New diplomacy and the end game

By Neville de Silva

Most of us have heard of the good cop, bad cop routine. Whether this is fictional or not, I wouldn’t know. Is it art following life or life following art? Whether true or not this routine seems to have been transformed into one of our foreign policy approaches. We seem to be following a two track policy. The hard, sharp criticisms, sometimes seen by traditionalists as over the top and abrasive, of some in the international community, are matched by the more discreet diplomacy that looks more at engaging one’s critics than sledge hammering them into pulp. There is much to be said for both approaches, depending on what one hopes to achieve, what one’s end objectives are in pursuing one or the other course.

Critics of the first approach might say that winning plaudits at home is well and good if one is expecting to follow a new career path, go into politics, for instance, as a defender of the faith, as a champion of the underclass of nations ( if one might coin a phrase) against the big and powerful. Others might say all that is fine but can we take on the whole world (or at least a substantial part of it) just to impress the populace at home and eventually to what purpose?

There are those who would say that it is fine to take on one’s critics, challenge their so-called standards preached to the world, and particularly to countries like ours, from various pulpits. However this should not be done by governments and their mandated agents but through other sources (the mass media for instance). In this way the message would still be conveyed In other words, try to absolve governments of such a course but where criticisms need to be made and arguments challenged, do so less abrasively.

I mention this because I see a storm brewing in foreign policy circles, among those who are interested in foreign policy and policy making and by those who have served at one time or another as diplomats serving Sri Lanka. Whether this is just a storm in a tea cup, to use a weathered phrase, because we seem to have veered away from our traditional and, perhaps time worn, approaches, or not, it is too early to say. Obviously there seem to be two schools of thought on this, unless of course, we are intentionally and very consciously following the twin track policy instilled by this good cop, bad cop routine.

The other reason I mention is because of the just concluded visit to the UK of foreign minister Rohitha Bogollagama who, to my mind, seems to be maturing in his job and presents what I would call the more human face of our foreign policy making. This despite attempts to mislead Sri Lanka into believing, in a not too subtly orchestrated attempt, that Bogollagama had failed to stand up for Pakistan at the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) in Kampala last November and that he had caved into western pressure. I had maintained immediately after the fiasco that Bogollagama appears to have been set up. Whether Pakistan should have been defended or not for violating the rules of conduct of the Commonwealth is another matter. But it was false to say that Bogollagama did not make his point at CMAG in favour of Islamabad though he obviously could not influence the ultimate decision.

News emanating from the British side, which one must admit, has been critical of Sri Lanka in recent months, suggests that Bogollagama’s affable approach and his more engaging nature appears to have paid dividends, especially with his British counterpart David Miliband with whom he had his first bilateral meeting and his deputy Lord Mark Malloch-Brown whose comments at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva recently evoked a sharp rejoinder from Sri Lanka. The foreign minister’s ability to absorb the criticisms but also explain the more positive developments in Sri Lanka in a more down to earth manner, appears to have gone down well.

He might not have read his Dale Carnegie but he appears to have nurtured a local equivalent which stood him in good stead not only in his meetings with British government and opposition politicians and others but even with the Sri Lankan community here. Fortunately, he left out chunks from the written script of his speech given at the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS).Whether he did it deliberately or not I would not know but it was a good thing, particularly, the paragraph from David Miliband’s speech at the launching of his ministry’s annual Human Rights Report which I had specifically quoted in this column last Sunday.

Let me quote that paragraph again because it has meaning for the policy being pursued now by the Rajapaksa administration. “UK foreign policy will support the use of the hard power of military force-from Kosovo to Darfur to Afghanistan and Iraq. Military victories never provide solutions, but they can provide the space for political and economic solutions to be found. And without military power, the result can be more bloodshed.” Since I have already explained its implications last week, it is unnecessary to do so again except to say that while Britain’s “hard power” is being exercised outside its own territory even without international sanction, Sri Lanka is doing so within its sovereign territory.

Perhaps the intention in including that paragraph was to tell the IISS audience that Sri Lanka is doing precisely what Britain is doing (the point I had made earlier in this column) while preaching a different sermon to others, thus implying double standards or a divide between the lesson and the practise. If that was the intention and Sri Lanka did not mind saying so in public, then I would have gone further and quoted another paragraph from David Miliband’s speech to the media on March 25 and also pointed to an embarrassing omission in the Annual Human Rights Report which, quite clearly the British are trying to hide.

First the para: “Our own democratic and judicial systems, which embody hard won rights, and deal with people of different religion or race on an equal basis, are living proof that healthy societies depend for their stability on equal rights for all. That is why, for example, we are making our contribution, through the return of British nationals and residents, to the closure of Guantanamo, and why it is our clear policy never to be complicit in torture or rendition to torture. It is why we need to continue to ensure that we adhere to all of our commitments to human rights (sic!) at home and abroad.”

While one could justifiably dispute some of the observations made in many parts of that paragraph, let me deal only with the claim that UK policy is “never to be complicit in torture or rendition to torture” and that the UK needs “to continue to ensure” adherence to its commitments to human rights. When Miliband says “never to be complicit” does he mean that the UK has never been involved in it or will never be involved? That is deliberately, I think, left vague and understandably so because UK is one of the European countries that have been found in the course of investigations in Europe to have been heavily involved in the CIA’s “rendition flights” where terrorist suspects are either flown to Guantanamo detention or flown out of US jurisdiction to countries where the torture of prisoners is known to happen. British and other European Union airports have been used for this purpose and the UK cannot deny this. Nor can it deny that Britain itself has sent suspects to countries where torture takes place, as emerged recently following a European Court decision. I could quote chapter and verse in proof of this but space does not permit it. But I could do so in a subsequent column.

Perhaps Miliband has a very short memory, not conveniently, I hope. A little over a month before he made this extraordinary statement in his speech, Miliband apologised to the House of Commons that contrary to “earlier explicit assurances,” two flights landed at Diego Garcia, the British Indian Ocean Territory where the US has a huge military base. He said the flights had been mistakenly overlooked in previous US internal inquiries carried out at the UK’s behest. Never to be complicit, is it Mr Miliband? This refers only to two flights and that via Diego Garcia. What of the other flights logged by observers through UK airports? Miliband refers to Diego Garcia. But interestingly there is no reference to this British creation known as the British Indian Ocean Territory in the chapter titled Overseas Territories and human rights of British nationals abroad,” beginning on page 81 of the Human Rights Report.

Not only do the people of that territory not have human rights, the territory itself seems to have disappeared from existence. So much for human rights! And as for the judicial process, another time perhaps.