As most of you know I am the child of Bangladeshi immigrants to the US. I don’t make much of my “identity” because it rests lightly on me, and is not a major concern. I’ve been to Bangladesh twice in the last 40 years. My views on ascriptive identity are old-fashioned, you should listen to me because I am a human, not because of my sex, gender, class, race or religion. My experience and background are not trivial, but neither are they the most important thing.
But sometimes they do matter. Recently I saw this Tweet:
This person lives in Washington D.C. and refers to herself as “Tree-hugging, granola-crunching, whale-saving, ACLU card-carrying, liberal Democrat; world traveler; tennis fanatic; animal lover; political junkie and activist.”
I think it is understandable that Lithuania is angry considering its geopolitical circumstances. The cancelation of the shipment seems petty, but it’s obviously within their rights, and for historical reasons, Lithuanians are extremely passionate about the current conflict in Ukraine and look very negatively upon Russia.
But what about Bangladesh? Here I can actually offer some personal perspective, because my parents grew up in Bangladesh (East Pakistan), and much of my family lives in Bangladesh. On the whole, feelings toward Russia are warm, if somewhat distant and abstract. On a geopolitical level, Russia has been a “friend” to both India and Bangladesh for decades. This is not just a theory at the scale of the nation-state, there were personal connections, as Indians and Bangladeshis traveled to the Soviet Union to study, and the USSR sent advisors to the subcontinent. On the merits Indians and Bangladeshis may not be comfortable with the Russian invasion, but should they turn their back so quickly on a relationship that goes back decades? Will Western countries embrace India and Bangladesh with open arms to reward them for their actions?
For Bangladesh, there is a more concrete historical reason for Russophilia: the Soviet Union was in the end on the side of India and the soon-to-be Bangladesh during the 1971 conflict with Pakistan. Because the US was a staunch ally of Pakistan, the official government’s position was to ignore evidence of massive human rights atrocities being reported by their own diplomats. The Bengali civilian death toll is usually given to be in the range of ~100,000 to 2 million. The latter figure actually comes from Pravda, and I think there is reason to be skeptical that 1 out of 33 Bengalis in East Pakistan were killed. But the ~100,000 figure is possibly too low. In any case, it wouldn’t be a trivial death toll even if it was around 100,000, and the need for widespread abortion clinics after the war attests to mass rapes (the rape had a eugenic intent, a Pakistani general asserted that they would “change the race of this bastard nation”).
The Nixon administration even took some threatening moves with naval power once India intervened and was clearly going to defeat Pakistan, aided by the Bengali nationalist left-wing militias. The Soviet Union mobilized its own naval power to check the US. People of my parent’s generation remember these events with some clarity (my mother was shot by Pakistani soldiers).
In 1972 Bangladesh was founded as the “People’s Republic of Bangladesh.” The name should make it clear that Bangladesh’s origin was as a secular socialist left-nationalist nation-state. Over the decades many things have changed, in particular, the rise of a more Islamic self-conception and the shift away from socialism to export-oriented capitalism. But the founding myth of a socialist nationalist struggle remains, and people of my parents’ generation remain strongly influenced by 1970’s Third World socialism.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been a disaster for geopolitical stability, and now the world economy. It’s been a disaster for Ukraine, and Russia is not really benefiting so much in material terms. I am personally terrified of the increased risks of nuclear war. All that being said, are the Russians intent on a war of total subjugation laced with genocide? My own understanding is that they thought Ukrainian nationalism was a paper tiger and that the corrupt government would fall and they would take over quickly. The Ukraine invasion is far more important than the genocide in Bangladesh in the early 1970’s (that targeted Hindus and intellectuals) because the fate of the world hangs in the balance, even if the probabilities are low. But to be candid on the grand scale of humanitarian disasters I doubt the civilian death count will reach anything like what happened in Bangladesh. Would Bangladeshis really want to sacrifice the old friendship for abstractions about the international order? Or a humanitarian crisis of far lesser magnitude than what they themselves went through two generations ago?
In the years after 9/11 the US went through foreign policy disasters because it refused the understand the world that it tried to change. There are other histories and other viewpoints out there. You may not agree with them, but they are there nevertheless.
