‘Nexus Research Policy Dialogue’: Can Sri Lanka exist, survive, and prosper without India’ - Rebuttal

I read with interest the W.A. Wijewardene column of 27 January titled ‘Nexus Research Policy Dialogue: Can Sri Lanka exist, survive, and prosper without India’. Wijewardene refers to his participation at a recent seminar with Nilanthan Niruthan, Director of the Colombo-based Law and Security Studies Centre in which both speakers apparently held the same view calling for Sri Lanka to be closer integrated with India. My letter is written as a rebuttal, to draw attention to the dissenting opinions voiced at this seminar (which Wijewardene fails to mention) arguing for a continuation of Sri Lanka’s non-aligned foreign policy and the dire consequences of aligning with any one of the great or rising powers. 

Niruthan’s world view of the USA and the West with China and Russia in opposing blocs and India straddling both blocs, is quite problematic. It ignores the current state of global destabilisation with the advent of President Trump imposing tariffs even on his own main trading partners and neighbours Mexico and Canada, in disregard of existing NAFTA arrangements! Mexico and Canada have reciprocated with their own tariffs against the US, raising the possibility of a trade war with global consequences and worse still public anger in these countries is rising against the Big Neighbour. President Trump has hinted his next move will be to impose tariffs on his EU allies and has even threatened to take over Greenland by force from Denmark! In this current global turmoil, sovereign countries will surely hesitate to embark on multilateral or bilateral trade arrangements, political or military alliances.

What we are seeing today, which is not mentioned by Wijewardene and Niruthan, is the disintegration of the earlier period of globalisation and the push at that time for a “rules based international order”. With the advent of President Trump, the US has pulled out of key international negotiations and multilateral commitments and withdrawn from participation in key UN organisations. President Trump says he is committed to the US “taking over and owning Gaza” with no right of return for the Palestinians. The Gaza Strip is recognised as part of the Palestinian territories under Israeli military occupation, therefore any attempt to seize this territory by force would violate international law and the principles of the UN Charter. Palestine currently enjoys “non-member observer status” in the UN, sometimes described as “de-facto recognition of the sovereign state of Palestine” and has been recognised by 146 of the 193 UN member states. 

What role will India play in this new world disorder? India is already adversely affected by the US beginning to deport hundreds of Indians back to India, in menacles, in US military planes, which conditions have raised the wrath of the Indian public. 

Chandrasena Maliyadde reminds us that “economists do computer aided analysis in cold rooms” and their theoretical assumptions tend to ignore social implications and real life field data. However, the making of foreign policy even for a small state must be based on historical recall and experience of past events, and the careful balancing of national interests without antagonising any country. Thus, any analysis that argues that Sri Lanka cannot do without India on economic grounds fails because no account is taken of the Tamil Nadu factor, from where historically invasions and attacks against Sri Lanka have been launched and even today sees the imposition of many non-tariff barriers blocking our exports and the fair implementation of the ISLFTA. Take the perennial issue of the poaching in our waters by hundreds of large Tamil Nadu bottom trawlers which are destroying the livelihoods of our northern fishermen. The only deterrent has been the Sri Lanka navy in their small patrol boats and courageous sailors who have managed to arrest poachers and seize their vessels while Delhi calls for “humanitarian treatment” of the poachers.

Sarala Fernando

(Retired from the Foreign Ministry as Additional Secretary, the writer’s last Ambassadorial appointment was as Permanent Representative to the UN and International Organisations in Geneva. Her Ph.D. was on India-Sri Lanka relations and she writes now on foreign policy, public diplomacy and protection of heritage.)