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In his 2022 article “The Bay of Bengal Could be the Key to a Free and Open Indo-Pacific,” Anu Anwar argued that the Bay of Bengal is a microcosm of the emerging multi-polar world order, with its massive population centers, transnational challenges, and latent natural resources. Three years on, as the winds of change have blown across the Indo-Pacific, we asked him to reevaluate his argument.Image: Indian Navy via XIn your 2022 article, “The Bay of Bengal Could be the Key to a Free and Open Indo-Pacific,” you described the Bay of Bengal as “a test case for a nascent multi-polar world order.” Three years on, how do you assess this characterization, and has the region’s strategic importance evolved as you anticipated?Indeed, the core thesis of the article — that the Bay of Bengal would continue to attract great power attention and serve as a microcosm of an emerging multi-polar order — has been substantiated by three key strategic developments since 2022.First, every littoral state of the Bay of Bengal has undergone a political transformation through electoral turnover or popular upheaval. Once considered bastions of regime durability, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have witnessed unexpected political recalibration. Second, Myanmar’s post-coup civil war has escalated dramatically, with the military junta losing effective control over key territories. Most notably, the strategic Rakhine State is now largely dominated by the 30,000-strong Arakan Army, a non-state actor with significant military capabilities and territorial ambitions. Third, systemic external shocks — from the protracted Russo-Ukrainian War to the renewed conflict in the Middle East — have produced cascading effects on regional strategic behavior. India, for example — once anticipated by many Western observers to align more decisively with the U.S.-led order — has instead advanced and deepened its strategic ties with Russia while refraining from overt alignment