How Mackinder's Heartland Theory of Geopolitics Helps Explain Bangladeshi PM Hasina's Ouster
17:10 GMT 11.08.2024 (Updated: 08:49 GMT 12.08.2024)
© AP Photo / Fatima Tuj Johora
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Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was forced from power last week by large-scale, violent, student-led protests. On Sunday, the politician offered her most direct explanation to date about the foreign forces responsible for her removal from office. Sputnik asked veteran international affairs commentator Jeff Brown to elaborate.
“I could have remained in power if I had surrendered the sovereignty of St. Martin Island and allowed America to hold sway over the Bay of Bengal,” former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina wrote in a bombshell letter published by Indian media on Sunday.
“I resigned so that I did not have to see the procession of dead bodies. They wanted to come to power over the dead bodies of students, but I did not allow it. I resigned the premiership,” Hasina added, asking Bangladeshis not to allow themselves to “be manipulated by radicals.”
“Don’t lose hope. I will return soon. I have lost but the people of Bangladesh have won, the people for whom my father, my family died,” the veteran politician wrote, referring to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Bangladeshi statesman who became the nation’s first president in 1971 and served as prime minister from 1972 until his assassination in 1975 in the wake of Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan.
Hasina’s remarks the significance of St. Martin Island to her ouster were at least the second time the island has been brought up in relation to her position in office. In May, she alleged that the representative of an unnamed Western country had offered her an easy victory ahead of elections held earlier this year in exchange for permission to build an airbase on St. Martin. Her government rejected the proposal, sticking to its “malice to none” foreign and defense policy, which rules out membership in security alliances. Much of the opposition boycotted the January vote, with the move praised by Western media.
Serving as Bangladesh’s prime minister from 1996-2001 and again from 2009 until last week, Hasina estranged the US and other Western countries with her remarks slamming US-led aggression against Muslim-majority countries under the guise of “democratization,” and her allegations earlier this year accusing the US of seeking to partition Bangladesh and Myanmar and carve out a Christian-majority state.
Hasina resigned from her post and fled Dhaka for India on August 5 while protesters stormed her residence. Large-scale demonstrations in Bangladesh began in June, triggered by the reinstatement of a quota system for government jobs, and quickly exploited by political and social forces looking to oust the government. Hundreds of protesters and police were killed or injured in clashes, with the army stepping in after Hasina’s ouster and tapping US-supported banker and academic Muhammad Yunus to serve as head of an interim government. Hasina and Yunus have a well-documented record of bad blood, with the former PM accusing Yunus of “sucking blood from the poor” with his Nobel Prize-winning microcredit schemes.
Hasina’s ouster last week failed to quell the violence, with Indian and Bangladeshi media reporting on attempts by Bangladeshis of the Hindu faith to illegally cross the border into India amid a spate of targeted attacks which have reportedly left as many as 232 Bangladeshi Hindus dead. Additional reporting says that other minorities, including Christians and Buddhists, have also been targeted, with violence ranging from attacks on homes, shops and religious sites to abuse targeting women.
‘Another Okinawa’
“The United States wants to turn Bangladesh’s Saint Martin Island into another Okinawa. Sheikh Hasina said no, so she had to be deposed with a classic color revolution [using] paid-for astroturf protests organized out of the US Embassy and the usual gang of Soros NGOs,” veteran international affairs observer Jeff Brown, author of The China Trilogy, editor at China Rising Radio Sinoland and the founder of Seek Truth From Facts Foundation, told Sputnik, commenting on the now former Bangladeshi prime minister’s sensational revelations.
“With the West’s Muhammad Yunus being put in charge after the overthrow, NATO will surely get control of Saint Martin Island. This would be an important strategic coup for the West to have a permanent presence in the Bay of Bengal and by extension the Indian Ocean and the Malacca Strait. China has commercial ports in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Myanmar, so Saint Martin would be an important equalizer,” Brown explained.
🇧🇩🇺🇸 What is St Martin Island and why is it strategically important to the US? 👇
— Sputnik India (@Sputnik_India) August 11, 2024
▪️ Just 3 square km in area, St Martin's Island is in the southeast of Bangladesh.
▪️ Positioned in a critical location, it lies about 400 km from 🇮🇳Kolkata, and 950 km from 🇨🇳Lhasa.
▪️ If the US… https://t.co/v1gevRzfLS pic.twitter.com/pYKjPrOaTE
NATO control of the Bangladeshi island means the alliance “can keep tabs on pro-China Myanmar, bring in all kinds of chaos there, stirring up the Rohingya Muslims there (which Hasina was trying to defuse),” the observer suggested.
“It would give leverage with India for the Quad. Sri Lanka, Thailand and Malaysia are all right there and work well with China. These latter two are members of ASEAN, which sides with China. NATO in Diego Garcia is quite far away in the Indian Ocean. Saint Martin is prime geopolitical real estate to help NATO encircle the World Island,” Brown added, referring to Halford John Mackinder’s influential 1904 article on the heartland theory, which deemed that whoever controls the “Heartland” of Eurasia effectively controls much of the rest of the world outside the Americas, Britain and Japan.
Map of the "Heartland Theory", as published by H.J. Mackinder in 1904, which suggests that the Heartland's size and central position in the world makes it the key to controlling the World-Island of Europe, Asia and Africa.
© Photo : Halford J. Mackinder
“NATO has lost Mackinder’s ‘World Island’ – the Asian continent – to Russia, China, the DPRK and Iran, so it can only try to destroy or control it from the periphery [using] AUKUS, the Indo-Pacific Quad, and color revolutions in the region creating chaos with their neighbors, such as Myanmar and Syria and deposing pro-Global South leaders like Pakistan’s Imran Khan, Sri Lanka’s Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Bangladesh’s Sheikh Hasina. These latter three and Myanmar are all pro-China, which is a bullseye on smaller countries for being overthrown by Western empire,” Brown explained.
