Save Sri Lanka strategy and Asian autonomy on Russia-Ukraine

An important takeaway from the response of the world to the Ukraine crisis is the undeclared, unofficial but discernible contours of an Asian convergence or consensus— ‘consensus’ as distinct from ‘unanimity’—to stake out an autonomous position, taking a balanced view

When there is a crisis, the Government has to be part of the solution, not the source of the problem. This regime has no solutions, and is not merely part of the problem, but in some central aspects, the cause of the problem. Everything is grinding to a halt. The economy, society and everyday life itself will soon be unable to function

Sri Lankan politicians indict their successors by referring to the achievements on their watch and pointing out how the successors squandered what had been bequeathed them. Let’s apply that to diplomacy. 

The resolution at the UNHRC Geneva on Ukraine, a highly emotive issue on which there is a wave of global opinion propelled by the world’s most powerful coalition of states and superstar opinion-makers, obtained 29 votes. So that’s obviously a very high-water mark. 

In May 2009, on my watch as Ambassador/PR, the supportive resolution in the immediate aftermath of a hard-fought war and controversial victory, moved in pre-emption of a Western resolution on Sri Lanka against the backdrop of a strong western campaign fronted by the (then) UN Human Rights High Commissioner, obtained the exact same number of votes—29—for Sri Lanka. 

Changing our situation 

When there is a crisis, the Government has to be part of the solution, not the source of the problem. This regime has no solutions, and is not merely part of the problem, but in some central aspects, the cause of the problem. Everything is grinding to a halt. The economy, society and everyday life itself will soon be unable to function. 

There is at least one source of suffering of the people and accelerant of the crisis that is wholly of the President’s choice: the unique, and cruelly calamitous, fertiliser policy. 

When a regime fails to ensure supplies of essential goods and services, wrecks food production and literally paralyses a country in a manner never even remotely experienced in 30 years of war, it has betrayed its mandate, unilaterally abrogated the social contract and forfeited the moral right to govern beyond any reasonable doubt.

When a regime causes multiple dysfunctions and dislocations, and itself exhibits multiple dysfunctions; when it is proves itself incapable and inflexible, insensitive and unintelligent, then any prescription for restoring a functioning country must involve as a prerequisite, the replacement of the regime. 

If the regime refuses to change its policy for the better, the citizens have a right to change the regime. It is coming down to an existential choice: do the people exist or does the regime exist? 

Any leadership with a conscience or wisdom would look for the exit ramp; step down and hand the country over to a coalition drawn from the Government and Opposition to run affairs. 

Since there is no sign that the regime has either good sense or decency, what then can be done? Public opinion cannot influence the country’s leadership, but it can exercise leverage over the governing coalition, the Opposition and civil society itself. Here’s my 5-point formula:

1. The economic catastrophe requires the country’s best economic brains to provide a solution. Economic think tanks such as Verite, Econsult, IPS, Advocata, etc. should hold a joint emergency roundtable and present a report with recommendations to the leaders of Government and Opposition parties for adoption. The report should be made public. If policy differences are too great for a single report, there can be two (Tracks A and B).

2. The SLFP and the other parties of the ruling alliance should quit the government, ending its two-thirds majority and making it less stonily stubborn and more malleable.

3. If the leadership fails to be flexible even then, the decent members of the ruling party itself should quit and join the SLFP in Opposition.

4. The SLFP, its allies and SLPP dissidents need not join the main Opposition formation or the JVP-NPP, in or out of Parliament. They can constitute themselves into an independent 

centre-left Opposition stream which can later negotiate with the main, established Opposition, or not.  

5. If the government cannot be changed from above and within, then the people will make things ungovernable from below, and they will have a moral right to do so, because it is for their survival and that of their families.  

Asian autonomy, new non-alignment?

An important takeaway from the response of the world to the Ukraine crisis is the undeclared, unofficial but discernible contours of an Asian convergence or consensus— ‘consensus’ as distinct from ‘unanimity’—to stake out an autonomous position, taking a balanced view. The Asian consensus was visible in South Asia together with some countries of Southeast Asia. That our neighbourhood, South Asia, refrained from being split between India and Pakistan by a crisis in Europe was very heartening. It is hardly usual to see India and Pakistan, bitter rivals, taking what may be termed a compatible stand. They were joined by Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Nepal and the Maldives were outliers. 

When there is an observable overlap or compatibility between Asia’s two competitive powers, India and China, it is a qualitatively significant development.

India and China abstained in the UN Security Council vote on the Ukraine crisis. India is a member of the Quad, China is the closest friend of Russia, and yet both abstained. China did not condone Russia’s action and India did not condemn it. 

