Responses of Bangladesh and Myanmar to the Ukraine Crisis: A Comparative Analysis from a Neo-Classical Realist Perspective

Abstract

The Ukraine crisis, which began with Russia's military intervention, has violently jolted the modern world. The egregious Russian invasion of Ukraine, on the other hand, has arguably altered the trajectory of the world order. This whiff of war does not exclude any state because all states in the world system are economically, politically, and socially interconnected and dependent on one another. Bangladesh is also feeling the effects of the Ukraine crisis. The crisis has highlighted some challenging aspects of Bangladesh's foreign policy, testing the robustness and independence of its decision-making process regarding United Nations resolutions. Myanmar, like Bangladesh, has appeared befuddled in its response to the crisis. This paper examines how Bangladesh and Myanmar's foreign policy anticipated an unwanted labyrinth by the crisis, which made its moral credibility critical to some extent. Furthermore, the paper discusses how these two countries’ foreign policy trajectories became entangled at a difficult crossroads. We used secondary data sources backed up by scholarly works on Bangladesh and Myanmar foreign policy, relevant books, recent reports, and writings on the subject for this article. This paper also sheds light on Bangladesh's U-Turn in supporting and speaking out in support of the UN resolution on Ukraine's humanitarian crisis.

Resurgence and transformation: the impact of COVID-19 on Myanmar’s tourism industry and future trends

“…The economic fallout from the decline in international tourism due to COVID-19 was deeply felt across Myanmar's tourism sector. An unexpected and severe slump befell this industry, which had grown into a lynchpin of the country's economic growth, making substantial contributions to GDP and employment (Mahmud & Jabin, 2022). There was a domino effect Impact of COVID-19 on international visitor arrivals SEAMJ that affected many related sectors when people stopped travelling internationally, including transportation, hospitality and local crafts, which led to a precipitous drop in income from tourists (Boughton et al, 2023).…”