Lanka loses balance, direction: Chooses Indo-US orbit, not Asian alternative

Pope Francis: “My people are poor, and I am one of them”

President Xi in Vietnam: “Unite to resist bullying”

Kadirgamar’s Last Testament

Self-limited

Then, show the country the Agreements

Of the six Popes of my lifetime starting with John XXIII, I felt emotionally closest to Pope Francis and saddest at his passing. While every Pope is inspired by and in communion with Jesus in some way, it seemed to me that Francis got closest to the core message of Jesus, conveyed most accurately the spirit of the teachings of Jesus, illumined most clearly the way of Jesus, and glimpsed Jesus most often in everyday social life and human existence. 

To me, the elevation to sainthood of El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, shot in 1980 by a rightwing assassin while celebrating Holy Mass, was the most distinctively emblematic gesture marking the progressive papacy of Francis. 

Pope Francis kept returning to Jesus’ parable of The Good Samaritan, which for him was the most paradigmatic of the essential Christian message, values, and moral-ethical imperative. His interpretation is at the center of his most vital theological text, Fratelli Tutti. (https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20201003_enciclica-fratelli-tutti.html) 

Pope Francis was the greatest interpreter of Jesus Christ in my lifetime. The best guide to being a good Christian, his was a ‘concrete spirituality’; the most authentic Catholic Existentialism I have encountered.   

Foreign defence industry footprint

We Sri Lankans have to glean from the Indian media, information about the Defence pact and other agreements with India which change Sri Lanka’s direction and destiny, signed on Sri Lankan soil, by Sri Lankan President Anura Dissanayake, elected by the votes of Sri Lanka’s citizens. That’s a uniquely grotesque travesty.

Deputy Editor of the Tribune (India), Ajay Banerjee who specialises in Defence and Strategic Affairs, sheds light on the AKD-Modi defence agreement in an exhaustive interview on DD India, April 6th 2025. 

Q: “My question Ajay is under this Anura Kumara government do you see a shift in their foreign policy when it comes to the India-China equation? 

A: In one word, yes.”

(PM Modi’s 2-Nation Visit: Strategic Insights with Ajay Banerjee. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIfLDI5VP5A) 

A point made by Ajay Banerjee was most revealing: 

“Point Number 2, also Defence Industrial tie-ups. Now Sri Lanka as we all know needs some kind of help in building up its defence industry, its defence base and also arms and armaments…” 

(Ibid)

Since when did Sri Lanka need to “build up its defence industry”? What is India’s role, and why only India? 

There is a direct continuity with discussions during the Wickremesinghe presidency at the India-Sri Lanka Defence Seminar on April 10th 2024 with the participation of State Minister for Defence Pramitha Bandara Tennakoon:

‘…”The collaboration and joint R&D with Indian defence industries would lead to the country’s economic revival…”

State Minister of Defence Hon. Pramitha Bandara Tennakoon made these remarks at a Seminar on Defence Cooperation held at Taj Samudra, Colombo, on Wednesday (Apr 10) while gracing as the Chief Guest.

The High Commission of India in Colombo organised the seminar under the theme “Identifying New Opportunities and Forging New Bonds” to promote Indian-made defence equipment and explore avenues for collaboration in defence production.

The High Commissioner of India, H.E. Santosh Jha, participated in the event with the Indian delegation led by Additional Secretary (Defence Production) in the Indian Ministry of Defence, Shri Anurag Bajpai...’

(https://www.defence.lk/Article/view_article/27924)   

The 2024 event built on an ambitious agenda unveiled in 2023: 

‘High Commission of India organised the first Seminar cum Exhibition on Defence on 7 June 2023 in Colombo. Hon. Pramitha Bandara Tennakoon, State Minister of Defence was the Chief Guest of the event...In addition, representatives from 16 leading Indian Defence companies such as Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Goa Shipyard Limited, and Bharat Electronics Limited were also a part of the event. It also witnessed enthusiastic attendance by local industry representatives from Sri Lanka. 

High Commissioner complimented the conduct of the first such collaborative exhibition that brought together stakeholders in the defence sector from the two countries. He underlined that India is exporting to 85 countries and defence exports stood at USD 2 billion from April 2022 – March 2023. This provided a good opportunity for Sri Lanka, as an immediate neighbour...

Hon. State Minister of Defence lauded the growth of Indian defence industry and expressed hope that seminar would facilitate collaboration between two countries, thereby contributing to stable Indian Ocean Region…He emphasised that collaboration and joint R&D with Indian defence industries would also lead to Sri Lanka’s economic revival…’ (https://www.hcicolombo.gov.in/section/press-releases/inaugural-india-sri-lanka-defence-seminar-cum-exhibition/) 

Opaque democracy

A moment of revelation about the state of our democracy under NPP rule came in a television debate-show, Swarnavahini’s Rathu Ira, on April 17th. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOEzaY7Ov3Q) 

Mujibur Rahman of the SJB and Sanjeeva Edirimanne of the SLPP, repeatedly and reasonably requested Dr Nalinda Jayatissa, Chief Government Whip in Parliament, to end all speculation about the agreements signed between President Dissanayake and Prime Minister Modi, by the simple, standard practice of tabling the agreements in Parliament on an early, announced date. Throughout, they addressed him cordially and respectfully as ‘Mr. Minister’. 

