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Beyond the Bay ...

The paper unfolds setting the objective, followed by highlighting
important maritime milestones under the heading ‘timing is important’. Before
briefly discussing the Sino-Indian Realpolitik of the IO, the Realpolitik stake of
Bangladesh and the legal framework within the ambit of the third United Nations
Law of the Sea Convention (UNCLOS III) of 1982 is scrutinized. However,
notwithstanding the fact as Reinhold Niebuhr is quoted by Guilhot (2011) as the
former had endorsed, “a theory must do justice to the complexities of change”,
various International Relations (IR) theories and particularly the Realpolitik of
the USA and other Indian Ocean Region (IOR) littorals are deliberately left
undiscussed for the brevity of the paper.
Objective

The objective of the article is to stimulate the readers to reckon beyond the
Bay of Bengal towards the IO for Bangladesh’s golden future.
Timing is Important

“When the strike of a hawk breaks the body of its prey, it is because of
timing”, wrote Sun Tzu two and a half millennia ago. In the maritime narrative
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of Bangladesh timing is one of the crucial components. It is pertinent to start
connecting couple of such eventful timing, which ushered the birth of a nation
the dawn of a Maritime Bangladesh:

a. Historic 21-point Programme of United Front in 1954 and 6-point
Programme of Awami League led by Bangabandhu in 1966 strongly raised
the demand to shift Naval Headquarters from Karachi to East Pakistan.
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b. Territorial waters and Maritime Zones Act, 1974 (Act No. XXVI of
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1974) to provide for the declaration of the territorial waters and maritime
zones almost a decade before the birth of the UNCLOS III of 1982.

c. The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) verdict on
dispute concerning delimitation of the maritime boundary between Bangladesh
and Myanmar in the Bay of Bengal on 14 March 2012.
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3. Sun Tzu: The Art of War, translated and with an introduction by Samuel B. Griffith; Foreword by B.H. Liddell Hart, p 92.
4. History of Bangladesh Navy @https://www.navy.mil.bd/bn_history.php accessed on 03 Dec 2018.
5. bdlaws.millaw.gov.bd/pdf_part.php?id=467 accessed on 03 Dec 2018.
6. Details of the verdict@www.itlos.org:case No.16.

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