I am embarrassingly uneducated about the region. Please help me be slightly less ignorant.
its bad , the hole new goverment comes from london and the first thing they approved was a US Navy Base .....
It's bad. Basically a CIA coup: https://asiatimes.com/2024/08/bangladesh-as-color-revolution-on-indias-doorstep/
I'm not saying that it isn't a CIA coup, but the level of proof that this article gives is weak as feck:
From whatever I have pieced together, it appears that adequate funding has been provided to the Jamaat-linked individuals operating in Bengal since at least last year and there had been some speculation that the US had funded a number of Islamist politicians who stood (and mostly won) during the Indian elections, opposing the candidates of India’s ruling BJP.
Honestly maybe it is a CIA coup, I guess time will tell. As I stated in the last thread about this, I just don't trust non-leftist authors making such unsourced judgements about things.
I don’t think you’re going to find a smoking gun here, but there are plenty of signs and also a larger pattern in the region for this sort of thing. This is from a great Vijay Prishad article posted elsewhere here:
Over the course of the past decade, South Asia has faced significant challenges as the United States imposed a new cold war against China. Initially, India participated with the United States in the formations around the US Indo-Pacific Strategy. But, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, India has begun to distance itself from this US initiative and tried to put its own national agenda at the forefront. This meant that India did not condemn Russia but continued to buy Russian oil. At the same time, China had—through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—built infrastructure in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, India’s neighbors.
It is perhaps not a coincidence that four governments in the region that had begun to collaborate with the BRI have fallen, and that their replacements in three of them are eager for better ties with the United States. This includes Shehbaz Sharif, who came to power in Pakistan in April 2022 with the ouster of Imran Khan (now in prison), Ranil Wickremesinghe, who briefly came to power in Sri Lanka in July 2022 after setting aside a mass uprising that had other ideas than the installation of a party with only one member in parliament (Wickremesinghe himself), and KP Sharma Oli, who came to power in July 2024 in Nepal after a parliamentary shuffle that removed the Maoists from power.
Seems reasonable enough. (sorry for the brief reply, I'm a bit busy atm)
The term is often used for all semis clandestine for operations of the US government. The CIA itself has had various open spinoffs that continue to operate. For example, the National Endowment for Democracy, to which a few interim government functionaries have ties, is a CIA cutout.
The backgrounds of those in the interim government body are... conspicuous. One must ask why those people and not others. Why no trade unions. Why those students. The military leaders responsible for the coup, leveraging the student and labor protests to do it, are of course proximally making these decisions, but their absurdly pro-American appointments mean taking orders from the US. Those connections would not be new.
It has the trappings of a color revolution, which is proper CIA territory. The title of the article uses this term.
I take it you’re not familiar with what color revolutions really are. Which part of the US government do you think would be involved in pushing regime change like this?
A field trip for the kids at Camp Dropshot, a counterrevolution themed CIA childrens outreach program jointly funded by generous donations from Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorganChase that focuses primarily on teaching children how to be compradors and to spin civil unrest into regime change.
There's always CIA there when a govt is couped and new one immediately ask for US base.
I don't think this is a fair response. @jadelord@discuss.tchncs.de's statement was correct. We don't need to read non-leftist authors so unskeptically.
The current favored carekeeper leader is a guy who got the Nobel Peace Prize for microloans. Make of that what you will.
Obama got one for waging 13 wars and wałęsa for completely fucking up his country, microloans seems peaceful in comparison.
You introduce a measure of economically preying on the poor even harder than before, and that is what Nobel Peace Prize is all about.
They should give me a Nobel peace prize for not posting my micropenis
The new government will almost assuredly be worse than the old one but the old one sucked pretty bad too. I give them 5 years tops before there is another coup and that one won't be used to install neo-liberals
The only thing that I've read anywhere that I respect is from Vijay Prashard. A super tldr is that it's mixed.
China really needs to be more proactive in its foreign policy. Losing three south Asian Ally’s to US proxies is not a good look.
If the USSR is too strong, side with the US to weaken the USSR.
this policy is probably the thing most singularly responsible for the coming collapse of global civilisation btw
Really though? By the time this policy emerged, Kruschev the revisionist had risen to power and was preparing the way for the USSR to liberalize. Mao was correct in preventing the integration of China into the USSR or it would have been subject to the same devastation as Russia once the Republic was dissolved. By maintaining a balance of powers, China was able to resist being absorbed into the USSR and avoid being couped and dominated by the West. The USSR destroyed itself.
