After the January 5 election in 2014, the foreign policy of Bangladesh was Asia-centric. In 2014, it grabbed the opportunities that came its way and those came mostly from Asia, both from near and far.
The Asia-centric policy paid off due to maintaining robust relationship with India, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to Japan and China, back to-back visit of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to Bangladesh.
In 2015, the government has continued to maintain the Asia-centric policy and in addition to that it consolidated its position in Europe to find more friends in the Western World.
Europe was very vocal about democracy, governance and stability in Bangladesh throughout 2013 and 2014. The European Union and United Kingdom sent a number of delegations to Bangladesh to express their position.
In this backdrop, the government had taken steps to strengthen relationship with the continent in 2015 and also Europe changed their attitude and considered the relationship through the realistic prism.
Europe has been the seat of realist politics and it understood that the tendency to interfere into Bangladesh’s internal affairs need to take a back seat.
It seems that the two sides have entered into a phase of a relationship where realistic considerations (in contrast to idealistic concerns such as democracy, governance, human rights) are predominant more than any time in the past.
Bangladesh was relatively stable throughout 2014 but it became volatile in the first three months of 2015.
Bangladesh’s warm relations with India, China, and Japan, and stable condition in the country encouraged Europeans to engage more with Bangladesh.
Bilateral trade and investment volume and prospective Bangladesh and more investment opportunity work as incentive to work more closely with Dhaka.
The two-way trade between Bangladesh and Europe is over one trillion taka [12.5 billion euro], important European country France has received work order for building Bangabandhu satellite, Russia got $12.5 billion Rooppur nuclear power plant project, and trade volume with Germany is growing every year.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited the Netherlands last year and discussed mutual cooperation in ports and water related issues.
Both the countries also discussed about Paira deep sea port project, a multi-billion dollar and very important strategic project.
The government has an intention to avoid any geo-political controversy regarding the deep sea port and that’s why it favours to award the contract to less politically sensitive European country.
So far, the Netherlands, India and China have expressed their interest to build the port. The government in written invited the United States, United Kingdom and other relevant countries to take part in the project bidding process but nobody showed interest.
2016 is likely to begin on a positive note as far as Bangladesh’s relations with Europe is concerned and this will continue as long as Bangladesh enjoys stability.
The two sides have perhaps entered into a phase of a relationship where realistic considerations are predominant more than any time in the past. The challenge is to keep the pace go on and make it sustainable.
To make that happen, Europe has to play a much larger role.
The tendency to bog down into Bangladesh’s internal affairs will need to take a back seat. Europe has been the seat of realist politics and it is time that they practice it for everyone’s benefits.
Bangladesh continued to maintain warm relationship with India throughout the year. The main event of this year is the implementation of land boundary agreement.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Bangladesh while Sheikh Hasina went to New Delhi after the demise of Indian President Pranab Mukherjee’s wife.
The institutional relationship between Bangladesh and US was never better than this period, but somewhere there is some uneasiness in the relationship. Awarding nuclear power plant contract to Russia and buying Chinese submarines are two issues which made the relationship complex.
But, the visit of State Department Under-Secretary designate Tom Shannon to Dhaka indicated a better relationship in the days ahead.
This year Japan signed its biggest ever aid agreement with Bangladesh to finance several projects. Under the deal, Japan would provide over $1 billion.
Next year, Bangladesh will consolidate its position in the Middle East.
Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali is going to Saudi Arabia, the most important country in the Middle East, in the first week of January. Not only that, three ministers visited the kingdom country in the last three months and industries minister would visit the country in January.
Bangladesh supported Saudi position on Yemen and also joined Saudi-led 34-nation anti-terrorism initiative.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is expected to visit Bahrain, another important country in the Middle East, in the first quarter of 2016.
