National Security and Nationalism in Bangladesh

Abstract

SINCE ATTAINING INDEPENDENCE in December 1971, golden Bangladesh has been battered and torn by natural disaster and political strife and has taken an about-face in foreign policy. Still reeling under the effects of one of the most vicious and destructive of civil wars, the ravaged country was the victim of a drought in 1972; floods, famine, and a cholera epidemic in 1974; and a series of coups and counter-coups in late 1975. During the relative calm of the past three years-a calm maintained under military rule-Bangladesh has moved from a strongly pro-Indian stance, and an attendant friendly relationship with the USSR, into a blatantly warm liaison with India's long-standing arch-rival and major source of insecurity, the People's Republic of China.1 If we recognize, however, that Bangladesh, though having the world's eighth largest population, remains essentially a microstate and tremendously sensitive not only to nature's phenomena but to the political and strategic environment, we can gain a greater appreciation of the pressures behind the foreign policy shifts and their implications for Bangladesh's national security. A great part of Bangladesh's microstate status can be attributed to the persistence of economic underdevelopment.2 Lacking both a dynamic economy and the resources which might support such an economy, there is little material resilience to withstand the unpredictable