Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, claimed that the US would not have planned to remove her from power if she had simply given up St Martin’s Island in the Bay of Bengal. The US denied the charges. During the time when Bangladesh was part of Pakistan, the Pakistani government had offered the island to the US.
Right now, the island is a point of conflict between Bangladesh and Myanmar. Regardless, Hasina’s claim highlighted the strategic significance of the Bay of Bengal for the US and its allies, such as India. The Bay of Bengal is located where the Indian Ocean meets the Pacific Ocean, making it a key route for much of maritime traffic.
While large-scale wars are unlikely in the Bay of Bengal, it serves as a ‘grey zone’ where military actions may occur without escalating into intense conflict between the US and India on one side and China on the other. In a paper released by the Centre for International Maritime Security, University of Texas, scholar Mohammad Rubaiyat Rahman explains that a range of non-military actions can be classified as “grey zone” activities, as reported by Eurasia Review. Countries along the Bay of Bengal, such as Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, have relied on China for economic growth and infrastructure development.
China has built ports, roads, pipelines and railway tracks in these coastal countries. From an American perspective, these development projects are seen as China’s “grey zone activities” in the Bay of Bengal, .