The issue was more Cambodia, Vietnam, Afghanistan and where ever else they undermined local socialist forces. But the USSR did create its own hangmen, when they reintroduced liberalism and did de-kolkhoziation
Chinese foreign policy back then is something a lot of people have trouble with. For what it's worth, I think there's a realpolitik answer to why China did it - they knew the USA would intervene on the side of the compradors in any and all conflicts in China's region if the conflict was socialists vs compradors, and that meant the USA could establish a foreard deployment of activated military. If China intervened on behalf of the revolutionaries, the USA would redouble it's involvement and China couldn't defeat the USA. So the solution was to take the board position that the USA would normally inhabit, preventing the USA from entering the theater. By intervening on behalf of the compradors, the USA had no pretext for intervention and China ended up with a forward deployed activated military presence AND significant influence over the governments.
This interpretation is congruent with their approach to capitalism as well, taking up the position that the USA would normally inhabit in exploiting workers by freely allowing Western capitalists to get rich off of exploited Chinese citizens. This resulted in China occupying the space the USA would normally be in and also giving China significant control over the means of production while also making it impossible to spin a narrative that China needs to be destroyed for its behavior.
So the solution was to take the board position that the USA would normally inhabit, preventing the USA from entering the theater. By intervening on behalf of the compradors, the USA had no pretext for intervention and China ended up with a forward deployed activated military presence AND significant influence over the governments
This makes no sense, especially considering that the US did intervene in at least two of the mentioned cases.
It makes sense. It just doesn't mean it worked or worked in all cases or even that it would work long term. China abandoned this era of its foreign policy likely because it wasn't theoretically sound, but if you're going to say it makes no sense then you're going to have to provide some supporting argument.
What is the idea behind intervening in a region on the side that is anti-communist with the goal of making NATO stop intervening on the anti-communist side? Does one hope that NATO gets confused by a polity that has been trying to normalise relations with them joining on their side?
The idea is that NATO or the USA no longer has the pretext to enter the battle against communism because they would have to fight China and the revolutionaries against the minority incumbent. Because NATO cannot enter the battlefield, China gets to deploy its military and supply chains into the theater while the West does not. This expands China's force projection without triggering a reciprocal expansion of Western force projection .
The idea is that NATO or the USA no longer has the pretext to enter the battle against communism because they would have to fight China and the revolutionaries against the minority incumbent
Except that they still do have that pretext, as they are still opposing local communist movements and the USSR.
Also, even if that was true - that it wouldn't actually be fighting to suppress communist movements - logical consistency and factual-ness of justifications of such actions is not important for performing such actions. Hell, they could just not make these justifications and keep the relevant operations unadvertised.Because NATO cannot enter the battlefield
But they obviously can, and did (via the Mujahideen in the case of Afghanistan).
What even is the argument for the presence of the PRC somehow making NATO removing its presence from a region?You missed the tactical problem I raised, which is that if the USA entered the battlefield it would be either as an ally of China or it would need to fight both China and the revolutionary movement.
Regarding the development of the Mujahideen, that is demonstrably NOT entering the battlefield and needing to find another way to influence the game. The development and use of the Mujahideen is quite fundamentally different than USA's intervention in Korea and Vietnam. For China, losing a local revolutionary movement is a small loss compared with having a permanent USA military base on the Korean peninsula.
In essence, China moving in militarily creates a forward deployment that is still a material threat to the USA. If China did so on the side of the revolutionariew against the establishment, they would fighting the establishment military, which the USA could augment. Instead, China gets the full benefit of the establishment military and if the USA did intervene it would tactically be fighting in two fronts simultaneously. This creates forward deployments of Chinese assets with logistical support and an extension of Chinese military recon, all of which benefit China against Western intervention without creating political openings on the world stage and most importantly at the UN.
You missed the tactical problem I raised, which is that if the USA entered the battlefield it would be either as an ally of China or it would need to fight both China and the revolutionary movement
What's the tactical issue here, though? That NATO would have to act not according to the image it tries to project, i.e. that NATO would do as NATO always does?
I'm not buying that anybody would seriously base their policy of military and clandestine activities abroad on betting that NATO would care about theatrics when NATO states were formally and very publicly allied with the USSR during the late WW2.In essence, China moving in militarily creates a forward deployment that is still a material threat to the USA. If China did so on the side of the revolutionariew against the establishment, they would fighting the establishment military, which the USA could augment
In Afghanistan, the PRC aided the Mujahideen revolutionaries against the establishment, which only helped NATO.
I'm sorry, but this reads like your conjecture, and not something that you can provide a source on (I welcome you to prove me wrong on this matter), and I don't see how anybody can defend this sort of foreign policy on the grounds of it somehow helping communist movements in the world.
