Ranil’s Geopolitics
JUN 30 2018Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe’s ‘Saman Kelegama’ lecture of yesterday’s revolved round two main themes: Geopolitics and the Government’s economic policy.
In geopolitics, his message rested around the tussle between China on one hand and Japan and India on the other, and their bid to take control of the Indian Ocean, with Sri Lanka at the centre stage.
Reaping the economic benefits from this battle sans a military conflict involved in taking advantage of China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR) initiative and the Indo-Japanese collaboration of ‘Asia-Africa Growth Corridor, Freedom of Oceans’ strategy.
As long as the rivalry is commercial and doesn’t go beyond that it doesn’t matter, the Premier said. The innuendo of Wickremesinghe’s phrase ‘doesn’t go beyond that’ was that the Indian Ocean rivalry doesn’t ‘degenerate’ to a military conflict where all will be losers, underlined by the fact that both China and India are nuclear armed.
The tangible benefits of Sri Lanka taking advantage of this rivalry are however yet to be seen. What however is visible is China steaming ahead with the Colombo Port City Development project and in the hinterland, the Hambantota Port Development project.
Nonetheless, India and Japan being democracies don’t have the liberty to lavish their taxpayers’ moneys in foreign climes, like Beijing which is not accountable to its masses. While China may have one overarching goal of being militarily superior, to what the USA is/was, India’s and Japan’s pursuits overseas, even if they may also be justified politically, the ultimate judge however is their own citizens, who will deliver their verdict at an election.
Therefore, however much Wickremesinghe may say of exploiting this rivalry to Sri Lanka’s advantage, the reality may be different with only one country, China, being ‘prominently’ in the race.
To underline this fact, a classic case is the US$ 200 million Mattala Airport project, ‘another’ Mahinda Rajapaksa white elephant, built after obtaining commercial loans from China. As a tradeoff to Hambantota Port, the ‘other’ white elephant project, the Wickremesinghe Government gave to the Chinese on a ‘debt to equity’ swap amounting to $ 1.1 billion.
The next ‘talk step’ was to give Mattala to the Indians in a similar fashion, whilst simultaneously allaying the fears of the Indians after China’s ‘intrusion’ into Hambantota. But the Indian investment is yet to materialize. In fact Wickremesinghe, at his yesterday’s talk referred to Mattala, ‘loudly’ inferring that it will be subjected to the similar ‘debt treatment cure’ as Hambantota. But then, actions speak louder than words.
A significant factor in Wickremesinghe’s speech was that the economic importance of the USA, Sri Lanka’s largest export market, not being highlighted. He made three references to the USA. One, half in jest and the other two, ‘matter of fact’.
They were that the Donald Trump policies were ‘driving’ Chinese investments into Hambantota, US tariffs on their allies were making the latter to look at Indian Ocean rim countries for trade and investments and lastly, that China is the growing superpower similar to what the USA was.
Wickremesinghe has understood geopolitics in general and US geopolitics in particular, well.
The USA, under Trump is going back to isolationism, first seen before the USA’s involvement in World War I in 1917, three years into the Great War and again in 1929 after the Wall Street collapse leading to the Great Depression. The USA came out of that shell only on 7 December, 1941, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbour. But 77 years later, under Trump, the USA is once more going back into its shell, giving China a free hand to rule the roost.
On the Government’s economic policies, Wickremesinghe inferred that whereas Rajapaksa’s policies were debt-driven infrastructure-led growth, theirs was a ‘trade and investment’ policy with protection to the local industry.
Balancing ‘trade and investment’ with ‘protectionism’ may be a difficult act to perform. But as Wickremesinghe said, ‘Politics is the art of the possible.’ Actions speak louder than words, probably being guided by the voting masses and not ‘big’ businesses which fund elections?
