Back in the middle of the 1980s, I remember thinking it rather odd that the president of Bangladesh went all the way to the airport to receive one of the three (or was it four?) vice presidents of Iraq, who just happened to be taking a short detour in Dhaka before being off to some conference in the Far East. I mean, even as a teenager concerned more about cricket than international protocol, the image struck me as odd.
Only later was I to come to realisation that Bangladeshis -- from the most powerful to the most humble -- love any kind of foreign attention; almost to the level of adulation that is rarely paralleled by any other people.
Someday I will revise that somewhat unflattering image, but that day certainly isn’t today in the aftermath of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s Dhaka visit. Sure, the head of the state or the head of the government didn’t receive Mr Kerry at the airport, and that is an improvement in self-esteem I suppose; but that is about where the improvement curve flattens out.
After hearing the statements from the government, the de facto opposition, and the make-believe opposition, you’d have thought that their entire political lives had been made worthwhile just by being in the same room as the American secretary of state who, were the local interlocutors to be believed, agreed to everything that anyone told him in Dhaka.
The fact that a courtesy visit was paid to Number 32 Dhanmondi and a courtesy invite extended to head of the de facto opposition, tells us little more than John Kerry is a seasoned politician who has cut his teeth in war, elected democratic politics, and diplomacy, with the finesse of a man who has navigated the choppy waters of the Obama presidency admirably.
And that presidency is coming to an end in a few months. That would make Secretary Kerry’s visit a largely, to put it politely, valedictory one, notwithstanding the exuberant statements of the three foreign ministers, the two would-be foreign ministers, and the professional spinmeisters of the regime, and the opposition.
John Kerry’s pronouncements and remarks, while important, are highly unlikely to be the final word from Washington DC where a new team is guaranteed to pick up the Bangladesh portfolio at Foggy Bottom in a few months
Let’s face it: The main purpose of the Kerry visit was simply to see if the status quo is holding vis-à-vis Islamist terror proliferation in Bangladesh. If the answer is in the affirmative for the next few months, Mr Kerry and his boss would have one less minor headache to worry about when they walk into the political sunset on January 21, 2017. And into the sunset they will go for sure since in the United States there are presidential term limits and competitive elections which determine who gets into office.
Chances that those elections will result in either Mrs Clinton or Mr Trump becoming the president of the United States are almost 100%, barring some calamity. Each of them will bring their own foreign policy team and philosophical preferences to the conduct of international affairs, and most indications show that both of them will mark out their own paths, unconstrained by the legacy of their predecessor.
That legacy, when it comes to foreign policy, has seen an incredible use of the concept of “outsourcing” in terms of prioritisation: For smaller countries on the periphery, the Obama State Department has largely let bigger countries in the neighbourhood set the agenda for America.
South Africa, Saudi Arabia, India, and Brazil have become like the planning offices for American foreign policy regarding their respective smaller neighbours. One doubts that someone as egotistical as Mr Trump or as controlling as Mrs Clinton would continue to delegate that much foreign policy making to regional heavyweights.
Knowing the scholarship record and professional resumes of some of Mrs Clinton’s foreign policy advisers like Tom Donilon, Dr Shirin Tahirkheli, and former Secretary Madeline Albright, it is almost a certainty that a Hillary Clinton administration would take a more hands-on approach to smaller countries like Bangladesh and re-emphasise issues like democratic governance and human rights that have been given a relatively short shrift by the Obama-Kerry administration.
As to what a Trump administration would do, I doubt even Mr Trump knows it from day to day.
Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit was certainly a high point for all sorts of people who got to meet him, talk to him, be photographed with him, or otherwise be in the same hallowed receptions with him.
But in the grand scheme of things, he represents a sun that is setting and soon will become far less relevant than his Dhaka “besties” give him credit for.
John Kerry’s pronouncements and remarks, while important, are highly unlikely to be the final word from Washington DC, where a new team is guaranteed to pick up the Bangladesh portfolio at Foggy Bottom in a few months.
Esam Sohail is an educational research analyst and college lecturer of social sciences writing from Kansas, USA