So. Yes, it's conjecture. However, I am not defending this sort of foreign policy on the grounds of it helping communist movements in the world. It explicitly does not help. What it does is advance China's national strategic goals on the grand chessboard. It is little comfort that China either did nothing or supported a smaller nation's communist movement if that movement (a long with Chinese material) is destroyed by USA intervention and results in a permanent USA base aimed at China.
It's an explicitly anti-imperialist instead of pro-communist approach. If the analysis is such that the USA would intervene and establish bases if a communist revolution occured in a small nation around China, the biggest threat to China is not the end of that revolution but the subsequent military occupation of their neighbor by the USA. So, if China instead occupied their neighbor, it takes up the space on the board. Sure, the USA could choose to fight China directly in that theater, but they didn't. They only ever did so indirectly, likely because fighting them directly was untenable - either tactically or politically or both.
It is little comfort that China either did nothing or supported a smaller nation's communist movement if that movement (a long with Chinese material) is destroyed by USA intervention and results in a permanent USA base aimed at China
It is even less comfort in case the PRC actively helps NATO crush a communist movement and establish a permanent NATO base aimed at itself.
If you calculate that the ally will surely be defeated, then it's better to not waste your resources on helping defeat them.Furthermore, Vietnam was hardly in immediate danger of being crushed by NATO at the point when the PRC decided to act against it.
It's an explicitly anti-imperialist instead of pro-communist approach
If you actively help the worst empire in the world, the approach is not anti-imperialist.
If the analysis is such that the USA would intervene and establish bases if a communist revolution occured in a small nation around China, the biggest threat to China is not the end of that revolution but the subsequent military occupation of their neighbor by the USA
The revolution already occurred in both Afghanistan and Vietnam, and the PRC sided with giving the control of Afghanistan to NATO's Mujahideen, so both of these cases contradict your guess.
So, if China instead occupied their neighbor, it takes up the space on the board
Did the PRC move to occupy Afghanistan or any other such neighbour where they helped defeat a local communist movement? Did they occupy Cambodia, at least after the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge by Vietnam?
I'm sorry, but this foreign policy was bad, and I can't say that you are doing a good job providing a solid explanation for why it wouldn't be so. This is one of the few issues I have with the PRC.
yeah very fair points and it's not materialist of me to engage in historical counter-factualising, just really upsetting how subjectively "good" things looked for international socialism in the mid 20th century and how badly we've fallen.
I think the problem is that in the mid 1900s, things actually weren't good for international socialism, it's just that it wasn't widely understood. The USSR was struggling to propagate it's own internal revolution. Remember, Lenin didn't want Stalin to take over but there was literally no one better for the job. Stalin, for all the good he did, went on a purging spree and STILL failed to secure the revolution against the counter revolutionaries. That means that by the mid 1900s the vanguard of the first successful revolution was already falling apart, and China not only saw it but called it out.
The USSR vanguard also made a ton of mistakes that hadn't been fully understood by the 1950s including religious persecution and economic bloc isolation. China's revolution was an incredible advance in not just Leninist vanguardism but in elucidating dialectical materialism itself. And China made huge mistakes that needed to be analyzed and corrected. And by that time we're talking the end of the mid 1900s.
Meanwhile the USA was for the first time seeing an ascendant Black Power movement and American Indian Movement, which they promptly crushed and co-opted.
Meanwhile Europe was busy doing Social Democracy to pull the wind from the sails of workers movements and the die hard communists were still confused about materialism, dialectics, and the like. European communist movements, including the Cuban revolution (as it was led by European colonists, albeit true revolutionaries and traitors to their European heritage), were arguing that all forms of queerness were liberal bourgeois perversions.
And in Africa, while the decolonization movement was energized, it was clearly wrong in its strategy and tactics because by the beginning of the end of the 1900s Europe had reasserted its neocolonial hold over the continent.
I guess what I'm saying is that maybe their was revolutionary zeal in mid 20th century but things were not actually good. And we're now in a situation where the revolutionary zeal is way more subdued, but the periphery is once again reasserting itself. This time, however, it seems like the European war machine is floundering in ways never before thought possible and its racking up loss after loss without much to show for it. And that, to me, feels more hopeful than anything else. Instead of the Soviet perspective of building a better system to compete with the imperialists, China has shown us that it's possible to participate exploit the contradictions in imperialism to create conditions that imperialism simply cannot resolve and, thus, cause it to self-destruct.
this is really well argued im too drunk to give a proper response but i appreciate it
The question is really whether this kind of long-term strategy is even realistic when you have a global empire that is aggressively trying to start wars and create chaos everywhere.
