Foreign Policy Innovation - Identifying the natural allies
Not East Not West, Look at How do you become Best!
Looking at the foreign policy of last 35+ years, it does not seem that there has been much thought given in our foreign policy. The way the foreign policies have been executed, we could have done without the expensive the foreign ministry, it seems. After all, you do not need a shiny plate to ask for alms in it! Don't you think so?
Bangladesh should look within herself and seek what are the areas where she can do best. The seemingly looming failure of Kyoto Protocol, Asian Century that are being heralded by ASEAN, Japan, Korea, China and India , Challenges of Bangladesh herself and Challenges of world wide failure of traditional leadership in nation states offer unique opportunities for innovation in Foreign Policy of Bangladesh. BD should look for natural allies within the global context and utilize her own strenghts to become a strong and positive contributor in the global scale while that role playing would ensure the fulfillment of basic needs of her own people.
So who are the natural allies?
Who have scarce land and other natural resources?
Who have a very high population density?
Who have successfully acted as the center country or hub economies?
Who have the green technologies ?
Who are good at the foreign policy similar to Bangladesh?
We intend to focus on the specific topics in coming days. Here are some of the summaries:
Bangladesh should refuse to align herself to any of the global or regional players, rather BD should faciliate a platform where these players, who are often blind of real issues, to combine their strengths to solve the problems rather than creating them.
Bangladesh should say YES to Singapore, UAE, Netherlands and Canada in that they compare with the issues that Bangladesh faces today.
Singapore, though very tiny, has a very high population density that is shared by Bangladesh. It has also built itself into a hub economy from the ashes of poverty through extreme discipline and pragmatic democratic reforms and leadership. Bangladesh has a lot to learn from this East Asian sister - not to directly copy her, rather to learn from her.
UAE, as we speak, is building herself into the newest hub economy of the world. There is a lot of exchange of human resources between the countries, too.
Bangladesh should emulate and learn from this two countries to become the next hub economy of Asia. Advantage with Bangladesh is that it is already geographically positioned to become a hub - only this has to be recognized and acted upon. Most importantly, Bangladesh sits in between the three greatest economic engines of our times - ASEAN, China and India. Bangladesh should make herself available to be a facilitator country for the world players (financial, commercial and political powers) to locate themselves in Bangladesh and tap into these three economies. And that can be done without losing our own interest - rather in that process of becoming hub we can solve our own problems.
The next country of interest should be Netherlands. This is a country which has driven innovation in land management and ecological resource management. Given our already acute problems with scarce resource and the perceived deterioration of the same in near future, we should become the playing ground of all the great innovation that has been done in the past and is being currently done.
Canada is another country which Bangladesh should learn from to build its policy in terms of how to project its image as a responsible player in the global stage.
We hope that our foreign policy makers, think-tanks on foreign policy and strategic issues would give enough thought on the suggestions forwarded here. These are not flawless - we recognize that. But these have been generated through the practice of hobby - on a part-time basis. A full-time rigor would be able to more succinctly identify our natural allies among the countries with whom Bangladesh should pursue strategic relationship. Foreign policy adviser should take note.
If you thought some of the ideas are worth of your reading time, please forward it to others. If you have an ear to the members of the CTG, economists, policy makers and strategists, please forward it to them. If you have an ear to the journalists and news editors of the electronic media, discuss it with them. Hope they would look at the suggestions and give due diligence.
Thanks for your time,
Innovation Line
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Note: This is a freelance column, published mainly in different internet based forums. This column is open for contribution by the members of new generation, sometimes referred to as Gen 71. If you identify yourself as someone from that age-group and want to contribute to this column, please feel free to contact. Thanks to the group moderator for publishing the article.
We have not seen the Liberation War, but we know if we can free the country from corruption first, we will eventually get to other dreams soon. Because of corruption, we could not even get into information highway for years, let alone other dreams!
This is the kind of article for which we started this column. Because of ongoing mess, a gift from our older generation, we often get diverted. Now that it seems some sanity is returning in Bangladesh, we would try to go back to our original plan.
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