What if the biggest variable in whether China attacks Taiwan is how many directions New Delhi is forced to look at once?
When considering a Taiwan contingency, people tend to focus on cross-Strait dynamics and China’s military capabilities for understandable reasons. But they should be thinking about India much more. India’s ability to create risk for China matters more than most debates over the future of Taiwan acknowledge. And India’s ability to do that is no longer just a function of tensions in the Himalayas or Pakistan’s role on India’s western front. It is increasingly shaped by Bangladesh and the historic choices its government is making.
Dhaka is reviving defense ties with Pakistan. Until recently, such a move would have been politically untenable: Bangladesh emerged as an independent state after the 1971 war with Pakistan, a conflict marked by mass atrocities that left deep scars in the national memory. That political barrier weakened after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s ousting in 2024. As a new leadership recalibrated foreign policy priorities, domestic resentment toward India intensified. Strategic pragmatism began to outweigh the historical taboos that had long constrained ties with Islamabad. At the same time, Dhaka is also deepening engagement with China.
With these developments, India’s traditional two-front dilemma risks hardening into a perceived three-front encirclement. This would reduce New Delhi’s freedom of action and, in turn, narrow one of the most plausible sources of strategic uncertainty Beijing must account for should it try to take Taiwan.
For much of the past decade, Washington treated Bangladesh as important but secondary. From 2009 to 2024, U.S. policy toward Dhaka was shaped largely by an India-centric frame, with Hasina’s Awami League government broadly aligned with New Delhi on counterterrorism, connectivity, and managing China’s rise. Bangladesh cooperated closely with India against insurgent networks, maintained an uncontentious posture with the Quad countries (United States, Australia, India, and Japan), contributed heavily to United Nations peacekeeping, and — despite deepening economic links to China — generally avoided steps that would unsettle India’s security equities in the Bay of Bengal. For Washington, this mix of stability and India-friendly diplomacy made Bangladesh look like a predictable partner to engage on development, labor rights, and humanitarian crises such as the Rohingya influx, rather than a variable in the regional balance of power.
If this trend continues, the logic that underpins U.S. regional strategy could invert: Rather than China being forced to divide attention across multiple fronts, India may be the actor compelled to split focus — China to the north, Pakistan to the west, and a more China- and Pakistan-aligned Bangladesh to the east.
In a future Taiwan crisis, that dynamic would weaken the U.S. position by reducing China’s exposure to pressure in the west and allowing Beijing to concentrate more attention and resources on the maritime theater. The stakes extend beyond Taiwan: The same bandwidth problem would weigh on the most plausible western Pacific contingencies, from the South China Sea to a crisis around the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands or on the Korean Peninsula.
India and Bangladesh Fall Out
India’s long-standing support for Hasina’s increasingly autocratic rule laid the groundwork for today’s strain in the relationship. Many Bangladeshis saw New Delhi’s backing as tacit approval of authoritarianism, fueling public anger that, by early 2024, led to the rise of the India Out movement and widespread protests against perceived Indian interference in domestic politics. When Hasina fled and took refuge in India following a failed crackdown of student-led protests, New Delhi’s decision to host her became another point of contention. The Bangladeshi interim government under Muhammad Yunus then oversaw court proceedings that culminated in a death sentence handed down to Hasina in absentia. New Delhi casts its decision to host her as consistent with humanitarian considerations; Dhaka frames the verdict as transitional justice. This dispute, compounded by years of public resentment, has locked the relationship in a posture of grievance and mistrust.
That mistrust is increasingly reflected in defense ties. In May 2025, Bangladesh canceled a $21 million contract with India’s state-owned Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers for an 800-ton Bangladesh Navy tug. It remains the first and only Indian defense deal to be formally scrapped. The project had been touted as a flagship under New Delhi’s $500 million line of credit, yet other items discussed under the framework, including coastal radar systems, naval logistics vessels, and army platforms, have seen no substantive progress.
