Taking Sri Lankan Foreign Policy to the Post-Confrontational Phase

The government’s external policy strength lies in the position of equidistance it is now maintaining with regional, continental and global powers.

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena (right) with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. Credit: Reuters

BY JAYADEVA UYANGODA ON 29/06/2016

Foreign policymaking is infinitely more complex than what politicians in the opposition, or those who are aspiring to come to power, want the public to believe. Sri Lankan’s leaders have been learning this simple, yet fundamental lesson, since last January. That is why the foreign policy positions of the current government seem to have been in a continuous state of flux.

There is a good reason for it to be so. The government has been compelled to confront a number of factors and pressures in establishing its own ‘foreign policy identity’. I do not think there is yet evidence to suggest that the government wants to have, or has been able to establish, a firm ideological identity in its external relations, as has been the case with many governments in the past, particularly the previous one of Mahinda Rajapaksa. Avoiding an ideological identity in its foreign policy strategies seems to be a key defining feature of the Maithripala Sirisena-Ranil Wikremasinghe administration at present.

Some see this flexibility as a weakness of the government. There is, however, another way of looking at it. It represents the essential dimension of pragmatism in foreign policy, necessitated by a range of complex domestic, regional and global factors. Muddling through is not necessarily a sign of weakness, or a prelude to disaster, in a context where the government has been experimenting with different responses to some key foreign policy determinants.

What are the key determinants that have shaped Sri Lanka’s foreign policy since January last year? We can put them in two groups.

Regime change

The first is electoral and regime change compulsions. Any new government would want to steer a new path of foreign policy. Given the atmosphere of extreme hostility between the two camps, the new government was compelled to abandon immediately the foreign policy orientation of Rajapaksa. The new orientation was seen in the restoration of closeness with regional as well global powers that had earlier been marginalised. This core dimension of Sri Lankan foreign policy continues with only a slight change.

This change is felt primarily in relations with China. Beijing had maintained a close political proximity to the previous government and its leadership. China’s aloofness to the emerging opposition during even the last months of 2014 was somewhat inexplicable too. All this led the new government to adopt a policy of distancing itself from China, both politically and economically. One could even detect some degree of tension between Sri Lanka’s new establishment and the Chinese government; this became somewhat noticeable with regard to the Colombo Port City development project. The government has since passed that initial phase of uncertainty and now appears to have refined its core foreign policy stance to be ‘friendship with all; enmity with none’.

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