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It looks as if the JVP has included the Indian neighbour’s name by sheer force of habit when it claimed that foreign powers like China and the US were ‘interfering in the internal affairs’ of the Nation. Whether the specific charges are true or not, and if so, to what extent, Sri Lanka has evolved into being the ‘epicentre’ of extra-regional power-projections in the post-Cold War era.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “is coming hot on the heels of a visit by a high-powered Chinese delegation. These forces continue to interfere in our domestic affairs. Sri Lanka has become a victim of global power-struggle. The country will lose its sovereignty at this rate,” JVP parliamentarian Vijitha Herath told newsmen in Colombo recently. “The Government let them play whatever game they like here,” he said, pointing out how the Government was entering into ‘deals and agreements with them”. 

It is in this context MP Herath made a sweeping statement that “India, US and China interfering in internal matters is a clear and present danger to national security”. Apart from socio-economic ills of the Sri Lankan society inherited at Independence, the JVP’s core ideas at birth had an ‘anti-India’ streak to it. Party founder Rohana Wijeweera made what he dubbed the ‘Indian hegemony’ the third of his famous ‘Five Classes’ for his cadres. 

Long after Wijeweera’s death in custody and the party giving up militancy for good, this one continues to remain on the JVP’s charter, with one improvement. The JVP does not fight shy of adding more names to the list of nations that ‘interfere in the internal affairs’ of Sri Lanka, but has not been able to – or, is unwilling to revisit its own past, and with that the relevance, or relative relevance of Wijeweera’s finding, which was flawed, especially at the start. 

Isolation, not insulation

The JVP however has been the only party to talk consistently about ‘foreign interference’ throughout its past decades of peaceful coexistence with democratic forces, and hence its mainstreaming, too. Yet, as a party that does not hope to form a Government at the national-level or does not hope to or want to join another coalition after the failed experiment with the centre-left SLFP of the past, under Presidents Chandrika Bandaranaike-Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa, even if in parts, the JVP can afford to talk about geo-political, geo-economic and geo-strategic insulation bordering on isolation from the rest of the world.

The world does not operate in silos as someone at Colombo’s Battaramulla suburb thinks – or, would still like it to be. As a relatively small, yet sovereign Nation, Sri Lanka does not decide or dictate how the earth spins on its axis and how it could and should spin, instead its strategic location in the Indian Ocean has been Sri Lanka’s sole advantage, to say the least. 

In the post-Independence era, the Nation has played around mostly with this one God-given geographical advantage without creating one or any of its own – unlike what nations like post-War Japan in the far neighbourhood and Singapore since creation have done.  Ask any Sri Lankan, and he would muse and mourn how the Nation would have been on the top of South Asia, if not the whole world, but for the decades-old ethnic war. 

The rot had set in much earlier, or was the inherited ones, like the class/caste divides were never sought to be shed. In the final analysis, the JVP cannot escape responsibility for what its ancestor had done through gun, not once but twice in two successive decades. When the First JVP insurgency in 1971, they launched the Second Insurgency in 1987-89, blaming it not even on LTTE terrorism and what should have been the JVP’s ethnic militant rival. Instead, they blamed it on India and IPKF – and launched their own acts of terror, but against the ‘facilitating’ Sri Lankan State and also on millions of innocents, of the very same Sinhala ethnic stock. 

Overall, the JVP should be asking itself if they went wrong also in keeping quiet when President first invited China for the Hambantota port project, after their Indian hate-object declined the offer, whatever the reason. This was followed by the successor Mahinda presidency going through motions and processes involving India, and then signing up Hambantota with China – as if was also in the script. The JVP was very much a part of the SLFP Governments headed by the two leaders, and quit the ruling UPFA combine, not over ‘external interference in internal affairs’. Not just the JVP, but other sections of the ruling class, or parties and persona who were in power, or hope to be in power – or, believed that elected political power was theirs only to have – should ask themselves the single and simple question: “Was playing the locational advantage to maximum politico-economic benefit a better option for Sri Lanka than getting identified overmuch with one or the other of extra-regional powers?”

Such introspection has become essential because of President Gotabaya’s recent uttering, hinting at a national consensus of sorts in China’s high-spending participation in the Nation’s economic growth and development. During talks with the visiting high-power Chinese delegation under ex-Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi, now Politburo member, President Gotabaya described Hambantota a ‘national project’ of Sri Lanka. If it was not, no political party in previous Governments, or those aspiring for power in the future, has contested him or even distanced their party from such a construct. The JVP has been the only one – but after they parted company with the SLFP  when Mahinda Rajapaksa was President.

