By Sadaf Sundas Riaz — SCN News
Bangladesh is not simply moving away from India and toward China or Pakistan. Under Prime Minister Tarique Rahman, Dhaka is attempting a more consequential foreign-policy shift: widening its relationships far enough that no single capital becomes the organising centre of Bangladesh’s external strategy. Rahman’s first months in office have brought deeper engagement with Beijing, a reopening toward Islamabad, stronger outreach to Türkiye and Saudi Arabia and continued economic engagement with Washington, while his government has simultaneously kept open the possibility of repairing a difficult relationship with New Delhi.
That pattern was visible again during Rahman’s first UN General Assembly appearance this week. His five-day New York programme placed Bangladesh’s priorities on global security, economic cooperation, climate change, sustainable development and the Rohingya crisis before an international audience, while his bilateral diplomacy demonstrated the wider network Dhaka is trying to construct. Pakistan was among the countries seeking to build on the recent momentum in relations, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif meeting Rahman on the UNGA sidelines as both governments discussed expanding bilateral cooperation.
The stronger news angle, however, is not that Bangladesh is developing warmer relations with Pakistan or China. Dhaka has dealt extensively with Beijing for years, and contacts with Islamabad had already begun recovering before Rahman took office. What has changed is the political framework around those relationships: Bangladesh increasingly presents engagement with several competing powers as an expression of strategic autonomy rather than viewing foreign policy primarily through the question of how New Delhi will respond. A September assessment by the National University of Singapore’s Institute of South Asian Studies described Rahman’s approach as diversification rather than a new geopolitical alignment, while warning that new partnerships could eventually create constraints of their own.
That distinction matters because India remains impossible for Bangladesh to replace. The two countries share a border of more than 4,000 kilometres, river systems, trade routes, power connections and deep historical and social ties. India’s geographical importance does not disappear because relations with China or Pakistan improve, and analysts assessing Rahman’s foreign policy continue to describe New Delhi as Bangladesh’s most consequential neighbour even as Dhaka searches for additional partners.
What Dhaka appears to be challenging is not geography but hierarchy. Under Sheikh Hasina, India enjoyed unusually strong political and security ties with the Bangladeshi government, and New Delhi became closely associated with Hasina’s rule. Her removal in 2024 and subsequent presence in India helped transform that closeness from an asset into a source of political friction, leaving the government that eventually emerged under Rahman with both an incentive and domestic pressure to demonstrate that Bangladesh’s foreign policy would not depend disproportionately on New Delhi.
Rahman’s choice of destinations for his first overseas tour offered an early demonstration. Rather than begin in New Delhi or Beijing, he travelled first to Malaysia before continuing to China in June. Bangladesh presented the itinerary as an expression of independent diplomacy, and analysts generally viewed the Malaysia stop as a deliberate way of escaping the familiar binary in which every Bangladeshi diplomatic move is interpreted as a choice between India and China. Malaysia also had practical importance because of the large Bangladeshi migrant workforce there, giving Rahman an economic and labour-policy rationale independent of great-power rivalry.
The China leg nevertheless showed where the largest new strategic opportunity lies. Rahman’s June visit produced 15 memorandums of understanding, two agreements and a joint communiqué, with cooperation spanning trade, investment, infrastructure, connectivity, diplomacy and strategic issues. Dhaka and Beijing subsequently moved toward additional diplomatic and defence dialogue, reinforcing the impression that China is becoming more than a source of infrastructure financing and imported military equipment.
For Bangladesh, China offers advantages that few other partners can combine. Beijing can provide investment, infrastructure, manufacturing links, defence equipment and access to one of the world’s largest markets while supporting connectivity across Asia. Bangladesh, meanwhile, occupies an increasingly valuable position on the Bay of Bengal between South and Southeast Asia, giving Beijing economic and strategic reasons to deepen the relationship. Rahman can use that Chinese interest to broaden Bangladesh’s options, but doing so without creating a new dependency will be one of the central tests of his foreign policy.
