"The destiny of nations depends upon the position of the sea."
— Paraphrased from Halford J. Mackinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919)
If Episode Ten mapped the economics of the tide, the flow of capital, connectivity, and commerce, Episode Eleven shifts focus to the politics of the currents, where trade winds meet ambition and sovereignty drifts between cooperation and conflict. In the Bay of Bengal, every ripple echoes history and signals power. Here, geopolitics does not merely unfold; it surges like a rising tide.
The Bay as a stronghold of power
The Bay of Bengal has never been a passive body of water. It has been and continues to be a melting pot where empires rose and fell, religions spread, and strategies clashed. Today, for Bangladesh, a deltaic nation connected to its maritime fate, this Bay is both a border and a lifeline.
Its 710-kilometre coast links the country to the more expansive Indian Ocean, within which the Bay of Bengal constitutes a critical subregion, the world's most active centre of 21st-century geopolitics (Kaplan 2010).
The Bay is not merely an area of economic promise but also a potential battleground for competing sovereignties, naval strategies, and international interests; whoever controls its routes gains power: commercial, strategic, and symbolic.
Historical currents and colonial legacies
Long before colonial flags fluttered on its horizon, Arab, Persian, and Southeast Asian merchants rode the monsoon winds across this sea, carrying textiles, spices, and faith between Chittagong, Masulipatnam, and Malacca (Chaudhuri 1985). The Bay's currents thus became corridors of civilisation, connecting South Asia to the larger Indian Ocean world.
When the Portuguese, Dutch, and British arrived, they did not see a peripheral sea—they saw a maritime prize. Walter Raleigh's prophetic words still resonate:
"Whosoever commands the sea commands the trade; whosoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world" (Raleigh, c. 1616, paraphrased).
Centuries later, Alfred Thayer Mahan's theory of sea power echoed the same truth: maritime control determines a nation's political destiny (Mahan 1890). The Bay, once sailed by merchant dhows and colonial frigates, is now traversed by oil tankers, container ships, submarines, and surveillance drones. The medium remains the same; the stakes, of course, are exponentially higher.
Modern geopolitics: The new arena
In the 21st century, and one may dare to say even in the postmodern world, the Bay of Bengal has reemerged as a key maritime crossroads. The adjacent and overlapping EEZs of India and Myanmar, within a broader Bay system encompassing Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Thailand, present both opportunities and conflicts. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and China's "String of Pearls" strategy introduce additional complexity, as ports such as Port of Belawan (Indonesia), Port of Tanjung Pelepas (Malaysia), Ports of Singapore, Chittagong, Kyaukpyu (Myanmar), Port Blair and Mumbai/Mundra (India), Laem Chabang Port (Thailand), and Hambantota (Sri Lanka) become symbols of both power and development (Holmes and Yoshihara 2008).
For Bangladesh, this is a delicate diplomatic stage. It must balance its strategic partnership with China, calculated reciprocal friendship with India, and security cooperation with the United States, Türkiye, and Pakistan: all while protecting its sovereign independence.
In his 2024 essay "Strategic Equidistance: Bangladesh's Calculus in a Fractured World", the author argues that this stance of "equidistance without estrangement" should serve as Bangladesh's guiding strategic principle. This approach involves cultivating friendly relations with all major powers without becoming too close, thereby protecting Bangladesh's independence and security. Rather than oscillating between great powers, Dhaka's maritime diplomacy should aim for a balance between access and autonomy, maintaining flexibility without compromising friendships, thereby serving as a modern extension of the longstanding "art of balancing" in the Bay.
As Zbigniew Brzezinski (1997) observed, small states in strategic corridors must act with "calculated subtlety", leveraging geography without succumbing to it. Bangladesh's diplomacy exemplifies this maxim.
Its maritime boundary settlements with India (2014) and Myanmar (2012)—secured through international adjudication—were not merely legal successes but acts of sovereign assertion through reasoned negotiation (Bangladesh v. Myanmar, ITLOS Case No. 16). These demarcations guaranteed resource access, preserved rights, and demonstrated the effectiveness of law, science, and strategy fused into statecraft.
Maritime power and sovereign strategy
Maritime power today extends beyond warships and weapons. It encompasses science, diplomacy, and sustainability. Bangladesh's growing awareness of naval and ocean policies should reflect this integration. The concept of a "postmodern navy", as described by Geoffrey Till (2013), supports commerce, enforces law, and fosters cooperation alongside deterrence. This indicates that Bangladesh's navy must not focus solely on defence but also on bolstering economic activities, enforcing maritime law, and promoting international partnerships.
