How America's Color Revolution Strategy Is Teaching Third World Democracies a Lesson

Being the world’s sole superpower came with a certain responsibility, or so the United States pretended while policing its global domain. Over the past decade, as information has leaked more quickly from its little analog corners and spread its implications around the world, the American deep state has lost its shadow.

While much of Europe, and the United States, out of nostalgia and habit, refuse to give up their anti-Russian rhetoric, democracies have borne the brunt of American brutality. At the same time, aside from Donald Trump’s rather ineffectual trade war with China, the Democratic establishment that replaced him not only left Xi Jinping’s authoritarian regime behind after the Wuhan crisis but, as investigations have shown, helped cover up the nation’s involvement at the cost of American lives.

There was a word here and a condescension there, but the greatest international threat to American hegemony was treated like a well-tolerated competitive little brother. China’s rule-breaking works well as long as trade dependence on the West remains, and as long as establishment corruption and collusion are not embedded in the State Department. It is telling that its famous mouthpiece, the Washington Post, recently discovered that its foreign affairs columnist, Max Boot, was married to a Chinese spy. Moreover, the now-arrested agent, Sue Mi Terry, is a former CIA analyst.

American foreign policy, distracted by its ever-moving war machine, and Chinese influence make too much of India’s necessary and historical proximity to Russia. On the other hand, a few words of concern are enough to evoke a much more globally relevant dragon-bear nexus. At the same time, India’s neighbouring democracy, Bangladesh, has been constantly lectured to the detriment of its peace, with the constant threat of regime change, which has recently been carried out.

US engagement with anti-government agencies fomenting protests is technically the opposite of diplomacy. Global diplomatic norms depend on countries’ ability to engage with legitimate governments, regardless of the diplomats’ political preferences. The idea is to build bridges, not to present oneself as a threat. That is why, despite a terrorist government in Afghanistan and military rule in Myanmar, India’s relations are with the governments currently in power, not the ones India wants to have there.

To a public that uncritically consumes the content of CIA-influenced publications, civil society appears as an acceptable authority to deal with. Except in democracies, civil society has literally voted to choose the government in power. Only it is a government that the United States does not like and will spare no effort to overthrow and replace with a puppet regime. Clearly, this has not worked well for Ukraine, Afghanistan, or Iran.

None of the moral principles apply to the most exceptional country in the modern world. American diplomatic personnel have consistently lobbied to engage with the opposition in India and Bangladesh. Now that Hasina’s elected government has been overthrown, an American close to Clinton is at the helm of Bangladeshi affairs. Mohammed Yunus has already been indicted in a case in which he is accused of embezzling millions of rupees in a country where the average citizen struggles to earn thousands of rupees. Norwegian authorities have also suggested financial fraud through his company Grameen Telecom, which partners with the Norwegian operator Telenor. He is, however, decorated with a Nobel Prize.

At the same time, Hasina’s resistance to Chinese ambitions at home meant that China had an interest in seeing another government in power. As prime minister, she had refused to allow China to build the deep-sea port at Sonadia. Instead, she invited the Japanese to finance one near Chittagong. This is not to say that Bangladesh’s trade or defense partnerships with China have suffered under Hasina. However, China has close relations with the Bangladesh National Party (BNP), and the Jamaat-e-Islami student groups are aided by their client state, Pakistan.

Similar to the Maldives, they funded a campaign for Indian independence in Bangladesh, which was very successful by branding all Awami League supporters and Hindu minorities as traitors to India. JEI is a group that has violently opposed Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan and has regularly committed heinous crimes against minorities. Not surprisingly, after the coup, their student groups desecrated monuments to Bangladesh’s independence and broke statues commemorating Pakistan’s surrender to India, allowing Bangladesh to separate after years of neglect and violence against the Bengali people.

This volatile environment has isolated Awami League-led Bangladesh from the US, impacting its trade and further increasing its dependence on China. At the same time, US harangues and blockade against Hasina’s party have given the highly radicalised Islamic Sharia law, openly supportive of the BNP and the JeI, the courage to plunge the country into chaos. Now that they have succeeded in overthrowing Hasina’s elected government, Hindus are being ethnically cleansed again, a repeat of the horrors of the 1971 genocide. US accomplices believe that these lives are of little importance in establishing control of the region. So far, there has been little comment on the situation, with the White House saying only that it would monitor the situation, in the same way that it did not react when the Yazidis and Hazaras were wiped out of their lands.

With the opening of a third front against India, a China-backed BNP and an ISI-backed JeI, India finds itself facing regional instability in a hostile region. The Narendra Modi-led government has shown extreme disinterest in an interventionist foreign policy, unlike previous governments that have offered military support to neighbouring countries or engaged in intelligence operations in favour of particular governments. It has acted in a manner that is exactly at odds with the way the US State Department acts and, for all its coolness and conservatism, it remains the only politically stable democracy in a region where communist and military autocracy is the norm.

The subversion of democracy is an American addiction. This is not to say that citizens whose democracy is being subverted did not have legitimate grievances before foreign influence. However, the color revolutions and military ousters backed by the United States have left all of these countries worse off, with economic growth decimated, media censored, and dictatorships or puppet regimes favored over the triumph of genuine civil society. Bangladesh may be a lesson. But history rarely teaches those who are not willing to learn.

The author is a columnist for several Indian publications such as NDTV, FirstPost and CNN-News18, and hosts a podcast on geopolitics and culture. She writes on international relations, public policy and history, and posts on X on her account @sagorika_s. The views expressed in the above article are personal and those of the author alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Firstposts.