Tiger Shark Exercise
Explore Bangladesh’s shifting defence alliances, marked by the Tiger Shark exercise and growing ties with the US, amidst the backdrop of regional instability and strategic balancing.
Context:
120 US military personnel arrived in Chattogram, Bangladesh, likely for joint drills under Pacific Angel, following the August 2025 Tiger Shark exercise. This reflects Dhaka’s shift towards warmer ties with Washington and a diversification in defence partnerships post the 2024 regime change.
What is Pacific Angel?
It is a multilateral humanitarian response civil military operation of the U.S.A, which enhances military-to-military partnerships in the Pacific while also providing medical outreach, civil engineering projects and subject matter expert exchanges.
What is Tiger Shark exercise?
Tiger Shark is a bilateral military exercise between the US and Bangladesh focusing on regional security, interoperability, peacekeeping operations, and military capacity building among armed forces.
- The 2025 edition reinforced cooperation via drills on medical evacuations, improvised explosive device (IED) countermeasures, and search & rescue missions. It also involved collaboration with other partners like Qatar and Thailand pre-exercise.
What is its significance for South Asian geopolitics?
- Diversification of Bangladesh’s defence ties: Following dissatisfaction with the quality and reliability of Chinese arms, Bangladesh is expanding partnerships beyond China to the US, India, Turkey, Japan, and Pakistan, reflecting a pragmatic balancing act.
- Counteracting regional instability: The military modernisation under Forces Goal 2030 aims to secure borders disrupted by insurgencies in Myanmar’s Rakhine and Chin states, ethnic conflicts spilling over from India’s Manipur, and Rohingya refugee crises.
- Rebalancing India-Bangladesh relations: While ties with India have seen strains post-2024 regime change, existing security cooperation remains important but cautious, especially with incidents like cancellation of defence deals and border agreement renegotiations.
- US strategic presence in Bay of Bengal: US military presence signals growing American interest in South Asia’s strategic waterways, maritime domain awareness, and counter-terrorism efforts.
- Emerging trilateral partnerships: Bangladesh’s defence collaborations with Pakistan and China, alongside new Western ties, make it a complex geopolitical player balancing regional rivalries and great power competition.
- Broader Indo-Pacific balance: Bangladesh’s new defence partnerships contribute to the strategic dynamics in the Indo-Pacific region, intersecting with Japan’s FOIP outreach and NATO-allied UK’s arms offers.
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The Source’s Authority and Ownership of the Article is Claimed By THE STUDY IAS BY MANIKANT SINGH
