Sri Lanka at Crossroads

Geopolitical Challenges and National Interests

Asanga Abeyagoonasekera

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9789813276741
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Geopolitics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Having celebrated its 70th year of independence in 2018, Sri Lanka, a strategically-positioned island nation, now finds itself with the potential to be a super connector in fast-developing Asia. While carving out a place for itself in the international arena, Sri Lanka has simultaneously had to look inwards to recover and rebuild its potential, bruised by an era of colonial rule and nearly 30 years of a civil war, with two youth insurrections.

This book examines these twin dimensions. First, how Sri Lanka is negotiating its international reach and the spheres of influence that extend from other Asian and world powers, and second, how the country is engaging in nation-building, from days of racial riots to ones of peace-building, reconciliation, more robust governance, and the development of cyber security.

Written from the perspective of a Sri Lankan academic and the head of the national security think tank, this book offers insights into how the country has addressed its post-conflict as well as geopolitical challenges, navigated through domestic politics, and ramped up peace-building efforts, to now reach a junction where it can put its foot firmly on the road to prosperity in a new Asian world order.

Contents:

• Geopolitics
• Political Landscape
• Foreign Relations
• Peace Building and Reconciliation
• Democracy and Institution Building
• Cyber Security and Foresight

Readership: Readers interested in international relations, South Asia, Sri Lanka, national development and geopolitics.Geopolitics;International Relations;Sri Lanka;Foreign Policy;National Interest;Peace Building;Conflict;Cyber Security0 Key Features:

• Unique book on the subject of geopolitics, international relations and domestic political environment, a perspective from a Sri Lankan academic and the head of national security think tank
• Analysis of the Domestic political environment and foreign policy on the 70th year of independence from colonial rule. Not many books has captured this perspective
• Importance of Reconciliation and peace building is discussed by a direct victim

Chapter 1

Geopolitics

“Because the Indian Ocean is sort of the world’s energy interstate and China will have a maritime presence, perhaps even a naval presence in some distant morrow. So the opening of this port in south Sri Lanka is of real geopolitical significance”

Robert D. Kaplan^a

The Geopolitics of Floating Bases and the New World Order¹

“Those far distant, storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world.” — Alfred Thayer Mahan²

US naval officer and strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan’s advice in 1890,³ for the US to push outwards to rule the oceans, is still heeded by US maritime forces in the present day. The USS Nimitz aircraft carrier, standing 23 stories high and 333 metres long with 5,000 personnel on board, arrived in Sri Lanka in October 2017,⁴ 32 years since the last arrival of a US aircraft carrier. Aircraft carriers are sea-faring air bases equivalent to floating geographical land masses with significant firepower which have been proven as key strategic war machines in the recent past.

The visit of the USS Nimitz^b is a clear indication of the military and economic might that the US projects through floating bases, not only in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) but globally. Floating bases are indicative of the US world order — one that is predominantly unilateral, save for ‘collective security’^c partnerships, and one that seeks hegemony. Nevertheless, the presence of USS Nimitz in the IOR was meant to symbolise the strong cooperation between the US and Sri Lanka during the regime of President Maithripala Sirisena. Back in 1985, the US aircraft carrier visit would have raised concerns for Sri Lanka’s immediate neighbour, India. However, today, the US and India enjoy a different relationship than in the past. The US has clearly cemented strong ‘ collective security’ relations with India, Japan, and Australia.

In this context, countries with a geostrategic advantage such as Sri Lanka are seen as ideal sites to further strengthen these lateral ties. From 2010 onwards, there have been more than 200 foreign naval visits to Sri Lanka, including India’s INS Vikramaditya,⁵ another aircraft carrier that visited the Colombo Port in 2016. Sri Lanka strives to balance all major powers’ interests in the country and thus accommodates these warships as friendship visits. The prevalent counter-argument is that some major powers, most notably China, are aggressively and one-sidedly pursuing their own self-interest by setting up military bases in the IOR. However, one could also contend that aircraft carriers as floating bases (such as the US’) in the deep oceans are trying to showcase and achieve a similar military strategy and projection of power.

President Sirisena’s Government is enacting this balancing act for Sri Lanka and creating equidistant foreign relations with the US, India, and China. In the region, India has also engaged in joint military exercises, the most recent being ‘Mitra Shakti 2017’⁶ with Sri Lanka in October of 2017. According to the Indian Express⁷ the joint military exercise was India’s response to China’s growing influence in South Asia and the IOR. However, this author’s opinion is that the article is speculative since the military exercise clearly falls short of limiting China’s growing power in the region. In this vein, many speculative media stories will raise similar questions with regard to Sri Lanka’s relationship with its neighbour, India.

President Trump visited China⁸ against the backdrop of all these geopolitical events in the IOR. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has arguably presided over more domestic stability and economic prosperity in his country than Angela Merkel, Theresa May, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump combined. President Xi, in his speech⁹ to the 19^th National Congress in October, highlighted the founding aspirations of Chinese communist values. This included moving 80 million people from rural to urban areas, boosting the country’s GDP from 54 trillion to 80 trillion yuan, projecting China as the world’s second largest economy, and contributing to 30 per cent of global economic growth in a span of only five years.¹⁰ While propelling innovation and scientific advancement, China has also made more than 1,500 reforms of a socialist nature to pursue modernisation, including fighting corruption. On the latter point, President Xi remarked, “We have taken out tigers, swatted flies and hunted down foxes”,¹¹ leaving no space for corruption.

