The on-going visit to Colombo by a powerful United States’ Navy task force led by the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz is yet another reminder of the geo-strategic importance of our island to the whole world and not to any single ‘big power’.
The US naval visitation is the biggest by any foreign navy in recent decades and is the direct result of the foreign policy re-set under the current Government. The previous regime, entirely due to selfish personal-political reasons, abandoned our long-practised foreign relations strategy, and depended heavily, but unrealistically, on China alone for large scale economic development and military supplies.
China does not seek vassal states, although the last regime here seemed happy to be one as long as the ruling clique and its cronies benefitted. China, with whom we celebrate sixty years of diplomatic ties this year, was a new communist society in the 1950s when little Sri Lanka, also emerging from the political shackles of a colonial nature, gave recognition to that country as it struggled with its revolutionary social experiment amid a hostile or suspicious world.
A warm friendship blossomed, beginning with the successful Rubber-Rice trade agreement and followed by numerous economic aid agreements and many outright gifts to impoverished Sri Lanka by that emerging and progressive power.
That relationship, however, was not one-track, and Colombo continued the much more intimate ties with regional power India, as well as closely-bound ties with our South Asian neighbours. On the other hand, ties with the West were also pragmatically developed and, in some early post-colonial decades, the West, led by the US and the European Union, were our biggest development donors. Japan’s swift rise as an economic powerhouse saw that country too once leading the list as our main development donor.
It was such a nuanced and multi-dimensional foreign policy that was interrupted by ham-handed tactics of the previous government. Colombo, under the Rajapaksas, allowed domestic politics and factional interests to dictate a foreign policy that merely sought to play one foreign power against another rather than relate to many powers at various levels.
The National Unity Government has returned the country to our usual – and realistic – policy of relating to diverse powers on the basis of different aspects of our national interest. Thus, India, as our immediate neighbouring power remains the bedrock of security for our neighbourhood, while the SAARC community is our ‘regional family’, as it were, given our close cultural links and immense potential for regional trade.
Co-incidentally, the SAARCLAW annual conference is currently being held in Colombo, hosted by the Sri Lanka Chapter of SAARCLAW and inaugurated last week by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
The last two years have seen a spate of visits by several navies, from every SAARC navy to various European navies, the US, China, and Japan. As Trincomalee, one of the world’s largest natural harbours, is modernized, Sri Lanka will be ready once more, as in ancient times, to welcome merchant and naval shipping, as well as private leisure shipping, from all parts of the world.
Threatening a return to violence?
Barely six years after the worst war in centuries on our island, with the nation settling into the labours and joys of economic development, must our country give ear to threats of violence and bloody savagery once more?
Who is now – suddenly - threatening brutal violence – one of bombing Parliament, of killing people they deem ‘traitors’ ?
The National Freedom Front and its leader, Wimal Weerawansa, MP, are threatening outbreaks of physical violence if Parliament moves further in its current, weighty, task of Constitutional reform. Last week, the nation reeled with shock – perhaps with some scepticism – over the threats of violence against the very centre of national democracy – our Parliament.
For a parliamentarian to threaten to physically destroy the very building of the legislature to which he has been (proudly) elected and now sits in, seems like a politics of nihilism and not one that fits into modern human civilisation. It is certainly not the politics that our great traditions teach us. Indeed, it is neither ‘civil’ nor civilian politics.
Wimal Weerawansa himself is familiar with military-type politics given his involvement in the second southern insurgency led by his former political party, the JVP.
The JVP itself, having intelligently learned its political lessons, is now immersed in civilian politics from local government to Parliament, with its staunch defence of, and active contribution to, parliamentary practices. That party’s popularity grows while the popularity of its ex-member, Weerawansa, wanes.
Perhaps, it was a crude attempt at getting national attention that prompted these recent hysterical outbursts by Mr Weerawansa. Sadly, the attention he is now getting is not one of popular admiration.
After all, no Sri Lankan, certainly no patriotic or right-thinking Sri Lankan, wants a return to the language and actions of violence and intimidation. The National Freedom Front and its cronies are indeed scraping the barrel of political polemic if they must resort to such brutish postures.
Today, the return to peace is symbolised by the return of the monopoly of violence solely to the agencies and personnel specifically trained for, and legally and procedurally bound to, the exercise of physical force in order to maintain public order and the rule of law. The nation has twice experienced the violent conflagration that is caused when individuals and groups with no such institutionalized authority and regulation take to violence for what they claim our legitimate ‘social’ goals – whether nationalistic or socio-economic.
Now, once again, we have some individuals – including a parliamentarian himself – threatening a return to social violence and mayhem. Such ‘retro-violence’ will be at the expense of the genuine sacrifice of our armed forces and police agencies who have defended with their lives the very democracy that Mr Weerawansa now threatens (again).