Sunday Times 2
Lanka’s foreign policy and security threats to India
View(s):Lanka is a hapless maiden being wooed by two determined suitors. One of them has been dating her for some time, lavishing valuable gifts on her but right now the affair has struck a rough patch and her lover wants his gifts back. But Lanka, as young maidens often do, has been living it up, spending on, ‘sugar and spice and all things nice’ which she could not afford and has no money left. She has declared herself bankrupt.
The other suitor is a distant blood relation who has been after her since she was in pigtails but not to her liking considering him to be a land grabber trying to get at her ancestral properties. But the family is now facing hard times and this suitor is providing Lanka and her family with all the necessities for survival. But he is jealous and furious, particularly about Lanka’s former lover who still has some links intact with her. ‘Don’t let him come into your backyard in his fancy vehicles. If you do there will be severe consequences,’ her relative and benefactor has warned.
This parable illustrates the tragicomedy that has been enacted over the years in the name of Sri Lanka’s long-standing foreign policy — the Non-Aligned policy or Neutral Non-Aligned policy as it was called during the two-year regime of former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
“All countries are our friends; we are Non-Aligned,” has been our proud boast since the days of SWRD and Sirima Bandaranaike. But who are our genuine friends — whether we have been Non-Aligned or Non-Maligned — that can really help us in this worst political and financial crisis we are in today? Only China and India?
At the time of writing these comments, Sri Lanka is in world focus: A ship, which the Chinese government describes as a ‘Chinese research vessel engaged in maritime and scientific activities’ is heading towards the Hambantota harbour, has been requested by the Sri Lanka Foreign Ministry to ‘postpone its visit’ despite being given permission to dock in by Sri Lanka before its departure from the port of Jiangyin in China.
The change of mind by Sri Lanka about the date of the visit is consequent to strong objections made by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs to the arrival of this vessel Yuan Wan 5 on the grounds that it is a ‘Spy Ship’.
Indian media are speculating, with no specific sources named, that the ship has an aerial reach of 750 km, is equipped to track space and aerial satellites and Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) and will attempt to ‘snoop on Indian installations’.
Sri Lankan students of Indo-Lanka relations will get a feeling of Deja vu when they hear of New Delhi defence establishment pundits going into paroxysms of angst and fear on national threats being directed to India from Sri Lanka by its foreign guests to India’s national security.
Remember the establishment of the Voice of America broadcasting relay station at Iranawila around the mid-1980s? Foreign affairs pundits and geopolitical analysts in New Delhi went into a frenzy claiming that it was for intelligence gathering by the United States on movements of ships and submarines, in the Indian Ocean and for listening to communications between countries in the region. Sri Lanka and the United States attempted to convince New Delhi that the VOA station was not for intelligence gathering but to no avail.
There were similar reactions when an Israeli Interests Section was opened in the United States embassy in Colombo. It was alleged to be a security threat to India and entire South Asia. But Israel posed no such threats that the Indian pundits alleged. However, a few years after such allegations were made India found no threats in holding back establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.
Israel not only provided armaments such as Kfir jet fighters but also trained Sri Lankan forces in guerilla warfare and helped create the Special Task Force (STF) whose prowess during the war on terrorism and today as a police force needs no elucidation.
A great fear entertained by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was that JRJ was conspiring to hand over the Trincomalee harbour along with its Oil Tank Farm to the United States. Assurances and denials by officials at the highest level both in Sri Lanka and by the US have not helped to change the intransigent beliefs of officials and Indian political leaders. We have a report dated 9/12/85 of a visiting Assistant US Secretary of State, Richard Murphy, telling a press briefing in Colombo that the US does not want military bases in the South Asian region because its strategic defence plans do not require them.
Indeed they succeeded in helping the Afghan Mujahideen which included — Osama bin Laden — to drive out the armed forces of a then superpower, the Soviet Union, from Afghanistan without military bases.
Origins of the Indian foreign policy perspectives on the Indian Ocean can be traced to British colonial times when it was a British lake whose waters swept the shorelines of its colonies in East Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia right down to the Pacific. India had no such territorial sweep but its geopolitical strategists such as Pannikar had visions of Indian dominance from Djibouti to the straits of Malacca.Even Jawaharlal Nehru had held the view that the defence of independent India was inconceivable without including Sri Lanka and Burma.
Indira Gandhi who succeeded her father was described as the ‘Empress of India’ dominating the entire South Asian region. In 1983 when Sri Lanka was in turmoil and India was engaged in an active campaign in preventing other countries from aiding Sri Lanka, she declared what came to be known as the ‘Indira Gandhi Doctrine’ for South Asia: No country in the region could develop relations between neighbours or with an outside power which India considers to be inimical to her interests.
Can India’s objections to Lanka-China relations be interpreted as a milder variant of the Indira Doctrine?
Today’s Indian strategists consider Sri Lanka to be ‘an aircraft carrier docked alongside the Indian coast that could pose a national security threat to India. Perhaps the only way to get rid of this threat is to blast it out of existence.
Sri Lanka is facing similar problems to other islands close to big nations which want to be their ‘big brothers’. Cuba and Taiwan are two such examples that we could study to develop a different foreign policy.
(The writer is a former editor of The Sunday Island, The Island and consultant editor of the Sunday Leader.)