Uninterrupted use of the seas, anti-smuggling patrols, and joint maritime exercises demonstrate that sovereignty now extends from the seabed to cyberspace, from coastal defence to environmental diplomacy, as elaborated in post–Cold War maritime strategy (Grove 1990).
As Michael Klare (2001) noted, "resource wars" define modern geopolitics. Bangladesh's deep-sea resource exploration and marine biodiversity programmes must therefore balance exploitation with ecological integrity. It should be a dual responsibility that characterises twenty-first-century sovereignty.
The geopolitical ecology of the Bay
No analysis of the Bay is complete without recognising its ecological volatility. Rising seas, intensifying cyclones, and salinity intrusion erode both coastlines and national interest-based claims. Scholars now speak of "climate geopolitics"—where shifting tides redraw boundaries of influence and vulnerability (Dalby 2020).
Bangladesh faces the twin imperatives of defence preparedness and indigenous adaptation. Disappearing coastlines may challenge the very baselines that define maritime jurisdiction (Beckman 2013). Here, diplomacy and foresight must converge in maritime national interest.
Bangladesh's leadership in climate diplomacy and its advocacy of the "common but differentiated responsibilities" place it at the moral centre of these new geopolitics. As Ahmad (2024) notes, maintaining strategic neutrality in climate and security forums helps Bangladesh Bridge divides rather than deepen them—turning vulnerability into moral strength.
Regional cooperation and the politics of partnership
Through BIMSTEC, Bangladesh could advance cooperative governance, albeit unevenly and incrementally, in maritime fisheries, disaster management, and connectivity (Rahman and Chowdhury 2020). This pragmatic, inclusive regionalism reflects Amitav Acharya's (2014) concept of "ASEAN-style consensus-building." This approach, modelled on the consensus-building process used by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), is slow and deliberate. However, it yields enduring agreements that all member states can support.
Such frameworks strengthen rather than weaken sovereignty. They show that, in a multipolar maritime world, sovereignty is maintained through networks rather than isolation. As Susan Strange (1988) observed, power moves through structures of production, knowledge, and finance just as much as through arms. Bangladesh's mastery of these interconnected domains will determine its future influence in the Bay of Bengal.
The theatre of strategy: Bay as frontier
Historian Richard Eaton (1993) described Bengal as a "frontier of frontiers", where land and water merged to shape identity. That metaphor remains relevant. The Bay today is a living border between nation and nature, ambition and adaptation.
Each Bangladesh Navy patrol, each diplomatic initiative, and each research expedition becomes part of a national performance of sovereignty. Here, strategy is not static—it is alive. Sovereignty, like the sea itself, must be renewed with each tide.
Foretelling the rising tide
However, beneath this choreography, deeper forces are mingling. Melting polar glaciers and rising seas threaten to redraw coastlines, submerge deltas, and redefine citizenship itself. The politics of the Bay are increasingly inseparable from the planet's physics.
Episode Twelve will examine these uncertain waters—how climate change, coastal erosion, and displacement challenge not only development but also the very idea of nationhood. If Episode Eleven has examined the geopolitics of the Bay, the next will confront its existential stakes, the politics of survival and emancipation.
Afterthoughts: Sovereignty at sea
The story of maritime Bangladesh and the Bay of Bengal is ultimately a story of adaptation, assertion, and aspiration. From colonial periphery to maritime participant, it must turn vulnerability into vision.
To reap benefit from its geopolitics, Bangladesh must regard itself as a riverine, coastal and oceanic state—anchored in its rivers yet oriented toward the open sea. Its future sovereignty will depend not on fixed coordinates but on strategic intelligence and moral clarity, the same qualities that underpin Ahmad's doctrine of equidistance: engagement without entrapment, openness without overreach.
The Bay remains what it has always been: a mirror of destiny. Its waves whisper of endurance, cooperation, and foresight. To understand its politics is to understand power itself, which is fluid, shifting, and profoundly human.
Foreshadowing Episode Twelve
Episode Twelve – Rising Tides: Climate Change and the Future of Coastal Bangladesh
will follow these very currents. It will explore how climate change reshapes Bangladesh's maritime geography, economy, and diplomacy. How disappearing coastal lands challenge the definition of sovereignty, and how new forms of resilience can redefine national strength. The tide that once carried trade and conquest now carries an existential question: can a nation secure its future when its frontiers themselves begin to move?
0 Comments
Post a Comment