At the 19^th National Congress, China’s external approach to the world was discussed. President Xi‘s gigantic One Belt, One Road (OBOR)^d project has already altered the natural geography in many parts of the world. This includes the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC),^e connecting to Gwadar Port, as well as Hambantota Port,^f which will change trading patterns in the region. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the Silk Road Fund are other economic initiatives working towards funding a new economic order. Thus, it is apparent that China has charted its own course in creating an Asian-led new world order that is geopolitically, economically, and militarily in direct contravention of the US’ world order, renouncing the perceived Western view.

Today, China projects itself as a proud country, at a time when socialists around the world are celebrating the centennial of the great October Revolution of 1917,¹² spearheaded by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Lenin. From its long history of struggle, China has set itself in the right direction to alter the existing world order (the one contravened by the US), by pursuing a strategy that is rooted in economic and geopolitical prowess. Much like the US, China’s power projections are articulated through the amassing of land bases. Yet China’s world vision is far broader, in that it is striving to combine its economic and military might with its socialist-political orientation as well as the geostrategic interests of developing countries.

Sri Lanka: Leveraging the Politics of Geography¹³

“The Village in the Jungle is different because it’s not about Us, but wholly about Them. It was very advanced in 1913, when many people in Europe were racist.” — Nick Rankin¹⁴

Rural Hambantota was first known for being featured in a book by Leonard Woolf¹⁵ in the early 20^th century, and now, as a port shaping Sri Lankan politics. Woolf’s Village in the Jungle was the first novel in English literature to be written from an indigenous perspective rather than a coloniser’s.

According to British author Nick Rankin, “It’s not a book about the white chaps at the club who run the show, but about those at the very bottom of the imperial heap, the black and brown fellows who don’t even know they’re part of an Empire, but who just survive day by day, hand to mouth, as slash-and-burn agriculturalists.”¹⁶ If Woolf was alive today, he would probably be writing his second masterpiece, Village that was Leased Out, Hambantota.

After Chinese President Xi Jinping launched the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Sri Lanka signed an agreement with China for one of the key strategic projects of this initiative in May 2017. The agreement was to lease out Hambantota Port with a majority share to a Chinese company for three generations.

BRI is the “project of the century”, according to President Xi. This trillion-dollar initiative aims to integrate Eurasia through the development of infrastructure. It is unquestionably the most ambitious project ever launched in recent times, and it seeks to revisit and resurrect the global legacy of Zheng He, an admiral from the Ming dynasty.^g A century ago, a British geopolitical thinker Sir Halford Mackinder^h argued that whoever controls the Eurasian heartland will control the world.¹⁷ US strategy looks further into Alfred Mahan’s maritime power; after World War II, George Kennan¹⁸ incorporated Mahan’s geostrategic focus on rim lands, rather than heartlands, to his Cold War strategy of containment of the Soviet Union to create a favourable balance of power.

As Washington rebalances to Asia, relations between the US and China have become increasingly contentious and zero-sum oriented. According to Wang Jisi,¹⁹ a Chinese foreign policy scholar, China must avoid a head-on military confrontation with the US. Instead, it should fill in the gaps left by the US retreat from the Middle East. By doing so, China will be able to decisively influence regions that are free from a US-dominated security order or a pre-existing economic integration mechanism. BRI was conceived from Wang Jisi’s initial inputs and strategy to have a significant Chinese footprint in Eurasia, especially to recalibrate the existing world order. According to the World Economic Forum,²⁰ by 2030 the US will no longer be the only superpower, and China will be well positioned among the many countries to become one of the big powers.

With its geostrategic position at the centre of the Maritime Silk Road, Sri Lanka is a ‘super-connector’ linking the east-west sea lanes. The Sri Lankan people should reap the benefits of the country’s participation in this initiative, and it is important that all strategic projects in this regard are carefully calibrated. However, the process of determining the content of the agreement has not been discussed in Parliament, in consultation with think-tanks, or the public. As a democracy with its sovereignty vested in the people by the Constitution, it is important to get input from as many quarters as possible when determining strategic projects for the country. Sri Lankan President Sirisena pointed out that the debate should go to Parliament, an argument which Minister Wijedasa Rajapaksaⁱ further expounded, and this is absolutely correct. The failure of such public consultations has triggered much internal destabilisation; in the past, the hurried nature of the 13th Amendment²¹ to the Constitution — the Indo-Sri Lankan Accord²² — triggered the southern insurrection.

China is Sri Lanka’s second largest trading partner, surpassing the US and just behind India. Sino-Lankan trade remains at more than US$ 3 billion.²³ This position will change significantly with the Chinese economic zone and Hambantota Port’s full operationality. By 2025, China will become Sri Lanka’s largest trading partner due to the significant investments in the island.²⁴ In the geopolitical context, while the global hegemon — the US — is strengthening its ties with India, other South Asian countries are strengthening ties with the regional hegemon, China, to counterbalance this. India’s role and China’s aspirations in the Indian Ocean remain a topic of debate among scholars. India fears encirclement by China and China feels the same vis-à-vis the US.

Tensions at the lines of intersection are highest at geostrategic hotspots like Sri Lanka. The Government’s consideration to lease out the new Chinese-built Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport^j (MRIA) to India is a measure to counterbalance China. While India, the US, and Japan will strengthen the rules-based order of the world, China will be the peace-loving explorer set on transforming the world on a self-proclaimed “win-win” basis.

In this strained geopolitical environment, Sri Lanka should design a plan, not based on the process of leasing, but rather chart a path within the interests of emergent and existing powers. It must seek to develop a value-added export basket to strengthen its economy.

Steering Co-operation Across Oceans²⁵

“We should not develop a habit of retreating ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgement
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Geopolitics
• Chapter 2 Political Landscape
• Chapter 3 Foreign Relations
• Chapter 4 Peace Building and Reconciliation
• Chapter 5 Democracy and Institution Building
• Chapter 6 Cyber Security and Foresight
• Endnotes
• Index
• About the Author