, Britain commands considerable influence in Bangladesh. Due to colonial connections, many Bangladeshi expatriates also live in the UK. They send huge remittances and contribute significantly to the Bangladeshi economy. This affords the UK a significant bargaining chip, but also allows the Bangladeshi diaspora to influence the Anglo-Bangladeshi relationship. Trade between both countries is also a vital factor. Bangladesh is a major export partner of the UK. Continued good relations are therefore important for both countries. Russia occupies an unusual position on the global stage. Under President Vladimir Putin, Moscow has repeatedly demonstrated that it has the capacity to affect the international order. Russia has historically had good relations with Bangladesh, going back to the 1971 Liberation War. Bangladesh and Russia maintain fruiƞul relations at the highest levels. Talks between the foreign ministers of the two nations at United Nations General Assembly meetings and at other global fora are routine. The two countries share close political, military, economic, and cultural relations. Both regions are undoubtedly facing serious economic hardship. Policymakers must consider how to define emergency measures into more viable programs. Their paths may not be the same, but their objectives – protecting lives and livelihoods, especially those of the most unsafe – should be.

South Asia & Bangladesh

As a fast-progressing economy, Bangladesh is in desperate demand of financing, while India and China see investment in Bangladesh as a way to expand their influence.

Bangladesh has seized this opportunity to use both China and India to fill its FDI deficit. However, far-sighted observers worry about the ‘Chinese Debt Trap’ and India’s ‘Big Brother’ aƫtude. There is also the security dimension of these relationships to consider. Bangladesh is ringed by India on three sides, and their 4096-kilometer border is the fiŌh-longest on the planet. The Bay of Bengal to the south is watched over by the comparatively powerful Indian Navy. Truth be told, the official claim that India and Bangladeshi share a ‘special relationship,’ with India as Bangladesh’s natural ally, is now becoming a matter of mockery. Conventional wisdom says that great power rivalry makes smaller neighbors vulnerable. As Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said recently, quoting a Swahili proverb, “When elephants fight, the grass suffers, but when they make love, the grass suffers also.” Nonetheless, this saying seems inappropriate in the case of the Sino-Indian tug-of-war for regional preeminence over Bangladesh. Rather than losing, the small-scale South Asian country is gaining favors. Indo-US, Indo-Saudi or Indo-Israel projects, or even the love affair between India and the Burmese military junta are not going overlooked by Bangladesh. Out of Burma’s neighbors, Bangladesh suffers the most from the ongoing Rohingya crisis. Like the CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) and NRC, most Bangladeshis still view Indo-Kashmir, Indo-Ladakh, or even Indo-Doklam tussles as purely Indian internal affairs. The underlying vulnerabilities of marginalized communities have been exacerbated by the pandemic. This especially applies to the Rohingya, who are in the grip of one of their worst collective crises as a people. The first COVID-19 cases in Cox’s Bazaar last June generated concern that the disease would spread like wildfire in the squalor of the camps where social distancing measures seemed practically unenforceable. Fortunately, the disease has so far been contained at manageable levels thanks to proactive testing. The 2017 crackdown on Rakhine Rohingyas by the Burmese military (Tatmadaw) drove over 600,000 refugees into Bangladesh. Both Western and Muslim nations censured Aung San Suu Kyi’s administration, however, India and China supported Burma. Both have high geostrategic stakes in Burma as they seek to establish themselves as global powers. However, China and India’s methodologies are fundamentally different. In an interview, Indian Ambassador Vikram Misri said India’s program for the advancement of Burma is quite the same as “others,” meaning China. “India wants to create public assets in Myanmar and handover to local authorities. We finance a project like Kaladan mostly by grants and some concessional financing, but we ensure that these never become a burden.”⁶ The Rohingya have been subjected to persecution, discrimination, and torture for decades. In 2017, almost a million of them had to leave their homeland because of gross human-rights abuses, and Bangladesh welcomed them. Nevertheless, three years later, the Rohingya are still suffering, still unable to speak up for their rights, and still marginalized.

