The present world economic scenario offers D-8 a broadened scope. The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) multilateral trade regime lost its momentum as a result of wealthy countries’ noncompliance and member states’ lack of cooperation. The lengthy characteristics of the WTO’s system may be due to international politics and disagreements between the USA and China, LDC versus developed members, and lastly the voluntary nature of implementation capacity.
Read moreCategory: Indo-Pacific regions
News and analyses of events in the Indo-Pacific region
Exploring Dhaka’s options in a multipolar world
In its interactions with more powerful and adversarial nations thus far, Bangladesh has demonstrated diplomatic maturity and poise. A troubled polarization of the region between China and India has resulted from the Bay of Bengal’s recent reemergence of its strategic significance. The US involvement in the Indo-Pacific area has also increased, and Washington is working harder than ever to restrict China by establishing an axis with India in the Bay of Bengal. Bangladesh, an Indian Ocean littoral nation, has assumed a more significant role in these circumstances. In the midst of this escalating geopolitical conflict, it has had to play smart.
Read morePelosi’s trip to Taiwan and a brewing storm in Indo Pacific
On 3 August 2022, the US-China ties reach a new low when US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi touched down in Taiwan. Pelosi is now the highest US official who visited the island in 25 years, despite warnings from other top Washington officials, but the situation is very different from what it was then. As a…
Read moreWhy should Bangladesh be reticent of borrowing money from the IMF and the World Bank?
Is the nation and society merely a slave labor camp, a source of raw materials, and a captive market for the economies of the west, where the populace consumes goods, they do not produce? If not, society, the economy, and the politics must be built up to foster and direct everyone’s efforts toward a different set of objectives and the institutions that may help them be achieved. Before interacting with the economies of the west, Bangladesh, a big part of eastern civilizations, must also figure out how to group its competitive advantages, turn them into a market strength, and connect them regionally. New options must be dotted upon, to circumvent unfair and unjustified US-led western sanctions. If necessary, bilateral and multilateral trade must be carried through alternative currencies.
Read morePutin’s Iran visit and its geopolitical implications
Moscow is searching for new venues now that its connections to Europe have been severed, and the huge region of Middle East, with all of its intricacies, presents a welcome chance. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Algeria, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi Arabia before the trips of the Russian President, where he also had meetings with peers from the nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council. At this time, it appears that Russia’s relations with the West, specifically Europe, are beyond repair, and Moscow appears to have undertaken a clear and decisive pivot eastward and southern, toward Asia. More importantly, Russia is acting as a guarantor to maintain the balance between Turkey, Iran and the Arab world. And for a proper balance, all parties are pursuing a strategy that can be described as compartmentalized policies for each country in order to achieve a greater collective result that satisfies domestic objectives.
Read moreWith sheer hypocrisy, USA picks its ‘human rights report’ to demonize the government of Bangladesh
The west led by the USA acts as the world’s police and courts. In the banner of “human rights stand superior to state sovereignty,” they always want to meddle in the internal affairs of other nations and will even go to war to achieve this. Many people’s human rights have been gravely abused by such actions all around the world. Tens of thousands of people have died and tens of thousands more have been hurt or made homeless in the Iraq War alone. Still, some western nations are willing to lecture others on human rights issues and criticize other nations they don’t agree with since they market themselves as “developed” and “democracy.”These western nations, who fought two world wars and arming to the teeth for the third, view “human rights” as their own concept and believe that it can only be established in accordance with their norms. Their hypocrisy, in the name of ‘human rights’, will have terrible effects on the global human rights movement and the implementation of Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Read moreThe future of Japan and Bangladesh cooperation against the backdrop of a major power rivalry
However, Japan’s alignment with Quad and rising friction with China, a strategic partner of Bangladesh, is raising the chance of future complications for Bangladesh. Jolted by the Ukraine war and China’s assertiveness, Japan is looking to boost its defense capability, which is embraced a pacifist outlook after its defeat in the Second World War. Public opinion polls and commentators have found that since the end of the Ukraine conflict, the Japanese people have been steadily turning away from pacifism. While the world’s attention is on the situation in Russia and Ukraine, U.S. and NATO hostilities with China and North Korea are escalating substantially halfway across the globe in the Pacific Ocean, thus leading to the state of unease in Japan. Since the Obama administration’s “Pivot to Asia,” which was created in part to divert attention away from the decision to surge troops in Afghanistan and Iraq in the failed U.S. war strategies in the Middle East, the U.S. military’s naval and air presence in the Western Pacific has steadily increased.
Read moreIs there any exit route for impending energy crisis in Bangladesh amidst geopolitical turbulence?
More than 1.8 billion people who reside in South Asia need economic solvency, improvement in social indicators and peace through political stability. Development is being impeded by the intensifying geopolitical competition, particularly between and among China, Russia, and the United States. This “great power competition,” which includes the dispute over the South China Sea, is…
Read moreIs the war in Ukraine to blame for the global food crisis?
In 2021, over 193 million people in 53 countries/territories faced acute food insecurity (IPC/CH Phase 3-5; see Chart 1), according to the Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC 2022). In comparison to the already record numbers of 2020, this is an almost 40 million increase. Over half a million people (570,000) in Ethiopia, southern Madagascar, South Sudan, and Yemen were identified as being in the most critical phase of acute food insecurity (IPC/CH Phase 5; see Chart 1) and required immediate assistance to avoid widespread livelihood collapse, famine, and death. The number of people encountering crisis or worse (IPC/CH Phase 3 or higher; see Chart 1) approximately doubled between 2016 and 2021 when looking at the same 39 countries/territories represented in all editions of the report, with persistent increases each year since 2017.
Read moreSri Lanka: how a South Asian country came under chaos
There is little doubt that a combination of internal and external forces contributed to Sri Lanka’s growth from a middle-to-high income country in South Asia to where it is today in just a few short years. For many years, Sri Lanka’s government has struggled with recurring budget deficits that have forced it to borrow frequently from both local and international markets, adding to the nation’s public debt. According to the breakdown of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt as of April 2021 is provided by the Sri Lankan Department of Foreign Resources, Sri Lanka’s international borrowing made up of 47% from the capital markets, 13% from the Asian Development Bank, 10% from China, 10% from Japan, 9% from the World Bank, 2% from India, and 9% from others. Sri Lanka’s foreign debt is owed to multilateral financial organizations and commercial creditors from Western nations. They sold the loan to ‘vulture funds,’ who actually took advantage of Sri Lanka’s every cent.
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