The distinction between diversification and dependence is particularly important because closer Chinese defence cooperation will be watched differently from ordinary trade. Bangladesh has long purchased Chinese military equipment, but institutionalised defence dialogue and strategic infrastructure carry implications for India and the wider Indo-Pacific balance. Dhaka can expand commercial cooperation with Beijing relatively easily; the calculation becomes more difficult if future arrangements touch naval access, sensitive ports, surveillance technology or other capabilities that New Delhi or Washington might view through a security lens. This is where a policy designed to increase Bangladesh’s room for manoeuvre could eventually begin narrowing it.
Pakistan represents another important part of the recalibration, but for very different reasons. Relations between Dhaka and Islamabad carry the unresolved historical weight of the 1971 war, meaning closer ties cannot be interpreted simply as another conventional South Asian partnership. Yet recent diplomatic and political contacts have created an opening for trade, connectivity and wider cooperation, and this week’s Shehbaz-Rahman meeting in New York demonstrated that both governments want to preserve the momentum.
For Pakistan, the opportunity is significant but easy to mishandle. Islamabad can develop commercial ties, direct connectivity, education, defence-industry contacts and cooperation in international forums, but attempts to portray Bangladesh’s outreach as joining an anti-India alignment would conflict with Dhaka’s broader strategy. Bangladesh gains leverage from having workable relationships with Pakistan, China and India simultaneously; it loses leverage if one relationship forces it into a bloc against another. The durable opening for Islamabad is therefore bilateral value, not strategic exclusivity.
That calculation is increasingly relevant as Bangladesh debates its relationship with emerging security arrangements involving Pakistan and other Muslim-majority powers. Bangladeshi experts discussing the Makkah defence framework have urged Dhaka to examine carefully how any participation would affect its interests, including the Myanmar and Rohingya questions and Pakistan’s own regional relationships. Separate analysis has noted that closer Bangladesh-Pakistan defence ties are already attracting attention in New Delhi, demonstrating how quickly cooperation in one relationship can affect another.
The United States introduces a different constraint. Bangladesh’s export economy depends heavily on access to international markets, while Washington remains important for trade, investment, technology and diplomacy. Dhaka therefore has strong incentives to prevent closer ties with China from becoming a strategic choice against the United States. The challenge is familiar to many middle powers: extracting economic advantages from China while retaining commercial and political access to the United States without allowing either relationship to dictate the other.
This is why Bangladesh’s emerging strategy should not be understood as equidistance. Dhaka does not need identical relationships with New Delhi, Beijing, Washington and Islamabad because each relationship serves a different purpose. India matters disproportionately because of geography, rivers, borders, electricity and transit; China brings infrastructure, manufacturing, financing and defence cooperation; the United States offers a major economic and diplomatic relationship; Pakistan provides another South Asian channel and growing links to a wider network of Muslim-majority states. Malaysia, Japan, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf partners further widen the field.
The result is better described as multi-alignment: cooperating with different powers on different issues while avoiding a permanent commitment to any single geopolitical camp. Research following Rahman’s China visit reached a similar conclusion, arguing that the government’s approach appeared closer to pragmatic multi-alignment intended to preserve strategic autonomy than a straightforward pivot toward Beijing.
Bangladesh is also diversifying through institutions rather than relying exclusively on bilateral relationships. Dhaka currently has an important role in BIMSTEC, which links South Asia and Southeast Asia and offers a platform for cooperation on connectivity, energy, trade, climate and maritime issues without reproducing the India-Pakistan paralysis that has weakened SAARC. At the same time, Bangladesh continues to explore broader Asian economic integration, giving it additional channels through which to reduce dependence on any single bilateral relationship.
This institutional diversification may ultimately prove as important as Rahman’s bilateral diplomacy. A middle power negotiating individually with India, China or the United States operates in an inherently unequal relationship; participating in regional economic and diplomatic groupings creates opportunities to build coalitions around particular issues. For Bangladesh, that could mean negotiating trade through one platform, maritime connectivity through another and development financing through several competing partners rather than allowing a single relationship to carry the entire foreign-policy burden.
