India – Sri Lanka Foreign Affairs: New Chapter in Defence Cooperation Beyond Commerce

With Indian foreign policy playing an increasingly important role in the world the ongoing collaboration and close cooperation between these two nations will further intensify the economic and diplomatic opportunities for India and Sri Lanka beyond the South Asian region and the  Indian Ocean realm . Similarly, India being a regional superpower and slowly moving towards being a global power requires its foreign and defence policy to be transformed to a higher level concerning to a responsible behaviour towards its neighbour to bring about stability in this region. This transformation requires a collective approach not only from the big nations like India but also from small island states like Sri Lanka.

 India’s foreign and defence policy with its southern neighbour Sri Lanka is intact and it needs to get its southern neighbours on its side to create an environment of collective security and for enhancing the connectivity of the Exclusive Economic Zone(EEZ) between India, Sri Lanka and Maldives to approximately 3.7 million sq.km. For India, Sri Lanka is a vital strategic partner in the Indian Ocean realm to maintain a strong balance of power in this region. On the hand, for India, Sri Lanka an island nation positioned to its South, links West Asia to East Asia through important sea-lanes where an estimated 60,000 ships, passes through this maritime route each year. It is in the interest of both India and Sri Lanka to seek for a stable Indian Ocean Region and have strong and capable naval forces working in coordination to deal with the menace of piracy as well protect the Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOCs) through which cargo worth trillions of dollars is traded.

Moreover, to curtail China’s ‘One Belt One Road’ (OBOR) initiative and the ‘String of Pearls’ strategy, India has to reinforce its air, naval, land and nuclear defence abilities. In this manner, safeguarding the territorial integrity of these small island states should be the prime importance of India. Perhaps the most significant modernising chapter of the Sri Lankan Navy  was the mode in which it had paved the way for the creation of fast attack crafts, special arrow boat squadron, amphibious vessels, high frequency surface wave radar system, and the commissioning of several Offshore Patrol Vessels (OPV). The Government of Sri Lanka ( GoSL) had also ordered two advanced OPV’s worth $150 million from India. For that reason, for a small island state like Sri Lanka to allocate twelve percent of its annual budget estimated to be around $2 billion is much higher than the big nations like China and India. Since Sri Lanka is having a huge national security budget, big nations like India can directly profit by selling the defence capacities to Sri Lanka. However, India has also been sensitive to the issue of post-civil war nation building efforts in Sri Lanka. Therefore, these initiatives can lead towards developing interdependence policies between India and Sri Lanka.

Like all other South Asian nations, there are many opinions regarding the foreign and defence  cooperation strategies pursued by India and Sri Lanka. The Presidential elections of 2019 undeniably opened a new window of opportunity for both nations to strengthen this long standing association. Viewing through the prism of two-way diplomacy it is evidently worthwhile to say that both neighbourly nations share common interests, values and beliefs from generation to generation. Despite these promising signs, in years ahead India together with Sri Lanka needs to fashion out a new policy strategy.

Srimal Fernando is a Doctoral Fellow at Jindal School of International Affairs (JSIA),O P Jindal University, India and a Global Editor of Diplomatic Society for South Africa. He is the winner of the 2018/2019 ‘Best Journalist of the Year’ award in South Africa, and has been the recipient of GCA Media Award for 2016