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Perspective Bangladesh

Published:  12:20 AM, 03 October 2019

Three grand strategies to meet the 21st

century Rohingya challenge
Sarwar J Minar

Being a small and peace-loving country, Bangladesh is going beyond its capacity by hosting more
than a million Rohingyas who were ousted by the Myanmar's government.

Bangladesh opted for securing Rohingyas on humanitarian ground, to a large extent, at the
expense of its main duty, serving its own people, expecting a short-term solution. However, as the
problem has lasted long enough already without a silver lining, it has emerged as a serious
concern for the country.

Therefore, 'how to meet the Rohingya challenge?' has become a million-dollar question.The
article briefly explores the possible options to meet the Rohingya challenge and seeks the locus
where it fits in Bangladesh's foreign policy discourse by availing the grand strategic framework
developed by Prof. Peter Layton.

Peter Layton's book,Grand Strategy, develops an analytical 'grand strategy' framework, as a

problem-solving methodology and a methodology for purposefully shaping the future (Layton,
2018).Layton offers three types of grand strategies: denial, engagement, and reform. Denial
grand strategy advocates stopping others from achieving their objectives using superior economic
and military power.

Engagement grand strategy advocates engaging with the relevant internal groups and enable
them to influence the target party to move towards expected way. Lastly, Reform grand strategy
advocates for changing the old ideas that people of target country hold and replace with new
useful ideas that serves the purpose. 
To face the Rohingya challenge, Bangladesh may take lessons from the grand strategic schemas
developed by Layton to purposefully construct and/or shape the future.First, according to the
Denial grand strategy, Bangladesh should take a strong position. It should have stopped Myanmar
from pushing out Rohingyas into Bangladesh using military and economic coercive power.

However, as the stage is already over, in the present scenario,in which more than a million
Rohingyas are already in Bangladesh, the goal should be to take concrete military steps to stop
Myanmar from pushing out anymore in any case.

The framework would take a hawkish stand to deter Myanmar government from worsening the
scenario any further. The challenges include developing enough relative power to credibly deter
Myanmar which will require investment of enough resources.

The pitfall of the grand strategy is that even though Myanmar can be stopped, from worsening
Rohingya situation, the real reason of the contention may remain unsolved.Second, according to
the Engagement grand strategy, Bangladesh should engage with various domestic groups (e.g.,
civil society organizations, various interest groups, and so forth), who share similar visions and
whose interests are aligned to influence the government.

Working with internal parties which are socially, culturally, and politically active enough to exert
pressure on the Myanmar government to change policy and policy priority towards expected way
may be fruitful.The challenges include finding out the necessary type of actors who share the
same vision.

The schema also requires commitment of investments in many forms. Third, according to the
Reform grand strategy, Bangladesh should take steps to reshape Myanmar's social norms and
rules,national identity perception, induce shaping its social change, public and government's
perception towards the Rohingyas, the interest perception of Myanmar towards the Rakhine State
as well as the Rohingyas' national identity perception. In sum, influence the national policy
priorities.

The challenge is that in order to replace the old ideas with new ones must be accepted and
adopted by the majority. Moreover, though sometimes the old ideas fall apart automatically,
sometimes it requires external intervention which is difficult since changing the minds of people is
no easy task and is very time-consuming process.

Choosing appropriate grand strategy leads to the next stage, a successful implementation. All
three grand strategy schemas require use of all sorts of power instruments: diplomatic, political,
military, economic, informational etc. besides available resources, it is also vital to develop
necessary means/resources to achieve the objective.
Updating the grand strategy as the per situation and maintaining a synthesis of ends, means, and
ways are essential for successfully achieving the goal.

The conditions favoring success for each grand strategy are important for outcome. As the
favoring conditions for success of grand strategy are more amenable to engagement and reform
grand strategies, it is advisable to go ahead with the two grand strategies to deal with the
Rohingya challenge. Both engagement and reform grand strategies may be sought
simultaneously.

These approaches may also be thought provoking for international community/actors as well
since solving the Rohingya crisis has emerged as one of the key issues of concern for the
international community as well as one of the key challenges in the 21st century.  

Grand strategy is essentially broader than foreign policy which works like a 'mother of foreign
policy' which gives proper direction to foreign policy in order to seek certain grand national
objective(s) (Minar, 2018). So, the locus of grand strategy will be higher than foreign policy of
Bangladesh and will work like a higher conceptual framework giving proper direction to
Bangladesh's foreign policy.

Adopting a grand strategic approach will assist Bangladesh formulating a 'pro-active' foreign
policy to purposefully construct a future of the region and thus meet the Rohingya challenge in the
21st century and beyond.

The writer, a PhD student in Political Science, Northern Illinois University, can be reached at
sarwar.minar@niu.edu.
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