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PINAK Ranjan Chakravarty, a former Indian high commissioner to Bangladesh, said during the launch of his memoirs at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi on March 28 that US ambassador Peter Haas went into hiding after a ‘strong message’ from New Delhi to Washington leading to Bangladesh’s January 7 election. It was very unusual, and it made sense only if the former high commissioner wanted to insult ambassador Haas and embarrass Washington over their role in the Bangladesh election.

Pinak Chakravarty did not leave anyone guessing that he was angry. He was confident that the US backed from its ‘full of sound and fury’ position in Bangladesh’s January 7 election to ‘nothing’ because of New Delhi’s ‘strong message’. He did not reveal the content of New Delhi’s message or when, where and how it was delivered. He was sarcastic about the US ambassador’s invitations to the BNP leaders to his house or going to theirs before New Delhi’s ‘strong message’ as if ambassador Haas was involved in a conspiracy with the BNP leaders for a regime change.

Washington pondered before reacting to the former high commissioner. Mathew Miller, the spokesman of the US State Department, dismissed Pinak Chakravarty’s comments but took over a week to do so. His comments were, however, embarrassing to the US and insulting to ambassador Haas. They did not react right away, perhaps because they did not want to treat the comments seriously. Mathew Miller thus dismissed the comments diplomatically during one of his regular meet-the-press sessions.

Pinak Chakravarty belongs to a small group of former Indian high commissioners to Bangladesh who are close to the BJP. They are strong supporters of, first, New Delhi’s strange ‘all eggs in the AL basket foreign policy’; second, its view that Bangladeshis must be grateful to India forever for its role in Bangladesh’s liberation war; and finally, that the BNP is anti-Indian, with links to the religious fundamentalists Jamaat-e-Islami, and therefore must not be allowed to come to power in Bangladesh.

They were upset because the US demand for a free and fair general election under the umbrella of human rights and democracy threatened all three foundations of New Delhi’s Bangladesh policy, through which it had successfully kept Bangladesh under control. This group was also upset with the US and ambassador Haas because they brought the Western nations and the UN into one camp against the AL regime.

Pinak Chakravarty’s claim that ambassador Haas and the BNP leaders frequented each other’s houses to allude to a conspiracy was baseless. Ambassador Haas and the high-level delegations from Washington were very particular and careful in flagging that they were encouraging the AL regime to hold a free and fair election. They also made it clear that they were not taking sides. The BNP neither received any direct encouragement from ambassador Haas or Washington nor did it claim so. Ambassador Haas and the US pursued human rights, democracy, and a free and fair election in Bangladesh sincerely because these were the bedrocks of the Biden administration’s much-vaunted Indo-Pacific Strategy, which were also the same objectives that the BNP was pursuing in its movement against the AL regime.

Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty and the ex-Indian high commissioners are also ardent supporters of the BJP’s Hindutva mantra, which visualises the once-Indian sub-continent or present-day South Asia as the Hindu Raj of Indian mythology. They also see South Asia in the context of the Monroe Doctrine, saying that the region is India’s backyard. Washington encouraged New Delhi to believe so during the two-decade-long war on terror from 2001 to 2021, when it unofficially viewed South Asia sans Pakistan through the Indian prism. Thus, the USA followed India in Bangladesh’s 2008, 2014 and 2018 general elections.

These ex-Indian high commissioners were unhappy when the USA tried to control Bangladesh’s 2024 election, which went against the Monroe Doctrine. However, it is still unclear what magic spell New Delhi cast over Washington for its 360-degree turnaround in the final days of Bangladesh’s elections. The USA certainly did not withdraw out of fear of the so-called ‘strong message’ as Pinak Chakravarty fondly wished because India has no stranglehold on Washington. Reality is the other way around.

Reports in the media also did not suggest that it was any ‘strong message’ that caused Washington’s turnaround. The reports suggested other reasons. One reason stated that Indian prime minister Narendra Modi pleaded with president Biden to keep the pro-Islam BNP from coming to power at a time when the BJP would be fighting a crucial election for a fourth term on the Hindutva mantra. Another reason stated was that Americans of Indian origin in the White House, State Department and Pentagon who support Hindutva delivered the Bangladesh election to the AL by sending the Biden administration into silent mode.

Neither reason nor both together explained satisfactorily why the Biden administration failed to follow up on any of the threats it had promised if the election was not free and fair. The election was absurd, surreal and the antithesis of a free and fair election. A better explanation may be the incompetence of the mandarins who presently head the Biden administration’s foreign and strategic policies. Bangladesh was one of their three God-given opportunities to raise the US and president Biden to the lofty pedestal of world politics.

Most Bangladeshis saw the failure of the mandarins of the Biden administration as a betrayal. The people in South Asia and the Indo-Pacific, where 60 per cent of the world’s population lives, saw the failure as another instance of America’s untrustworthiness as a world power. The Biden administration thus squandered the God-given opportunity that the Bangladesh election offered for the sake of India, and that too for the BJP’s racist Hindutva mantra.

The Biden administration had earlier failed with the opportunity that came its way with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. It was a made-to-order strategic narrative for enhancing the US image on the world stage by standing against a world bully attempting to devour a small neighbour. The Biden administration’s involvement in the Ukraine war was initially enthusiastically welcomed worldwide. The involvement also witnessed one of the rarest bipartisanships in the US in a foreign war. It helped a ‘modest to moderate rise’ in president Biden’s poll numbers, leading to his first State of the Union address in March 2022. The Biden administration failed to exploit the Ukraine War to its benefit and squandered it through poor diplomacy.

Meanwhile, Israel started the Gaza genocide in October last year, and the world watched the genocide in real-time. The Biden administration not only failed to use this God-given opportunity, but its handling of the Gaza genocide has been America’s worst-ever public relations disaster on the world stage. The Israeli armed forces brutally killed defenceless women and children in many thousands in the ongoing Gaza genocide. They did not spare even hospitals. The Biden administration ignored calls from every part of the world to stop supplying arms to Israel. The Biden administration thus became complicit in the Gaza genocide.

Israel committed the most flagrant violation of international law when it recently declared its sovereignty over the Golan Heights that it annexed during the Israel-Egypt War of 1967. The EU condemned the annexation, along with most of the members of the United Nations. Israel’s illegal and criminal acts will now give any big power the excuse to gobble up a small power if it wants. Israel’s act has the potential to destroy the UN, which was established after the Second World War on the ruins of decolonialisation.

The Biden administration’s silence in Bangladesh was understandable from the pathetic role of its foreign policy mandarins in Gaza. It was poor diplomacy by the State Department and the National Security Agency. They destroyed America’s credibility worldwide by siding with Israel in the Gaza genocide. They lost US credibility in South Asia and the Indo-Pacific region, where two-thirds of the people of the world live, by betraying most Bangladeshis to make India happy! They also shot their Indo-Pacific strategy in the back, which helped China become the most formidable power in the Indo-Pacific region.

Postscript: Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty doubled down on his comments after the State Department trashed them. He is hallucinating nevertheless, perhaps because he believes that the BJP’s power comes from the Hindu gods of mythology led by Shiva! Meanwhile, President Biden’s second term is looking shaky. He has himself and his administration’s love for Israel and India to blame.

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M Serajul Islam is a former career ambassador.