President Gotabaya was obviously referring to the predecessor ‘National Unity Government’ of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe writing off the Mahinda Rajapaksa regimes’ construction-cum-concession contract for a Chinese firm into a ‘debt-equity’ swap deal. With that deal alone, China got a 99-year-old lease over and complete possession of Sri Lanka’s Hambantota ‘territory’. 

National unity and ‘national consensus’, in the case of China, did not seem to have stopped there. During the run-up to the victorious 2015 Elections, then Opposition UNP’s Ranil Wickremesinghe was vociferous that he would shelve China’s Port City project in Colombo, if voted to power. Post-poll, he found reasons to amend his words and ways, and said that they would only be making changes to the original project. Likewise, ahead of his own Election as President in November last, Gotabaya Rajapaksa promised to scrap the ‘debt-equity’ deal over Hambantota territory. But once in power, one of the early clarifications he volunteered was the inevitability of the Nation living or learning to live with the swap deal of the previous dispensation. It was a ‘commercial deal’, President Gotabaya explained, but promised to continue ensuring that the Nation’s security, sovereignty and territorial integrity did not suffer. After the parliamentary polls in August last, his new Foreign Secretary, Prof. Jayanath Colombage, has been equally vociferous, and clarified the ground situation very well.

War of words…

By the very definition, cold war is a war by other means, where no shots are fired or lives (hopefully) lost. On and in Sri Lanka, the US and China have begun their inaugural battle royale through a war of words. This contrasts with the Cold War era competition, where the US alone was seeking Sri Lanka’s hand when JRJ was President. 

That was because the US saw Sri Lanka’s neighbouring India only in the company of the erstwhile Soviet Union. India’s compulsions then and now were/are China and Pakistan, and in both cases, the US was soft on them, for its own ‘America first’ policies. Today, the US and China began with wooing India and Sri Lanka, respectively. In this second round, both are seeking a foothold in Sri Lanka itself. Rather, China already has its foothold here, and the US wants its toe-hold at the very least. The US offer of $ 480M MCC grant for infra development here is also about that toe-hold space. 

In reference to Sri Lanka’s China relations thus, the US Ambassador at Colombo, Alaina B Teplitz, told a local Media interviewer how the Island-Nation “should engage with China in ways that protect its sovereignty”. Independent of the freewheeling US advice for Sri Lanka, a Chinese Embassy official in Colombo, quoting Beijing Government’s Foreign Office, said how the US ‘should do its ‘homework’ well rather than telling other countries what to do, or even spreading rumours to discredit other countries about allegations of human rights violations. 

Now, Sri Lanka cannot blame India or any other third Nation for its own decisions. To have the US, too, or just have only China here, and in the name of development and funding, is a decision for Colombo alone to take – and shoulder the responsibility of it all. As President Gotabaya highlighted at his talks with the Chinese delegation, will there be a ‘national consensus’ on this again, remains to be seen. 

After all, the rival Wickremesinghe Government had ‘invited’ the US in the first place as President Gotabaya explained how Sri Lanka, and not China, had sought the Hambantota project and project-funding. The question is if in the contemporary political situation prevailing in the country, Ranil Wickremesinghe’s invitation to the US deserves reciprocity from the Rajapaksa regime, or return of the gesture/favour on Hambantota earlier. 

Yet, all cold wars also begin only with a war of words, and are mostly confined to the same. But China having set foot on Sri Lanka already, with the promise of using Hambantota or any other territorial space, including airspace and sea waves, at its disposal, the US can still seek/demand its toehold on similar conditions. Whether or not Sri Lanka offers that facility to the US, too, is where it will begin – but definitely not end. A lot will then depend on what (all) China does with the Colombo Port City and Colombo Port container terminals for activities other than commerce – espionage, for instance, be it against India or taking a peep into the US military base in Diego Garcia, just across Hambantota with only the waters of the Indian Ocean dividing – or, connecting – them. 

The question today is if Sri Lanka will become another Pakistan in South Asia, not in terms of its rivalry with India. Instead, it is about inviting both China and the US to its shores.

N. Sathiya Moorthy is Distinguished Fellow and Head-Chennai Initiative, Observer Research Foundation, the multi-disciplinary Indian public-policy think-tank, headquartered in New Delhi. 

This article was originally published on Ceylon Today.  
Views in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect CGS policy.