Washington’s Abominable Geostrategic Design to Subjugate Bangladesh

The tragic trajectory of Bangladesh’s political fate since the coup of 5 August 2024 is not merely the story of one nation’s democratic derailment; it is emblematic of how America has long deployed coercion, manipulation, and force to reduce sovereign states into client states.

Bangladesh—born out of fire and sacrifice in 1971 with the cry of “Joy Bangla!”—now finds itself shackled by a Washington-orchestrated regime change, a living testament to the grim prophecy of John Quincy Adams: “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She might become the dictatress of the world.” That prophecy, once cautionary, has now metastasized into reality.

From Liberation to Subjugation

In 1971, Bangladesh emerged from the crucible of genocide, its soil drenched with the blood of three million martyrs, its rivers carrying the tears of violated women, its villages scarred by Pakistani military atrocities. The United States, under President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, shamefully sided with the butchers of Islamabad. Declassified documents reveal Nixon’s chilling contempt for the Bengali freedom struggle, while Kissinger dismissed the suffering of millions as a “basket case.” America, instead of supporting self-determination, actively armed and backed Pakistan. It was only the moral clarity of voices like Senator Edward Kennedy and the American people’s outcry that stood with Bangladesh’s liberation.

Yet, more than fifty years later, Washington has turned full circle: now imposing its will directly upon Bangladesh, installing a puppet regime under Dr. Muhammad Yunus—an unelected technocrat—through what can only be described as a CIA-scripted putsch. This was not a neutral “transition of power”; it was a violent rupture of constitutional order, designed to ensure Dhaka bends to the dictates of Washington’s strategic chessboard in South Asia.

The Architecture of Clientelism

America’s method of manufacturing client states has been consistent across decades: from Iran in 1953, when Mohammad Mossadegh was overthrown in a CIA coup to protect oil interests, to Chile in 1973, where Salvador Allende was assassinated with Washington’s blessing, to Iraq in 2003, when “weapons of mass destruction” were conjured out of thin air to justify occupation.

Bangladesh is but the latest victim of this imperial machinery. The goal is not democracy, nor human rights, nor “free and fair elections”—catchphrases peddled by State Department mandarins. The goal is subservience. As Noam Chomsky wrote in Hegemony or Survival (2003): “The United States seeks to dominate the world by force, and those who resist must be crushed.”

By coercing Sheikh Hasina—Bangladesh’s longest-serving and most successful prime minister—out of office, Washington sought to dismantle an independent-minded leadership that prioritized national interest above American diktat. Hasina’s refusal to allow U.S. military basing rights in the Bay of Bengal, her outreach to China and India for balanced diplomacy, and her defiance in refusing to hand over sovereignty to Western NGOs sealed her fate. The August 2024 coup was the “deadly final solution” to Washington’s Bangladesh matter for them.

The Puppet Regime of Dr. Yunus

At the center of this sordid play stands Dr. Muhammad Yunus—hailed abroad as a Nobel laureate for his utter manipulation, flakily lionized as the “banker to the poor,” but exposed at home as a man disconnected from the soil that birthed him. Yunus has long been America’s favored instrument, cultivated through decades of patronage by the Clinton family and Western financial elites. His sudden anointment as Bangladesh’s interim head following military intervention was not a coincidence; it was the fruition of years of careful grooming.

The interim regime is not democratic; it is colonial in nature. Its function is not governance, but obedience—to dismantle pro-liberation forces like the Awami League, to rehabilitate Jamaat-e-Islami collaborators, to surrender economic sovereignty to IMF austerity packages, and to align Bangladesh’s foreign policy entirely with U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy. In short, to transform Bangladesh into a client state, a pawn in Washington’s long struggle to encircle China.

George Orwell’s warning in 1984 resonates eerily here: “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” America is tearing apart Bangladesh’s democratic fabric, reassembling it into a docile dependency.

The Violence of Dependency

Clientelism is never bloodless. The events of July 2025 in Gopalganj, where the Bangabandhu Mausoleum was nearly desecrated under the protection of military forces aligned with the Yunus regime, bear witness to the violence unleashed by Washington’s proxies. The re-entry of Jamaat-e-Islami into the political bloodstream—those who butchered, raped, and collaborated with Pakistan in 1971—shows how America has no qualms in rehabilitating fascists so long as they serve its geopolitical interests.

Bangladesh today mirrors the fate of other client states where Washington’s hand has been heavy. In Afghanistan, American occupation left a trail of devastation only for the Taliban to return stronger than ever. In Libya, U.S.-NATO intervention toppled Gaddafi and reduced a once-prosperous state into a fractured warlord zone. In Ukraine, America has turned the nation into a proxy battlefield, sacrificing its people at the altar of great power rivalry.

And now, Bangladesh is being written into that same tragic ledger.

Resistance and the Spirit of 1971

Yet, if history teaches us anything, it is that the spirit of liberation is not so easily extinguished. Bangladeshis have never tolerated servitude for long. From the Language Movement of 1952, where students died for the right to speak Bangla, to the Liberation War of 1971, where ordinary villagers became guerrilla fighters, the people of this land have risen time and again against oppression.

Rabindranath Tagore once wrote, “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high… into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.” That call reverberates once more. The present American-imposed regime may wield guns, tanks, and propaganda, but it cannot erase the people’s yearning for sovereignty.

As Thomas Jefferson reminded the world, “When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.” The Bangladeshi people are slowly awakening to that duty. Across the villages and cities, whispers of defiance grow louder: Sheikh Hasina’s absence is not the end, but the beginning of a new phase of struggle to reclaim the republic.

America’s Hubris, Bangladesh’s Destiny

The irony of America’s strategy is that it breeds the very resistance it seeks to crush. By attempting to reduce Bangladesh to a client state, Washington has sown seeds of deep resentment that will one day erupt. America may succeed temporarily in installing its satraps, but it cannot command the loyalty of a people who fought one of the bloodiest wars of the twentieth century for freedom.

History is littered with failed empires: Rome, Britain, the Soviet Union. America, too, in its arrogance, forgets that its “unipolar moment” has already passed. New global alignments are forming; multipolarity is the reality of our age. Bangladesh, with its 170 million people, strategic location, and indomitable spirit, will not remain a pawn forever.

Martin Luther King Jr. once declared, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” America’s subjugation of Bangladesh is but a temporary distortion. Justice will come, as it did in 1971.

End Point: Reclaiming the Republic

America may imagine itself as the master puppeteer, but Bangladesh is not a lifeless marionette. Its soul was forged in sacrifice, its destiny written in the blood of martyrs. No foreign power—be it Nixon’s America of 1971 or Biden’s America of 2024—can permanently enslave a nation so deeply rooted in struggle.

The world must bear witness: Bangladesh is not America’s client state; it is a sovereign republic betrayed by conspirators but destined to rise again. 

Until that day arrives, let us recall the immortal words of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who thundered on 7 March 1971: “The struggle this time is the struggle for our emancipation! The struggle this time is the struggle for our independence!”

Today, that clarion call must be renewed—for sovereignty, for justice, and for the reclamation of a Bangladesh that belongs not to Washington, but to its own people.

Written by: Anwar A. Khan 

Author's Bio: Anwar A. Khan was a Freedom fighter in 1971 to establish Bangladesh and is now a political analyst based in Dhaka. He writes on South Asian politics, liberation history, and international affairs.

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