The Duran Podcast - Bangladesh Coup. US Challenges India

Episode Date: August 18, 2024

Bangladesh coup. US challenges India

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation in Bangladesh. We did get a coup. That's the way it looks. Actually, the coup prime minister has said it was a U.S. coup. So she's come out and said it was a coup. The United States denies that it was a coup in Bangladesh. But we do have an interim prime minister, Eunice, who does appear to be a type of Juan Guido character for the United States. someone who comes from from their side of things, who's gone through the process that they put

leaders through in order to put them into leadership roles in other governments. So we have him in place. And we have some indication, at least from the Kood Prime Minister, as to what all of this was about. Basically, this was about control of the Bay of Bengal. And obviously, this is something that. that India and China will probably have to address if this was indeed what the coup was about. Yeah, I think I'm absolutely sure that this was a coup.

It's, I mean, if you want to look at the sort of, you know, the way it was set up, I mean, Brian Bellettic has done a good program about this on his channel. But, I mean, I've no doubt it was a coup. And all you have, all you have to do is look at the person who's taken over, Eunice is somebody with a very, very long connection to the United States, going all the way back to the 1960s. He is very strongly pro-American. He's very hostile, both to India and China.

And the whole way in which the events were executed is just very consistent with the whole colour revolution format, protests by young people, students as they call. And many of them are for students, but protests about them. Stories spread about violence against the protesters. There may have been violence against the protesters. I'm not saying, but we always get stories about violence against the protesters in this particular type of scenario.

Then the police and military who are expected, who, you know, might have been expected to stand behind the. constitutional and democratically elected prime minister, which is what the prime minister was. It's important to remember this. Anyway, they melt away. Perhaps they've been bribed. Perhaps they've been persuaded. Maybe many of them are not particularly enthusiastic about her for all kinds of reasons. But anyway, they melt away. And she is forced to take the helicopter and fly off to India and go into exile. And everything collapses around her. and then the new person steps in interim prime minister,

and he's absolutely, as I said, the kind of person that you can imagine handpicked by the United States. And we've seen this play out, place after place and time after time, if you want me to say which one it resembles most closely, it is the Maidan events of 2014 in Kiev. I mean, it's almost exactly the same as that. And the explanation, I think the United Prime Minister, the USID Prime Minister, Hashima has provided it.

The Americans want an naval base in Bangladesh so that they can control the Bay and Bengal. By the way, this is one of those bad ideas that has been floating around in the Pentagon for a very, very long time. I can remember that it was being first. I mean, I actually can remember this. It was first being debated in the early 1970s, late 1960s. I mean, it gets back all that way. The Americans then lost interest in it for a while because, firstly, Bangladesh became

independent of Pakistan and started to tilt a bit more towards India. This is in the 70s. Then the US and China, and that base, yeah, that naval base was really. principally targeted in China. In those days, the US and China had a long period of very good relations. But now, of course, US relations with China are not so good. In fact, they're very bad. The US sees China as its adversary.

US relations with India, which has been historically the country that has been had the closest relationship with Bangladesh. It was the Indian army that intervened. in Bangladesh in 1971 and helped Bangladesh achieve independence of Pakistan. Anyway, India's relations with the United States are not so good anymore either. So you have a coup, you get the naval base, eventually they will get their naval base. The American warships will be able to operate at the Bay of Bengal. and that was why Hashima had to go, and that's why the clue happened.

I am not saying, by the way, and this is an important point to make, that there were not reasons for discontent within Bangladesh. Of that there is no doubt there definitely were. There's been inflation, there's been economic issues, there was issues about a government recruitment, an education recruitment policy, not issues in themselves which one would have expected, would lead to the collapse of the government.

And as for the economic situation, yes, it is true that there has been an economic boom in Bangladesh. Yes, it is also true that the benefits of that boom have been very unevenly distributed. But that is what often happens in countries like Bangladesh. And usually you do not expect events like this to take place spontaneously in countries which have happened. had a prolonged economic upswing. So yes, I think this was a coup. I've set out, I've set out

wine. And the objectives, it seems to me, are very clear. And it will prove horribly counterproductive in the end, both for Bangladesh and, dare I say, for the United States also. Because India and China are going to have to respond to this. I mean, how do they view this? Well, they don't view this with any favor. I mean, China, of course, It is extremely concerned about the potential establishment of another US naval base in the Bay of Bengal. China, of course, does not have a coastline in this area. But if there's American warships in the Bay of Bengal, well, you know, conceivably, I'm not sure about ranges and things of this kind, but you could perhaps imagine U.S. Navy being used to launch.

against Chinese positions. And of course, it also enables the US to put pressure on other countries in this area. Myanmar, Thailand, Thailand thinking about joining the bricks, for example. It creates another pressure point that the United States could potentially use against China. The Chinese are obviously not happy. But the country that is most unhappy and most concerned, is India Hashima, who was the Prime Minister

of India, Ertrop Bangladesh, the one who's just been overthrown, a very close ally and friend of India's. Her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who either way, just going to remember, he was the independence leader in Bangladesh,

he was somebody who was very close to India and she has been very close to India also. So what's happened? is that a pro-Indian government has been overthrown in a country that neighbors India. It's been replaced by a pro-American government.

