Sri Lanka’s current foreign policy and external alignments are increasingly asymmetrical with the needs of its material base; with its fundamental economic, financial and developmental requirements and interests.
Sri Lanka is being redesigned and reconstituted into what Mao Zedong called a “semi-colony”. A semi-colony is one which does not belong to a single outside power but is shared by several, with each having its sphere of preponderant influence.
The US-Sri Lanka partnership communique issued during Minister Samaraweera’s visit to Washington DC, reveals the extent of the envisaged US ‘engagement’. It is both broad-gauge and deep-going.
It envisages Sri Lanka as the crossroads where the US and India strategically converge. Sri Lanka is to be integrated into the Indo-US strategic grid in the Indian Ocean and Asia-Pacific regions.
Veteran foreign correspondent PK Balachandran of the New Indian Express suggested that the Wickremesinghe administration may cooperate with the ‘Hanuman Bridge’ connecting South India and northern Sri Lanka in consequence of the partnership agreement with the USA because such contiguity is part of the larger strategic grid being rolled out by Washington.
That grid is part of the attempt to contain China, and in Washington’s grand strategic planning, Russia as well, i.e. to contain Eurasia (which has served as Sri Lanka’s natural rear base and hinterland).
The partnership statement shows that in furtherance of its project, the US will be engaged in the re-modelling of the Sri Lankan state institutions themselves, from the judiciary to the military. Moreover, Sri Lanka’s laws, ideology and consciousness will be remoulded with US advice and assistance, so that the island can be converted into a loop in the US network in the Indian Ocean and Asia-Pacific zones.
As part of the game-plan, the Sri Lankan Government, State and policy process are now the playpen of the West’s favoured children, the Tamil Diaspora and Colombo ‘peace NGO’ civil society. It is also as part of this lockdown that the Sri Lankan military is sought to be downsized and shifted away from defending its own borders to serving as ‘sepoys’ in UN peacekeeping missions, rented out as auxiliaries serving US strategic interests.
Constitutional change is underway to establish a durable Tamil semi-state entity in the North and East which can serve as a Western and Indian enclave and springboard. Camouflaged as ‘reconciliation’, the objective is a federalized, weak, porous state, which empowers domestic constituencies/communities with markedly anti-China consciousness.
To fund the plan, the UNF government is about to embark on its boldest and most daring exercise in a policy agenda already overstuffed with bold and daring experiments. It is seeking to sucker one of the world’s oldest and most sophisticated civilizations, namely China.
Just as the 2009 victory over the Tigers was perceived as a win for the Beijing consensus, the overthrow of Rajapaksa in 2015 was projected as a defeat for the Beijing Consensus and a victory of the Washington Consensus.
Today’s Sri Lankan experiment is a projection of Washington’s soft power interventionism --what the Chinese call “peaceful evolution”-- and constitutes an enlargement of Washington’s footprint in Asia.
Having spurned and insulted China -- as External Affairs Minister Mangala Samaraweera did in his media conference in Beijing itself -- Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s administration now wants China to subsidize Colombo’s “pivot” to the US and India in their joint and separate efforts to compete with and contain China! The UNP government is trying to get China to actually pick up the bill for a project which is part of the US “hard” and “soft power” offensive posture in Asia and the Indian Ocean region, encircling and targeting China (and Russia).
China is supposed to pay for an anti-Chinese conversion of an island critically located at the crossroads of the strategically vital Indian Ocean region; an island which the UNP leadership seeks to carve up into two spheres of influence: the Southern two-thirds preponderantly for the US-UK and the Northern-third preponderantly for US ally, India.
Thus China is meant to build and expand infrastructure -- including ports in the South, where the Sinhala preponderance does not make for a large Indian footprint -- for US use, while Trincomalee in the North-Eastern quadrant will be placed in a predominantly Indian sphere of influence from which China is quarantined. China is to construct the very platforms for the possible interdiction of China’s Maritime Silk Route.
In Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s plan, Beijing is to bankroll both the marginalization of patriotic political forces friendly to China as well as the burial of the Beijing Consensus. If it succeeds, the message will go out that there is no economic deterrent to a strategic delinking from Beijing and a tilt against its core regional interests!
“Our foreign policy has been reset…Our friendship with our sister and neighbour, India, has reached new levels of excellence in the last twelve months...Our historic relations with our other powerful friend and neighbour, China, are as strong as ever and next month’s
visit by our Prime Minister to Beijing will further strengthen our ties. Our cordial ties with the US have now been elevated to of a very special friendship making the US one of Sri Lanka’s staunchest friends in the international community. The US-Sri Lanka partnership dialogue bears testimony to this bond.” (https://www.colombotelegraph.com/index.php/restructuring-our-economy-our-foreign-policy/)
So India is “our sister” with whom relations “have reached new levels”, the US which sponsored an intrusive resolution on Sri Lanka at the UNHRC despite the election of a friendly government is a “very special friend” and “one of Sri Lanka’s staunchest friends”, while China, our demonstrably, indubitably, staunchest friend over decades, is merely “our other powerful friend and neighbuor” [sic] with whom relations have not been upgraded and “are as strong as ever”.
Today’s Sri Lankan experiment is a projection of Washington’s soft power interventionism --what the Chinese call “peaceful evolution”-- and constitutes an enlargement of Washington’s footprint in Asia
China is clearly ranked third in the hierarchy, so why should it be the first to reach for its purse, and most deeply too? Shouldn’t the Prime Minister take his begging bowl and go plead with either our “sister” whose fishing boats pillage our waters, or our “very special” friend “one of our staunchest”, rather than solicit our “other powerful friend”, the downgraded China?
The new Sri Lankan model is the offspring of the union between our “sister” India and our “very special friend” the USA. The current Colombo model is one in which China is the preponderant financial contributor but is relegated to a subordinate role and status in the political, diplomatic and strategic spheres. China builds the economic foundation and is accommodated in the basement, while the US and India own the building and occupy the penthouse apartments.
Harim Pieris, a confidant and former advisor of former President Kumaratunga recently recommended that Sri Lanka be to India as Hong Kong is to China, overlooking the fact that Hong Kong is a part of, and belongs to China while Sri Lanka isn’t a part of and doesn’t belong to India.
An authentic, unvarnished expression of the decadent comprador ruling elite’s opinion of China was exhibited in ex-President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga’s shameful description of the Nelum Pokuna as a “commode” (“kakkussi pochchiya”). The building was a gift from China and modelled on the magnificent Lotus Pond of King Parakramabahu’s Polonnaruwa. A greater contrast with the conduct of Madam Sirimavo Bandaranaike who never forgot China’s generosity in gifting the BMICH, cannot be imagined.
