Saturday, January 14, 2012 A former American Diplomat says, India must prevent further Chinese involvement in Sri Lankan affairs, as the Chinese have already made its mark on the island.
Former U.S. diplomat William H. Avery said, in a book titled “China’s Nightmare, America’s Dream: India as the Next Global Power” that India must pressure Sri Lanka to kick out the Chinese and become a kind of vassal state.
In the book, extracts of which were published in the Wall Street Journal last week, Avery describes how India just stood by and watched as China moved in to build a port at Hambantota.
Avery, now a business consultant, served at the U.S. Consulate in Chennai in the 1990s, a time when India’s relations with the U.S. nosedived following New Delhi’s nuclear tests. Avery opens the book with this see-sawing policy to illustrate how, in his view, the U.S. response to India often has been short-sighted.
Avery says, India must respond to the challenge of an authoritarian China, by spending even more on defense and using economic coercion to influence its neighbors. “India must now concentrate on the Finlandization of Sri Lanka,” referring to Finland’s subjugation by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. “In the short term this will mean preventing any further non-Indian involvement in Sri Lanka’s affairs.”
