The telephone call that President Maithripala Sirisena received last Friday from United States Vice President-elect Mike Pence in Washington, DC, was, no doubt a brief, formal, courtesy call, but it must be taken for its own value. We, in Colombo, cannot easily judge whether or not the incoming US administration was prioritising little Sri Lanka in its network of international relations.
If that was the case, and the US wanted to highlight the fact, there would have been an announcement by the US State Department that such a phone call was made especially to Colombo.
Even if Washington has not prioritised this country the way it does its well known strong allies and partners, the call must be seen as an opportunity for Sri Lanka. An opportunity for what, is the question. This development must be seen in the light of Sri Lanka’s general foreign policy stance and our current placement in the global web of complex inter-state relationships.
However, early local speculation about Sri Lanka’s relations with the in-coming Trump presidency seems to have been mainly by people feeling very guilty about the atrocities committed during the decades-long internal wars or, at least the internal war waged in the North-East. The internal wars between the State and the southern insurgent movements seem to be solely a fading memory – happily for some people.
The main speculation locally about the Trump presidency was whether the new US administration would be ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ on that uncomfortable question of atrocities in the North-East war. The whole focus by these concerned elements seems to be whether the Sri Lankan State, especially the Sri Lankan armed forces would be helped by the in-coming US administration to avoid being pilloried by the UN or allied world bodies for what happened in the North-East.
Global politics
In these modern times of globalisation, it is no longer possible to simplistically view global politics simply in terms of ‘international relations’. There is no simplistic ‘us & them’ scenario.
In recent decades, certain elements within Sri Lanka loved to hate what they called ‘the international community’, with some of them even using the acronym ‘IC’.
A closer look at whom they referred to as the ‘IC’ indicated that the reference was not to the global community as a whole but to a specific set of countries who apparently were ‘hostile to Sri Lanka’. This set of countries seemed to include the US and its close western allies in Europe and Canada and Australia, both latter countries being close American allies as well.
But the global community is far more than this group of what might be loosely termed as the Western bloc. Indeed, to crudely use the term ‘international community’ merely to refer to this Western bloc not only does a disservice to the rest of the international community but it also gravely obscures the finely wrought framework of inter-state relations that make up the global system today.
For example, both China and Russia are important members of the global community of nation-states, but will certainly resent being lumped with the ‘Western bloc’. Our close neighbours and culturally ‘kin’ nations, India and Pakistan, would also be upset by that kind of crude classification. So would much of the Non-Aligned Movement.
Rajapaksa regime
That crude nomenclature seems to have been part of the crude ultra-nationalism of the previous Rajapaksa regime which thrived on obscurantism as a means of hoodwinking the mass of people with the opium of a self-satisfying ethno-centrism and xenophobia. The emphasis by the Rajapaksa regime that it was the (Sinhala-led) ‘Sri Lanka’ government which stood alone in the face of the so-called ‘international community’ and alone defeated the terrible LTTE (and by extension, all separatist Tamils) served to build a false image of singular heroism that obscured not just the complexity of international relations but also the complexity of the internal problem of ethnic conflict. To the last regime all this was mere propaganda hyperbole to retain vote banks.
In fact, this simplistic propaganda and its willing consumption by all those bewitched by the heady opium of ethno-centric nationalism also did a disservice to our armed forces who have endeavoured to remain fully professional – despite the compulsions by successive sets of politicians for military victories for their personal gain. An important part of modern-day military professionalism is the recognition of the vital role played by global surveillance systems (of all kinds from financial to satellite monitoring) and systematic coordination with these global systems, none of which have anything to do with so-called Sri Lankan ‘sovereignty’.
The LTTE could not have been beaten by the Sri Lankan State alone precisely because the Sri Lankan state is not in isolation. It never was isolated, in the entire history of polities on this island. The best evidence is the absorption of Buddhism by the most powerful Sri Lankan polity of the time at the behest of a far more powerful foreign power, Emperor Dharmasoka’s Maghadan empire.
Delhi and Colombo
Similarly, if the LTTE exploited a bilateral gap between Delhi and Colombo at one time, it was a combination of Indian maritime surveillance and US satellite surveillance that helped the Sri Lankan armed forces interdict the Tigers vital external resupply system. And it was a mix of Chinese and Russian-made ground attack aircraft that enabled the SLAF to make good use of its dominance of the skies to decimate grouping and regrouping Tiger forces. And so on …. True to its professionalism, the Sri Lankan armed forces did not allow petty nationalism to cloud or misdirect its war effort.
President-elect Trump, himself, is probably learning the ropes in Washington right now, including the limits of ‘national sovereignty’ and the importance of transcending such old-fashioned conceptions in order to benefit from the emerging globally shared sovereignty. Paris-based Interpol, is a superb example of this shared sovereignty that helps each sovereign state protect its individual security in coordination with the rest of Interpol member states – as Sri Lanka does.
In the case of President-elect Trump, right now he is probably learning the intricacies of NATO and other military alliances so vital to US interests, including that of the extension of American power globally.
At least Trump is enough of a very successful businessman to be ready to learn the ropes of whatever he takes on – previously it was business and now, the presidency. As predicted in these columns earlier, the incoming Trump cabinet is already being filled up with genuine Washington Establishment ‘insiders’. This is ‘mainstreaming’ of Trump (if he ever was outside the mainstream) into the giant US state-system.
Similarly, after those years of pretence of being ‘outside’ courtesy the Rajapaksa pseudo doctrine, Sri Lanka too is happily joining the mainstream once more.
The gobal mainstream is no longer merely that of nation-states working together. The global system - whether it is the business world or social, economic, cultural or professional interest groups - is today a very complex one of layered linkages and affiliations that intersect inter-state relations in ways that can no longer be controlled or easily regulated by the states alone.
Common benefit
Hence, that phone call will be the opening of a door that is, perhaps the single most important access, but already is parallel to many windows also opened between the two countries. It is up to Sri Lankans, in their plural variety of interest groups, to see what is the common benefit, in addition to what is of special interest and reach out in friendship and mutual learning.
After all, we are indeed at the geographical crossroads between east and west in the Indian Ocean. So even as we host China and India as major powers, we should be ready to evolve usefully strong ties with even bigger powers outside the region.
Certainly, we can be sure that a properly mainstreamed new US administration will adopt some of the previous administration’s diplomatic tracks – which will include an emphasis on human rights. That is the continuity that any properly functioning state exercises. How much human rights will be emphasised will remain to be seen. This country, however, should take pride in its own correct, truly moral, handling of human rights internally so that this issue cannot be exploited by other powers to the detriment of Sri Lanka’s communities. Perhaps we could help out Washington and London in any ‘transitional justice’ that is needed in Iraq and Afghanistan!