{"id":57764,"date":"2016-08-19T14:08:35","date_gmt":"2016-08-19T20:08:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=57764"},"modified":"2016-08-18T14:27:51","modified_gmt":"2016-08-18T21:27:51","slug":"foreign-policy-and-self-imposed-non-negotiability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/08\/19\/foreign-policy-and-self-imposed-non-negotiability\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreign Policy and self-imposed non-negotiability"},"content":{"rendered":"

Malinda Seneviratne<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Small nations typically do not have much by way of bargaining power vis-\u00e0-vis powerful nations; \u2018small\u2019 meaning economically and militarily weak rather than land size.\u00a0 Weak, however, does not mean helpless.\u00a0Indeed there are very few if any relationships between the powerful and the weak that are not characterized by contestation and continuous negotiation of the terms of control.\u00a0 The same goes for relations between countries, despite power differentials.\u00a0 Sri Lanka, right now, appears to be an exception.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, diplomacy is a sphere of activity where words are almost always used to varnish unpalatable truths.\u00a0 In fact there\u2019s nothing bad about anything bilateral or multilateral if we went strictly by the statements uttered by the stewards of foreign relations.\u00a0 And yet if one were to factor in track records of the particular protagonists, statements uttered in different contexts and examine the small print of agreements, diplospeak immediately looks an infantile language which has barely evolved out the grunts.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s consider Sri Lanka\u2019s case. First and foremost, the country\u2019s economic situation has been the main determinant of foreign policy formulation.\u00a0 The economic logic of the particular regime has informed the picking of friends by and large.\u00a0 The striking exemption was the Mahinda Rajapaksa regime at the height of the offensive against the LTTE when defeating the LTTE counted more than \u2018economic sense\u2019 in the weight given to friendships with foreign nations.\u00a0 As a result, after the end of the war, that regime had to rush to China for help, support that did not come free.<\/p>\n

There were other prices to pay of course and pounds of flesh were duly extracted in Geneva first and eventually in Sri Lanka when those nations which felt peeved by Rajapaksa put their weight behind his detractors.\u00a0 This is not to say, of course, that he would have prevailed if there was no such support, but that\u2019s another story.<\/p>\n

Post-Mahinda, as expected, the new Government placed their bets on the anti-Rajapaksa bloc, especially India, the USA and the EU.\u00a0 And lost.\u00a0 The Government was forced to pick the Rajapaksa Option. China.<\/p>\n

And yet, it appears that the Government is not yet done with pandering to the demands of the USA and India.\u00a0 Of course, governments inherit debts owed by previous regimes and one can argue that a responsible regime cannot pout and refuse to pay.\u00a0 However, we also know that this Government is politically on the same page with the USA as far as what is good for Sri Lanka is concerned.\u00a0 It has essentially decided to inhabit the US version of Sri Lanka\u2019s reality and design a future Sri Lanka that delivers the interests of that country.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s legitimate.\u00a0 If you are in agreement then you go along.\u00a0 Going along is one thing, but allowing someone like the US Ambassador to be presumptuous enough to state that he will help Sri Lanka write a new constitution is something else.\u00a0 Even diplospeak cannot varnish incompetence or worse, impotence.<\/p>\n

Then we have the Indian High Commissioner virtually saying ETCA is a done deal.\u00a0 If indeed the deal is done despite objections from quarters other than the oppose-anything Joint Opposition then once again it means that this Government is either on the same page as India about the benefits for Sri Lanka (again, all-is-good diplospeak) or worse is incompetent or clueless.\u00a0 Reminiscent one might say of J.R. Jayewardene\u2019s capitulation to Rajiv Gandhi in July 1987.\u00a0 Shows a worrisome (that\u2019s a generous term) lack of confidence.\u00a0 To make it even worse, it appears that the Government wants India to develop the Oil Tank Farm in Trincomalee.\u00a0 Why India, is the question that needs to be asked in a context where India is not going to (and cannot) bail out Sri Lanka economically.\u00a0 That\u2019s China\u2019s job and that\u2019s official whether we like it or not.<\/p>\n

Put all of this on the same page (of a newspaper, say) and the picture is pretty clear: this Government has a foreign policy that can be written in a sentence \u2013 \u2018say aye\u201d to whatever India or the USA proposes to further their strategic, economic and other interests and submit to China\u2019s economic diktat\u2019.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a small chance that the statements issued by the US Ambassador and the Indian High Commissioner are nothing more than a couple of diplomats putting a brave front in the face of an impending China take-over.\u00a0 It\u2019s hard to say, however, given the Government\u2019s apparent policy of treating such moves as being in the \u2018goes without saying\u2019 category, the subtext of which (need we say?) is essentially \u2018comes without saying\u2019.<\/p>\n

Small nations typically do not have much by way of bargaining power vis-\u00e0-vis powerful nations.\u00a0 But few nations are absolutely powerless.\u00a0 Given certain comparative advantages (strategic location, for one), Sri Lanka can bargain.\u00a0 And must.\u00a0 At least, it can play one power against the other and try to optimize.\u00a0 The kind of capitulation we are seeing, however, indicates that this Government believes that its political future is in the hands of India and the USA.\u00a0 There have been others who came before who believed the same and looked in disbelief when outcomes that were preferred and considered assured did not materialize.<\/p>\n

All that for the future.\u00a0 Sooner or later, this Government will realize the worth of that pithy Sinhala saying \u2018katin bathala sitaveema\u2019 (planting sweet potato with the mouth).\u00a0 The US Ambassador will understand the US version of this: \u2018put your money where your mouth is\u2019.\u00a0 Right now, both India and the USA are backing on throwing a few paisas and pennies (respectively) and raking in big bucks in economic and strategic terms.\u00a0 There\u2019ll probably be a limit to what the big buck provider, China, will tolerate on the strategic front.<\/p>\n

It is better to wake up, even slowly, rather than be woken up rudely.\u00a0 Chances are that this Government, if woken up rudely, will break into giggles and say \u2018that\u2019s so sweet of you\u2019. \u00a0Indeed it\u2019s a throwback to J.R. Jayewardene\u2019s famous line when ushering in the open economy: \u2018Let the robber barons come!\u2019\u00a0 Only, on a larger scale and by a Government that appears incapable of taking stock of changed global realities.\u00a0 This is not 1977 or 1987.\u00a0 This is 2016.\u00a0 Back then, China was not even mentioned. Today, China dominates the script.\u00a0 Only, this Government doesn\u2019t seem to have read it.<\/p>\n

Malinda Seneviratne is a freelance writer who contributes a weekly column to the Daily Mirror titled ‘Subterranean Transcripts’.\u00a0 Email: malindasenevi@gmail.com<\/a>.\u00a0 Twitter: malindasene.<\/em><\/p>\n

Email This<\/a>BlogThis!<\/a>Share to Twitter<\/a>Share to Facebook<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Malinda Seneviratne Small nations typically do not have much by way of bargaining power vis-\u00e0-vis powerful nations; \u2018small\u2019 meaning economically and militarily weak rather than land size.\u00a0 Weak, however, does not mean helpless.\u00a0Indeed there are very few if any relationships between the powerful and the weak that are not characterized by contestation and continuous negotiation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malinda-seneviratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}