{"id":42148,"date":"2015-07-13T21:47:38","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T01:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=42148"},"modified":"2015-07-13T21:47:38","modified_gmt":"2015-07-14T01:47:38","slug":"how-to-secure-sri-lanka-from-becoming-a-casualty-of-the-great-gameof-super-power-rivalry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=42148","title":{"rendered":"How to Secure Sri Lanka from Becoming a Casualty of the “Great Game”of Super Power Rivalry"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

By<\/p>\n

N Sathiya Moorthy<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reports and denials about Sri Lanka procuring Chinese-made JF-17 fighter aircraft notwithstanding, there is the larger question of securing South Asia as a region, from within and without. The responsibility for the same, if and if only the nations of the region so desire, has to fall on all of them, given that it\u2019s not about just the size and shape of their landmass and economies, but relates more to issues of sovereignty, security perceptions and consequent prescriptions.<\/p>\n

The JF-17 Thunder is a lightweight, single-engine, multi-role combat aircraft developed jointly by the Pakistan Aeronautical Complex and the Chengdu Aircraft Corporation of China. According to Taiwan-based \u2018Want China Times\u2019, which first reported the purported sale, the \u201cfighter is deployed for aerial reconnaissance, ground attack and aircraft interception. Its designation \u2018JF-17\u2019 by Pakistan is short for \u2018Joint Fighter-17\u2019 and its alias \u2018FC-1 Xiaolong\u2019 in Chinese stands for \u2018Fighter China-1 Fierce Dragon\u2019<\/p>\n

The \u2018Want China Times\u2019 reported that \u201cSri Lanka will become the first foreign country to acquire the JF-17\u201d and that the \u201corder will be for around 18-24 aircraft\u201d, confirming claims made at the 51st Paris Air Show last week that the first contract for the sale of the JF-17 had been signed with “an Asian country”. The Pakistan Air Force announced that they will begin delivery of the JF-17 to Sri Lanka from 2017, adding that its Pakistani and Chinese developers will continue efforts to promote the aircraft to other countries.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

However, the Sri Lanka Air Force (SLAF) has promptly denied the media claims about the JF-17 purchase. An SLAF spokesman has been quoted as saying that JF-17 was among the aircraft under consideration for purchase. Air Force Spokesperson, Wing Commander Gihan Senevirathne speaking to Colombo-based Daily Mirror said that although both Pakistan and China have indicated the availability of the fighter jet and proposals have been submitted on the availability of the aircrafts, SLAF has not made any decision on purchasing them.<\/p>\n

Publicly-available information, according to the Daily Mirror, \u201cindicates that the SLAF currently has around 160 aircraft, 27,400 soldiers and 1,300 officers. Aircraft acquired from China include seven J-7 fighter jets and nine Y-12 transport aircraft, with additional orders for two MA-60 transport aircraft\u201d. While China has been a reliable supplier of weapons and fighter aircraft through the \u2018Eelam War\u2019 against the LTTE, it is unclear if the proposed purchase \u2013 whichever the source \u2013 is to replenish ageing aircraft in the existing fleet, or to expand the same.<\/p>\n

Peace and fellowship<\/p>\n

Amidst unconfirmed reports of Sri Lanka procuring Chinese fighters comes the news of the US geo-political rival of the Asian giant reviving its interest in the Indian Ocean island-nation as a \u201ccritical partner\u201d in broadening American interests across the Indo-Pacific region. US President Barack Obama’s ambassadorial nominee for Sri Lanka, Atul Keshap, was also reported to have told Senate Foreign Relations Committee at his confirmation-hearing that the US wanted to build lasting peace and fellowship among Sri Lanka’s various religious and ethnic groups.<\/p>\n

“We want to help build a lasting peace and fellowship among Sri Lanka’s ethnic and religious communities, including credible justice, accountability and reconciliation that can facilitate closure for those who suffered and lost loved ones during the war,” Atul Keshap, the nominee for US Ambassador to Sri Lanka, told the all-important Senate panel, the Press Trust of India has reported since. “It is important to get this right, and the UN and international community can lend useful insight to the efforts of the Sri Lankan people,” Keshap said.<\/p>\n

