The nineteenth-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard observed that the man who marries regrets it, and the man who does not marry regrets that too.
The point is not that choice is meaningless, but that certain situations are structured so that no available option escapes consequence; the regret is not a punishment for choosing wrongly, but a feature of the situation itself, present before the deliberation even begins.
This is, perhaps too precisely, the position of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) today.
The US-China trade rivalry, which is rewiring global supply chains, and the US-Iran confrontation, whose consequences are now drawing long queues at filling stations in Dhaka, were not decisions made in Bangladesh’s capital.
But the structure of available choices has been arranged, by forces largely external to these countries, such that every path forward precludes something irreversible.
Like death and taxes, the regret that follows was never up for negotiation.
The window that closed For a brief historical window, the economic ladder was attainable.
The East Asian miracle, namely that of South Korea, Taiwan, and later China itself, demonstrated that late industrialisation was possible within the postwar liberal order.
The conditions were specific: a period of relative great-power stability, open markets for manufactured exports, permissive technology transfer, and a multilateral institutional framework that, despite its asymmetries, provided a stable enough floor for long-run planning.
The bet seemingly paid off, producing one of the most dramatic reductions in absolute poverty in recorded history.
The US-China trade rivalry, which is rewiring global supply chains, and the US-Iran confrontation, whose consequences are now drawing long queues at filling stations in Dhaka, were not decisions made in Bangladesh’s capital.
But the structure of available choices has been arranged, by forces largely external to these countries, such that every path forward precludes something irreversible.
That window has since closed.
What has replaced it is not a new development paradigm but a contest, conducted through tariffs, semiconductor controls, friend-shoring mandates, and the silent rewiring of development finance, between two powers whose rivalry is increasingly total.
Bangladesh is the clearest illustration.
Its garment sector, the backbone of an export-led development model that lifted millions out of poverty over three decades, was built on the assumption that access to Western consumer markets was stable and expandable.
That assumption now sits within a geopolitical variable nobody in Dhaka controls: US-China decoupling reshapes supply-chain geography, friend-shoring redirects investment flows, and trade-as-leverage makes market access a political instrument rather than an economic constant.
The understated trilemma The trilemma this produces for LMICs is rarely stated plainly, but each of its three parts carries lasting implications that warrant further elaboration.
Align with the Western bloc and inherit its terms: access to capital markets, development finance, and the green transition agenda, each bundled with conditions whose content evolves but whose structural asymmetries persist.
The US-Bangladesh Agreement on Reciprocal Trade, signed in February 2026, illustrates this precisely: a reduction in tariffs in exchange for binding commitments across defence procurement, digital governance, energy purchasing, and restrictions on trade relationships with countries Washington designates as non-market economies.
Critics have described it as highly unequal and potentially damaging to Bangladesh’s strategic independence, a framework whose obligations run deep while its benefits remain conditional.
On the climate front, late-developing economies are being asked to forgo an energy pathway that earlier industrialisers relied upon to build the very technological capacity now being brought to bear in designing that transition, a sequencing difficulty that persists regardless of how the demand is framed.
Align with the Eastern alternative....
