Russia announced that its navy is holding drills with India in the Bay of Bengal after having visited Bangladesh for the first time in half a century and carried out its first-ever drills with Myanmar before that. No other country has excellent military relations with all three of them like Russia does. American and Chinese military interests converge in Bangladesh, but the first has no such relations with Myanmar while nowadays prioritizing such ties with India, whereas the second’s relations are the exact opposite.
Bangladesh’s upcoming elections in January might result in the ouster of incumbent Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who earlier accused the US of orchestrating regime change against her. At the same time, anti-state forces in Myanmar seized a district capital for the first time in their country’s decades-long civil war, which prompted the military leadership to warn about ‘Balkanization’. Readers should also remember that ties between those two neighbors remain tense due to the contentious Rohingya issue.
Amidst the newfound geopolitical uncertainty in South Asia, it’s imperative for there to be a responsible extra-regional stakeholder with whom all parties can pragmatically cooperate without this being at the expense of any other’s legitimate interests. Therein lies the role that Russia is playing via its latest display of military diplomacy all across this month with those three countries. Neither America nor China can do the same as was explained, hence why this responsibility falls onto Russia.
The signal being sent by Myanmar, Bangladesh, and India through their embrace of the Russian Navy is they all agree that this country is a responsible extra-regional stakeholder without any ulterior interests in the Bay of Bengal unlike the suspicions that some of them have of Chinese and US policy there. These helps foster trust between them in spite of their different military relations with those other two countries, whose military interests diverge in Myanmar and India but converge in Bangladesh.
About that last-mentioned point, Bangladesh still retains close military ties with America and China in spite of its incumbent leader warning earlier this year about the US’ regime change plans. It’s unclear whether or how her country’s foreign policy might change if she’s possibly deposed next year, be it democratically at the polls or undemocratically via a Color Revolution, but the point is that Bangladesh’s armed forces are presently trying to balance between those two.
By contrast as was earlier explained, the situation is altogether different regarding Myanmar and India, the first of which has military ties with China but not with the US, while the second’s such ties with China are troubled by their territorial dispute whereas they’ve never been better with the US. Accordingly, Myanmar might understandably view Indian-US military ties as a threat of some sort the same as India might understandably view Myanmar-Chinese ones, thereby worsening the regional security dilemma.
Nevertheless, Indian-Myanmar relations remain friendly even in spite of their polar opposite military ties with the US and China respectively, but this state of affairs is arguably attributable in part to each being reassured of the other’s pragmatism as proven by the military ties that they share with Russia. If it wasn’t for that country’s military diplomacy, their suspicions of each other might be even worse than they presently are since there’d be no common military-strategic denominator between them.
The New Cold War rivalry between China and the US could have divided the region to the detriment of all three countries’ objective national interests, but this scenario was averted due to their pragmatism in cultivating military-strategic ties with Russia, which helps manage the regional security dilemma. Casual observers might have missed the integral role that Russia plays in the Bay of Bengal through its military diplomacy, but those three are keenly aware of this and embraced its navy precisely for that purpose.
