Democracy promotion, regime change and US foreign policy: the case of Bangladesh
Jan 24, 2025
The deeply entrenched authoritarian regime of Sheikh Hasina was toppled by a student-led movement on August 5 2024. The global community cheered the moral courage and the phenomenal organisational skills of the student leaders. The redoubtable Economist magazine voted Bangladesh as ‘the country of the year’ (2024) because students led a movement that ‘toppled a tyrant’ and paved the way for a brighter future.
Do the student leaders really deserve such praise or was there the not-so-hidden hand of external forces? It is reasonable to argue that the legitimacy of a home-grown pro-democracy movement is impaired when it is co-opted by powerful external actors whose geo-political considerations might not be aligned with the national interest of a country.
The Economist is silent on this issue while there is hardly any national debate on this vexed question perhaps because the media is still not free in the post-Hasina era. Critics have suggested that
The prime suspect that aided and abetted the expulsion of the Hasina regime is the USA. It has a notorious track record of fomenting regime change in different parts of the world. For example, one study finds that, during the Cold War, the USA supported 66 regime change operations, most of them of a covert nature typically led by the CIA.
After the Cold War, global democracy promotion became an essential feature of US foreign policy mediated through the National Foundation for Democracy (NED) and its affiliates, but prominent critics, such as Stephen Kinzer, maintain that democracy promotion is merely a fig leaf to mask the fundamental motivation to install US-friendly governments, especially in countries deemed to be of strategic value to the USA. He drew on 14 case studies spread across many countries and time-periods to arrive at his dystopian view.
Successive US governments have been “willing to support any governing clique, no matter how odious, as long as it did America’s bidding,” (by) “overthrowing democratically elected leaders and leaving tyrants in their place.” Admittedly, US-led regime change operations led to the removal of repressive political leaders, such as Ngo Dinh in South Vietnam, Manuel Noriega in Panama, or Saddam Hussein in Iraq, but, argues Kinzer, ‘they were often former allies-of-convenience who’d stepped too far out of line.’
This brief review of the global evidence on regime change by the United States does not in any way prove that the Hasina government became the victim of US machinations. Of course, the US government has categorically denied that it played any role in assisting local actors to overthrow the Hasina government. As a US State Department spokesperson proclaimed:
“Any implication that the United States was involved in Sheikh Hasina’s resignation is absolutely false.”
Yet, there is considerable historical and circumstantial evidence that the USA was not an innocent bystander in the tumultuous political developments in Bangladesh that took place in mid-2024. As one study notes:
Bangladesh and the United States are … important economic partners…Bangladesh is… The largest U.S. investment in Bangladesh is the operations of Chevron which produces 50% of Bangladesh’s natural gas …Bangladesh is the second largest apparel exporter in the world after China and ranked third in the list of RMG exporters to the USA.”
It is also a matter of historical record that the US government has had unfriendly, and, at times, hostile relationship with both Hasina’s father (the late Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangladesh) and Hasina herself. The liberation of Bangladesh was actively opposed by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and President Nixon. They in turn actively supported Pakistan. The US government turned a blind eye to the genocidal acts of the Pakistan army in then-East Pakistan in a bid to crush the Bangladesh independence movement. This emergence of Bangladesh was directly supported by India and aided and abetted by the former Soviet Union. The US was opposed to losing ground in the Indian subcontinent to the Soviet Union and its allies. Hence, its indifference to the suffering of the Bangladeshi people. One seminal study of that period called such actions by the US government a case of ‘moral blindness’.
Henry Kissinger held a typically disdainful attitude towards the newly emerged nation of Bangladesh. His aides advanced the thesis of Bangladesh as a ‘basket case’ that defied US will and became independent. He also called Sheikh ‘the most stupid person in the world’. Furthermore, it was during the reign of Henry Kissinger that Sheikh Mujib was assassinated prompting one prominent analyst to conclude that
“Americans were important players behind the 1975 coup in which Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was assassinated along with the members of his family”.
It is also a matter of historical record that, during the tragic Bangladesh famine of 1974 during which more than a million people perished, the US government did not supply the required aid in a timely fashion because it objected to Bangladesh doing business with Cuba.
Fast forward to US-Bangladesh government relations in the 21st century. It appeared that the US softened its attitude towards Bangladesh. It called the country under Hasina’s rule a ‘moderate Muslim country’ .
This rapprochement did not last long, especially after Peter Haas was appointed as US Ambassador to Bangladesh. He behaved like an opposition politician rather than a diplomat. He soon became a persona no grata within government circles and left Bangladesh under acrimonious circumstances.
It was around this time that Bangladesh got ensnared in geopolitical developments. Apparently, argues Jeffrey Sachs, an internationally renowned scholar of global and economic affairs,
“Bangladesh had delayed signing two military agreements that the U.S. had pushed very hard since 2022, indeed by none other than the former Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the neocon hardliner with her own storied history of U.S. regime-change operations.
One of the draft agreements, the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), would bind Bangladesh to closer military-to-military cooperation with Washington. The government of PM Hasina was clearly not enthusiastic to sign it”.
At the same time, new evidence is emerging that an affiliate of NED ran a program for two years training pro-democracy activists who were opposed to the Bangladesh government. NED also fully funds a Bangladeshi newspaper based in Sweden (Netra news) that ran a long campaign of opposition against the Hasina government.
The current interim government that followed the political exile of Hasina to India is headed by Nobel Laureate Yunus who has deep links with the USA. He received two medals from USA – one from the President and another from Congress. This a rare feat for a non-US citizen.
It is noteworthy that the interim government was recognised by USA almost immediately after its formation. One prominent Bangladeshi newspaper observes:
‘Since the interim government led by Dr Muhammad Yunus took office in Bangladesh, the US has shown what seems to be a reinvigorated interest in advancing the partnership with the country’.
In sum, there is at least historical and circumstantial evidence that USA was by no means averse to the idea of political transition in Bangladesh, even if it meant the violent overthrow of a repressive government. Sheikh Hasina herself expressed deep concerns about the risk of a US-led movement to oust her. Her fears were confirmed by China with one analyst making the following observation.
“If the US succeeds in supporting a pro-American regime in Bangladesh, it may establish military bases there, which will threaten China’s maritime transport routes.”
It appears that the US has succeeded in supporting a ‘pro-American regime’ in Bangladesh. How such a regime will evolve over time remains to be seen.