Edirimanne, a former TV journalist, quoted from a recent program aired on India’s NDTV, pointing out that the NDTV presenter referred to Prime Minister Modi’s recent visit as “a diplomatic triumph” because it featured the “first-ever Defence Pact” between India and Sri Lanka which had resulted in a “Defence Alliance” between the two countries. (https://youtu.be/ztJKbA0Uh8k?si=3ckrV2iL_oTUOxIx) 

Dr Jayatissa didn’t contradict him, but brushed him aside saying that each country would present it as a triumph for its own leader, but it was a ‘win-win outcome’. When pressed, he declined to elaborate. 

Continuing to refer to the Opposition participants derisively as “oya gollo” (“you fellows”), Minister Jayatissa told them that recourse to the Right to Information Act was as good as it was going to get. He flatly refused to table the agreements in Parliament. 

Clearly the contents of the AKD-Modi agreements would remain a secret from the sovereign Sri Lankan people until the NPP decides otherwise—while the contents are already known in every major capital that cares to.

First friend’s first satellite

The Sri Lankan external relations norm, deriving from its ethos has been of nonalignment and autonomy through balance, which has been chiefly practiced by the SLFP, President Premadasa’s UNP and (less consistently, more erratically) the SLPP. Under these administrations there have been tilts—but these have been tactical, conjunctural and contingent, not strategic or structural, unlike the AKD-Modi accords. Hitherto, the needle of preference has only flickered, depending on different economic projects and perceived exigencies. 

Since 1948 there has never been a subordinate alignment with any one ‘friend’ i.e., patron. President Premadasa related to me with admiration, how DS Senanayake, regarded an Anglophile, threatened to remove Ceylon’s reserves from British banks when London began to look like it was dragging its feet on Independence. 

In the 1950s it was a UNP administration that faced the hostile Hickenlooper amendment from the US Congress when it signed the Rubber-Rice Pact with China. 

Even under the UNP, Sri Lanka never signed up to the notion that our security as a nation was ‘co-dependent’ on and ‘indivisible’ with that of any other. Convergences and confluences were episodic. Anura Dissanayake’s administration is the first to make the paradigm shift to Sri Lanka as dependent variable of India’s or any country’s security, i.e., a satellite. 

The doctrine that ‘even among friends there must be a first’ is a narcotic to imbue addiction to the delusion that the strategic and security interest of an illegitimately designated ‘first friend’ takes precedence over the national interest of Sri Lanka. It is an ideology to condition Sri Lanka into placing the interests of the ‘first friend’ above our own. 

Except for the disastrous early-1980s under JR Jayewardene, and the Ranil-Mangala co-sponsorship of the Western resolution at the UNHRC Geneva in 2015, Sri Lankan foreign policy was always one of balance and striving for even-handedness if not equidistance. We balanced between India and Pakistan, India and China, China and Russia, the East and the West. We usually secured the support of most states or almost all --as in the UNHRC Geneva resolution in May 2009, a week after we won the war. 

Those days are gone, as we see from the following news story. Pakistan Navy’s plan to hold naval exercise off Trincomalee scrapped following India’s concerns - The Hindu.

This shabby treatment of Pakistan which opened their stocks and gave us the MBRLs that helped us defend Jaffna after the evacuation of Elephant Pass (2000), is an atrocious way to conduct external relations. Betraying old faithful friends besmirches our reputation and honour. Who will trust us enough to stand by us? 

Anura Dissanayake is the first Lankan leader ever to put our external relations into a straitjacket—tailored by a Great Power, most dangerously our great neighbour. 

Asia, not Indo-US 

When Sri Lankan political figures or commentators denounce the ‘frog-in-the-well mentality’ or the ‘island mindset’, shrieking ‘build bridges, not walls’, they never mean ‘look globally’, or ‘look to Asia’, or ‘look at the Global South’. They mean look West and ally with it, or look upwards and integrate with India, or both. This contradicts the best of Ceylon’s/Sri Lanka’s foreign policy thinking and tradition, the perspective of contemporary Asian thinkers such as Kishore Mahbubani, and current Asian dynamics. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4COv3rcvJg). 

What’s going on in the world right now—what’s shaping up—is very clear from Trump’s tariff/ trade war. The real target is China, confirming that the USA and China are the two competing superpowers– one established and reacting irrationally to relative decline, the other, potential and rising--in the world today. That Beijing isn’t blinking reveals China’s self-confidence and strength as a player. (https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/china-orders-halts-boeing-jet-deliveries-bloomberg-news-reports-2025-04-15/) 

The prestigious US periodical The Atlantic makes this assessment: 

“…The president’s [Trump’s] gambit is likely to strengthen China’s geopolitical position, embolden Beijing militarily, and diminish both the United States’ global standing and its economy…” 

--Rogé Karma, ‘What if China Wins the Trade War?’ The Atlantic 

(https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/04/china-trump-trade-war/682524/) 

The Trump tariffs warrant and are generating Asian answers. 