I guess my PoV is that the friendship of nations seems like a moot point; India and Bangladesh are too poor to sacrifice for this sort of goal. Russian food is important for them, but they provide no essential finished technological exports to Russia (happy to see this disproven if so). So what would it achieve?
Asking India to join has the air of asking India to put in place the same restrictions as West or China during Covid – the cost to development is so high that it would not increase human well-being and would be a humanitarian loss.
China’s another matter, though even then I’d be fairly happy to see Russia become their lapdog; in muddies China in Western eyes which is good for our cohesion toward them, and would speed the Russians resigning themselves to fate as a minor power (with nukes).
Bangladesh is hardly unique among nations in the global South not condemning Russia. US liberalism has accelerated its cultural imperialism/religious proselytizing, and I suspect many countries view a Russia – China as more culturally and politically tolerant towards their interests, and therefore less threatening to be aligned with.
Also, swiftness with which the West hypocritically punished Russia for military interventions the West itself has committed with impunity the past half century or so probably gave leaders paused. Cross the West and you could be shut out from the global financial system.
Surely, even if they don’t outright prefer a Russia-China hegemony, a bipolor world would be preferable for many countries including Bangladesh.
Hmm, I’d guess that these countries don’t want to choose, and in a much less safe and stable world where countries are divided into two economic and military camps, as in the Cold War (which far from being more stable, led to incidents like Razib mentions), they’d have to.
In a world like that, some developing countries could a ChRussia bloc, but I think it wouldn’t be so helpful for development. The Chinese CP view is flatly to suppress consumption and use mechanisms to stop off-shoring of manufacturing in China. The West is a better bet if you aim to move up the value chain by raw exports->manufacturing exports->fully developed, as the successful catch up economies have.
“Because the US was a staunch ally of Pakistan, the official government’s position was to ignore evidence of massive human rights atrocities being reported by their own diplomats. The Bengali civilian death toll is usually given to be in the range of ~100,000 to 2 million. The latter figure actually comes from Pravda, and I think there is reason to be skeptical that 1 out of 33 Bengalis in East Pakistan were killed. But the ~100,000 figure is possibly too low. In any case, it wouldn’t be a trivial death toll even if it was around 100,000, and the need for widespread abortion clinics after the war attests to mass rapes (the rape had a eugenic intent, a Pakistani general asserted that they would “change the race of this bastard nation”).”
The real Nazis of S Asia. West Pak really took the Steppe:AASI relations to their worst possible conclusion. And they still love to brag about the “superior Muslim
/Punjabi race.” Imran Khan’s Nazi critiques ring hollow for a reason. Yes the BJP has some bad actors. But in the same way that Trump is not the second Hitler, Richard Spencer is the leader of a far right race obsessed faction of the GOP and the Haridwar incident is like that for BJP. It is an anomoly.
The BJP Nazi crap is so overblown. Yes some of the early leaders had a weird Hitler fetish. But so many leaders of political movements, especially leftist ones, have fetishes for even worse killers. Heck, one could argue that the fetishes many S Asian Muslim carry for genocidal conquerors, some old whom can be directly quoted looking down on S Asians racially, is equally insane.
People are tribal and brutal throughout history. Both sides were in partition. But only one took things to a similar magnitude post partition. And still remains the worst place for minority rights in the subcontinent.
One of the worst foreign policy mistakes the US ever made was trusting Pakistan. The military junta theocracratic kleptostate only continues to harbor terrorists at the cost of its own peoples’ wellbeing, at least in part, regarding its neighbor, out of irrational religious hatred and also disdain over grossly exaggerated perceived racial differences.
@Matt:
Russian food is important for them
What are you talking about exactly? As far as I know, we (India) produce our own food, and have surpluses every year. (I used to keep reading stories about food rotting in warehouses because our storage facilities aren’t up to scratch.) In fact, we export some food too, unless I’m mistaken. Quite possibly we import niche food items that can’t be grown in India, but that’s true for any country.
What we are really dependent on the Russians for is arms. They supply more than 50% of our arms (I’ve heard the number 70% too), and that really is what is driving the noncommittal position of the Indian government on the current war. The Indian government is now trying to encourage local arms manufacturing, but producing our own equivalent of a Lockheed Martin ain’t no easy task.
