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It had to happen. It was inevitable. When the neighbourhood becomes more geopolitical and particularly geostrategic, the geographic scenario changes, and sometimes dangerously so. Though we talk of historic times and we have been long-time friends we forget the times when friends have turned enemies or at least not the all-weather friends we now claim to be.

If in the years gone by relations have not been as warm and close as they are said to be, at least for the sake of good neighbourliness, leaders and their governments do have to display camaraderie even if pretence must be on regional or international display.

After all, we know only too well that artifice is often a part of politics, be it domestic or international. Those who remember the not-too-distant past would recall that the Janatha Vimukti Peramuna (JVP), the political party Anura Kumara Dissanayake represents today, did launch a battle royal, if one might call it that, when the then President Junius Richard Jayewardene did sign a pact (or was forced to sign) by a belligerent and aggressive India in 1987, pushing Sri Lanka into constitutional amendments that forced domestic political change and into internecine strife.

Of course, at the time, Dissanayake was only a small-time party activist and hardly what he is today. That was also the time when India’s High Commissioner acted—one might read his book—like he had been planted here by the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar himself.
This was the time of the once Royalist (not the one that runs away from the cricket field) United National Party (UNP), which in more recent days was bowing to Narendra Modi as though he was still chief minister of Gujarat.

Sri Lankan politicians (except perhaps the UNP) might applaud with relish that this was the same Indian government that welcomed that same AKD-led JVP/NPP to India on an official visit long before the presidential elections in Sri Lanka, probably at the instigation of the Indian intelligence agency RAW.

By that time, Indian intelligence had written off pro-tem president Ranil Wickremesinghe, to whom the Indian government pumped in money to rescue the country from the economic and political stupidity of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who thought he was more wise than Kautilya.
As new Sri Lankan leaders began to see the emergence and rise of Indian power in the Indian Ocean and in the changing world, they too could not but ignore an emerging power next door, however suspicious they might have been of its long-term intentions. India was there to stay, especially if it was part of QUAD that did tie it somehow to Western powers and pro-Western powers such as Japan.

So China, physically relatively far away from Sri Lanka compared to India, has to be a different ally and not one that could be a military supporter, as it could be against a non-state agent like the LTTE. Certainly not against a fast-growing military power, which is also a nuclear power, as China is.
So all three nations—two emerging world powers and the third an island nation caught in a cleft stick—must necessarily play different political and diplomatic games.

Those who have read the two joint statements between India and Sri Lanka and China and Sri Lanka would notice where the big power emphasis is depending on where their interest lies and what Sri Lanka promises to do.

Interestingly, when India extends its economic assistance, China, which AKD visits next, provides bigger doses of investment and aid as President Xi does by holding out billions of dollars of assistance for an oil refinery to be built right next to the China-aided Hambantota Harbour.
But that is not all that China wants. Besides the strong diplomatic support Beijing has provided to Sri Lanka, particularly at the UN, especially the UN Human Rights Council, China wants Sri Lanka’s assistance in conducting undersea mineral exploration and so calls for joint maritime support in Sri Lankan waters.

This is where Sri Lanka clashes with India, as Colombo had many years ago applied to the UN to extend its extensive economic zone, which is said to contain huge reserves of undersea minerals of expanding value in modern technological advancement.

But just this year India had filed a petition, also with a UN body, laying a claim for India’s rights to the Indian Ocean economic zone where China is also exploring; a part of the sea, which is also claimed by Sri Lanka, and where foreign scientific research vessels have been operating.
This is bound to become an area of increasing foreign confrontation as India claims it is encroaching into its security area and its peace zone.
It might have been noticed that after the China-Sri Lanka Joint Statement called for close rapport with regard to maritime research and exploration and access to Sri Lankan waters, President Dissanayake, on his return to Colombo, said that India is Sri Lanka’s closest friend.

With the contestation between the two Indo-Pacific Ocean big powers escalating, the NPP government is turning its foreign policy interests in another direction. One would have expected that since Sri Lanka has historical and trade and economic connections with the Western world, President Dissanayake would make an official visit to Europe or the UK. Obviously it is too early to think of Trump’s USA.
But AKD has sought to make his next official visit to the United Arab Emirates. It does come as something of a surprise. Is it that no other invitations to official visits have come or that he is exploring new areas to make a foreign policy presence through trade, investment and tourism in pursuit of fresh economic ventures.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was assistant editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later, he was deputy chief of mission in Bangkok and deputy high commissioner in London).