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Some 15 months or so ago the Sri Lanka Foreign Ministry hastened to ‘clarify’ a remark that foreign minister Mangala Samaraweera was reported to have made in an interview with Japan’s largest broadcasting establishment NHK. It had to do with Sri Lanka’s foreign policy under the new government.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe:Indian Ocean countries should shape their destiny themselves.

NHK said: “Sri Lanka’s foreign minister says the country will review its China-dependent foreign policy and boost ties with other nations.” The NHK interview was reproduced in some local media. The ministry denied that the minister had mentioned any particular country when he talked of the new government reviewing the country’s foreign policy.

Even if he did not make a specific reference to a country as claimed, anybody who had been following the presidential election campaign and subsequent comments and developments regarding China-financed projects, especially massive infrastructure projects, and the critical remarks about corruption and abuse, know only too well that the finger was pointed at China.

Though the criticism and allegations were directed at persons in the Mahinda Rajapaksa government, China was implicated by extension. It might also be recalled that the port call by a Chinese submarine and the security concerns raised by India led Sri Lanka to claim that it will never be allowed to happen again or words to that effect.

Moreover the haste with which Samaraweera has tried to establish links with the US and the string of officials from Washington who quickly visited Colombo to touch base with the new government seemed even longer than China’s so-called “string of pearls”.
So much so that just a few months after President Sirisena took office and the ‘mangala mohotha’ was observed in Washington DC, Secretary of State John Kerry deigned to pay a visit to Colombo, the first US Secretary of State to do so in some 40 years. This, it seemed, was a marriage of true minds.

It might also be recalled that Prime Minister Wickremesinghe paid his first official visit to New Delhi following in the footsteps of President Sirisena. That was to be expected. But if the public thought that he would then visit China, the country that provided, among other things, the weaponry to fight the Tamil Tiger insurgency at a time when the west not only turned its back on Sri Lanka but was a virulent critic of the Colombo government, he headed to Japan. It was some time later that Wickremesinghe decided to go to Beijing.

Those better acquainted with the workings of the Chinese mind and its often patient diplomacy would – or should – have known that Beijing would stay the course despite the pin-pricks because, as Chinese leaders later emphasized, they deal with countries not with passing politicians.

While the new government’s caravan headed by Samaraweera was travelling to Washington and other western capitals, Beijing was going about its business knowing only too well that the economic/financial assistance Sri Lanka needs to overcome its immediate fiscal problems is not going to come from Washington or other western allies that Colombo was assiduously cultivating as part of its recalibration of its foreign policy.

So now it is not Chinese subs but ships of the US Seventh Fleet and other commands that are frequent callers at Sri Lankan ports.
That comes as little surprise. Just as Colombo started wooing Washington as part of its new foreign policy assessment, the US was also seeking to enmesh Sri Lanka in President Obama’s pivot to Asia policy.

Sri Lanka’s re-orientation seemed to dovetail perfectly with the Obama game plan of including the Indian Ocean region from east of India into the Pacific which has traditionally been the region of US security concerns from the days of the Cold War.
Obama’s first term strategy has been to turn diplomatic attention and its military weaponry away from conflicts in the Middle East (or West Asia as it should be called) to the Asia-Pacific region. It is already becoming clear that this strategy is failing for several reasons, particularly because this poorly concealed effort to challenge China via the Indian Ocean region is a policy fraught with some danger for the smaller countries geographically located in the region.

The above provides a sort of prologue to look at Prime Minister Wickremesinghe’s more considered and thoughtful inaugural speech delivered at the Indian Ocean Conference in Singapore earlier this month. Some of the observations Wickremesinghe made are of course truisms. But what is interesting and certainly provides food for thought especially for those US officials who believed that Sri Lanka was ripe for plucking as a pliant client, is the Prime Minister questioning the viability of the US bid to shape a joint Indo-Pacific security strategy ignoring the fundamental diversity and uniqueness of countries of the Asian region.

While China was stamping its claim to sovereignty in the East China and the South China seas nearby, it was also turning its attention to countries in the Indian Ocean in pursuit of its policy of extending its maritime sea route all the way to east Africa and into parts of West Asia.