What gets the Indian government in a real pickle is that their foreign policy has always (since the middle of the Cold War) been to keep Russia as a friend to balance our perennial antagonism (and sometimes enmity) with China. But now with Russia and China seemingly becoming besties for a long time to come, I don’t know how this policy can be sustained.
I didn’t realise that, but surely anyway if India exports to food to cover Russian shortfall, that will raise price? But it’s not a direct impact.
Re; Russian arms, I think this war raises some questions about their value anyway.
@Numinous
I think he is referring to huge share of fertilizer imports from Russia. Also heavy agricultural machinery.
Russian food is a way bigger deal for Bangladesh. Russian wheat is a big deal for them.
@thewarlock, re;fertilizer for India, I think you credit it me with more than just shooting my mouth off and making assumptions, but that’s a something worth considering?
@thewarlock: “One of the worst foreign policy mistakes the US ever made was trusting Pakistan.”
At risk of shooting my mouth off again, how much does that gets us back to the OP premise from Razib? That the US could say, well, they’ve been friends by us back in the 20th century, an ally against the Soviets, and they haven’t funded those that target America, so what do we care of the struggles between them in distant countries, even if they’re the aggressor? Which would be somewhat analogous to India/Bangladesh and Russia in this case. If “Friends, not sacrosanct principles” is seen as an accepted stance, then I could see extending that to the US for Pakistan.
Hopefully this war serves as an impetus for the Third World to reduce their economic dependence on the West. West remains the wealthiest region on Earth so trade with them will remain important. But whenever possible, develop your own companies especially in finance, information technology etc.
Otherwise if your country ever crosses the West, “Tree-hugging, granola-crunching, whale-saving, ACLU card-carrying, liberal Democrat; world traveler; tennis fanatic; animal lover; political junkie and activist”” Nikkis of America will make sure your country suffers economic ruin for internet points.
@Warlock:
The amazing thing is the inability of the US military/intelligence/diplomatic borg to change their attitude towards and sponsorship of Pakistan, which has clearly been the enemy of the US and its interests since the end of the Cold War.
It is the root cause of the Afghanistan fiasco. The US fought the wrong war in the wrong place against the wrong people.
@Harry, that could be an option (presuming that interpretation of events). But remember that local import substitution policies are often hard. In the case of Russia, cf the state of cars under Communist production (Lada, &c). More recently Putin told apparently told Russia to do a bunch of import substitution in manufacturing, but it’s quite difficult for them because of the incentives towards faking it and just doing corruption and pocketing subsidies.
Finance and IT are also somewhat convincingly sectors that the US has some structural advantages in, for cultural and historical reasons. Having a worse version of some technology for a long time might be as much of a problem as having a good version with weak resilience to certain events.
If people can see that the technology is not as good, that can lead you to morale problems, or even uncompetitiveness. As Russia ultimately discovered, or had revealed, in the ’80s. (Another contemporary version may be the way the Right Wing in the US has made some efforts to establish competing mainstream media, social media and universities and genereally these get just laughed at and diminish their status further and are perhaps counterproductive.)
Definitely would need some degree of a balancing act to say “Well, we have enough free trade in this tech that we’re not falling behind or embarassing, but not enough that you can easily switch it off and its more painful for us than you”. Russia can’t make that balance as easily ‘cos they lack the sort of economic structure that allows them to develop enough competitive industries – under Communism because Communism and under the RF because of corruption? It seems like possibly the same sort of social problems that led them to what Putin did (which looks like a massive concentration of power under one man who can make a strategic miscalculation and an inner circle that are so bought due to corruption that they can’t really check him) also led them to have this economy that has some dependencies on Western imports.
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/anne-applebaum-on-the-ukraine-crisis-107?s=r&utm_source=pocket_mylist
Probably the best thing I’ve listened to about this ordeal
The US definitely shouldn’t ally with Pakistan any longer (the US definitely has been played). Definitely should pull India in to the Western camp to counter China (in fact, the India/China rivalry will be the big one of the 21st century). And from India’s perspective, while they are still dependent on Russia for arms, as this war has shown, that’s not a smart strategic move in the long term.