• Japan dumped US dollar bonds, invested in Asian bonds.
• China is networking South-East Asia. 
• Japan-China-ASEAN are converging. 
• India isn’t countering the US as Japan and China are, nor rallying South Asian resistance, nor working with China-Japan-ASEAN on an Asian response. 

Why is India partnered with the non-Asian superpower, the USA, instead of competing with China as itself? Because China will always be more advanced, ahead in the revolution of late-modernity, while BJP-RSS led Bharat remains shackled by the double burden of self-perpetuated, self-glorified backwardness and irrationality: 

(a) The caste system 

(b) An ancient religio-mythological guiding ideology.  

Therefore, Sri Lanka must ask itself the following:

• How does it serve Sri Lanka’s interests to be straitjacketed by Indian paranoia about China? 
• How does it serve us to ally with the USA via India, against Asian titan China—especially when the world is increasingly negative towards India’s geostrategic partner, the USA?
• Why shouldn’t Sri Lanka retain the option of leveraging China’s old friendship and new strength for our benefit? 
• When Tamil Nadu, whose fishing boats invade our seas and steal our fish, lobbies India/Bharat led by Modi or another BJP leader who (a) believes in the Ramayana (b) holds that conceding Kachchatheevu to Sri Lanka was a betrayal, to occupy/annex Sri Lanka’s North-East studded with Indian projects denoted ‘strategic assets’, where will Anura’s double-cross of our long-standing friends Pakistan and China leave our country? 

Kadirgamar’s last testament 

Whether you are a US Republican or Democrat, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski are hugely respected. In Putin’s Moscow there is an annual international symposium attended by Foreign Minister Lavrov in honour of Academician Evgeny Primakov, the iconic Foreign Minister and PM who was Putin’s rival in the 1999 Presidential stakes.  

Sri Lanka doesn’t honour and draw upon the heritage left by its best thinkers and policy practitioners. Thus, we have no conceptual compass and map—and lose our way in the world. 

Lakshman Kadirgamar personally enjoyed, and curated for this country, the friendliest relations with US-India-China, but had steely-eyed clarity about Sri Lanka’s national interests and its most tried and tested friends over the long term. Inspired by SWRD and Sirima Bandaranaike, in Kadirgamar’s doctrine Sri Lanka was never anyone’s fellow-traveller, never took its cue from any power. Though not absolute, national sovereignty was central. 

Kadirgamar’s ‘last lecture’ on Sri Lanka’s foreign policy was just months before his assassination, at the unveiling of the bust of China’s iconic Premier and Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai at the BMICH on April 9th 2005, in the presence of China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. Alongside Foreign Minister Kadirgamar, I was there as a member of the Governing Council of the BCIS under LK’s Chairmanship, to join in welcoming China’s PM. Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa was present, CBK wasn’t. 

Kadirgamar’s speech was a definitive declaration: 

“…When a relationship is based on mutual respect and affection, the size, importance and power of one of the two countries in that relationship does not have a disproportionate influence on the other. 

China has never sought to influence the domestic politics of Sri Lanka. Over the years China has proved to be benign and sincere with no ulterior motives for befriending Sri Lanka. She has never tried to dominate, undermine or destabilise Sri Lanka.

She has come to our rescue with timely assistance on several occasions when there were threats to Sri Lanka’s national security and territorial integrity.

There have been no strings attached to Chinese aid. When a relationship between two countries is not based on dependence, it is strengthened by the fact that it is based on the mutual recognition of equality. Sri Lanka in its own way has been helpful to China. The rubber-rice pact of 1951 has been referred to.

In more recent times Sri Lanka has in a modest way been of assistance to China in international fora especially in the field of human rights where Sri Lanka, taking the view that China was being unfairly treated in certain quarters, has been her steadfast ally. It is good for a relationship when both countries are able to contribute something towards sustaining and enhancing it. Sri Lanka has remained steadfast and unequivocal in respect of its One China Policy.

We believe that Taiwan is an inalienable part of the People’s Republic of China - something which the United Nations has reaffirmed each year. We support China’s policy of peaceful reunification and China’s efforts to promote cross-straits links for the benefit of the Chinese people and their social and economic development. Sri Lanka has expressed its support for China’s recent anti-secessionist law.

It is in the light of these considerations that Sri Lanka observes with admiration China’s steady, peaceful ascent to the summit of economic power. Long may the People’s Republic of China flourish and prosper. Long may the friendship between China and Sri Lanka grow in strength and vigour.”

(https://tamilnation.org/intframe/china/050409bmich_kadirgamar) 

Kadirgamar mentored the JVP leaders including Tilvin Silva and Vijitha Herath, arranging study-tours to China. Today they have pivoted with colossal unwisdom in the opposite direction. AKD’s isn’t ‘double-pocket diplomacy’, but ‘double-cross diplomacy’. 

Lakshman Kadirgamar’s Last Testament must be a pillar of Sri Lanka’s foreign policy architecture.