The procurement freeze is mirrored operationally. Since Hasina’s ousting, India and Bangladesh have held no bilateral army exercises. SAMPRITI, the flagship ground-forces exercise, has not resumed since its 11th edition in Oct. 2023, breaking a decade-long pattern. This is occurring amid Chinese announcements that the People’s Liberation Army would deploy to Bangladesh in May 2024 for a first-ever bilateral counterterrorism training event. While reporting has not confirmed that the training occurred, the announcement itself signaled Dhaka’s growing openness to non-Indian security partnerships.
Pakistan and China Move In
As New Delhi’s influence erodes, Beijing and Islamabad have moved quickly to fill the vacuum. In late 2024, Bangladesh’s interim government placed its largest-ever order for artillery ammunition with Pakistan Ordnance Factory, more than 40,000 rounds, reportedly over triple its 2023 purchase. By August 2025, cooperation had expanded: Bangladesh’s Quartermaster Lt. Gen. Faizur Rahman traveled to Rawalpindi to meet Pakistan’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Sahir Shamshad Mirza and toured major defense production and training facilities, indicating intent to institutionalize military and industrial ties.
Momentum continued in Oct. 2025 when Mirza traveled to Dhaka for talks with interim leaders and senior service officials, with both sides emphasizing expanded officer exchanges, counterterrorism and cyber defense training, and closer maritime and air cooperation. In early November, Pakistan Navy Ship Saif docked in Chittagong, the first Pakistani naval visit to Bangladesh in more than 50 years. Shortly after, Heavy Industries Taxila’s chairman, Lt. Gen. Shakir Ullah Khattak, held discussions in Dhaka on upgrades to Bangladesh’s Chinese-origin Type 59 and Type 69IIG tanks, reinforcing the defense-industrial turn.
The timing of Mirza’s visit is notable for another reason. Alongside Dhaka’s reported discussions to acquire up to 48 Pakistan-assembled, China co-developed JF-17s (a fourth-generation fighter jet), Bangladesh has approved a plan to acquire 20 Chinese-made J-10CEs (a larger and faster fourth generation fighter jet), surface-to-air missiles, and radar systems by 2027 for $2.2 billion as part of Bangladesh’s military modernization program, Forces Goal 2030. Only two air forces operate the J-10C family: China and Pakistan. That detail captures what Bangladesh would inherit if the deal proceeds: training pipelines, sustainment dependencies, and doctrine shaped in Beijing and refined in Islamabad.
First, the J-10CE is now being marketed as combat-credible after Pakistan’s 2025 clash with India, in which Pakistani J-10CEs with PL-15 missiles reportedly performed well against Rafales. If Bangladesh trains on the same system, potentially with Pakistani support, China effectively extends a proven air-combat package onto India’s eastern flank.
Second, the triangular arrangement: Chinese hardware, Pakistani expertise, and Bangladeshi adoption, creates a de facto alignment that could complicate India’s air defense and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance planning. If Bangladesh deepens dependence on the same suite of aircraft, missiles, and radars, it opens the door to shared tactics, maintenance procedures, and limited logistics or intelligence cooperation. For India, that means greater pressure to distribute attention and resources across two fronts rather than treating the western theater as the primary axis.
Third, Pakistan’s J-10CE program offers Beijing a rare window into how a U.S.-trained, Western-oriented air force employs Chinese hardware under realistic conditions. For decades, the Pakistan Air Force has relied heavily on U.S.-made F-16s and associated training with the U.S. Air Force, shaping a Western-style tactical and operational culture. Through sustained Chinese-Pakistani training and exercises, China harvests integration lessons — how Chinese sensors, shooters, and command-and-control interfaces perform when used by Western-trained pilots and against Western-origin platforms. If Bangladesh adopts the same constellation, it is not just buying aircraft; it is buying into an operational ecosystem that China and Pakistan can iterate and standardize over time. This is relevant not only to India, but to how the People’s Liberation Army studies future conflicts involving U.S. and allied air forces.