Or perhaps the Indians should pull the Americans to the Indian camp? I joke, but I say this because Americans shouldn’t expect to be the senior partner in this relationship. India lives in a world where China is already ahead of it, economically, militarily etc. It can live with a more powerful China because it already lives in such a world. Its the Americans who can’t tolerate a world where China ends up being more powerful than them. So dare I say, in this cold war with China, its the Americans who are more desperate to contain China. And thus its the Americans who need India more than vice versa at least wrt China.
So if Americans want a good relationship between India, it should be a relationship of equals. It means India may have a good relationship with Russia, Iran etc and the Americans will have to live with it. It means India will elect governments that the New York Times liberals will find extremely reprehensible. Those governments may or may end up going after degenerate American cultural imports. But the State Department will have to suck it up if it wants a good relationship. No more petty sanctions because India buys Iranian oil here or Russian planes there.
India could play China and the US like the girl who won’t commit to one boyfriend, and try to use that to extract more international freedom of action. I suspect that it would work out less well in that India would end up with a distinctly second-class trade relationship with both, with barriers to Chinese and US imports and exports, certain technologies not on the list for trade or filtering back to India.
To some extent for the US, simply having India develop economically will naturally counter-balance Chinese interests in Asia, so there’s possibly no real need to compromise too much but simply bide time until India’s catchup growth and China’s slowing growth moves the two together.
That’s rather too grandiose. Forget LM and advanced weaponry, India has trouble producing problem-free small arms (e.g. rifles): https://medium.com/war-is-boring/indias-anti-terror-troops-despise-their-assault-rifle-3fcafa392aaa
So, yes, India is highly dependent on Russian arms exports, starting with the humble rifle, let alone tanks and jet fighters.
That’s adorable. How many aircraft carrier battle groups does India have?
That just too cute! Have you heard of this thing called the Pacific Ocean? It sits between the U.S. and China. India, on the other hand, shares a border with China. Good luck with that without an American alliance.
The U.S. supported Pakistan in the Bangladesh war because Nixon and Kissinger were using Pakistan as a back channel to P.R. China, and Pakistan’s president had basically said, “Be nice to us or you can kiss your ‘opening to China’ goodbye.”
Since that was the lynchpin of their foreign policy strategy–and great power realignment was to be a foundation of Nixon’s 1972 re-election strategy–they said “how high?”
Given the growing pile of evidence that the experimental ‘vaccines’ are causing serious injuries I think Bangladesh is lucky to lose out on this shipment even if the reasons are sordid and despicable.
@Roger Sweeny:
That was then this is now. 50 years is a long time. See my comment above March 9, 2022 at 9:33 am.
“The amazing thing is the inability of the US military/intelligence/diplomatic borg to change their attitude towards and sponsorship of Pakistan, which has clearly been the enemy of the US and its interests since the end of the Cold War.”
Matt: India could play China off the US the way Europe could play Russia off the US. In other words, when one power is a local direct autocratic threat and the other is a liberal democracy willing to help you, it’s a pretty easy choice who to align with.
Harry: Threats focus the mind. The US really should have no interest in what Iran does (Israel does, and so does SA, but ultimately, the ME being a basketcase doesn’t affect the US much). And India should be discovering about now that relying on Russia for military equipment is a stupid strategic decision.
Anyway, ultimately, I see the US-India relationship (by the end of the 21st century) to become something akin to the UK-US relationship in around 1900. The US would help India fend off a surging revanchist local power (just like it helped the UK fend off a surging revanchist local power before). Leadership of the free world will still reside in the Anglosphere.
I remember the tragedies of Bangladesh (and the Concert) and rooting for India (on TV) in the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. I was a young adult just out of the military (and Vietnam). But I have no recollections of the United States siding with Pakistan — the television was drenched with the horrors of the people of Bangladesh. If any Americans (besides the Nixon Administration) were pro-Pakistan (which may have an been anti-Soviet reaction) I was not aware of it. Memory, of course, is a fragile thing, but point being the official posturing of one’s government may often mean nothing to the culture and allegiances of its citizens; not so today!
From the perspective of good of civilization the sheer existance of something like Russia is an undesirable anomaly. Russia threatens the very existance of the civilization by having those thousands of nukes, while at the same time doesn’t really contribute much to the civilization’s progress, or well-being in a non-redundant, non-replaceable way. It is an Unnecessary Evil. It really should’t be there – the model of civilization with somehting like Russia is a faulty model, a self-destructive model.
