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Analysis of strategic landscape
   MYANMAR is a pariah state and has little influence over the international community to form an opinion in favour of them. They are under heavy economic and military embargo for human rights violation and lack of respect for democracy. Having said that we should not lose sight of growing relations between China and Myanmar, and it must be taken into consideration by Bangladesh and the international community because China, as a regional power, will play an important role in any conflict between countries adjacent to her border. The Myanmarese military has been completely revamped with the help of Chinese assistance. It has been reported by international media that ‘China sold more than 22 A5M attackers and at least 50 F-7 fighters to the Myanmar air force in 1991 and 1993. Satellite photos have also shown two Chinese-made Y-8 transporters at the Yangon airport. Also, 12 Chinese Lang Chang K-8 jet trainer aircraft have been sold to the country in the past seven years’ (‘China arms Myanmar military’, www.upi.com, March 14, 2008). Myanmar has raised new divisions with supporting units and hardware to make it one of the strongest military powers in South East Asia. They have also actively searched for new suppliers to reduce import risks and approached Israel, Ukraine, and Russia for a range of military hardware from artillery pieces, armoured personnel carriers to sophisticated jet fighters. If additional manpower, new weapon systems, improved logistic backup conditions are combined with their enormous experience that they have gained through fighting a counterinsurgency war against the rebels in the last fifty years, they automatically become a greater military power than Bangladesh. But their weakness lies in their fragile economy and their isolation from the international community which, I believe, put them in a disadvantageous position to achieve a desired end in a war against Bangladesh.
   China has a long-term strategic interest in Myanmar because of latter’s convenient geographic location, which is the gateway to Bay of Bengal, and huge energy reserve. Aside from installing a number of listening posts in strategically important Coco Islands (ftp.fas.org/irp/world/china/facilities/coco.htm), China has also heavily invested in Myanmar’s seaports to develop docking, repair, maintenance, and refuelling facilities capable of catering for the needs of Chinese navy. So, a solid strategic partnership has been built between the two neighbours for mutual benefit and interest.
   As a permanent member of the UN Security council, China has the veto power that can be used as a shield against western pressure to discipline the military junta of Myanmar. But whether or not China will use its veto power to rescue Myanmar is subject to Bangladesh’s relative strategic value to China vis-à-vis Myanmar and to the degree of involvement of the US in the conflict. Strategic analysts believe that China acknowledges the strategic significance of Bangladesh because of its peculiar geographic location, which cuts the north-eastern region off from the rest of India, acts as a bridge between SAARC and ASEAN, and offers access to Indian Ocean via the Bay of Bengal. The growing Chinese economic and military assistance to Bangladesh is a testament to latter’s strategic significance in South Asia. So in the end, China may end up being a peace broker between Bangladesh and Myanmar to prevent a conflict or to prevent the escalation of a conflict to ensure its neutrality and to limit the scope for western powers to play any significant role in the conflict to protect its own strategic interest in the region.
   In any conflict between Bangladesh and Myanmar, America will side with Bangladesh simply because both the nations believe in democratic values, freedom of speech, respect for human rights, and terror-free world for global peace and stability. On the other hand, America is one of the staunchest critics of the Myanmarese military junta for its lack of respect for human rights and democracy. Americans have already imposed economic and arms embargo on Myanmar and have persuaded other western allies to do the same to put pressure on the military junta to restore democracy in the country ‘Britain wants more Myanmar sanctions over Suu Kyi, in.reuters.com, June 18). So, in a conflict situation, Bangladesh will find America on its side, but Myanmar will face even more isolation for attacking a democratic country.
   Britain and France, both seeking a regime change to restore democracy in Myanmar, will also join America to support Bangladesh in its
   fight against Myanmarese military junta.
   Russia, being one of the few countries that supported the independence movement of Bangladesh and having a close defence relation
   with Myanmar, may find itself in a difficult diplomatic situation and may offer itself as a peace broker to maintain neutrality in a conflict situation.
   India views Myanmar as an important country for the success of its ‘look east policy’ and as a good source of cheap energy reserve to meet its rising energy demand. India is also seeking to cultivate deep economic and defence relations with the military junta to counterbalance Chinese influence in Myanmar for its own strategic advantage. Once a solid supporter of Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement, India, for its own strategic and energy interests, has changed its policy toward Myanmar to establish bilateral relations based on the principles of non-interference in internal affairs to please the military junta. The policy shift by India has not gone unnoticed by international observers and China Post writes, ‘Once a staunch and vocal Aung San Suu Kyi supporter, India began engaging Myanmar’s military junta in the mid-1990s – a shift that has seen security, energy and strategic priorities override concerns over democracy and human rights... India is eyeing oil and gas fields in Myanmar and fears losing out to China in the race for strategic space in Asia’ (‘Energy needs, strategic concerns keep India silent on Myanmar’, www.chinapost.com.tw, July 17). At the same time, the policymakers of New Delhi are aware of their role in the independence movement of Bangladesh and her strategic significance for the security of north-east India. So overtly, India may seek neutrality in a conflict between Bangladesh and Myanmar, but they may extend covert support to Myanmar to put Bangladesh in a disadvantageous position so as to force Bangladesh to grant concessions in some vital outstanding issues such as maritime border demarcation, action against northeast insurgents, and transit rights.
   Despite the bitter memories of 1971, both Bangladesh and Pakistan have moved forward and established economic, political, and defence relations based on mutual trust and benefit. Aside from religious sentiment, Pakistan acknowledges the strategic significance of Bangladesh because of latter’s geographic location and shared strategic outlook. So, Pakistan may provide moral and even some logistic support to Bangladesh in the event of a conflict between Bangladesh and Myanmar.
   Being the third largest Muslim country in the world, Bangladesh is expected to get overwhelming moral and even some logistic support from the Arab nations as well.
   