As the PTI report pointed out, If confirmed by the US Senate, Keshap would be the second Indian-American to be serving in an ambassadorial position in South Asia. Richard Verma is the current US envoy to India.”We want to help the Sri Lankan people strengthen democracy, civil society, and human rights, including media freedom and freedom of religion,” he said. “Economically, the US is Sri Lanka’s largest export market. While our trade volume is relatively low, there is great potential to expand our partnership,” he added, indicating without having to mention, how the \u2018balance of trade\u2019 position\u2019, particularly when investments too are included, is wholly lop-sided between Sri Lanka and China.<\/p>\n

Keshap has not said anything that has been said by the Americans before. In fact, incumbent US Secretary of State, John Kerry, as co-chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had co-authored a bi-partisan report, where the point had been made that Sri Lanka was of \u2018critical\u2019 importance in the US scheme, for the region. Where then does the US places other friends and\/or allies like India, Japan, Australia, Indonesia and Japan \u2013 and not necessarily in that order \u2013 is a question that too may abeg an answer, but the US strategy seems to be the \u2018denial\u2019 mode, to ensure that China does not have geo-strategic friends partners.<\/p>\n

Before the change of Government in Sri Lanka, the global perception was that the nation had moved too close and too fast towards China, and the relationship was reaching a point-of-no-return. If it also had anything to do with the Sri Lankan understanding\/misunderstanding of the time, on the US view on \u2018critical partner\u2019 needs to be explored. If the rulers of the day thought that the US observations meant that Washington had little choice than to engage with Colomb, and on the latter\u2019s term, it was not to be.<\/p>\n

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, after losing the 8 January 2015 presidential polls, publicly blamed the US \u2013 and India\u2019s R&AW \u2013 for his defeat. Prior to that and even during his earlier, post-war 2010 presidential poll victory, the Rajapaksa camp had launched a whisper campaign \u2013 which however was loud enough to be heard in Washington and New Delhi \u2013 that the former in particular was working for a \u2018regime change\u2019 in Sri Lanka. If President Rajapaksa himself had not made an issue of the same, it might have also had to do with his getting re-elected at the time, and by a huge margin. His camp might not have had much (more) to complain about.<\/p>\n


\nPre-condition and all
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

If American Keshap\u2019s statement is to be understood, \u2018ethnic peace\u2019 in Sri Lanka seems to be on the top of the US agenda for the South Asian nation. Whether owing to its own assessment, or under pressure from European allies, the US seems to have concluded that \u2018ethnic peace\u2019 in the island-nation is a pre-condition or sine quo non before Washington could breathe easy and comfortably to justify to itself, too, that Sri Lanka could become a \u2018critical partner\u2019 of theirs.<\/p>\n

During critical periods, phases and points in the time, the US State Department in particular had held a strong view on allegations of human rights violations, \u2018war crimes\u2019 etc. The then US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is at present among the favourites to win President Obama\u2019s Democratic Party nomination first, and then the 2016 polls, to succeed him. It\u2019s another matter that whoever wins the presidency, the American perception of Sri Lanka would change too much, too far, and too early.<\/p>\n

As is known, the European, Canadian and Australian allies of the US have in them strong, vocal and vociferous constituencies of Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora voters and opinion-makers, where \u2018ethnic issue\u2019 and \u2018war crimes\u2019 is of critical political and electoral importance. Independent of electoral politics and otherwise, too, the Nordic nations, who are at times thought of as fronting for the US, have a stand-alone, nearly uncompromising position on human rights violations of the kind that the Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora and their global backers have been accusing the back-home armed forces with.<\/p>\n

The question also now remains if in Washington\u2019s perception any major next step(s) viz Sri Lanka in operationalising the \u2018critical partner\u2019 syndrome cannot proceed without ethnic peace, which might go beyond the \u2018Tamil question\u2019. Tamil-speaking Muslims for a substantial section of the \u2018minority population\u2019, in turn accounting for about a fourth of Sri Lanka\u2019s population. They are a no-nonsense people, who had been caught between the devil and deep blue sea on questions of ethnic equity and equality, but are not known to have identified especially with anti-American, Islamic fundamentalist\/extremist groups, world-wide.<\/p>\n