Middle Eastern Countries

It seems that Middle Eastern countries are oŌen forgotten in this kind of geopolitical debate. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Arab States facilitated 23 million migrant laborers, with 9 million (39 percent) women migrant laborers in 2017. The main part of those workers is from Asia, with a sizeable number additionally coming from Africa, particularly Egypt, and progressively from East Africa (Kenya, Ethiopia, and Uganda). The ILO estimated that migrants in the six GCC States account for over 10 percent of all migrants globally, while Saudi Arabia and the UAE respectively host the third and fiŌh largest migrant populace in the world. Indeed this has a huge impact on geopolitics.⁷ Five million Bangladeshis live in the Middle East, and Bangladesh depends heavily on the Middle Eastern countries for inward remittances, receiving approximately 59 percent of the entire remittance flow from the region. The Middle East employs around 81 percent of the 10 million Bangladeshi migrant workers. At present, Bangladesh keeps up relations with the Middle Eastern countries through different methods like trade, security and in particular religion that empower the two to co-operate more effectively than their Western or Far Eastern aide. Furthermore, these countries are enormous contributors to Bangladesh regardless of their policy towards China. This is one of the factors which influenced Bangladesh to join the Riyadh-based Islamic Military Alliance Centre, formed with a mission to fight terrorism and extremism in general. According to BRAC, the largest NGO in the world, around 200,000 Bangladeshi migrant workers returned home between mid-February to mid-March, including 41,000 from Saudi Arabia, 38,000 from the United Arab Emirates, and 20,000 from other Gulf countries last year. (Arab News, December 20, 2020). Normally, every month, around 50,000 job seekers would move into the global labor market, but this has come to a halt due to the pandemic over the past three to four months. Some 200,000 workers could not go overseas to work despite having legal work permits and papers. Most Bangladeshi remittance sources are being badly affected by the pandemic, given the skill set of Bangladeshi migrant workers. Bangladesh is thus entering into the global ‘new normal.’ Per the World Economic Forum, “The economic importance of the more than 10 million migrants from Bangladesh who sent close to $18 billion in 2019 cannot be overstated. International remittances normally represent around 7% of Bangladesh’s GDP. But the COVID-19 pandemic is having an acute effect on Bangladeshi migrants abroad, who are largely concentrated in countries with strict lockdown measures. Considering the large volume of Bangladeshi migrants in the Middle East, secondary economic impacts through depressed demand and falling oil prices will also likely add strain to the flow of remittances.”⁸ Israel is one of the most important countries in the Middle East. Both Israel and Bangladesh were established in the wake of bloodshed: for Israel, the Holocaust; for Bangladesh, the barbarities during the 1971 Liberation War in which the pro-independence Bengali populace was methodically attacked. Israel extended diplomatic recognition to Bangladesh upon its founding in 1972, however, Bangladesh refused to reciprocate out of solidarity with other Muslim nations. As of 2021, Bangladesh still has no diplomatic or economic relationship with Israel. This is an ideal opportunity for change. Since 1972, many Arab states have reached a rapprochement with Israel. Israel is also a growing partner of India. Israel has a great deal to offer in South Asia, particular.

USA

Finally a change of guard in the White House brings USA back in the track. The whole world has watched democracy in action since November 3, 2020. We have seen how dirty it can get. At the top of it all, the most important winners aren’t Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the most important winner is democracy. The biggest lesson is that the institutions matter more than the individuals, if the former are robust. If President Donald Trump had his way that the system of checks and balances built over centuries would have collapsed. Salute to the framers of the US Constitution who did not let that happen.A second big lesson is not to make science the enemy of politics. A Trump victory would have sent a dangerous message to the remainder of the planet that science can be ignored even where it matters the most – that a pandemic can just be wished away regardless of how costly it’s in terms of human health and misery. We will only hope that science will return to the White House in pandemic management, a critical precondition for a sustainable economic recovery in the US.It would be a blunder to anticipate any major changes in the US strategy. The new grown-up in the Oval Office is a practical person, confronting numerous genuine homegrown difficulties, as a matter of first importance being to reestablish diplomacy in the lead of the Presidency. What could likewise be a modest assumption is that the finish of a conditional and go-it-single-handedly strategy model rehearsed in the Trump period. Collaboration and arrangement rather than pride and harassing will ideally return in light of the fact that the essential elements for settling issues in the arrangement and financing of overall public merchandise like pandemic control, worldwide trade, and in this way the climate change issue of the earth. Biden is anticipated to shape US strategy that in a general sense trusts it can accomplish more when it works close by the comity of nations and reconnect in multilateral participation, worldwide standards, and the worldwide request. The US retreat from worldwide initiative leŌ its partners and companions fairly rudderless. It will take more than a single political decision to reconstruct the resultant loss of trust. America should genuinely coordinate in remaking a stronger principles-based arrangement of overall administration that will address the difficulties and exploit the chances of this century without abandoning countries. In any case, Trump’s more grounded than-anticipated showing ought to stir individuals who anticipated that that one should totally forsake the ethos of his strategy. The post-Trump Republican Party, which can stay a power to deal with, is presumably going to remain indifferent to the value of worldwide establishments and consequently the utility of multilateral arrangements.US considers Bangladesh to be an important partner in US initiatives to strengthen relations in the Indo-Pacific region. Bangladesh is in no way an exception to the geopolitical polarization that has emerged in the region. Especially for the Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS), taken up to counter China’s BRI. Bangladesh hopes to see a more grounded US policy on the Rohingya issue under the Biden Administration with more extensive respective relations with Bangladesh and the new Administration will fortify Bangladesh-US relations on center issues thinking about Bangladesh as a geopolitically vital country. There can be no overstating the importance of the works facing Biden. If he survives whatever threats, legal and rhetorical, that Trump throws his way in the coming days and weeks, he will begin his term facing a profoundly divided country, one even more polarized and tribal than the polls have suggested. It’s a country during which one-half can’t exactly understand the contrary half. He likewise goes up against a natural that is influenced by an always demolishing pandemic, a weak economy, racial bad form, and an environment emergency that millions will not recognize. So, there is no big hope for Bangladesh that the relationship with US might alter drastically, but then new US administration takes Bangladesh as a prospective ally due to it geo strategic location and US also need to consider that the dynamics of regional politics in South Asia has been changed a lot recently.

