The BNP, under Tarique Rahman’s leadership, has just completed its first six months in office. More than on the domestic front, it is on foreign policy that Bangladesh has faced trials and tribulations. In its election mandate, the BNP promised a foreign policy that would cater solely to Bangladesh’s own national interest, treating other nations as a ‘friend and not master’. Six months on, the BNP-led government is increasingly facing criticism from its political opposition (Jamaat-NCP), and the country’s new foreign policy has not been without scrutiny either.
At the outset, the BNP’s foreign policy has been a continuation of the core direction taken by the previous interim government under Yunus’s chief advisership. This is especially true of ties with the United States and China. Relations with both have not only improved; both countries have expressed the utmost eagerness to make bilateral ties more multidimensional. For the United States, Bangladesh is now a strategically significant nation and a security guarantor in the Indo-Pacific, while for China, Bangladesh is a comprehensive strategic partner and a reliable neighbour for ensuring Beijing’s connectivity to South Asia.
Tarique Rahman’s Beijing visit in June saw the bilateral relationship upgraded to a ‘community with a shared future’. The visit covered a range of areas of cooperation, encompassing the economic, defence and humanitarian spheres as well as people-to-people contact. Its highlight was that Dhaka secured Beijing’s cooperation on investment in the Teesta project, the modernisation of Mongla Port and the Chattogram Economic Zone, while Beijing secured a stronger institutional relationship through mechanisms such as the ‘2+2 diplomatic and defence dialogue’, along with strategic access to infrastructure and connectivity projects that replaced earlier India-linked plans. Moreover, the MoU signed between the Chinese Communist Party and the BNP was aimed at political proximity, furthering China’s deeper leverage over Bangladesh.
Described as an effort in Bangladesh’s national interest, Rahman’s Beijing visit received appreciation from the BNP’s opposition. A parliamentary motion was passed unanimously, hailing the visit as a ‘landmark event’ and an ‘extraordinary success’ that had produced meaningful progress. The opposition also stressed the need for an independent and transparent foreign policy devoid of any ‘external interference’.
With the United States, Bangladesh has ventured into closer and more active bilateral ties, covering the defence and security dialogue, trade, and diplomatic and humanitarian support. The US reciprocal trade deal concluded in February under interim rule, however, came under scrutiny, perhaps the only concern the opposition expressed, seeking a parliamentary review and complete transparency of the agreements, although it stopped short of calling for its cancellation.
In contrast, Bangladesh’s foreign policy approach towards India remains unsettled. Moving away from the interim government’s approach, the BNP government reciprocated New Delhi’s pragmatism with optimism, as seen during Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman’s visit in April. From visa renewal and New Delhi’s economic assistance to the reopening of trade routes, it appeared that bilateral ties between the adjacent neighbours were gradually showing a conscious thaw, moving away from the past one and a half years of diplomatic deadlock. This does not mean that the contentious issues, especially Hasina’s extradition, the Ganges Water Treaty and border security, remained unaddressed. Quite the contrary, the two neighbours have been engaging on them in meaningful, repeatable and transparent dialogue.
Nevertheless, the political opposition has fallen back on the usual anti-hegemony rhetoric to oppose the BNP government’s reciprocation of New Delhi’s consistent diplomatic outreach. The opposition has often resorted to imposing conditionalities on the BNP’s engagement with India. The uncertainty surrounding Tarique Rahman’s planned New Delhi visit, caused by objections raised by the opposition, is the most revealing instance. Sheikh Hasina’s public address to the foreign press in New Delhi on 5 August triggered strong reactions in Dhaka, which formally protested it as a ‘grievous insult’. Even though New Delhi distanced itself from the event, stating that the Indian government had ‘no role’ in it and ‘does not endorse’ any of Hasina’s statements, while also noting that the extradition issue was under review as per the existing treaty, a diplomatic fallout ensued, with the BNP government stating that the New Delhi visit would take place only when the environment is deemed ‘favourable’.
Even before the BNP government gave its official reaction, the opposition was quick to place its conditions: that the government should not visit India unless New Delhi is ‘held accountable’ for sheltering Hasina, that any trip to India before progress on extradition would be seen as a ‘betrayal of the people’ and a ‘compromise with India’ and that the BNP was being ‘too accommodating’ to New Delhi, thereby ‘allowing Indian hegemony’.
Six months on, the BNP government is still navigating its own foreign policy, one that it calls ‘Bangladesh First’. While the label indicates strategic autonomy, in practice that autonomy has proved selective. The same opposition that celebrated an upgraded relationship with Beijing and calls for a review of US deal instead, treats engagement with New Delhi as something requiring conditions and accountability. While the opposition is not steering foreign policy outright, it is shaping the political boundaries within which BNP can operate, especially on India. To the extent that the government’s room for manoeuvre is set by which ties its opponents find acceptable, Bangladesh is struggling to maintain a balanced foreign policy under pressure from the opposition.
