Our Non-Alignment and India’s multiple alignment policy

Sri Lanka’s foreign policy is still that of the ousted Rajapaksa party and implemented by Ranil Wickremasinghe and this has resulted in Lanka being held in a political vice between two geopolitical forces.

The foreign policy of Lanka today is officially identified as Non- Alignment — whatever is meant by it. Although it is often said by the so-called foreign affairs cognoscenti — diplomats, academics involved in foreign affairs and those of the think tanks and defence establishments — that foreign policy is basically a projection of domestic policy, it has not been so in this highly literate island.  For the vast majority of people, the hoi polloi or ‘yakkos’ as they are identified, foreign policy has not been a subject of interest.

It is only after the country declared itself bankrupt and there were infinitely long queues lasting for days for essential commodities such as food and fuel and a shortage of essential medicines that foreign policy became a subject of interest for the masses. They are now aware that the country has to depend on two squabbling regional powers for foreign currency loans and the supply of essential commodities for their very existence.

The people had earlier existed happily mainly on loans borrowed from foreign countries and sources, with the leaders not giving a damn about the need to keep expenditure proportionate to income, as housewives know well.

Soon after Lanka’s independence, diplomats and politicians were declaring that Non-Alignment should be the strategy for newly emergent former colonies to prevent the two power blocs — the United States and its allies who were mostly Western capitalist democracies and the Soviet Union with its allies the Warsaw Pact communist countries — from interfering in their internal affairs. Non-Alignment would help protect the sovereignty of these poor and unarmed nations against the two mighty power blocs that within a few years acquired even nuclear weapons capable of causing a nuclear holocaust.

Although a basic objective of Non-Alignment, as proclaimed by its founding fathers, is to ensure that it protects the sovereignty of weak and under-developed nations from Big Power rivalry, the Non-Aligned strategies followed by Sri Lanka now paradoxically have resulted in the nation being caught up in the rivalry between an emergent regional power, India, which is backed by a Big Western Power bloc, and China, the emerging superpower.

In August this year, Lanka came into world focus when India wanted Lanka to postpone indefinitely the grant of permission for a Chinese ‘research vessel’ which India claimed was a ‘spy ship’ to dock into the Hambantota harbour. Gotabaya Rajapaksa when he was president had granted permission for the Chinese vessel to enter the port. Indian reports said the ship, Yuan Wang 5, was equipped to track space satellites and ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles) and, therefore, the ship with a vast aerial reach extending in and around India poses a security threat to India. Permission was eventually granted to the ship to enter that harbour by the Rajapaksa government.

Despite former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s policy being declared as ‘Neutral Non-Alignment’ and the current president toeing his line, this brand of Non-Alignment has left the government in a comic situation where it has to align itself with one power or the other, depending on the circumstances.

India has given loans amounting to USD 4 billion to keep Lanka going with financial assistance and staving off the financial crisis. But its assistance, Lanka’s political observers note, is also aimed at the acquisition of Lanka’s strategic assets such as naval facilities and the Oil Tank Farm around Trincomalee harbour, Northern islands in the vicinity of India’s southern coast and two harbours in Colombo, in addition to influencing government policy in the Northern and Eastern Provinces.

China’s relations with the former Rajapaksa regime appear to have soured over some contracts on development projects and it holds the Lanka government in a bind over the rescheduling of loans through IMF negotiations. These loans, amounting to billions of dollars, had been lent to the Rajapaksa government’s ego-boosting projects that brought in little or no return on investments.

India’s evolving Non-Alignment appears to be undergoing many transformations from the traditional Non-Alignment it is still officially said to be following.

Indian academic Swaran Singh, a Professor of diplomacy at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi) in an article titled ‘India’s policy of multi-alignment tested amid ongoing Russia-Ukraine Conflict’ says India’s policy of multi-alignment was on full display in August and September this year with Indian Prime Minister attending a whole range of summit meetings and India’s Foreign Minister Jaishankar attending dozens of meetings involving BRICS as well as several quadrilateral, triangular and bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the 77th sessions of the UN General Assembly.

‘In this gradual shift of India’s foreign policy from traditional Non-Alignment towards multi-alignment involving building a partnership across many sectors with as many countries as possible, the ongoing Ukraine crisis has been an acid test for India’s efforts to carefully craft this complex balance between its engagement with Russia, China and other Eurasian nations on the one hand while building close proximity with the United States.

‘This method …… has been criticised by some as running with the hounds and hunting with the hares strategy.’

What is relevant to Sri Lanka about Narendra Modi’s government running with the hounds and hunting with the hares is that with regard to Sri Lanka and also other South Asian countries the strict traditional Non-Aligned policy prevails.

Sri Lanka is not expected by the pundits in India’s Foreign Ministry to align itself with China or any other foreign power which goes against Indian interests.

And India right now keeps the Sri Lankan gas cookers burning, people from starving and dying with financial assistance in the forms of billion-dollar loans, the terms on which the people will have to re-pay remains unknown. India is recognised by the Western power bloc including Japan as the de facto regional power of South Asia, leaving South Asian nations to India’s mercy.

What do we do under these circumstances? The Non-Aligned Movement has no flag. So we wave the Indian flag, sing hosannas and dance to Non-Alignment tunes as we have done since we joined the movement way back in the mid-fifties?

The writer is a former editor of The Sunday Island, The Island and consultant editor of the Sunday Leader. He could be contacted via email: gamma.weerakoon@gmail.com)