Beijing, for its part, is likely to view this dynamic as an opportunity to consolidate its broader regional architecture. Pakistan is already China’s largest arms customer: Roughly two-thirds of Chinese arms exports between 2020 and 2024 went to Islamabad, and Bangladesh is now the second-largest recipient, with Chinese equipment accounting for nearly three-quarters of its arms imports. The result is a deeper alignment of defense dependencies that positions Bangladesh within a procurement and training network shaped in Beijing and refined in Islamabad. As India’s Chief of Defense Staff, Gen. Anil Chauhan warned in July 2025, there is a “possible convergence of interest … between China, Pakistan and Bangladesh” with “security implications for regional stability and security dynamics.” While Bangladesh gains advanced aviation know-how, this shift carries a reputational risk and complicates India’s defense planning.
Maritime Implications
In the Bay of Bengal, China has become the primary external driver of Dhaka’s naval modernization. This includes the purchase of two Type 035G diesel-electric attack submarines, financing a submarine facility near Cox’s Bazar, and providing technology transfer and construction support for surface combatants. Those projects are anchored around Bangladesh’s two main seaports, Chattogram and Mongla, both now embedded in China’s Belt and Road Initiative and increasingly frequented by Chinese navy port calls. The visit of training ship Qi Jiguang and the amphibious vessel Jinggangshan at Chattogram in October 2024 underscored how Chinese naval diplomacy is tied to infrastructure that Beijing has helped design and finance.
This emerging pattern sits atop a wider maritime architecture that already stretches from Pakistan’s Gwadar and Karachi facilities to Sri Lanka’s Hambantota port. Pakistan operates Chinese-built frigates, hosts Chinese submarines, provides replenishment and logistics support along the Arabian Sea, and will soon operate Chinese-built submarines. Sri Lanka’s Chinese-financed Hambantota provides China’s navy a logistics node astride the crucial international sea lanes connecting the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. If Chinese-built docks, repair yards, and navy bases in Bangladesh eventually offer select access or servicing to Chinese or Pakistani vessels, they would seemingly turn Bangladesh into one of the last remaining “pearls” in the string of pearls theory.
For India, this erodes the assumption that the Bay of Bengal is a comparatively secure area from which to project power. New Delhi has responded by upgrading airfields, jetties, and surveillance infrastructure in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, trying to turn them into a bastion for monitoring Chinese movements through the eastern Indian Ocean. But as Chinese and Pakistani hulls become more regular visitors to regional ports, the Indian Navy will be forced to devote more ships, submarines, and maritime patrol aircraft to watching its own eastern sea lines of communication. The same three-front pressure that India now feels on land thus begins to take shape at sea, limiting New Delhi’s freedom to contribute meaningfully to contingencies beyond its immediate neighborhood.
That maritime shift matters for Taiwan. India’s ability to complicate Chinese planning by posing a credible risk along the Himalayan frontier or across the Indian Ocean shipping routes that supply China’s economy and military is a key element of the regional balance. A Bangladesh that is part of a Sino-Pakistani naval ecosystem, even at a modest level, tilts this frame. It lessens the likelihood that India could use its navy to threaten Chinese sea lines of communication in a crisis, and increases the incentive for New Delhi to husband scarce assets for the defense of its own coasts and islands instead of supporting a broader maritime coalition in the South China Sea.
A less-encircled India could play a far more consequential role in a Taiwan crisis. With fewer local dilemmas, India could turn the eastern Indian Ocean into a genuine second front by threatening China’s sea lines of communication and offering its ports and airfields as enablers for U.S. and allied forces. This would force the People’s Liberation Army to keep substantial troops and aircraft tied down along the Himalayan frontier, rather than shifting them east to the western Pacific. By opening critical infrastructure to coalition operations, India could credibly threaten China’s western sea lanes, sustain operations far beyond its borders, and create a two-front challenge for Beijing.
