The silent foreign policy debate

This is unobjectionable, as far as it goes. Ideally, of course, such would be the case. Continuity and certainty in one's affairs is generally a good thing, be it in business or government, and it would be dislocating and discomforting, both inside the country as well as outside, if election changes heralded radical new shifts in foreign relations.

The truth, however, is that foreign policy is in no appreciable way different from domestic policy, and that as attractive as continuity is, differing views as to the direction a country's foreign policy should take are as valid a subject for political debate as any other.

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In this country it is generally the opposition AL who most forcefully suggest that foreign policy should remain unchanging, regardless of who is in office. The reason for this is that in the public mind the foreign policy that the AL is identified with is by and large an electoral handicap while the foreign policy the BNP is identified with is by and large an electoral benefit to them.

So of course the AL would want to take foreign policy off the table when it comes to political debate. BNP, on the other hand, continues to want to draw a bright line of differentiation between it and the AL on the issue because it sees this as one of the party's strong points in the minds of the public.

However, the BNP does not really involve itself in substantive debate on the issue either, contenting itself with little more than mere demagoguery on the issue and implying that the AL would be subservient to India and not look out for the best interests of the country.

It thus seems to me that it is long overdue for the country to really have the foreign policy debate which the AL is too nervous and the BNP is too cynical to want to pursue.

The issue is not merely our relations with India, though India would of course loom large in any foreign policy discussion, but Bangladesh's entire global outlook and relationship to the rest of the world.

Bangladesh's current policy is a very inward looking one: a Fortress Bangladesh mentality, if you will. Consider the evidence: We remain inveterate skeptics when it comes to foreign investment. We have not linked up with the Asian Highway network. We remain skeptical of free trade agreements. We only very belatedly linked up to the submarine cable that has opened up massive new possibilities in the information and communication technology sector. We are not interested in opening up domestic facilities for transnational use. We continue to drag our feet on signing and implementing bilateral and multi-lateral accords and arrangements. I could go on.

It is my contention that this kind of blinkered thinking is really hurting the national interest. I would further argue that the common denominator to the current government's position is its distrust of India. If there were some way, for instance, of signing up to the Asian Highway that didn't necessitate going through India, there is no doubt in my mind that we would have done so.

As support for this last point, it is interesting to note that today Bangladesh's trade deficit with China is in fact larger than our trade deficit with India, but this bilateral trade deficit has caused not nearly so much heart-ache (bilateral trade deficits are, incidentally, a more or less meaningless statistic, but that is an argument for another day).

The question the needs to be asked is whether pathological hostility to India is deforming out foreign policy goals. Within this context, how we manage the relationship with India is crucial because such a determination ultimately impacts almost every other aspect of our foreign policy.

However, this isn't a debate we are likely to see any time soon. Just as the Democrats in the US were cowed into supporting the Iraq war for fear of being dubbed anti-American and unpatriotic, so the AL is also desperate to avoid any suggestion that it might be able to manage a more productive relationship with India, even if it is patently obvious that the current approach is anything but productive.

But India is not the only issue. There is also the issue of our relationships with the Middle Eastern countries and how we are going to balance our need for cheap fuel with protecting the rights of the hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi labourers in the region and what we are going to do about money from the region that has ended up financing terrorism in Bangladesh.

Then there is the question of whether we are going to prioritize free trade over the loss of revenue from tariffs and import duties. There is the question of how best to attract foreign investment and which foreign investment to target. There is the crucial question of energy security and the possibility of setting up a regional power grid, which has serious foreign policy implications.

And, critically, there is our relationship with China and South-East Asia. BNP has articulated the excellent "Look East" policy but little has been done to implement it and it would be interesting to know where the major parties stand on this issue and what ideas they have for its implementation. I would like to see more concrete steps in this direction and am in fact firmly of the belief that as long as India and Pakistan remain at loggerheads that we need to move our focus from Saarc to Bimstec.

So how about it? Let us have this debate out in the open. The nation deserves it. And the disquieting truth is that for all of the policies we pursue inside the country, it is how we choose to position ourselves within the global context in the next few decades that will ultimately determine how we fare.

Zafar Sobhan is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.