While this remains an open question, the theory is relatively strong. Wars destroy productive forces. That's not just what they do, it's a major component of their purpose. The USA military destroys productive forces. However, China's productive forces were built using USian and European capital, and the outputs of China's productive forces are the foundation of the West's economy. Destroying China's productive forces destroys the West's capital and destroys the West's commodity sources.
This is relatively new in history. It remains to be seen if these conditions will stop a war. If a war starts, it remains to be seen if these conditions will change the revolutionary conditions in the West sufficiently to bring about revolutionary defeatism at a large scale.
TLDR: China is more naive when it comes to the US empire and its desires than the USSR
Mao developed the Three Worlds Theory to distance China from the first (US and the USSR) and the second (developed countries of the Global North) worlds
Don't you mean 'the first (US and the developed countries of the Global North) and the second (the USSR and the rest of the Warsaw Pact) worlds'?
The Chinese government knows that a offensive political strategy will have american carriers arriving at their shores in two days max, so they try to "uphold international law" to give the americans less leeway to attack and possible have more cards to deal with the taiwan issue.
Bad government replaced with an even worse one, as far as I understand.
Since 1981 you've had power going back and forth between Sheikh Hasina's Awami League party (social democrats who figured prominently in the war for independence but have been thoroughly compromised by neoliberalism) and Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh National Party.
The recent student protests could probably be characterized as Sheikh Hasina being left holding the bag when the chickens of corruption came home to roost, and then doubling down on an unpopular but not very consequential policy. After ~250 died at the hands of police and the protest movement kept growing to a point where it could threaten the operation of the political apparatus, the army did a coup- for the first time in 45 years or so. Then they installed an interim head of state who was a pioneer of microfinance, and were in talks with "all the opposition parties" to form a new government.
There's plenty more going on underneath the surface that our bulletin bears can embellish.
The policy was not popular, but fairly consequential, assuming you mean the portion of jobs reserved for the descendants of freedom fighters
She also, like a total nutjob, claimed anyone against the policy was a "Razakars", effectively calling them traitors to the country
People finally had enough of her and her bullshit
I agree this sub makes it seem orchestrated by outside forces, which do meddle, but she did herself in
It's not like she conjured the policy out of thin air this year. It had stood for a while, there was just a big push this year.
Pushing bioessentialism on veterans in people's ancestry is cringe, but it's far from the worst thing that a head of state can do. It's pretty clear that she had the support of around 40% of the population.
It's not good though
And when it lead to mass protests they could have relented and said it would be corrected, instead of fighting with a bunch of students worried about their futures
Student protests happen all the time.
Why did Bangladesh experience a full government capitulation, whereas Indonesia a couple years ago did not?
There are external factors that play a huge role here.
Students had tried doing small tasks like organizing traffic a few years ago, they were cracked down on and it worked in Bangledesh
The fear was that they would go from volunteering to correct the flow of traffic to organizing for something political
This time the students were successful
I'm not saying there are no external forces at play, but the domestic desires appear to have been the major force here
Sadly now, there are numerous groups attempting to manage the chaos and come out on top, while the poor and weak suffer
I read the new PN Yunus was a regular visitor to the US embassy. I would not be surprised if this was a way of the USA getting at India, for Modi paying his first visit to Russia. Same way they got rid of Khan in Pakistan when he didn't cancel his visit with Putin right after the start of the Ukraine war. India had huge influence in Bangladesh with Hasina. USA couldn't meddle too directly with India, since India is still a big part of their strategy against China.
In general if the United States is excited about a coup they caused it, which is bad
What I understand is Sheikh Hasina was turning into an authoritarian leader, having ruled from 1996-2001 and then from 2009 onwards. A combined 20 years in total!
She did some good things
In power, she won admiration for stabilising the country, tackling jihadist groups and growing the economy, largely through the garment manufacturing boom. The rate of extreme poverty halved.
some bad
But her rule became increasingly oppressive, with extrajudicial killings and the jailing of political opponents and journalists. There was growing anger about corruption, especially as the economy foundered and living costs soared in the wake of the pandemic.
and really sketchy things
With youth unemployment at 40%, the reintroduction of government job quotas for descendants of those who fought in the Bangladesh independence war in 1971 – seen as a bung to party supporters – brought students out in protest.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/aug/07/the-guardian-view-on-bangladeshs-uprising-a-fresh-but-fragile-opportunity-to-renew-democracy
Funny that the garment boom is a good, imperialism is a fuck when sub-human wages halve poverty
??? If this is sarcasm, get bent. I'd rather someone admit to not being well informed and ask honestly, than run their mouth like shithead redditors who profess to know everything after reading a wiki summary. Go snark somewhere else