Dhaka’s Non-Alignment and Its Limits
For Bangladesh, this engagement is not solely about alignment against India. It also reflects a pragmatic defense diplomacy rooted in a long-standing pursuit of strategic autonomy. Interim Government Foreign Affairs Adviser Touhid Hossain publicly downplayed concerns that buying Chinese systems would trigger penalties under the U.S. Think Twice Act of 2025, arguing that Bangladesh’s neutral foreign policy should shield it from such fallout. Relatedly, it is plausible that Pakistan could also provide an additional layer of resiliency if Chinese systems ever become subject to sweeping sanctions. Pakistani firms could, at least in theory, act as intermediaries for certain maintenance or ammunition needs, blunting Western attempts to curtail Chinese-origin capabilities through export controls. This prospect is speculative, but it is likely part of the appeal of a deeper relationship with Islamabad. That confidence underscores Dhaka’s belief that it can modernize under Forces Goal 2030 while maintaining balanced ties with China, India, the United States, and other partners.
This balancing act is grounded in the principle of “friendship to all, malice toward none,” which successive Bangladeshi governments have invoked in pursuit of non-alignment. However, Dhaka’s post-2024 foreign policy realignment is not simply a case of opening as many doors as possible. It represents a reconfiguration of which doors remain politically and economically viable. Under Hasina, Bangladesh maintained different streams of engagement: close security cooperation with India, a cautious but steady relationship with China, and minimal defense ties with Pakistan. Today’s shift does not expand that portfolio; it redistributes it. Canceling Indian defense contracts, suspending army exercises with India, and allowing mistrust with New Delhi to calcify, while advancing parallel activities with China and Pakistan, are not the actions of a state maximizing flexibility. They are indicators of a state adjusting to new strategic constraints and repositioning itself within an evolving geopolitical environment.
That logic became more immediate after Bangladesh’s recent national election on Feb. 12 — the first since the 2024 uprising — in which the Bangladesh Nationalist Party secured a decisive parliamentary majority and moved to form the next government.
Early signals from Bangladesh Nationalist Party leader Tarique Rahman point to continuity on China: he has framed foreign policy around jobs and investment and publicly described China as a “development friend.” A government judged on near-term economic performance will default to partners that can finance and deliver at scale and major infrastructure and defense deals embed long-lived dependencies that are expensive to unwind. That means China-linked port and defense industries are more likely to harden, increasing Bangladesh’s durability as an eastern-flank constraint on India.
On India, Dhaka is likely to keep relations functional but more transactional than under Hasina. Post-2024 grievances and political symbolism (Hasina’s refuge in India foremost among them) reduce the odds of a rapid reset even as Dhaka expands options tied to China and Pakistan. The mechanism is leverage: Maintaining multiple channels gives Dhaka bargaining power and avoids dependence. India should therefore plan for less alignment-by-default and more uncertainty to the east, reinforcing the three-front bandwidth problem that matters for Taiwan deterrence.
Rethinking U.S. Strategy Toward Bangladesh
The 2025 National Security Strategy underscores why Bangladesh matters beyond South Asia, highlighting low- and middle-income states as the key battleground where Chinese influence is already shifting the balance.
A useful starting point for reorienting U.S. policy is the Integrated Country Strategy. Led by the chief of mission, it is Washington’s central planning document for each embassy, which links country objectives to the National Security Strategy and the Joint Regional Strategies while coordinating the efforts of the State Department and other U.S. agencies. In principle, it communicates to partners that U.S. engagement is intentional, coherent, and sustained. Yet as of Feb. 2026, the United States lacks an implemented strategy that reflects the dynamic landscape. A 2024 update was issued but subsequently withdrawn amid policy shifts in Washington, leaving formal guidance from 2022 rooted in a very different Bangladesh.
That updated strategy would have to take Bangladesh’s security concerns seriously and treat its air force requirements as a strategic opportunity rather than a sunk cost to Beijing. Dhaka’s interest in a J-10CE package is, in part, a response to a lack of geostrategic depth; neighboring Myanmar’s growing inventory of MiG-29s, JF-17s, and Su-30s; and the need to keep pace with that perceived threat. Bangladesh’s pursuit of Forces Goal 2030 reflects genuine anxiety about airspace control, border security, and the safety of its peacekeepers and coastal approaches.