Other large militaristic countries like US or China are kind of Necessary Evils, they are driving the progress of civilization forward with technology, science, in case of US, but not China culture and so on. If these were replaced by some kind of nature reserve the civilization would drastically slow down, perhaps even go backwards – I doubt UE, India would be enough to replace these two. If Russia – the Unnecessary Evil – was replaced with a nature reserve (the one with the option to extract resources) the civilization would do better: not much loss in progress, but less corruption, less militarism, less vodka, less propaganda and so on. Including details like not having to pay large fees for air transport between Asia and Europe that Russia extract now.
https://mobile.twitter.com/AmanUTT30990450
Ongoing Pak atrocity watch
The atrocities of Bangladeshi war of independence were horrible, but hopefully the world changed enough in 50 years to act more forcefully to prevent a repeat. It’s worse with the internal conflicts of repressive nations, understandably. But invasions and annexations of smaller neighboring countries have become virtually impossible, just remember the annexation of Kuwait. So I just don’t see how the world’s inability to help Bangladesh then gives South Asian countries some sort of a moral high ground now.
Is trade an issue, then? India is a major supplier of chemicals and pharmaceuticals to Russia, which is already endangered by problems with convertibility of Russian ruble. There is a lot of plans for buying Russian armaments, but it won’t be possible in the near future because Russian planes and missiles used too many foreign parts to allow unimpeded production. But even Europe continues massive trade with Russia despite all the sanctions. So while foreign trade is objectively in danger, it isn’t going to be affected by the formal stance of South Asian nation against the war of aggression.
Why, then, they don’t take the stand? I’m afraid that the ultimate cause is simply racist, that Ukraine is a white, European, aspiring EU nation and therefore its tears are seen as a “proper payback” for the sins of the colonizers of the past centuries. But I will be glad to be convinced that something different is going on…
@Dx
Yeah no. This has nothing to do with some magical “just deserts” for being White. That is incredibly myopic. You are acting like some Western Leftist graduates of Smith College run all of the Indian foreign policy establishment. And Russia is actually seen right now by the Alt Right as a big savior of white people. Hence, a big portion of the white supremacist faction of the Republican party (a minority faction but still present) supports Russia. There are enough talks of the “Jewish Cabal” and its control of NATO and imperialism in Ukraine.
The US needs to put its money where its mouth is like it did for Pakistan. Give India weapons deals as a priority to reduce dependence on Russian arms. Actually respect that all of Kashmir is an integral part of India. And continue to assist India in defending its Himalayan border from China. Until there are more tangible benefits, and India isn’t chained to Russia for military and other (cheap energy, fertilizer) support, there will be issues. Also, a lot of India joint military ventures are with Russia (eg. Brahmos missile). Not exactly easy to back away from such a close defense partner.
India is still heavily dependent on Russian arms spare parts to power its military. Russia has historically helped India a lot. It is now pivoting to China. So India knows it cannot depend on Russia the same way it has because of geopolitical reality.
For the US, it needs to be a true quid pro quo. None of the pseudo-secular, often radical islamoapologist crap, the Leftist Squad wants either. They openly support Kashmiri terrorism and all sorts of idiotic socialist ideas like the current Indian Farm laws. Foreign money was a huge part of why capitalist reforms failed. And yes there is a right wing pro trade lobby in the US. But the way the left wing one interferes and screws with Indian development is annoying as hell. Often times support is conditional on all sorts of looney leftist ideas.
I fully support India and the US coming together. But there has to be some fairness and understanding. Alliances won’t shift overnight entirely. If one wants to shift them faster, greasing the wheels often helps. The US has more resources to do that than India does. India is barely trying to get back into things after being clobbered by the Wuhan Flu.
The US was moronic for historically trusting Pakistan the way it did. It is even more moronic that it continues to do so. India wants to be a true friend to the US, one can even argue perhaps a junior partner, but not a total minion. Instead of working with the current government, all you read in American papers is a lot of censuring. There is often more critique of Modi, a leader of an electoral democracy, than the army junta puppet to the West and the autocrat to the North.