At the UN Human Rights Council resolution on Ukraine, China voted against. India and Pakistan abstained. 

Though most Sri Lankans who opine on foreign policy are well aware of India as a member of the Quad, few would know that India is also a member of a grouping called the R-I-C, which stands for Russia-India-China; a formula of Russia’s iconic post-cold war foreign policy thinker, Foreign Minister and PM Evgeni Primakov, who derived his inspiration for this formula from Lenin’s very last text in which the latter predicted that the preponderant influence on the long-term global outcome would come from Russia, India and China. 

In the UNSC resolution on Russia-Ukraine, the UNGA debate and the vote on the UNHRC resolution, the RIC held and superseded India’s Quad identity. 

The latest official US document on the Indo-Pacific accepts the notion of “ASEAN-centric”. And yet, ASEAN as an entity neither condoned nor condemned Russia. The Philippines which has defence ties with the USA has so far not condemned Russia. Neither the contradictions with China, a strategic partner (and friend ‘without limits’) of Russia, nor the value accorded in East Asia to the deterrent and balancing presence of the USA, nor yet the stand of Japan, could get ASEAN off the fence. 

What is more, the ASEAN member-states have secessionist threats or memories of them. It also has small countries which have had to deal with threats or actual interventions from larger neighbours. However, neither factor stampeded ASEAN into a knee-jerk condemnation of Russia. Here, the role of Vietnam has been crucial in preventing lopsided collective partiality. 

Each Asian state had its own reasons. In international relations and foreign policy, international law is an important factor but hardly the sole factor, sometimes not even the main factor, and certainly not the single prism through which matters are seen and sole criterion according to which decisions are made. There are principles that govern international relations (IR) but they aren’t always principles of international law. 

Apart from an introductory reference to Hammurabi, international law really enters IR only with Hugo Grotius, a long way from Thucydides in 5th century BC, and never as a foundational text. International realities always supersede international law. Security concerns and strategic considerations, threat perceptions, power and the state (wielding a monopoly of violence) as main protagonist, are among those realities. 

What matters are each state’s perceptions of the interests of that state and the calculus made by each state of the relations it has with the main players in any given question—in this case the West and Russia. 

Almost all South Asian and ASEAN states have a relationship with Russia that they value. Most have also watched the developments in Europe from a postcolonial perspective, and viewed with alarm the five waves of NATO expansion in the direction of Russia. Asia also recognises Russia as a Eurasian country. 

Having undertaken such a calculus, most states of the SAARC and ASEAN regions chose, despite other contradictions and compulsions, to adopt a measured policy of non-collusion and non-condemnation; walking a tightrope while carefully balancing between contending principles: non-intervention vs legitimate security concerns. India combined both principles. Its UNGA address refrained from mentioning Russia. 

The Asian consensus of refusing band-wagoning with one side in this New Cold War amounts to the adoption of a de facto Nonaligned policy. Given that Nonalignment was conceived in Bandung 1955 before it was born in Belgrade in 1961– the capital of a country blasted out of existence by NATO in 1999—it can be said that Nonalignment had an Asian origin and vocation. 

Nonalignment was born as a third space which refused to be polarised between the two contending blocs of the Cold War. It is but natural that the Third or New Cold War should witness an autonomous Asian reflex action which may yield a New Nonalignment. Asia’s conduct during the Ukraine crisis demonstrates that it is the natural home of multipolarity. 

As Georgia did, Ukraine also holds lessons for the Sri Lankan majoritarian (“Sinhala Buddhist”) chauvinists. If majoritarian nationalism attempts to impose its agenda on national linguistic-regional minorities who have ethnic kin in a neighbouring state, then the minority looks to that neighbouring state. Often the minority receives solidarity. If the majoritarian hegemonistic state which has alienated its own minorities and refuses to share power with them, also poses a threat to the neighbouring state by becoming a hub of a power or powers that are perceived as posing a threat to the neighbour, then the neighbour will either arm, train and support the ‘kin’ minority, or if it is sufficiently large and incensed, will openly intervene

Sri Lankan stance

This is a space that Sri Lanka, located in South Asia should be most comfortable in. It would be reckless for Sri Lanka to step outside of the South Asian and larger Asian consensus. The UNP’s Sir John Kotelawala crossed swords with Asian legends, China’s Zhou Enlai and India’s Nehru at Bandung in 1955 earning the reputation of “Bandung Booruwa” (the Bandung donkey) and paying the domestic price at the election of 1956. The UNP regime of J.R. Jayewardene supported the UK on the Falklands/Malvinas issue, breaking ranks with the Nonaligned, and paid the heaviest price down the road when we were left to fend for ourselves in 1987. Argentina has yet to forgive and forget. States have elephantine institutional memories. Addressing the UNGA in 2003 Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe refused to condemn the unprovoked Western invasion of Iraq. 

