Bangladesh at UNGA 2024: Glitter, gold, and ground reality
Bangladesh desperately needed global attention to reap gold out of this moment of change.
1m ago
What the Rana Plaza tragedy means in 2024
Let’s visit this discussion on three levels of analysis on the local, national, and global scenarios and impacts.
7m ago
To catch a pirate
Today’s piracy further feeds upon those flows including petroleum and the growing numbers of African/Asian countries involved. Control is now imperative.
8m ago
Foreign policy quandary for Bangladesh: ‘Umbilical’ or ‘geopolitical’?
Bangladesh’s foreign inclinations increasingly sway between “umbilical” and “geopolitical” poles, as principles, policies and preferences compete for priority.
9m ago
The colour of war?
Today’s Red Sea skirmishes raise multifaceted concerns, which range from the war in Gaza widening and awakening old wounds, to geopolitical frontlines being rewritten by shifting chokepoints.
9m ago
Bangladesh as a ‘developed country’: ‘Graduating’ imperatives
“Graduation” has become a Bangladeshi buzzword. Journalists, scholars, and technocrats were working on that term even before November 24, 2021. On that day, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly green-signalled a possible exit from the “least developed country” (LDC) to join the “developing” list from 2026.
2y ago
9/11 anniversary, Afghanistan and values
“What goes around comes around” may be an apt and oft-used cliché, but in referencing 9/11 and Afghanistan, it only embitters. US President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from “forever wars” was supported by 54 percent of US adults, according to a September 4 Pew survey.
3y ago
July 14, 2018
Puff the plastic dragon
Puff was a mythological dragon, made famous by one of the original, 1960s, folk-rock bands, consisting of Peter, Paul, and Mary. He lived “by the sea”, and would “frolic in the autumn mist” in a land they called Honah Lee.
July 7, 2018
World Cup and International Relations
As one of the most widely watched human activity, soccer's World Cup Championship unleashes raw competition between countries, raising emotions that cover almost every stripe we know and triggering nationalism of even a guttural kind.
July 4, 2018
Mexican polls: The other soul
Democracy is, by far, the most acclaimed historical form of government. It not only allows representation of all groups, but also permits every adult to exercise complete sovereignty at the polling booth. There might be nuances and variances here or there, particularly in the preceding campaigns and subsequent outcomes, but we have, by and large, managed to live with our differences, converse with adversaries, and bite the bullet so democracy strengthens itself.
June 30, 2018
Democratic regression: The “English” turn
Gideon Rose made an astute observation in editing the May/June 2018 Foreign Affairs cover story on the current “democratic regression”. “We have seen this movie before,” he quoted a Latin friend of his on the concurrent predicament, “just never in English.”
June 24, 2018
Kissinger's rise and fall of enlightenment
Henry Kissinger did not mince his words. As one of the most erudite commentators of global power rivalry, he was truly jolted to see the computer game, Go, a prototype of the more mesmerising AlphaGo game, capable of making strategic decisions far faster than human beings, and predicting the winner more accurately.
June 19, 2018
A Muslim Westphalia?
Future historians might find it far easier navigating through this post-Cold War era to explain the Muslim predicament. Since 1990 or so, one sturdy Muslim state after another has bitten the bullet, to put it bluntly, devastated for good: Iraq, twice over (1991 with Operation Desert Storm for invading Kuwait, then the 2003 war for allegedly possessing weapons of mass destruction); Libya, simply because of the dramatic collapse of one person, Muammar
June 9, 2018
Trump's 'personal' foreign policy
Donald J Trump's foreign policy weltanschauung may be better understood perceptually and through his personal relations than its claim to be practical and pragmatic. This seems to be the message from a purview of four of his policy pursuits: rebalancing trade with China, clipping Iran's wings, anchoring a bold Middle East policy approach upon recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital, and denuclearising North Korea. They do add up, and there may be something beyond a simple sum of all the parts, but constructing and construing them from unfolding events can also breed confusion.
June 6, 2018
The game of bluff and brinkmanship
With 2018 being the first functional year of Donald Trump's foreign policy paradigm, a pattern seems to be emerging: brinkmanship as the starting point, as much to contrast his approach to his predecessor(s) as to reaffirm the relative strength of the United States that even US citizens were beginning to seriously doubt.
May 26, 2018
'We are the world' lullabies in Windsor
It was just what the increasingly divided world needed, a cementing force: Meghan Markle to sparkle the audience, and Prince Harry to carry the tone and torch of his mother, the “People's Princess”. Behind Bishop Michael Curry's fiery speech, it seems Michael Jackson's “We are the world” carried the Windsor wedding as a silent uninvited guest.
May 23, 2018
Forster's third democratic cheer: Mahathir (as a symbol)?
EM Forster, almost a lone-wolf democracy crusader between the two world wars, confronted as unpalatable a European playground as many African, Asian, and Latin American countries striving to convince others of their democratic claims face today: an uphill battle in which the institutionalised forces against democracy, such as extreme rightists/leftists and militarism, were usually at least as strong as those
X