And the Indians are not going to be happy at all about this. And perhaps not coincidentally, they have been making moves over the last period of time to try to improve their relations with China. Jai Shankar, the Indian Foreign Minister, and Wang Yi had a meeting in Laos. This is before the events in Bangladesh took place, but you could see the build-up to it. They had a meeting in Laos, which apparently went very well. They're now again trying to come

to terms about the tensions on the border. The Chinese media has been pointing out to the Indians that look, we're not really your enemies, we're not trying to overthrow you. The US is much more your enemy than we are. And of course, the Indians have to worry that what happened in Bangladesh might be attempted by the US in India itself, not, I think, directly. I don't think the US believes that he can mount a colour revolution against the Indian government. India is huge. I think it would be almost impossible to do that. But there are lots of places within India itself, Kashmir, other places as well, where if you wanted to create trouble for the Indian government, you could. And I think that this is a signal to the Indians from the US, that if they step out

of line, go on doing what they're doing, pursuing their independent policies, the full force of the United States will be turned upon them. And I don't think the Indians, for all kinds of reasons can sacrifice their independence in that sort of way. So they're going to be looking for friends. And that can only mean the bricks and that can only mean some kind of a reconciliation with China. Yeah, I mean, the big question is why now? Why did they decide to pull the trigger on a Bangladesh coup? Because you said this has been in the works for a long time. But the United States, the Pentagon, they never went through with it fully. But for some reason, they decided to pull the trigger now at this moment in time. And the only logical explanation is they're getting nervous

at seeing bricks, at seeing reproshment between China and India, at seeing India becoming much more independent, sovereign, more powerful. It's becoming a much more powerful country. So, you know, to me it seems like this was this was a panic move in a way, but but a move nonetheless to say, okay, well, we're going to establish our naval base here right next to you. And here we are. So don't don't get out of line. Correct. That's exactly what it is. And I think this is this is how it will be seen in India. I mean, this will be seen as a very, very unfriendly Indian-American relations have been deteriorating for some months. The US expected that India would go all in

into an alliance with the US against China. And that hasn't really happened. India is a member of the quad, but the quad has never morphed into the kind of anti-Chinese alliance that I think the US thought it would. And of course, India maintains and preserves this very, long established and very popular in India relationship with Russia. So I think that the Americans have been very frustrated with India.

And you've been seeing for quite a few months now, a sort of drumbeat of criticism of India coming from the US and Western countries. So a couple of months ago, there was complaints about the fact that various Sikh separatists in Canada and the US had been assassinated, supposedly by Indian agents. There were suggestions that Prime Minister Modi himself was implicated in those assassinations. You remember, we talked about it at the time. We said this looked like a warning shot directed at Modi. We had, and it was also staged even as India was on the even, on the even,

of the G20 summit meeting in India, which Modi was hosting. So all of those stories appeared then. So anyway, and then after that, we had more criticisms of India during the parliamentary elections, attempts to spin the elections as an electoral defeat for Modi, even though he's been re-elected for the third time, which is only one other Indian Prime Minister, Jawahala Neri. has ever achieved that but anyway they came after modi then there's been a drumbeat of criticism which has been steadily growing now he went to moscow a couple of weeks ago if you remember met with

Putin lots of economic agreements taken agreed at that time and he's trying to balance that by a trip to ukraine though that is not yet crystallized and appears to have been postponed, perhaps to the end of this month. But anyway, they're now taking a much more aggressive step with this coup in Bangladesh, which will only land them with more problems. The Indians are the Chinese, more likely to sort of converge with each other. The Indians and the Chinese inevitably hostile to this government in Dakar, in Bangladesh, Bangladesh, a country that is not fully stable anyway.

It's been through an economic boom, but it needs a lot more investment to develop economically. In order to develop economically, it needs good relations with its neighbours. India and of course China, which is perhaps the only country that could invest in and which might be interested in investing and building up Bangladeshi infrastructure, which Bangladesh urgently needs. All of that has been sacrificed, again, to a geopolitical game, which to my mind has absolutely no value.

The US won't gain anything in the end. Bangladesh won't gain anything in the end. All that's going to happen is that the region is going to become more unstable. All right, we will. the video there, the durand.locals.com. We are on Rumble Odyssey, bit, shoot, telegram, rockfin, and Twitter X, and go to the Duran shop, pick up some merch like the t-shirts we are wearing today with country flags right here on the sleeves. Take care.