Sinhala-Buddhist majority Sri Lanka also has a fair share of Christians, particularly Sinhala and Tamil-speaking Catholics, both of whom seem to have seen eye-to-eye only on their current common distaste for the possible return of President Rajapaksa as the next prime minister, playing South Asia\u2019s Vladimir Putin, if it became that. While wanting Sri Lanka to address the ethnic concerns not only of the Tamils but also of other minority communities in the country, the US also would not seemingly want to have trouble of any kind on hand, particularly on the ground, if the current efforts and overtures were to develop the \u2018critical partner\u2019 expectations.<\/p>\n


\nRe-balancing or what<\/strong><\/p>\n

In context, playing the reverse strategy to the US, the Rajapaksa leadership might have concluded that Washington had little choice in the matter if it wanted Sri Lanka to be a \u2018critical partner\u2019, but at the same time, did nothing about it from its side. If anything, the Sri Lankan tilt towards China only increased and became more pronounced and purposeful during the period.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a chicken-and-egg question if the increased Sri Lankan engagement with China, and not just on the development front, had anything to do with the US initiatives\/decision to proceed against the South Asian nation at the UNHRC, and personally so. The situation seems to have changed for the better on the US-Sri Lanka front with the change of government in Colombo, but the last word has not yet been said, either in terms of a possible Rajapaksa come-back, or on the UNHRC front, or both.<\/p>\n

If the current efforts of the new Sri Lankan government, particularly on the UNP side of Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe \u2013 and not necessarily as an initiative of the permanent fixture for the next five years in President Maithiripala Sirisena \u2013 is to more away, and be seen as moving away from China, particularly on the strategic front, it seems to be wanting to achieve it in a very obtuse way, so to say. \u2018Bringing in the US without hurting China\u2019, or not throwing out China without preparing the US the way Sri Lanka perceives the \u2018critical partner\u2019 syndrome seems to be the mantra of the current leadership, starting with Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera.<\/p>\n

It is not without historic reasons, on either side, viz China and the US. As the Sri Lankan folklore cutting across party-lines go, the \u2018Rubber-for-Rice Pact\u2019 of the Fifties with China was what is believed to have saved Sri Lanka, then Ceylon, from hunger and starvation, in the early Fifties, when the newly-independent island-nation was still coming to terms with an administration and administrative responsibilities to call its own. The nation\u2019s GoP, now headed by Prime Minister Ranil, was in power at the time.<\/p>\n

Later in the Nineties, when Sri Lanka went on to procure Chinese aircraft in its war with the LTTE, Beijing \u201cwould not discuss payment issues, or even the costs, as they knew we did not have the resources to pay up then\u201d. Going beyond party loyalties, the Sri Lankan Establishment has not forgotten China\u2019s good-deed of the decade. Incidentally, SLFP\u2019s Chandrika Bandaranaike-Kumaratunga was the President of Sri Lanka at the time. Her presidential successors, namely, Rajapaksa and Sirisena, now, belong to the party that Chandrika\u2019s father had founded.<\/p>\n

Against this, despite being ideologically closer to the US and the rest of the West in terms of \u2018liberal democracy\u2019 and \u2018market economy\u2019, the UNP might have felt cheated when the US looked the other way when Colombo cried out for intervention at the height of India\u2019s \u2018Operation Poomalai\u2019 humanitarian intervention in the Tamil areas being bombed out by the Sri Lankan forces in 1987.<\/p>\n

Later, when \u2018war crimes\u2019 became an issue in the UNHRC, the US was in the front-line, purportedly against the Rajapaksa leadership, but perceived nearer home as also against the Sri Lankan nation, State and their armed forces. China, along with Russia, and also Pakistan became the most dependable allies of Sri Lanka. Today, when the Ranil premiership in the present government in particular, seems to be wanting to re-balancing the Sri Lanka-China, Sri Lanka-US equations, it has only succeeded in bringing both, almost on the same plane and pace.<\/p>\n

