It’s a new dawn for foreign policy in America. Gone are the days of terse State Department statements one has to read between the lines to deduce policy objectives.
Today, those objectives are telegraphed weeks in advance, blasted over X, and repeated ad nauseum to journalist pools crammed into Air Force One as America under Trump acts swiftly and forcefully to implement its foreign policy objectives.
While the ‘Donroe Doctrine’ will do much to restructure allegiances and alliances, 21st century America has long meddled in foreign affairs, often unsuccessfully. One such example happened under Trump’s predecessor who sought to instil democratic values in Bangladesh via support for regime change. While change (and a mysterious $29 million USAID donation to two individuals to help “strengthen the political landscape in Bangladesh”) happened under Biden, the success of the U.S.’s involvement is an open question.
In brief, historical tensions between Bangladesh and Biden stretch back at least as far as 2021 when the U.S. sanctioned Bangladesh’s Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) – a specialized anti-crime unit – in response to allegations of extrajudicial killings committed by the battalion; an unprecedented move, given that it accounted for the first ever sanctions made by the U.S. on Bangladesh.
Then, in advance of Bangladesh’s January 2024 elections, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken issued a warning that visa restrictions would be issued for those “undermining” the vote. When those elections were boycotted by opposition parties, the U.S. State Department announced its “concerns over reports of voting irregularities, condemned the violence that took place, and lamented the lack of participation of all political parties.” Despite this, no visa restrictions ever seemed to have come into force notwithstanding the prior threat.
As tensions boiled over in the summer of 2024 and Bangladesh’s students took to the streets calling for the government’s ouster, Biden’s administration called for calm, condemning violence and stating it was “watching [the] matter very closely”.
When Bangladesh’s government collapsed, Biden was quick to publicly display support for the interim government’s newly installed leader, Muhammad Yunus, whose ties to Democratic elites like Hilary and Bill Clinton had him circulating amid the upper echelons of America’s ruling class. In an unprecedented display of support usually reserved for major global or regional powers, Biden met Yunus for a sideline meeting at the September 2024 UN General Assembly with both teams taking the opportunity to amplify the photo-op.
Despite the overt support for an untested and unelected interim government speedily telegraphed by Biden’s administration, Yunus’s interim government has largely shunned U.S. political and democratic objectives.
Today, Bangladesh has drawn closer to Pakistan, Russia, and China, empowered a previously banned Islamic fundamentalist party, and continued a slate of extrajudicial killings while making high-profile claims of peace and improvement.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2024 protests, lawlessness reigned as Hindu minorities and shrines were attacked and destroyed. Despite these high-profile reports, there were no calls from Biden’s administration for calm or restraint.
More recently, in a chilling article titled “New rulers, old killers”, Al Jazeera reported that despite “promises of justice, reform, and an end to state violence […] those promises are under question.” The article notes that despite claims of reform, Yunus’s administration has permitted the system which allows the RAB to act with impunity to remain intact. The victims? Political activists, detainees held without warrants, alleged criminals, and citizens.
That impunity is spreading throughout society as prominent student leaders from the 2024 revolution are gunned down in the street ahead of the nation’s upcoming elections, anti-Indian sentiment keeps foreign students locked in their rooms for fear of personal safety, and angry mobs lynched a Hindu man accused of blasphemy.
The fact is, Bangladesh remains a deeply divided country, cleaved along religious and political lines. Since Yunus’s interim government has come into power, those divisions have continued to fester despite high-profile talk of a public mandate for reform.
Even the country’s judicial system has become weaponised for partisan gain. Since late 2024, the Anti-Corruption Commission has filed a veritable avalanche of cases against former ministers, business owners, MPs, and their family members often freezing accounts and seizing assets without clear basis. Those hit with claims are infrequently afforded detailed access to the allegations made against them. Instead, cases are paraded before Bangladeshi press to fuel the perception of an interim government acting judiciously, with the allegations repeated ad nauseum. Curiously few ever make it to trial where the full scope of evidence must be laid bare.
It all calls into question the legitimacy of the interim government and its backers. For a government which conducts in-absentia trials of a sitting English Member of Parliament based on hearsay rather than evidentiary proof and cancels cricket matches with India as diplomatic tensions heat up, the interim government is playing fast and loose with an American interpretation of a free and fair society.
In the end though it will be Biden and his administration who hold the ultimate responsibility for throwing their support behind this new chapter in Bangladesh’s history. But as American interests and influence in the country and the region dissipate, one wonders if the Donroe Doctrine’s roving eye might not eventually look eastward.
Photo by Austin Curtis on Unsplash