To counter this Chinese strategy the Obama policy was to leave behind the mess it helped create in West Asia and move into the Indian Ocean via the more amenable Modi administration in New Delhi with which it reached a mutually helpful agreement.
Sri Lanka located strategically near vital sea lanes that carried much of east-west trade could serve as an important link in US policy and be in a position to safeguard the freedom of navigation. So Sri Lanka did not have to chase after the US as it is doing. Washington was coming to Colombo.

Ranil Wickremesinghe made several interesting observations. Wickremesinghe quoted political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s words to make his point that “Asia is polycentric, multipolar and constantly evolving. There is no uniformity in Asia in terms of geopolitics and culture and each of those countries is a separate world to itself even as it overlaps in trade and commerce with its neighbours and with the US.”

Quite rightly he said that for the US, the Pacific region and not the Indian Ocean has been intrinsic to its security. “Indo Asia-Pacific is destined to remain a mere conceptual rather than a realistic premise. The collapse of the Trans Pacific Partnership has further weakened the argument for it.”

He argued that the Indian Ocean region was acquiring an intrinsic significance of its own and Indian Ocean countries should shape their destiny themselves. He called on the Asian countries in the Indian Ocean especially, to take the lead in determining their own future.

Advocating an Indian Ocean Order he said that “This Order should be built on a consensual agreement and no singular state should dominate the system.” This reference to a single state reminds me of then Indian Prime Minister’s retort to me at Temple Trees when I asked her about the Indian Ocean Peace Zone proposal and if it was to be realized whether a single regional power would dominate the Ocean.

“I know who you are referring to. You are referring to India. India does not want to dominate anyone” she said sharply raising her voice. If Wickremesinghe is referring to the Asian states in the region, then one can think of only one state that could dominate the region – India. One reason why SAARC has not prospered the way that ASEAN has developed is because of a genuine fear among the smaller members of SAARC about Indian dominance.

Those who recall the first meeting of South Asian officials held in Colombo to discuss the creation of SAARC will remember that the smaller countries were fearful of India especially when it insisted that political bilateral issues should not be the subject of discussion. I remember this quite well as I covered the meeting for the Daily News and talked to several of the officials from neighbouring countries that attended the meeting who were apprehensive.

Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, like Samaraweera before him in the NHK interview, might not have mentioned a country by name. But if he is referring to countries that have or will have the economic and military power to be dominant in Asia then it could mean only India and China, the two most powerful states in this region.

He shot down the Obama “pivot to Asia” policy because among other reasons the “growing militarization, historical disputes and strategic mistrust pose serious challenges to the emergence of a viable and sustainable strategic security order.”

He emphasized that there will be resistance to any single country attempting to unilaterally shape the strategic order of the region. Since an extra-regional state is one that is pursuing such a policy, Asian nations will be all the more suspicious and careful. If so Sri Lanka herself needs to be careful in positioning herself in this new foreign policy order to ensure that it is not sucked into an emerging big power conflict

After all Asia has experienced colonial wars and the intrusion of super-powers-as in the case of Indo-China- and the disastrous effects it has had on the region. If the Obama policy has been only partially successful in that it has only been able to woo a few Asian nations, would there be a change in approach with a new incumbent in the Oval office? Hillary Clinton who many expect will succeed Obama, has followed a more aggressive foreign policy as Secretary of State.

It was Clinton who wrote in Foreign Policy magazine on “America’s Pacific Century” and probably made “pivot” a familiar word in foreign policy making. She wrote that pivot strategy will proceed along six courses including strengthening bilateral military alliances and forging a broad-based military presence.

There is no doubt, as Wickremesinghe observes, that dominant issues of this century will be decided in the Asia-Pacific region. Every country in the region wishes for a better relationship with China and the US. This is not just because of geostrategic reasoning. Rather it is because of simple geography. The smaller countries in the region wish to maintain links with both China and the US.

It is this realisation, especially with regard to the economic support we can get from China and the important historical ties Sri Lanka has had with that country under governments headed by different political parties that probably made Wickremesinghe make a second official visit to Beijing.

Thus a resetting of Sri Lanka’s foreign policy cannot and should not be an unnecessarily extended courtship with Washington and the West but a balancing that does not sacrifice or betray the country’s national interests.