ISAS Insights

Although one of the world’s largest countries in terms of population, Bangladesh is much smaller in size and power in comparison to its neighbour, India. It is also ‘India-locked’, hemmed in geographically on three sides by its more powerful neighbour. It also owes its nascence as an independent sovereign state actor to India. Hence, it needs to be very nimble to be able to retain for itself sufficient space for manoeuvrability in policy formulation which is necessary to obtain its aspirations and objectives in foreign policy. This paper does not seek to provide any prescription for action. Rather, it tries to extrapolate a paradigm of behaviour in such a situation which could also be relevant to other smaller states in comparable milieu.