Latin America and the Caribbean

The agony brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has attracted less attention than that of China, Europe, and the US, yet the locale has experienced some of the most severe flare-ups of the pandemic on the planet. The pandemic’s effect is not homogenous, and all of the 33 nations of South America should be analyzed independently to completely see how the region is being affected by the pandemic. The international scene is moving from numerous points of view. Latin American countries, like Bangladesh, are among the emerging economies of this century. Bangladesh already has strong cultural and economic ties with the LAC countries, but as emerging nations, both must explore business and trade opportunities. Bangladesh can take this chance to export Ready Made Garments (RMG), pharmaceuticals, melamine goods, services, jute products and handicraŌs. As a result, Bangladesh should seek free trade agreements with LAC countries. They can also work on global climate change option as all of them are facing the same crisis. We saw some intriguing geopolitical moves toward the beginning of June 2020, when Iran sent an oil tanker to Venezuela to alleviate huge fuel shortages there, in spite of Washington’s warning against doing so. Cuba has also made an impact during the pandemic. Following its long-standing practice of “doctor diplomacy,” Havana rushed clinical detachments to South Africa and Italy. Washington’s influence in LAC has been in retreat for some time, predating both COVID and the Donald Trump administration. This advancement coincides with China’s rising impact in the region.

Africa

The COVID-19 pandemic has incited widespread geostrategic disquiet in Africa. It is important to ask: what are the “uncertainties” facing Africa when analyzed through geostrategic focal points? For quite a while, African analysts and strategists have regretted the mainland’s economic reliance on the rich economies of the Global North and rising forces like China. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp relief the weakness of the major powers that make up groups like NATO, the G7, and G20. If ever there was a time for African solidarity, it is now. With more well-off countries focused on taking care of their own issues, it is time for African countries to seek international fortitude that mirrors the mantra of “African answers for African issues.” Bangladesh has received enormous support from African nations during the Rohingya crisis. Seven countries of Africa recently changed their vote from ‘abstention’ to ‘yes’ on a proposal at the plenary session of UN General Assembly on the issue of human rights of Rohingya and other minorities in the South Asian nation. Gambia has filed its case against Burma at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for the genocide of the Rohingya in a move widely welcomed by the Muslim minority society, as well as by Bangladesh.On the politico-monetary front, Pan-Africanism is starting to come to fruition in the form of the unique African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA). Broken worldwide supply chains afford African nations the chance to devise intracontinental supply systems like the global cross-line trade imagined in the AfCFTA arrangement. It may signify the inclination of African leaders towards China rather than the West for financial help, while inclining more toward the West for standards of governance. Bangladesh, however, is a unique case as South Asia is exceptionally partitioned. Bangladesh cannot rely on only India or China alone.

UN & WHO

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that the organization will continue researching on the COVID-19.Neither the countries first hit by the pandemic nor those to which it later spread were able to fully fulfill WHO guidelines. There is no mechanism for sanctioning violations of these guidelines. The UN should discuss measures, including indemnity supports to victims in countries that have not taken necessary measures or report in the event of a health-threatening epidemic at the world or regional level. In the Global Humanitarian Response Plan for COVID-19, the UN Secretary-General highlighted the need to watch for weak networks in the public arena. Bangladesh needs a demographic mapping survey to meet this requirement. It will likewise enhance Rohingya refugee COVID-19 reaction plans.

As of Social Safety Nets in Bangladesh (vol 2), A United Nations report found that the social safety aid activities embraced by the Bangladeshi government have been limited in scope. To make an already difficult situation even worse, numerous media reports uncovered the involvement of pro-government individuals and their partners in the misappropriation of relief supplies. This is profoundly risky as long as down and out individuals are wandering the streets Dhaka asking for food. It should be noted that Bangladesh did not enforce any strict mandates at first, and a great many individuals were out in the city, particularly in Dhaka, which is a megacity with 46 thousand people per square kilometer. Social contact is intense on public transportation and in the ghettos. In densely populated and lower wage nations like Bangladesh, the implementation of social distancing as prescribed by the WHO is a fantasy.