   Strategic objectives to attain
   1. To form strategic partnership with Myanmar and to consider it an indispensable part of Bangladesh’s ‘look-east’ policy to enhance economic, diplomatic, cultural, business, and people to people contacts with all the South-East Asian nations and China
   2. To earn the confidence and trust of the Myanmarese government and its people that Bangladesh is sincere about establishing bilateral relationship based on the policy of non-interference and utmost respect for each other’s sovereignty
   3. To consider the Myanmarese armed forces a vital element
   in bilateral relations and to
   form defence partnership with them for peace, security, and
   stability
   4. To maintain favourable balance of power situation with Myanmar
   5. To resolve any disputes through dialogue and to avoid the possibility of military confrontations
   6. In case a military confrontation is unavoidable, limit the scope of confrontation to minimise the loss of lives and properties
   7. In case a conflict takes the shape of a full-scale war, break the will of the Myanmarese military to fight by inflicting heavy damage upon its men, machine, and economy
   
   Strategies to follow
   1. To choose and implement AH (Asian Highway) 41 route to connect to Myanmar and to the rest of ASEAN nations
   2. To form a bilateral security forum to discuss matters relating to national and regional security and to consistently follow a transparent policy with regards to Bangla-US military cooperation to assure the military government that the existing defence relations with the US has no anti-Myanmar bias and that Bangladesh will never allow a foreign power to use its soil to harm a neighbour
   3. To increase defence cooperation between the two nations in the field of training, military exercise, and exchange of sensitive security information under a mutually agreed upon defence cooperation framework
   4. To accelerate overall military modernisation process and to increase security contacts with ASEAN Regional Forum and China
   5. To launch an intense diplomatic effort, both bilateral and multilateral involving China, and the UN to defuse tension
   6. To use the border security force to repel sporadic border incursions and to keep the army on a stand by mode to continue with diplomatic efforts to diffuse tension
   7. To create a naval blockade against Myanmar to take control of its commercial shipping lanes and to use full military might to force the aggressor to retreat and then to ask for help from China, America and its allies, and the Muslim countries to achieve a desired end in the conflict
   
   Concluding observations
   AS A mature and active regional player, Bangladesh should recognise the opportunities from a healthy and peaceful relation with Myanmar while remain alert at the challenges that get thrown at her because of Myanmar’s political, economical, and strategic weaknesses. For Myanmar, Bangladesh is a country of $225 billion with an open market, liberal investment climate, modern technology, and the most cost effective route to establish economic relations with India.
   For Bangladesh, Myanmar also offers the most cost effective route to connect to ASEAN nations and to China. The trade and military significance of such a road network is enormous for Bangladesh. The combined size of the ASEAN and Chinese economies are even bigger than that of Japan. Bangladesh’s geographical proximity to South-East Asia gives her the unique opportunity to connect two major regional forums, SAARC and ASEAN, through Myanmar to enhance inter regional economic, trade, cultural and security interactions, to transform herself into a regional commercial hub, and to contribute constructively to regional stability through regional security forums such as ARF.
   Strategically, Bangladesh can improve its balance power situation with regional heavyweights by establishing relationships based on mutual interdependence and benefits and therefore attain more flexibility in devising policies that will protect her own national interests and will affect the future strategic direction of South and Southeast Asia.
   So, Bangladesh should emphasise preventive diplomacy to eliminate the risks of conflicts with Myanmar and should assure its government and people of Bangladesh’s
   intentions for establishing bilateral relations based on the policy of non-interference and non- aggression.
   Shah Mohammed Saifuddin is founder of the Bangladesh Strategic and Development Forum

