The US’s vested interest in St Martin’s Island in the Bay of Bengal has sparked concerns about potential US involvement in the ousting of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina
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After the former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s downfall, news reports have since suggested that a foreign hand is at play behind her ouster. These reports are linked to an undelivered speech that has been attributed to Hasina, perhaps incorrectly. As Hasina was forced to flee her country on 5 August, the purported speech’s salience has subsequently grown. It depicts the former PM apparently admitting that she could have remained in power had she accepted the United States’s (US) demands for handing over control of Bangladesh’s St. Martin’s Island to have “sway over the Bay of Bengal”. Although any attribution of this speech to Sheikh Hasina has been denied by her son Sajeeb Wazed Joy, she had referred to the island in a previous similar insinuation.
It depicts the former PM apparently admitting that she could have remained in power had she accepted the United States’s (US) demands for handing over control of Bangladesh’s St. Martin’s Island to have “sway over the Bay of Bengal”.
In May 2024, Hasina claimed that a “white man offered her a hassle-free re-election in the 7 January elections provided she allowed a foreign country to establish an air base in Bangladesh territory.” She further stated, “There is no controversy here, no conflict. I won’t let that happen. This is also one of my crimes.” The obvious reference was America’s interest in St. Martin’s Island, because of a 2023 rumour, that Washington DC demanded the island in exchange for supporting the Awami League government. While such speculations had been denied by the spokesperson of the US Department of State, Matthew Miller, the country’s overt push for a “free and fair election” in Bangladesh this year, disconcerting the Hasina regime, has reignited suspicions. Although American interests remain a subject of debate despite US denials, the geostrategic significance of St. Martin’s Island is undeniable for various regional and extra-regional actors in the Bay of Bengal.
Located in the northeastern part of the Bay, the island is approximately 9 km south of the Teknaf coast in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh, and 8 km west of north-western Myanmar (Figure 1). The island is ideally positioned to facilitate surveillance in the Bay of Bengal which has gained strategic significance in recent years due to China’s assertive push in the Indian Ocean region. Beijing has been increasingly investing in the Bay littoral countries to gain a foothold in the Bay under the banner of its flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). A recent notable development is Beijing’s assistance in building Dhaka’s first submarine base; the BNS Sheikh Hasina, off the coast of Cox’s Bazaar. Inaugurated in 2023, the base opened the possibility of China operating submarines in the Bay of Bengal. In the same year, reports emerged of Beijing maintaining an intelligence facility on Myanmar’s Coco Island, near the Strait of Malacca—a critical chokepoint for Beijing, as nearly 80 percent of its energy imports pass through it. China’s expanding presence in the Bay is the baseline for an expanded maritime role in the wider Indian Ocean region and the Indo-Pacific. This runs contrary to US interests in the Indo-Pacific region, which aims to limit Beijing’s influence.
Figure 1: Location of St. Martin’s Island in the Bay of Bengal
Source: The map has been created by Jaya Thakur, an independent researcher and former Junior Fellow at ORF, Kolkata.
In the next decade, China is expected to augment its great power status by expanding in the Indian Ocean further. Numerically, China has already overtaken the US in manufacturing ships, narrowing the gap in its ability to project power at sea. As power concentration, led by the US-China dynamic, grows in the Pacific theatre, it is likely to spill over to the Indian Ocean. With its strategic presence in Myanmar and Bangladesh, China is advantageously positioned around the Strait of Malacca and the Bay of Bengal. Comparatively, despite a robust power projection in the area from the US Seventh Fleet in Yokosuka, Japan, the US may be sensing the need for a more immediate crisis-response basing facility or intelligence-gathering station around the Bay of Bengal. The Bay’s geographical distance from the US’s Indian Ocean support facility at Diego Garcia further underscores the strategic necessity for being closer to this maritime space. The St. Martin’s Island, with that assessment, may be a perfect node for the US to augment its Indo-Pacific strategy. Besides, the US Indo-Pacific strategy, particularly in the Indian Ocean, has led from the front through a trade-tech-security approach, in that order of preference, leaving classic geopolitics for the Pacific theatre. If the US is, indeed, looking for a presence in the Bay of Bengal, it could balance out the security component in the aforementioned trio approach. However, the Indian Ocean has traditionally perceived a great power role in a different light since the Cold War, led by a regional perception churned by the ‘Zone of Peace’ resolution in the 1970s.
The Bay’s geographical distance from the US’s Indian Ocean support facility at Diego Garcia further underscores the strategic necessity for being closer to this maritime space.
As the era of multilateralism unravelled, the US shifted to a burden-sharing approach in the Indian Ocean, where regional partners would take the lead. India assumed a new role in this regional strategy, strengthened by strong bilateral ties with Washington. The failure of regionalism led by SAARC further opened the door for consolidating bilateral and minilateral mechanisms. The Quad’s approach to regional security in the Indo-Pacific is part of this evolution. Consequently, great powers, including the US, have maintained a strategic reticence toward any overbearing security role in the Indian Ocean, given the region's fractiousness, lack of consensus, and political volatility. While St. Martin’s Island would offer the US an ideal location to build a strategic continuum—Fifth Fleet-Diego Garcia-St. Martin’s-Seventh Fleet—the US is unlikely to invest in establishing a new facility in the Bay of Bengal. This is particularly true if the Republicans win the upcoming November elections, as they have consistently shown a declining appetite for external engagement and expenditures.
Beyond the alleged US interest in acquiring St. Martin's Island, the island has long been a source of dispute. Historically, Bangladeshi fishermen were frequently charged by the Myanmar Navy for crossing the maritime boundary, an issue that was only resolved in 2012 by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS). More recently, the Arakan Army, a rebel group in Myanmar, fleeing from persecution by the Junta government, has staked claim to the island, leading Bangladesh to deploy warships despite officially denying the claim. As a strategic asset in the Bay of Bengal, St. Martin's provides Dhaka with valuable resources, trade opportunities, and significant tourism potential. Given the current tumultuous power dynamics and complex geopolitics in the region, ensuring the island's security is crucial for Bangladesh regardless of the government change.
Blaming a ‘foreign hand’ for domestic political problems is an age-old instrument in political diplomacy, especially used during the Cold War years. However, as the interim government in Dhaka struggles to restore normalcy to the country, the focus must be on addressing the real economic and governance issues that transformed the student protests into a mass movement, eventually toppling the fifteen-year-old Hasina government.
Sohini Bose is an Associate Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.
Vivek Mishra is a Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.
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Sohini Bose is an Associate Fellow at Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Kolkata with the Strategic Studies Programme. Her area of research is India’s eastern maritime ...
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Vivek Mishra is Deputy Director – Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation. His work focuses on US foreign policy, domestic politics in the US, ...
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