One underused tool for addressing Bangladesh’s security concerns is the Excess Defense Article program, where Bangladesh already has a substantial track record with the United States. Under the Foreign Assistance Act and Arms Export Control Act, the Excess Defense Article program allows U.S. equipment that has been declared surplus to be transferred at little or no acquisition cost, with the recipient paying primarily for transport and refurbishment. Dhaka has become one of its more successful users: 4 C-130E transports and 20 T56 engines arrived as excess defense articles and were regenerated through a $180 million Foreign Military Sales package; two former U.S. Coast Guard Hamilton-class cutters became Bangladesh Navy Ships Somudra Joy and Somudra Avijan; and 50 mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles have helped protect Bangladeshi peacekeepers in Mali. Beyond the Excess Defense Article program, Dhaka has acquired higher-end U.S. systems, including the RQ-21 Blackjack, an unmanned aircraft system obtained via Foreign Military Sales. Those cases show that Dhaka can manage the logistics, training, and sustainment demands that come with U.S. kit, while delivering significant capability at a fraction of new-build cost.
A similar logic could, in principle, be applied at the higher end of the capability spectrum. The U.S. Air Force is in the process of replacing 36 F-16CM Block 50s at Misawa Air Base with 48 F-35As beginning in 2026, part of a broader modernization and posture adjustment in northeast Asia. While some of those F-16s are already being reassigned to Osan Air Base where they are expected to serve well into the 2040s, others are likely to become surplus as F-35 production continues. The Misawa-based F-16s would offer a proven platform with reliable sustainment support. If Washington were willing to designate a tranche of these aircraft as excess, Bangladesh could emerge as a plausible recipient and replicate a variant of Indonesia’s model. In 2011, Jakarta secured 24 F-16C/D Block 25s as excess and funded their regeneration and upgrade including new radar, mission computers, and other systems through a Foreign Military Sales package worth $750 million. For Dhaka, a comparable excess-plus-upgrade model incorporating APG-83 Active Electronically Scanned Array radar, new electronic-warfare suites, Link-16, and service-life extensions would almost certainly be cheaper than the roughly $2.2 billion it is reportedly prepared to spend on 20 J-10Cs from China.
Realistically, such an option would come with significant preconditions. Transferring modern F-16s would almost certainly require a General Security of Military Information Agreement or like agreement with the U.S. government. Such an agreement sets the rules for how partners protect U.S. classified military information, and it is a prerequisite for sharing the kind of sensitive mission systems found in a contemporary F-16. For Bangladesh, moving toward the F-16 would therefore imply also taking on new obligations in information security, counterintelligence, and physical protection of U.S. technology.
Whether or not Washington ultimately chooses to go that far, Dhaka has already demonstrated that it can absorb U.S. platforms through the Excess Defense Article program, keep them operational, and employ them in ways that advance both its own interests and those of the United States. A carefully structured F-16 package, contingent on improved political conditions and a robust security-of-information framework, would convey that Washington is willing to offer a high-value alternative to Chinese fighters. For a government that structures its defense choices in terms of value and diversification rather than ideology, a lower-cost F-16 path that answers its air force concerns could become a credible counteroffer to Beijing’s J-10s.
Yet F-16s are not the only path. Washington should think in terms of concentric circles: a “big win” in which Bangladesh fields U.S.-made fighters, and “small wins” in which Dhaka turns to non-Chinese, non-Russian aircraft that still tie it more closely to the West. The Bangladesh Air Force’s December 2025 letter of intent with Italy’s Leonardo for Eurofighter Typhoons to replace its J-7s and MiG-29s is a good example. The United States can use third-party transfer approvals, export-credit tools, and Foreign Military Financing to make Western bids like the Typhoon more competitive, especially if they integrate U.S. weapons, sensors, or datalinks into U.S.–Bangladesh training and exercises. Similar support could apply to other Western airframes that fit Bangladesh’s budget and infrastructure while avoiding Chinese and Russian supply chains.