The jousting between the White House and Fox News is drawing grave warnings from pundits to Obama’s team that this is a losing issue for their man. They quote the old tag, ‘Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.’
   Certainly the jabbing has been refreshingly vigorous. Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, explains Obama’s refusal to appear on Fox News by saying, ‘Fox News often operates either as the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican party. We’re going to treat them the way we would treat an opponent.’
   ‘I want to show you right where the enemy is located,’ Beck screams to his adoring three-million audience as he circles Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News headquarters in green ink on a map of New York. ‘This is the enemy, America!’
   Surely, it was a no-brainer for the White House. Fox’s troupe of right wingers will trash Obama, whatever Dunn says. Why not please your own political base by showing a little backbone and giving Murdoch a slap on the snout?
   Besides, history suggests that if the White House keeps up the small arms fire and doesn’t lose its cool, in the end it will carry the day, and edge Fox as a network operation into the Glen Beck insane asylum, viewed with derision by even more millions of Americans.
   In the case of the Obama administration there’s the added bonus that after surrendering abjectly to every powerful interest group in America, they’re at last showing an appetite for a scuffle.
   Many presidents have seen political benefit in setting up the press as irresponsible mudslingers, overpaid, lazy and politically biased, which is most people reckon it is anyway. The champion here was Richard Nixon who unleashed Pat Buchanan and the late William Safire, and those famous lines for vice president Spiro Agnew, including the rather playful ‘nattering nabobs of negativism.’
   Actually it’s a measure of how sloppy the Nixon people were that across the entire Watergate Scandal they failed to excavate Carl Bernstein’s family ties to the Communist Party, nor the fact that every few weeks Bernstein would take time off from his investigative labours with Bob Woodward and drive up to Vermont to visit his cousin Shoshana who at that time was living under an alias in Brattleboro, one jump ahead of the FBI which had her on its Ten Most Wanted list as a radical bomber. People often overestimate the surveillance capacities of the state. One leak of that info to one of Nixon’s pet columnists and the Watergate scandal would have been over.
   But in some of the famous exchanges from Nixon-time, it was the president who came out ahead in the eyes of public opinion. I can remember watching the clash between Nixon and Dan Rather in a press conference in 1974 as the Watergate scandal neared its climax. When Rather stood up, Nixon’s people in the room booed and Rather’s colleagues cheered. Nixon, on the stage, looked down at Rather and asked with heavy sarcasm, ‘Are you running for something?’ Dan snapped back, ‘No, sir, are you?’ Many people took Rather’s response as smartass, and out of place. But then, Rather was never the brightest bulb on the block.
   Nixon’s chief weapon of coercion before the 1972 election was the Joint Operating Agreement, which suspended normal anti-trust rules so that competing newspapers in one town could, in the name of newspaper preservation, collude in fixing advertising rates. In the ’72 race Nixon collected a record number of newspaper endorsements.
   Another weapon in the wars between White House and press was a tax audit or an indictment. In the 1930s, Moe Annenberg, with close mob ties and co-owner of the Race Wire, ATT’s fourth biggest customer, owned The Philadelphia Inquirer and used it to support Republican politicians in Pennsylvania and attack Roosevelt. FDR promptly turned for help to David Stern, publisher of the Philadelphia Record and the New York Post. Stern promoted an IRS investigation and Moe pulled three years in jail. (Moe was the father of a former US ambassador to the Court of St James, Walter Annenberg – who spent many diligent years winching his family’s reputation out of the mud.)
   Some presidents, like Kennedy and Reagan, had no need to foment a public feud with the press, since the press in all essentials was in their pockets anyway. Carter furnishes the classic case of someone who simply lost the initiative and fatally allowed the press to make fun of him as a wimp, in his canoe beating off a giant rabbit with a paddle, or passing out during a jog, or whining about ‘malaise’.
   The most intricate story is that of the jousting between the Clintons and the press, from the moment, almost fatal to his initial presidential campaign, that Murdoch’s National Star exposed Clinton’s long affair in Little Rock with Gennifer Flowers in January, 1993.
   Hillary Clinton threw down the gauntlet on January 27, 1998, at the onset of the Lewinsky affair, when she told Matt Lauer of NBC that ‘the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.’
   At the time plenty of people made fun of HRC for this, but it was undoubtedly smart politics, just as the attack on Fox News is now. It fired up Clinton’s base, and allowed an extensive cottage industry to thrive, unearthing the rightwing conspirators and their financial backers, such as Richard Mellon Scaife.
   Seventy-five years ago, it mattered greatly to FDR what the Philadelphia Inquirer was saying about him. Obama’s White House probably cares about the New York Times and the Washington Post but not much else. The Wall Street Journal has loathed Obama from the getgo. The Fox Network is really the only enemy with mass appeal and as I suggested at the start it’s not political rocket science to go after it. Tone matters here. The barbs should not be whiny, but caustic and good humoured, to the effect that this is not a news medium but the propaganda wing of the Republican Party, as Dunn says. It’s essential not to blink. Glenn Beck is connected to sanity by a pretty thin mooring rope. A few months of this and he’ll probably pop, either going back on the bottle or slithering into a psychotic break, though some would say this is a nightly event anyway.
   Alexander Cockburn can be reached at alexandercockburn@asis.com

AL men to get business
for their sacrifice

That is what, once upon a time, one top leader said and this silly fellow is just echoing the same message. What happened to him? When AL has minister like this, let me declare it clearly and loudly for Sheikh Hasina, tough times are ahead of you and your party.
   An expatriate
   Via e-mail

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