The Bay of Bengal gives Dhaka additional leverage. Bangladesh sits near the intersection of South Asian and Southeast Asian trade routes at a time when China, India, the United States and Japan are all devoting greater attention to the Indo-Pacific. Ports, energy networks, supply chains, submarine cables and maritime security have increased the strategic value of territory that was once discussed primarily in terms of South Asian geography. Bangladesh can benefit from that competition if it attracts infrastructure and investment without converting economic relationships into exclusive military commitments.
The risk is that geopolitical competition eventually forces decisions that balancing alone cannot postpone. Dhaka can trade with the United States while accepting Chinese investment, deepen relations with Pakistan while negotiating with India and work with Gulf states without joining their conflicts. The harder tests would involve demands over military access, strategic ports, Chinese technology, Indo-Pacific security arrangements or defence alliances. Those are the points at which a strategy of maintaining several options could encounter choices that cannot be satisfied simultaneously.
India remains the most immediate test because relations have not simply collapsed. Recent diplomatic moves suggest both governments still see value in repairing them. Bangladesh has moved to send Foreign Secretary Asad Alam Siam to New Delhi as high commissioner, while discussions around a future Rahman visit have continued despite unresolved disputes. The relationship remains burdened by Hasina’s presence in India, border issues and broader political mistrust, but neither side appears to have concluded that estrangement is sustainable.
That reinforces why describing Bangladesh’s policy as an anti-India pivot would be misleading. Rahman received an invitation to visit India after taking office, and New Delhi remains too important economically and geographically to be excluded from any durable Bangladeshi strategy. What appears to have changed is Dhaka’s willingness to insist that improving relations with India should not require limiting engagement with China, Pakistan or other partners.
There is also a domestic political dimension. A foreign policy publicly framed around national interest gives Rahman space to distinguish his government from the Hasina era while responding to constituencies that believed Dhaka had become too accommodating toward New Delhi. But domestic popularity and strategic effectiveness are not necessarily the same thing. An assertive posture toward India may carry political appeal, while Bangladesh’s geography still requires practical cooperation on trade, water, energy and border management.
The government therefore has to convert the rhetoric of “Bangladesh First” into transactional diplomacy rather than allow it to become another ideological alignment. Strategic autonomy is valuable only when it expands choices. If closer relations with China create excessive financial or security dependence, or closer ties with Pakistan make a workable India relationship harder, diversification could reproduce the same imbalance under a different partner. That contradiction has already been identified by analysts examining Rahman’s first months in office.
Rahman’s UNGA debut provided a useful international stage for this emerging posture. Bangladesh presented itself not principally through a rivalry with India but through wider issues including global peace, economic cooperation, climate vulnerability, sustainable development, humanitarian concerns and the Rohingya crisis. That framing itself reflects the diplomatic transition: Dhaka wants international partners to deal with Bangladesh according to Bangladesh’s own priorities rather than primarily as a state situated within India’s strategic neighbourhood.
The deeper change is therefore conceptual. For decades, Bangladesh’s foreign policy was frequently analysed through a triangle — Dhaka balancing New Delhi and Beijing. Rahman’s government is trying to enlarge the geometry. China remains crucial and India remains unavoidable, but Pakistan, the United States, Malaysia, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Japan and regional organisations increasingly provide additional economic and diplomatic routes.
Whether that approach succeeds will depend less on how many new partnerships Dhaka announces than on whether it can prevent those partnerships from becoming competing obligations. Bangladesh’s advantage comes from being useful to several powers simultaneously; committing too deeply to one could reduce precisely the strategic value that makes the others interested.
That is the significance of Bangladesh looking beyond New Delhi. It is not abandoning India for China, Pakistan or the United States. Dhaka is attempting to move from a foreign policy shaped by the gravitational pull of one dominant neighbour toward one in which several relationships compete for Bangladesh’s cooperation — giving the country greater leverage to negotiate trade, investment, security and connectivity on its own terms.
If Rahman can preserve that flexibility, “Bangladesh First” could evolve into a genuine strategy of multi-alignment. If the new partnerships begin demanding exclusive strategic commitments, however, Dhaka may discover that escaping one dependency only to acquire another is not balance at all.