Not long ago, when you thought of a South Asian country ravaged by floods, governed by bumblers and apparently teetering on the brink of chaos, it wasn't Pakistan that came to mind. That distinction belonged to Bangladesh.

Henry Kissinger famously dubbed it a "basket case" at its birth in 1971, and Bangladesh appeared to work hard to live up to the appellation. For the outside world, much of the country's history can be summed up as a blur of political protests and natural disasters...