Sunday Times 2
Why Sri Lanka is a crucial hub in the Indo-Pacific region
View(s):Many of us in Sri Lanka do not realise what a significant position our little island has in the world. The part of our globe that comprises the maritime space stretching from the coasts of East Africa and West Asia across the Indian and western Pacific Oceans (including the eastern coasts of East Asia) right across to the western coasts of North and South America, is now being referred to as the Indo-Pacific Region. It is a term that is becoming increasingly common in modern strategic and geo-political discourse. This confluence of oceans is traversed by many of the world’s important trade routes, and it does not take a genius to work out that our little island lies at the mid-point of these sea lanes – in fact it is the very hub of the Indian Ocean.
Half the world’s container traffic and two-thirds of the world’s oil shipments now pass through these oceans while 40% of global natural gas resources and 55% of known offshore oil reserves are contained herein. Home to four billion people – 60% of the world’s population – the Indo Pacific Region includes the world’s three biggest economies, five of its nuclear states and seven of the ten largest armies in the world. This arguably is the region which in the 21st century will change the history of the world – and our little teardrop off the coast of India is situated slap bang in the middle of it!
The common link between all these nations of the Indo-Pacific is the sea – the world’s largest fishing ground as well as the vast expanse of water along which so much of today’s maritime traffic flows. The use of the term Indo-Pacific implies a dynamic coupling of the Indian and Pacific Oceans as well as those lands bordering these oceans as a single strategic system.
We can no longer (as the Japanese did during the Edo period under the Tokugawa shoguns and the Chinese did during the time of the Emperor HongXi) cut ourselves off from the rest of the world and live in isolation like those frogs in their proverbial well. In our interconnected and instantly connected modern world, what happens in one part of the region affects other parts so that no one nation will be able to resolve future threats by itself.
The security threats shared by the nations of the Indo-Pacific region are many: natural disasters (like the earthquake that affected Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido last week and the terrible tsunami that ravaged our own island in 2004), trafficking in arms and drugs, sea piracy (as happens in the straits of Malacca and off the horn of Africa), illegal fishing and overfishing – and of course disputes, conflicts and terrorism.
In the 15th century, when China owned the greatest seagoing fleet (up to 3,500 ships at its peak) in the world, the ancient port of Devinuwera with its famous Tennavaram temple on the south coast of our country was a regular port of call and a major centre of commerce for seagoing traders.
Our northeastern harbour Trincomalee has from the middle of the eighteenth century been acting as a magnet for naval powers interested in the use of strategic bases within the Indian Ocean. In modern times, submarines are proving to be powerful weapons as they can avoid detection while carrying missiles including nuclear warheads.
What better harbour to house one’s submarines than Trincomalee?
The influential American naval historian Alfred Thayer Mahan in his book The Influence of Sea Power upon History defined the main strategy of sea power as “command of the sea” – the ability to deny use of the sea as a means of transportation to an enemy while simultaneously protecting one’s own merchant shipping – and the ability to use the sea to project power ashore while denying that capability to the enemy.
As our petty politicians bicker and jostle among themselves, throat-cutting and under-cutting each other in their quest for power, I cannot help pondering these words, as relevant today as they were then, of Colvin R de Silva in his 1953 book Ceylon under British Occupation:
“A petty state, mediaeval in structure, unprogressive in ideas, parochial in policy and diplomacy and rent by internal dissensions, could not anyhow have checked the advance of a modern imperial power.”
And these days it is not just one modern imperial power that is seeking and striving and bidding for power and influence in our region.