Redefining Bangladesh's Economic Diplomacy

Economic diplomacy has been a declared policy of the successive regimes for quite some time but its meaning and operational aspects remain unclear over the years, making it an almost lip service of the people in power.

In Bangladesh, it has not been backed by intelleectual exercice and longterm political thinking with which the practitioners can go ahead to attain national objectives of foreign policy pursuit.

In context of Bangladesh, a seasoned diplomat like Dr Toufiq Ali, has in his mind the question if those ‘who lay down the policies and implement them see economic diplomacy the way it should be looked into. If we are not sure about what it is and what our approach should be, it is time to time to redefine the country’s economic diplomacy.

Reality check

Bangladesh’s diplomacy is ostensibly based on moderation and the principle of ‘friendship to all and malice to none’. But that friendship in each country has never been well-defined. Instead, Dhaka has what Professor Imtiaz Ahmed of Dhaka University’s International Relations

Department called a Biriyani (a food item which contains many things together) approach as it does not have separate package for each country, region and bloc in view of harmony in mutual interests. ‘If you put 50 items on your plate and if two-three of them taste bad, people would raise questions about the rest,’ he spelt out.

What really is Economic Diplomacy?