Sri Lanka is firmly on the wrong side of history

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Since that seismic event that impacted the global order established in 1945, Sri Lanka has chosen to be on the wrong side of international law, decency, and history. On numerous occasions the foreign policy establishment of the country decided to side against the principles of territorial integrity, sovereignty, non-aggression and basic human decency. 

This week too, at the 11th emergency special session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York that adopted a new resolution calling for an end to the war, Sri Lanka joined a few countries that did not support the move. 141 Member States voted in favour of the resolution and seven against. Sri Lanka was among the 32 that abstained. 

This was the same position Sri Lanka took when the world body overwhelmingly condemned the Russian move in September 2022 to annex four provinces of Ukraine and the initial condemnation of the invasion in February 2022. By doing so Sri Lanka has rejected the notions of sovereignty and territorial integrity of a nation which have been the cornerstones of the international world order which prohibit states from the use of force against the “territorial integrity or political independence” of another state. This principle is enshrined in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and has been recognised as customary international law. 

Conversely, this ensures that imposition by force of a border change is an act of aggression. The days of aggression and territorial expansion using military force were supposed to be a thing of the past after witnessing their devastating impact in two world wars. Having faced an internal challenge to our own territorial integrity and as a nation living in the shadow of a giant neighbour that had in 1987 violated the country’s air space and later intervened in its domestic affairs, one would assume Sri Lanka would be a staunch defender of these principles.

Last year, during the initial stages of the invasion of Ukraine this newspaper in an editorial cautioned that “Russia will lose; Sri Lanka should not.” Though the military outcome of the war was uncertain at that time the ideological battle taking place was clear and the outcome was certain. It was a battle between two value systems: the people of Ukraine seeking greater integration with Europe and the conditions that entail that membership – a liberal democratic government, adherence to the rule of law, independent judiciary and media and a free market economy. Vladimir Putin’s Russia has decreed that the nation of Ukraine does not exist and is seeking its subjugation through territorial expansion by military conquest. 

Today, as the war marks its one-year anniversary, Russia has already lost, its military diminished, internationally isolated, and economically weakened. Rather than subjugating the whole of Ukraine as it intended to do a year ago, Russia is fighting today to maintain occupied territory in eastern Ukraine. The blunder has galvanised the western alliance, NATO is set to expand to Sweden and Finland and Ukraine has proven more than able to withstand the onslaught of what was supposed to be the second largest military in the world.

As these events unfold, Sri Lanka’s foreign policy establishment under President Ranil Wickremesinghe has shown little deviation from his predecessor. The same anti-democratic, unprincipled and isolationist policies that were pursued by the Gotabaya Rajapaksa administration are now continued by the current regime. It is this bankruptcy in policy and lack of substance that is glaringly visible in its voting on the Ukrainian invasion.

When the story of Ukraine is told, it would be of the perseverance and triumph of a free people who fought with the assistance of the democracies of the world against a tyrant. In that story, Sri Lanka, Asia’s oldest continuous democracy, will unfortunately be standing on the wrong side of history.