Since the 26 August 2017 influx of the Rohingya community into Bangladesh, particularly in the Cox’s Bazar district, the country has been subjected to phenomenal challenges. While the initial issues were to arrange food and accommodation for a community who had no other option but to flee their homeland, gradually the nature of challenges diversified. This article identifies the relationship between the local community and the Rohingya community in the Cox’s Bazar district in the aftermath of the influx. While doing so, it unfolds different types of tension and difficulties that emerged in the area due to the Rohingya influx. It concludes that the influx has fundamentally affected and altered the lives of the locals, which must be taken into consideration by the Government of Bangladesh in its plans for this region.
The twentieth-century world order has been shaken and is being reinterpreted in different terms. The rise of China has been instrumental in such reshaping, which does not only affect the current global world order but also the region of South Asia, which has its own rising power—India. What are the choices of South Asian nations under the circumstances? This article seeks to ask. In this context, I choose to study Bangladesh. Bangladesh, the youngest South Asian nation, started its journey with a foreign policy assumption of its geographic limitation; that Bangladesh is locked by India on three sides with a small border with Myanmar and a southward opening towards the Bay of Bengal has made Bangladeshi experts call it an ‘India-locked’ nation. Despite such a pessimistic undertone, Bangladesh has emerged in the second decade of the twenty-first century as a country to be reckoned with. While I argue that for Bangladesh both India and China are of paramount significance, one must not forget that for both the countries, Bangladesh holds strategic significance not only due to its locational reality but also an array of other reasons. This article thus seeks to explore Bangladesh’s strengths and challenges in responding to India and China’s policies towards it and thus contribute to the understanding of the strategies of small powers towards big powers in a region. Certainly, in the light of a looming Asian century, this article also plans to chart the changing landscape of the larger international politics and concludes how an emergent South Asia and a small power like Bangladesh can play an instrumental role in it.
This article argues that in the 21st century, international order has not only become unstable but also short-term in nature and issue-based, which has led to the emergence of a number of alliances whose functionality can be questioned. A number of alliances are being formed and are in existence but without any clear goals and objectives. This hypothesis is applied to understand the nature of the recently formed AUKUS—Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States’ alliance in the Indo-Pacific region. The paper, taking the framework of international order, argues that AUKUS would be one such alliance that has started with a lot of promises but its fundamental proposition to counter the rise of China in the Indo-Pacific region—although it does not mention the name of the country—is impractical. Given the economic rise of China as well as the example of the Five Eyes (FVEY) of intelligence sharing mechanism of the Anglophone countries formed during the early years of the Cold War, the AUKUS may survive the test of time but it also may exist as an example of the patterns of the current international order—that is another alliance without a clear path. This article also takes into account of the reaction of the Southeast Asian nations and criticisms against AUKUS in Australia. It points out how Australia’s security should be viewed more comprehensively.
International Relations (IR) is no longer considered as an academic discipline that analyzes the major powers or great powers' activities only. From its Cold War content of emphasizing on traditional state-centric security, it has traversed a long way to expand its subject matter. Similarly, smaller nations and their imprints on international politics are also emerging as a significant area of inquiry in IR. This article seeks to contribute to this inquiry by discussing Bangladesh's rising significance and how academic IR addresses this issue. It traces the history of IR in Bangladesh as well as its gradual expansion. It discusses the growth of IR as an academic discipline at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, that gradually led to the development of IR studies in other parts of the country. The article documents this growth, which is the first of its kind to trace the rise and development of IR in Bangladesh. It therefore fulfils the lacuna in understanding how and where the growth of IR took place in a non-western country.One might contend what is the relevance of studying IR in Bangladesh. The article argues that despite being physically small, academic IR has generated interest in Bangladesh due to the changing geostrategic significance of the country. The article outlines the rising geopolitical significance of Bangladesh where great powers are interested to come and be a part of Bangladesh's development. It is in this context, the study of IR becomes more pertinent in Bangladesh.
The discipline of International Relations (IR) started its journey in 1919, to understand why wars occur, reflecting the concerns arising out of World War I. The origin of the discipline thus has carried a Western bias since its inception and often remained oblivious to investigate the concerns of non-Western countries. In this context, the aim is to locate the centers of learning about the development of institutional IR in South Asia, by probing into the academic development of IR in different countries of the region. While doing so, it is necessary to emphasize how the concept of “international” emerged in South Asia much before the ideas of international relations in modern sense made their ways in the region. While there is a rich heritage of “international” in South Asia, the modern statehood often juggled between the old and the new. The institutional development shows that South Asian IR, despite a rise in local contribution to global IR, still yearns to follow Western path in educating about IR. The investigations on South Asian IR and its institutional set ups take two broad views into concern. First, it elaborates on the root and the expanse of the idea of “international” indigenously prior to the idea of modern statehood penetrated South Asia. This discussion also highlights on how the region building itself has gone through transformation and finally the political region emerged through institutionalization of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). The institutional expanse of IR in South Asia, its rise, location and development of IR in different countries of the region are worth a serious study. It should be noted here that the first institutional beginning of IR took place in modern day Bangladesh, established by the British colonial ruler in 1947, right before the partition of the subcontinent. However, one must take into account of the trend in South Asian IR of how the concept of “international” is imbued in the teaching and research of IR. In the case of Afghanistan, very few academic resources are available to ascertain if this is the case, like in other South Asian countries. Bhutan is seeing a development in the understanding of “international” as well as expanding on research in this area except it has not institutionalized the study of IR like other South Asian countries. The discussion concludes by arguing that while South Asian IR has made its distinct contribution in developing IR as a discipline, it is yet to create its own foothold as it is influenced by Western traditions in its teachings.
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