Diplomacy is never a matter of simple black and white. There is nothing mathematically precise about it. It has nothing to do with perfection, as it were. It is, more than anything else, a demonstration of skills in dealing with the world. In a more important way, it is about upholding national interests abroad.
Diplomacy is not about defeat in the global arena, which is why it would be misleading to look at Bangladesh’s failure to come by membership of BRICS in Johannesburg as a setback for the country’s diplomacy. The fact that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was there on invitation, together with the leaders of other nations aspiring to BRICS membership, was acknowledgement enough of the significant role Bangladesh has begun to play in global affairs.
And lest people keep complaining about what did not happen for Bangladesh in Johannesburg, they should be informed that Indonesia is among the countries which sought and did not get membership of BRICS. To berate the Bangladesh government, therefore, over this “failure” to make an entry into BRICS would be to ignore the very principles ingrained in diplomacy in our times. There will be time for BRICS, in the not too distant future, to welcome Bangladesh into its fold. We do not have to lose our sleep over what did not happen in Johannesburg last week.
Maintaining and developing relations with the rest of the world calls for sober assessments of objective reality on the part of governments. For more than two decades, the Chinese government was unable to make an entry into the United Nations because of opposition to it by the United States, which supported Taiwan’s occupancy of the seat till 1971.
The Chinese leadership did not consider this long period of deprivation a diplomatic defeat. On a similar subject, when the Chinese government vetoed Bangladesh’s application for membership of the global body in the early 1970s, nothing in Dhaka suggested that Bangabandhu’s government took it as a diplomatic failure. Dhaka waited for better times, which came in September 1974, to take its place in the UN.
When the issue is one of diplomatic successes for Bangladesh, there are plenty of them we can cite. In the weeks and months following the liberation of the country, governments abroad in quick succession accorded diplomatic recognition to the new state. Even a hostile and Pakistan-oriented United States came forth with an official acknowledgement of the new realities in South Asia through recognizing Bangladesh. With Saudi Arabia, the Bangladesh government made arrangements with Riyadh for Bengali hajj pilgrims to make their way to Mecca even before the kingdom recognized Bangladesh.
Dhaka did not think that Riyadh’s non-recognition of the realities emergent in 1971 was a diplomatic failure. Just as the government knew Beijing’s recognition would be there sooner or later, so it knew that the Saudis too would be in our courtyard in good time. The only hitch here was that China and Saudi Arabia came to our doorsteps after Bangabandhu had tragically passed from the scene.
Back in the late 1990s, the Bangladesh government made it known that Farooq Sobhan, an accomplished diplomat, would be the country’s nominee for the office of secretary general of the Commonwealth. With New Zealand’s Don McKinnon as the other candidate, Sobhan had a difficult task ahead of him.
One could argue here that Bangladesh’s foreign policy establishment, together with its diplomatic missions in Commonwealth countries, should have expended more efforts in promoting Sobhan’s candidacy. That would have made a difference. But that does not detract from the fact that at the end of the day the Bangladesh government thought it prudent to withdraw its candidate and let McKinnon be elected unanimously.
Diplomacy is certainly not to be treated lightly. Bangladesh is in immense need of diplomats who can articulate the country’s priorities with finesse in global forums. The job of diplomats is not simply to write letters to foreign policy establishments abroad but to follow up on them. And that happens when a country has within its foreign policy structure people whose grasp of diplomacy is thorough, who have it in them to speak for their nation abroad with conviction.
One could, from that perspective, inquire into the reasons why Bangladesh’s diplomats in Washington were unable to handle the sanctions issue before Washington publicly announced them. Again, when a newsman with links to the 2001-2006 BNP-Jamaat government gains access to the US State Department and asks questions indicative of a maligning of the government in power in Dhaka today, one can legitimately ask why our embassy has been unable to come forth with its own narrative, has not been proactive in countering the anti-Bangladesh propaganda in Washington.
On the BRICS question, despite all this talk of how diplomacy works, one wonders if the foreign policy establishment in Dhaka did what it was supposed to do, which was to do all it could to argue Bangladesh’s case for membership of the body. Perhaps that would not have yielded any positive results; perhaps we would still be where we are today with BRICS. But was the diplomatic establishment at Shegun Bagicha convinced that the five member-states of BRICS were waiting in Johannesburg to welcome Bangladesh into the organization?
Premature statements were earlier made of Dhaka’s getting admission into BRICS. On what basis were they made? And did the mandarins at MOFA convey the impression to the PMO, to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, that BRICS membership for Bangladesh was there for the asking?
No, diplomacy has nothing to do with black and white. But it has everything to do with a nation’s presenting an intellectually powerful foreign policy to the outside world. In the 1970s, Bangabandhu’s government, with an eloquent foreign policy team led by Kamal Hossain on board, would have nothing to do with Pakistan unless Islamabad formally acknowledged Dhaka’s independent status. The recognition came in February 1974.
In the same year, purposeful diplomacy was exercised by the government on the issue of the Pakistani prisoners of war (POWs) in India. Bangladesh was unable to try the 195 Pakistani officers it had charged with committing genocide in 1971. Was that a failure? There is the broader picture to consider here. In the interest of a new, peaceful and hostility-free South Asia, Bangabandhu’s government let the POWs go free, albeit on the understanding that in line with its promise, Pakistan’s Bhutto government would try them in Pakistan itself.
In 1974, therefore, the focus for Bangladesh was on constructive diplomacy, both in the matter of obtaining Pakistan’s recognition and negotiating the terms of the tripartite agreement arrived at in April. Negotiations on a deal on land boundary in that same year between Indira Gandhi and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman were a testimony to the astuteness which Bangladesh’s diplomats demonstrated in that early stage of national freedom. Similar was their performance in working out the details of the Ganges water-sharing treaty initiated by HD Deve Gowda and Sheikh Hasina in the later 1990s.
Bangladesh’s diplomacy calls for re-energizing as well as re-engineering. The country needs experienced, assertive diplomats, at all levels and in tune with global trends as also national priorities, to be posted in capitals around the world. Diplomacy is a herculean task in these difficult times; and with a growing campaign abroad aimed at bringing about a political change in Bangladesh, it will be for our diplomats to work out the strategy through which such activities by foreign governments and organizations can be neutralized. The government, in simple terms, must get its act together.
And, no, BRICS was neither a debacle nor a setback. Diplomacy cannot be assessed in simplistic terms. But let the Johannesburg episode serve as an opportunity for Bangladesh’s foreign policy experts to redefine their approach to the world from here on.
One way of doing that is for the government, especially the PMO, to have in place a body of experts and analysts who could assist the head of government in formulations of foreign policy initiatives in future. And certainly at the top of the foreign policy structure at MOFA we are in grave need of intellectual and inspirational leadership, in that absolute sense of the meaning.
Syed Badrul Ahsan is Consultant Editor, Dhaka Tribune.