Just as every Asian state, in determining its national interest, has its own relationship with Russia to consider, so too does Sri Lanka. When we fought a long war against separatist-terrorism, Russia consistently supported and defended us in all global forums, especially in New York and Geneva. 

As Gordon Weiss noted ruefully in The Cage, that unlike in Geneva, Sri Lanka was safe in New York because we always had the umbrella of Russian and Chinese veto-power during the decisive last stages of the war. 

Just as Pakistan always recalls the support extended by Sri Lanka in 1971 (the morality of that stance was certainly questionable) and that gratitude proved decisive when the Tigers were besieging Jaffna in 2000 and we obtained MBRLs from the Pakistani stocks, we must never forget Russia’s diplomatic support when the so-called Co-Chairs were moving or backing resolutions against Sri Lanka. 

As Georgia did, Ukraine also holds lessons for the Sri Lankan majoritarian (“Sinhala Buddhist”) chauvinists. If majoritarian nationalism attempts to impose its agenda on national linguistic-regional minorities who have ethnic kin in a neighbouring state, then the minority looks to that neighbouring state. Often the minority receives solidarity. If the majoritarian hegemonistic state which has alienated its own minorities and refuses to share power with them, also poses a threat to the neighbouring state by becoming a hub of a power or powers that are perceived as posing a threat to the neighbour, then the neighbour will either arm, train and support the ‘kin’ minority, or if it is sufficiently large and incensed, will openly intervene.    

The only way to prevent this is to arrive at an autonomy solution with the minority bordering a strong state. If a state fails to do this in time, the areas in which national minorities form a compact majority, get hived-off by the bigger neighbouring state. This is what happened in Georgia and Ukraine.

What stopped it going all the way for Sri Lanka was the signing of the Indo-Sri Lanka Accord by President J.R. Jayewardene in 1987, followed by the piloting of the 13th amendment through Parliament by Prime Minister Premadasa.  

The risk could have reappeared with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s tilt to China coupled with his refusal to reiterate the commitment he gave as a troika member, to implement the 13th amendment. The risk has receded because the GR administration has crashed Sri Lanka’s economy to such an extent, the Government itself is willing to auction the island off to the highest bidder who may turn out to be India. 

That said, it can always happen again, with this or another administration in Delhi, a different mood in Tamil Nadu, and some incident related to land-grabbing and military repression in the North, unless the 13th amendment is actually implemented in the form of an active Provincial Council. 

If the two Minsk accords (2014 and 2015) been implemented by the Kiev Government – which however was too ‘nationalist’ to do so even though they were party to it, the separatist republics would not have been recognised and the war would not have been triggered. Something for the drafters of the proposed new Constitution to bear in mind. 

David vs Goliath? 

What of the argument that as a small state on the doorstep of a large one, and with memories of coercive interventionism Sri Lanka should take the side of Ukraine against Russia? 

If any country has experienced military intervention, destabilisation and economic blockade at the hands of a larger, more powerful one—in this case the greatest military power in history—it is Cuba, an authentic David, not a superpower proxy. Every year in the UNGA, Cuba’s resolution against the decades-long US economic embargo (the blockade) wins by record majorities. Here are some pertinent extracts from the statement of the Cuban Foreign Ministry: 

“The US determination to continue NATO’s progressive expansion towards the Russian Federation borders has brought about a scenario with implications of unpredictable scope, which could have been avoided.

…History will hold the United States accountable for the consequences of an increasingly offensive military doctrine outside NATO’s borders, which threatens international peace, security and stability.

…Ignoring for decades the well-founded claims of the Russian Federation concerning security guarantees and assuming that Russia would remain defenceless in the face of a direct threat to its national security was a mistake. Russia has the right to defend itself. Peace cannot be achieved by sieging or cornering States. 

…Cuba rejects hypocrisy and double standards. It should be recalled that in 1999 the United States and NATO launched a major aggression against Yugoslavia, a European country that was fragmented with a high cost in human lives in pursuit of geopolitical objectives, disregarding the UN Charter. 

The United States and some allies have used force on many occasions. They have invaded sovereign states to bring about regime changes and interfere in the internal affairs of other nations that do not submit to their interests of domination and defend their territorial integrity and independence…” (Havana, 26 February 2022, Cubaminrex)

The West’s declared attempt to isolate Russia appears surreal when India and China, the world’s two most populous countries, have studiedly refused to do any such thing.