Complementing this security track, Washington could pursue an economic track aimed at easing Bangladesh’s trade transition as it graduates from least-developed country status to a middle-income country in Nov. 2026. For Washington, Bangladesh’s transition is as much a security question as an economic one. Bangladesh will retain access to World Trade Organization technical assistance, but it will no longer benefit from the same training and capacity-building programs. A bumpy graduation that undercuts export earnings by gradually losing specific tariff preferences would tighten Dhaka’s fiscal space, increase its reliance on Chinese credit, and make Chinese defense financing and military sales even more attractive. Conversely, a sustainable trade relationship with Washington would give Bangladesh greater room to diversify away from the Sino-Pakistani defense industries and to consider U.S. offers from a position of relative economic stability whether in excess defense articles, maritime security, or information-sharing.
The U.S. market is both critical and newly exposed. Even before graduation, Bangladeshi exports to the United States, dominated by ready-made garments, are facing total duties averaging around 35 percent. Bangladesh has tried to blunt the impact by pledging larger purchases of U.S. cotton and wheat and by exhibiting openness to wider trade concessions, but for now its apparel sector remains highly vulnerable to U.S. tariff policy. The Bangladeshi Ministry of Commerce has started to lay the groundwork by establishing subcommittees to develop action plans and made free trade agreements central to its strategy. Bangladesh’s only concluded bilateral Preferential Trade Agreement is with Bhutan, but it is pursuing agreements with the European Union, Japan, India, China, and others, and policy papers consistently list the United States among priority partners.
A natural next step would be to build on the current tariff negotiations and develop a phased trade package tailored to Bangladesh’s graduation timeline. The United States could pair preferential tariffs with targeted market opening on the Bangladeshi side, especially in aviation and digital services, where U.S. companies and dual-use technologies overlap with broader security objectives such as logistics, communications, and cyber resilience. Additionally, Washington could embed the arrangement in a roadmap toward a deeper trade agreement with a parallel track for security cooperation that could include maritime domain awareness and defense-related agreements. Such a package would not shield Bangladesh from all of the shocks of graduating from its economic status, but it would smooth the steepest part of its adjustment in its most important market, curtail the incentive to lean even more heavily on Chinese finance and arms, and tie Bangladesh’s long-term economic trajectory to a broader U.S.-Bangladesh partnership that spans both trade and defense.
America’s Margin of Error
The Bay of Bengal and the eastern Indian Ocean were supposed to be areas where China confronted uncertainty; instead, the uncertainty is increasingly India’s. A three-front India is less able to complicate Chinese planning or assume risk in a Taiwan crisis — or in other major western Pacific contingencies involving U.S. allies and partners. If Bangladesh’s drift continues to reduce New Delhi’s strategic bandwidth, it will undercut exactly the regional balance the 2025 National Security Strategy treats as vital to sustaining deterrence and keeping the Indo-Pacific open. The purpose of a more ambitious U.S.-Bangladesh strategy is not to “win” Dhaka away from Beijing, but to keep open a multi-vector future: one in which Bangladesh can modernize without locking into a Chinese security architecture; India’s sense of encirclement is mitigated rather than inflamed; and the United States gains, not loses, options in the Bay of Bengal.
For U.S. strategy, Bangladesh is the hinge: When Dhaka tilts toward a Sino-Pakistani security ecosystem, India is forced inward and China gains operational freedom eastward. Left unattended, Dhaka’s incremental choices in procurement, training, port access, and trade point toward a subregion in which India feels strategically cornered and China faces fewer risks as it thinks about Taiwan. Getting there will require faster diplomatic machinery, credible security alternatives, and a trade relationship that cushions Bangladesh’s economic graduation. That will mean treating Dhaka less as a development file and more as a strategic actor. And it is exactly the kind of competitive hinge the National Security Strategy says will decide whether Beijing can act with the comfort of inevitability.
Wolfgang Petermann is a U.S. Army foreign area officer currently assigned to the Defense Intelligence Agency and has previously served at the U.S. embassy in Dhaka. He is a graduate of Bangladesh’s Defence Services Command and Staff College and holds master’s degrees from Stanford University’s Center for East Asian Studies, Bangladesh University of Professionals, and Norwich University.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official policies or positions of the Department of Defense or the U.S. government.
**Please note, as a matter of house style, War on the Rocks will not use a different name for the U.S. Department of Defense until and unless the name is changed by statute by the U.S. Congress.
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