IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/indqtr/v65y2009i1p67-82.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Anatomy of Military Interventions in Asia

Author

Listed:
  • Baladas Ghoshal

    (The author is Visiting Professor, Academy of Third World Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.)

Abstract

This article looks at the recent military intervention in the politics of Bangladesh—within the broader framework of the military's role in the politics of Asian countries, as it evolved in different stages and patterns over the years—identifies its main characteristics and prognosticates their implications on the future political developments in the country. The main hypothesis is that a new pattern of military involvement in politics is emerging in countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, which we will call ‘power without responsibility’, a trend that bodes ill for democratic developments in both the countries. In the current situation in Bangladesh, the military intervened, no doubt, to correct the mess, to use army language, not directly but indirectly by propping up their cohorts in the form of a caretaker government, where the policy directions and actions of the new government were determined essentially by the armed forces. Bangladesh military is fast imitating the Pakistani model, albeit in a different form, to place itself as an arbiter in each and every aspect of social, political and economic life of the country. Like in Pakistan, the Bangladesh army does not necessarily have to come directly into power. It can wield effective power and influence even while remaining in the background and, yet, constantly destabilize politics and deprive the democratic forces the necessary political space. The caretaker government remained in power by courtesy of the military and ruled at its bidding. If at all the current experiment of social and political engineering by the Bangladesh military succeeds, though doubtful, it can always take the credit for cleaning up the mess in the politics of the country and filling in the democracy deficit that the country is facing today. The responsibility for the failure can always be passed on to the caretaker government whose civilian façade has been kept deliberately to confuse and hoodwink the domestic constituency and the international community. So, a new model of military intervention in politics—rule without responsibility and accountability—has emerged in Pakistan and Bangladesh, which obviously has both long- and short-term implications for political developments in Third World countries and, thus, requires closer scrutiny and analysis.

Suggested Citation

  • Baladas Ghoshal, 2009. "The Anatomy of Military Interventions in Asia," India Quarterly: A Journal of International Affairs, , vol. 65(1), pages 67-82, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:indqtr:v:65:y:2009:i:1:p:67-82
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://iqq.sagepub.com/content/65/1/67.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:indqtr:v:65:y:2009:i:1:p:67-82. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.