Super-power rivalry<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite the present Government\u2019s perceived efforts at maintaining an equi-distance between China and the US, it has only succeeded in making Sri Lanka a possible hot-bed for super-power rivalry. One way would have been to get rid of China\u2019s involvement in the strategic sphere, continuing the established ties on the development front. But then, there are no free lunches in international diplomacy, and having accepted and still expecting big-time Chinese investments in the country, Sri Lanka, whoever was\/is in power, is in no position to do so.<\/p>\n

It is in this context that the cure seems to be worse than the problem, for Sri Lanka. Inviting\/admitting the US into Sri Lanka without wanting\/asking China to get out, can instead make the strategically-located island-nation in the Indian Ocean, the emerging hot-bed of \u2018super-power rivalry\u2019 when not has existed thus far, here or elsewhere.<\/p>\n

More importantly, it goes against the grain of purported \u2018national consensus\u2019 on the subject, as perceived since the early months of the Rajapaksa presidency, if not earlier. \u2018Aid from China and elsewhere, security relations only with neighbouring India\u2019 seemed to have been the slogan at the time. Maybe because the Rajapaksa leadership came to be seen as going back on the security part of the consensus, the successor Ranil leadership seems wanting to swing to the other extreme, replacing \u2018India\u2019 with the US.<\/p>\n

Such a shift has a tactical message, whether intended or otherwise. The China-India in Sri Lanka\u2019s security equations \/ relations would have still kept it all at the regional-level, both being rising Asian powers, though China would still be an extra-regional power in the strict sense of the term. By bringing in the US (possibly instead of a hyper-sensitive India), Sri Lanka might have upped the ante on the China front, by conferring on the equations the missing geo-strategic element and, unwittingly and unknowingly, on China the status of a de facto \u2018super-power\u2019 when competing suitor in the US is already one \u2013 and just now the only one.<\/p>\n


\n\u2018Look East\u2019 and \u2018Act West\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s anybody\u2019s guess why an ever-reluctant India did not seek to fill the space which the new Government in Colombo was supposed to be creating, for perceived purposes of purported \u2018re-balancing\u2019 viz China. The hyper-sensitivity of India being misunderstood in Sri Lanka might only be one of the reasons. India\u2019s years\u2019 old \u2018Look East\u2019 policy, combined with decades of \u2018Act West\u2019 policy (in geographical terms, it should include the then Soviet Union during the \u2018Cold War\u2019 era) has continued to ensure that New Delhi has little time still for the neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

Pious intentions, be it of the earlier governments in New Delhi, or of the current and latest leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has not translated into continued and non-interventionist strategic cooperation beyond a point. There has been little or no improvement or increased activity on the bilateral front with Sri Lanka, for instance, after Prime Minister Modi broke the 28-year-old jinx of an Indian Head of State or Government visiting Sri Lanka on a \u2018bilateral\u2019.<\/p>\n

Modi\u2019s gesture of inviting South Asian Heads of Government for his Inauguration in May 2016 remains just that, at least in the case of Sri Lanka. It makes immense sense for India to be watchful of its every step now and ever, on the Sri Lanka front, particularly when parliamentary elections in the island-nation became due earlier than originally required (March 2016), the very minute President Sirisena came into office. It owed to his pre-poll commitment on the subject.<\/p>\n

But Sri Lanka is not waiting, and does not want to wait, until at least a full-fledged Government came into power with well-defined re-allocation of powers between the Executive President and the Prime Minister (and as the head of the Cabinet) under promised constitutional amendments for the purpose. Nor has the rest of the world. As events of the recent days have shown, Sri Lankan armed forces are exercising separately but simultaneously with a Chinese combat team on a land venue and with the US SEALS, off the Trincomalee coast in the East, during a overlapping fortnight. India stands out \u2013 or, has been made to stand out, and in comparison to the other two, and in relation to its own security equations with Sri Lanka and security responsibilities in and for the shared waters.<\/p>\n

(The writer is Director, Chennai Chapter of the Observer Research Foundation, the multi-disciplinary public-policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi.)<\/em><\/p>\n

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By N Sathiya Moorthy Reports and denials about Sri Lanka procuring Chinese-made JF-17 fighter aircraft notwithstanding, there is the larger question of securing South Asia as a region, from within and without. The responsibility for the same, if and if only the nations of the region so desire, has to fall on all of them, …<\/p>\n

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