The New Nation - Internet Edition

UNB, Dhaka

Foreign Advisor Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury Thursday said Bangladeshi think-tanks can help identify pragmatic new priorities for the foreign policy, which has been traditionally focused on defensive interests.

"There is a need to change the paradigm. We need to pursue our offensive interests more vigorously," he said speaking on " Our Foreign Policy and the Contribution of Think Tanks" at the BEI auditorium.

Citing example he said, "In the climate-change debate, mitigation is our defensive interests while adaptation support and technology transfer represent offensive interests." The Centre for Foreign Affairs Studies (CFAS), a new thin-tank outfit, organized the function. CFAS chairman Amb Ashfaqur Rahman also spoke at the function.

The Advisor said policy research and advocacy groups should be able to preempt national interests and induce and encourage policymakers to act on time.

"They must be endowed with agility and flexibility. They cannot afford to be supertankers and take-forever to take a new angle," he told the function.

Dr Chowdhury said pursuing an optimal foreign policy requires coordination and collaboration among all stakeholders. Think-tanks are one such stakeholder. They, however, have the added responsibility to help synthesize consensus that takes into account the primacy of national interest. Achieving the foreign policy objectives also requires cross-border cooperation, be it bilateral or multilateral. "We can no longer consider the counterparts in our foreign policy as monoliths or unitary entities," the Advisor said, adding the counterparts also have multiple stakeholders, their think-tanks among them.

Dr Chowdhury said it is imperative that think-tanks across national borders, across interests, form alliances to further enlightened national interests. There, too, one can reap the first mover's advantage.

He noted that think-tanks often face the challenging task of striking a balance between objectivity and public expectation. They cannot just remain confined to thinking. They must also know how best to communicate their thoughts, without succumbing to populist pressure.

representative to the UN said, "We have a number of policy challenges, in domestic, as well as in regional and international contexts. Some of these are daunting - resolving them will require not only groundbreaking research but also consensus building."

He viewed that the national efforts to fight the threat of extremism and religious fundamentalism would require a broad political consensus and an "egalitarian social policy to address their root causes".

"We will have to think how our different educational systems, while meeting our varying professional and spiritual needs, can remain compatible with each other," the Advisor told the function. He said think-tanks could contribute to enhancing understanding on the need for an inclusive education system that is necessary to fight poverty, inequality and fundamentalism.

Dr Chowdhury, however, reminded that credibility of a think-tank largely depends on the quality of its research, its objectivity and professionalism. "A research institution should not be a shop, delivering 'made-to-order thoughts'. It should not be prescriptive either," he said, adding that intellectual independence is absolutely essential for a think-tank to do its job right.