THE EMERGING STRATEGIC MIDDLE: NETWORKED POWER, BURDEN-SHARING AND BANGLADESH'S STRATEGIC CHOICES

This policy paper presents the Strategic Middle as an emerging architecture of diversified partnerships, institutional connectivity and strategic flexibility amid intensifying great-power competition. It proposes that Bangladesh should actively engage this evolving network to diversify dependencies, strengthen strategic resilience and preserve meaningful policy alternatives without aligning exclusively with any major power. The paper places domestic economic, technological and institutional capacity at the centre of this approach, arguing that strategic autonomy depends on the ability to manage external dependence while retaining the flexibility to adjust national choices as circumstances change.