The contrasting approach of the US towards Bangladesh and Pakistan raises some questions, according to a Nikkei Asia article.
While Bangladesh has been the focus of democracy promotion efforts, with the threat of visa sanctions against those undermining free elections, the US remains conspicuously silent about Pakistan's undeclared martial law situation, characterized by mass arrests, disappearances and torture used as political weapons, it says.
President Joe Biden's administration in Bangladesh wants to take advantage of two important factors: the presence of close relatives of Bangladeshi politicians in the US and Britain, including Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's son, who has an American green card, and the sizeable proportion of Bangladesh's exports to the West, with the US being the top consumer, as stated in Nikkei Asia.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken wants to guarantee that Bangladesh will hold free and fair elections in early 2024, but the tactic of threatening visa sanctions against those "responsible for, or complicit in, undermining the democratic election process" is unlikely to advance this goal and may even backfire.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has voiced her concerns that the US is pursuing a regime change strategy in her country, aiming to eliminate democracy and replace it with a non-democratic government, as she stated in a parliamentary address in April.
In stark contrast to the recent political and economic unrest in Pakistan, which is on the edge of default, Bangladesh has had tremendous growth. But while Pakistan was invited to both but did not attend, Bangladesh was omitted from Biden's Summit for Democracy called in 2021 and this year.
The US has criticized Bangladesh's democratic regress while continuing to give short-term geopolitical issues top priority by rewarding Pakistan. The US in 2021 classified Bangladesh's Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) and a number of its current and former officials as culpable in significant human rights violations connected to the nation's war on drugs, leading to the freeze of their assets there.
In December, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the country's biggest opposition party, and the police engaged in a violent altercation. US Ambassador to Bangladesh Peter Haas later sought an investigation into the incident. In a discussion with Bangladesh's Foreign Minister Abdul Momen, Secretary Blinken also shared his worries about threats and violence against the press and civil society.
Sanctions against foreign officials, however, frequently have a symbolic function and obstruct dialogue, with significant unintended consequences. For instance, Beijing recently blocked a meeting in Singapore between Chinese Defence Minister Gen Li Shangfu and US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, citing Li's inclusion on a sanctions list from five years earlier.
One could even make the case that Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the Myanmar military, along with three other senior commanders, were targets of US sanctions prior to the coup that overthrew the country's civilian government in 2021 because the generals may have felt they had little to lose by carrying it out. Since then, additional sanctions have only made matters worse and brought Myanmar closer to China.
Sanctions are still a desirable option for American policymakers, however, given that the West continues to dominate the global financial system and the US dollar continues to be the principal reserve currency.
The Sheikh Hasina administration could be a crucial ally in the US fight against terrorism and initiatives to strengthen security in Asia. But as indicated by the absence of meetings between the Biden administration and Sheikh Hasina during her recent trip to Washington for talks with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, bilateral relations are strained instead.
Despite the fact that during his visit to Singapore, Defence Secretary Austin committed to stand his ground in the face of intimidation or pressure from China, using such measures is unlikely to benefit American interests in Bangladesh.
Bullying the seventh-most populous nation in the world may bring back painful memories of the US turning a blind eye to the brutal resistance by the Pakistani military in 1971 as Bangladesh fought for independence, which resulted in the loss of nearly 3 million lives.
