President Maithripala Sirisena last week opened in Colombo a meeting of 60 Senior Drug Enforcement Officials of the Indian Ocean Region highlighting the emerging centrality of Sri Lanka, especially in dealing with non-traditional security challenges. Expanding traffic and commerce has already made Indian Ocean the nucleus of power projections, proving prophecies of celebrated scholars such as Robert Kaplan, who wrote in his book Monsoon that this region will become "as iconic in the new century as Europe was in the last century." Hopefully, we have learnt lessons, and contestations of the US-China-India 'triangle' will not make this century as violent as the last one.
Sithara Fernando of General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University (Sri Lanka) seeks to address some of these questions: what are the prospects of competition or cooperation within this strategic triangle; what pattern will their relations assume; how can stability be maintained; and what does it means for Sri Lanka? He uses the framework of Harry Harding of University of Virginia who has done pioneering work on US-China-India and he classifies strategic triangles into four types: all-working-together; two-against-one; all-against-all; and, one mediating the conflict between other two.
Swaran Singh Nilanthi Samaranayake, who examines the US perspectives, agrees with this view but underlines how US focus remains 'global' freedom of navigation and how, given its enduring alliance systems, US remains far more glued to Atlantic/Pacific Oceans. In spite of the increased importance of India to US, the latter does not fully share India's anxieties about China's forays into Indian Ocean. Also, Samaranayake does not see China being as preoccupied with the Indian Ocean as is India, and not even US.
Li Qingyan of China Institute of International Studies presents the Chinese perspective. The main contradiction in Indian Ocean, for her, is between global hegemon US and regional hegemon India; not between China-India or China-US. She says, commerce across the Indian Ocean surpassing both Atlantic and Pacific will only intensify this contradiction. The editor's chapter seeks posits scenarios from purely theoretical perspectives. At least in traditional security framework, India's strategic location makes China and US compete in courting New Delhi. While realism paints US-India as joining against China , social constructivism projects all working together. From a non-traditional security perspective, Abhijit Singh of the Indian Navy shows how pollution, piracy, trafficking etc necessitate cooperation He cites several examples.
Two chapters from the Sri Lankan perspective, by Prasanna Alahakoon and Y. N. Jayarathna, both from the Sri Lankan Navy, highlight the vantage points of history and location of Sri Lanka. While Alahakoon examines how the port of Trincomalee had lured sea-faring powers from ancient times, Jayarathna busts the myth of the ‘String of Pearls’ saying that, in modern warfare, both technologies and methodologies do not privilege port calls. Trincomalee is one of the world's largest natural harbours, is four miles wide and five miles across east-west and is so deep that nuclear submarines inside the harbour can avoid radar or sonar detection. But Alahakoon proposes to make it a staging post for disaster relief and tourism to help Sri Lanka mediate in this unstable strategic triangle and benefit from their help in naval modernisation and maritime infrastructure.
While various contributors do not present any consensus, the editor concludes that broadly speaking the dynamics of this triangle will be one of complex-competitive-coexistence where counter-realpolitik socialisation will enhance their cooperation. As regards Sri Lanka, the challenge he sees lies in the tendency amongst these formidable powers to subordinate this island to their own grand strategies. But Colombo, he says, must engage all of them but do so without getting too close to any of the three.
Dr. Swaran Singh is Professor for Diplomacy and Disarmament at Centre for International Politics, Organization and Disarmament (CIPOD), School of International Studies, JNU, New Delhi
