Moscow and Bangladesh
![handle is hein.journals/probscmu24 and id is 142 raw text is:
Moscow and Bangladesh
By Bhabani Sen Gupta
n March 1974, the last two of eleven Soviet
minesweepers which had been engaged in
harbor-clearing operations in the shipping chan-
nel of Ch'ttagong and Cox's Bazar left the waters of
Bangladesh The ships were part of a 20-unit fleet
sent by the Soviet Union two years earlier, at the
request of the new People's Republic of Bangladesh,
to clear ports in the strategic Bay of Bengal of the
mines and sunken ships left in the wake of the
Republic's tumultuous birth in 1971. In two years,
the Soviet fleet had salvaged 17 vessels, ranging
from a 15,000ton freighter to smoal coastal ships
and barges-and what is more, it had carried out
the entire operation free of charge Yet, when the
last of the Soviet ships left four months ahead of
schedu e, the Bangladesh government seemed more
releved at their departure than grateful for their
services, whie Soviet representatives were re-
ported y in a state of some aggravation. According
to Calcutta's leading rewspaper, The Statesman,
some Bangladesh officals had begun to feeI rather
uncomfortable about the prolonged presence of
the Soviet force, surmising that it might be one
reason for China's continued refusal to recognize
the ,new republic and maintaining that the Russians
were using Chittagong as a 'foothold' for keeping
watch on the Indian Ocean. As for the Soviet view,
the paper added:
Mr. Sen Gupta, formerly Professor of Disarmament
and Strategic Studies at the School of International
Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi),
is a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow for Study of Inter-
national Conflict, affiliated with the Research Insti-
tute on International Change, Columbia University
(New York), Among his writings are The Fulcrum of
Asia, 1970; Communism in Indian Politics, 1972;
and The Malacca Straits and the Indian Ocean, 1974.
He is currently working on a book-length study of
the Soviet Union and the security of Asia.
The Russians seem to feel unhappy that their
good work in making Chittagong and Cox's Bazar
ports safe and operational has not been much appre-
ciated by the Bengalis. Soviet diplomats have infor-
mally regretted that some Bangladesh officials and
politicians have been rather unkindly. Their
disillusion, they say, is because they have done the
salvage and minesweeping work . . . free of [con-
siderable] cost, for which all they have earned is a
bad name.'
The respective attitudes reportedly entertained
in this instance are idlustrative of a perceptible re-
serve in recent relations between Moscow and
Dacca-a trend which at first glance may seem sur-
prising in view of the USSR's crucial supportive role
in the events leading to Bangladesh's independence
and its early moves to befriend and assist the strug-
gling new South Asian state. Against the complex
backdrop of all the factors and forces which have
affected big-, medium-, and small-power relation-
ships in the subcontinent, however, the shift in the
attitudes of both regimes is more understandable.
The present paper will attempt to explain this shift
in terms of the broader geopolitical considerations
that have brought it about.
The Events of 1971
Soviet strategies in South Asia over the two
decades up to 1970 have been explored in some
depth in recent issues of this journal and need not
be recapitulated here.' The springboard for the
present discussion is Moscow's efforts during the
IThe Statesman Weekly (Calcutta), March 23, 1974.
2 See William J. Barnds, Moscow and South Asia, Problems Of
Cormunrsm (Washington, DC), May-June 1972; and S. P. Seth,
Sino-indian Relations: Changing Perspectives, ibid.,
March-April 1974.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/probscmu24&div=22&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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