According to a plausible but all in all naïve reading of recent events in Bangladesh, the recent coup would benefit China because it would give Beijing an advantage over Delhi and an opportunity to expand its influence and 'encircle' India on the eastern front as has already happened with Pakistan on the western front. Beijing would enhance its presence in the Bay of Bengal and the northern Indian Ocean which, together with recent Chinese 'victories' in the Maldives, would help keep Delhi stuck in South Asia and unable to challenge Beijing in the Indo-Pacific. 

Invalidating this kind of analysis, however, was Hasina herself. Who in her first interview as a refugee in India took a few pebbles off her shoe: “I could have stayed in power if I had handed the island of Saint Martin to the United States, thus allowing the Americans to control the Bay of Bengal,” said the former prime minister. Who as early as last spring denounced Washington's heavy meddling in the country's affairs. “A 'gora,' a white man,” Hasina said last May, ”had offered me a smooth re-election on the condition that I allow a foreign country to build an air base in Bangladeshi territory.” Hasina's statements had been promptly denied by U.S. State Department spokesman Andrew Miller, but heavy U.S. interference in Bangladesh's elections last January is a fact. Since August 2022, U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh Peter Haas had been calling for “free, fair and transparent elections” and, in December 2022 had met with Bnp leader Sajedul Islam Sumon. In December 2023, opponents of Hasina's government blocked traffic and clashed with police at the suggestion, it was said in the country, of U.S. diplomats. After the election, the United States was quick to declare that the vote was not “free and fair.” Too bad the organization that monitored the election was the National Democratic Institute funded by the U.S. State Department's National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The NED is also active in Bangladesh and is said to fund the anti-government newspaper Netra News. The Americans themselves had no objection, incidentally, to Pakistan's rigged elections, quite the contrary. Curiously enough, too, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs Donald Lu used to make a couple of trips to Dhaka, most recently last May, to “strengthen bilateral cooperation and demonstrate U.S. support for a free, open and prosperous Indo-Pacific region.” Donald Lu, just to be clear, is the gentleman who orchestrated from behind the scenes the ignominious ouster of Pakistani ex-premier Imran Khan and who was recently asking the U.S. Congress for a few hundred million dollars to fund Pakistan in its evergreen and everlasting quest for “counter-terrorism” funds in exchange for some kind of unidentified favor. On the other hand, the geostrategic importance of St. Martin's Island is undeniable, not only for Americans but for various regional and extra-regional players in the Bay of Bengal. To explain it in very simplified terms: attempts by Dhaka to diversify its activities by targeting China, and Hasina's grand rejection of the military base, angered Washington, which would use the opportunity to place a more accommodating government in Bangladesh: a government that would ensure not only the pursuit of U.S. strategic interests in the region, but also, through a potential resurgence of terrorism, refugees, and instability on the Indian border (heretofore deemed 'safe') the ability to keep Delhi in check whenever Indian government decisions prove contrary to U.S. interests in the region and beyond. On the other hand, this is not the first time and certainly will not be the last time that the Americans use 'good' jihadi to pursue their strategic interests. And U.S.-India relations have long been, to put it mildly, rather complicated and characterized, especially in recent months and not unjustly, by a healthy distrust on the Indian side. In the new interim government in Dhaka, which they say is in danger of being as 'interim' as the Taliban government, sit in equal parts Islamic fundamentalists more or less linked to Pakistan, members of the military and individuals linked in one way or another to Washington, beginning with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Yunus.