A week from last Sunday, and planet Earth seems to be a very different place. Such is the fragility of the current world order, where war and disruption seem to be never too far away, while peace, which everyone including the warmongers pontificate about, is never guaranteed or assured. The morbid odour of death and destruction pervades large chunks of the planet and it is only a matter of time before those of us who have no inclination to be pawns in global power games are nevertheless dragged into, or rather sucked into, one side or the other and the inevitable collateral damage that follows.
While the big boys play their dangerous games, including attacking known nuclear facilities, it is the smaller fry fighting for survival that get squashed the quickest, making mere survival a nightmare. Those nations that consider themselves economically better off and hence militarily superior seem to think that the world is theirs to conquer, be it monetarily or militarily. The doctrine of might is right, which the world thought belonged to the past, is very much alive and kicking thanks to the silence of the majority. World bodies like the United Nations, which were set up at the end of World War II, to prevent a third from taking place, appear to be toothless, powerless, and insignificant, reduced to being mere spectators issuing statements, which no one appears to take seriously either.
Therefore, the world order that we used to know where matters that concern nations are discussed and deliberated upon and decisions are arrived at based on consensus, which once upon a time was the preserve of astute diplomats, appears to be over with the advent of the might is right doctrine – be it Russia, America, Israel, or China. When Russia invaded Ukraine about three years ago, the rest of the world confined itself to merely issuing statements condemning the blatant act. Some, while condemning, continued to surreptitiously carry on trade with Russia, notwithstanding sanctions and a trade embargo. The sanctions appear to have had no deterrent effect over the course of the past three years, with Russia pounding Ukraine heavier than ever in the past couple of weeks.
The lukewarm response to the unprovoked Russian aggression appears to have emboldened Israel to continuously bombard Gaza since October 2023. The attack that was triggered by an outrageous Hamas terror attack on Israel, killing hundreds of concertgoers and with hundreds of hostages being taken, has resulted in retaliatory attacks way out of proportion to the provocation and continues to date, with Gaza reduced to a wasteland of rubble.
Across the Atlantic, Donald Trump has been making noises not only about acquiring Greenland, which he claims to be an inconvenient piece of real estate as far as America’s security is concerned, but has also been making outrageous overtures to Canada to surrender its sovereignty and become the 51st state of the United States. The only logical reason one can attribute to this line of thinking, where Trump assumes that every land he covets could be his, is the might is right doctrine, where the rules are written as the mighty go along and global unions like the UN become irrelevant.
Meanwhile, not to be outdone, Asia’s rising power China appears to have set its eyes on its contentious neighbour Taiwan. Whether it will take the cue from the rest and chart its own course we will have to wait and see, but the fact is that it is going with the flow and weighing its options. And if it chooses to, it knows that nothing more will ensue other than innocuous condemnation from the West.
Having blown Gaza back to the stone age and driven its entire population of two million out of their ancestral homeland, thus completing its project of ethnic cleansing, followed by large swathes of that land area already being earmarked for resettlement, Israel opened an entirely new flank by furiously attacking Iran from early morning on Friday (13). Iran is a different story to Gaza and, despite the loss of its military top brass in surgical strikes, is likely to meet the Israelis halfway.
At the end of the day, what seems an Israeli-Iranian conflict is in reality a proxy war between the Chinese, who have invested heavily in Iran as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, obviously with other designs, and the United States, whose proxy Israel has once again been commissioned to do its bidding. In fact, Trump was blunt, taking little effort to conceal the obvious, telling the media that he had warned Iran plenty. The fact that Trump has bypassed the UN in issuing direct ‘comply or face the consequences’ orders to Iran, a sovereign nation in its own right, is yet another example of the dangerous rise of the doctrine of might is right.
As far as Sri Lanka is concerned, the consequences of another protracted war in the Middle East will likely result in an immediate and direct bearing on its economy, with oil prices already soaring. Iran is also one of the biggest buyers of Ceylon Tea. Given Sri Lanka’s less than adequate reserves, a combination of rapidly rising fuel prices and a flood of new vehicle imports can potentially drain precious forex, which is why it is necessary to err on the side of caution when it comes to matters of the economy, given this latest development.
Speaking of which, the Government must also display that same level of caution when it comes to its foreign policy and choose wisely who it picks to be its friends. In a dramatically polarising world where a nation’s fortunes directly depend on the foreign policy choices it makes, to err on the side of caution would ideally be the preferred path, but that path is now already lost.
Having abandoned Sri Lanka’s longstanding foreign policy of non-alignment in favour of hitching its fortunes to neighbour India by entering into a gamut of memoranda of understanding covering key sectors including defence and health, its fortunes are now linked to that of India’s. While India is big enough to absorb the shocks of a protracted global conflict, not so Sri Lanka. The fact that the contents of these agreements have been kept a tight secret despite many promises to reveal the same and even appeals to the Right to Information Commission being ignored, it is safe to assume, at the very least, that non-alignment is no more.
In a dog-eat-dog world, the Government of Sri Lanka must be mindful that it runs the risk of facing collateral damage as a consequence of being irrational with its foreign policy. While the regime must urgently look into the welfare and possible evacuation of Sri Lankans caught in the crossfire in both Iran and Israel, it must also look beyond, at the economic and geopolitical implications. Already on the domestic front, there has been a noticeable increase in anger and resentment towards Israelis who have taken up residence here – some legally and others illegally. Questions are being raised as to why these groups are allowed to set up their own places of religious worship and as to why these places are being guarded day and night at taxpayers’ expense.
While the Government continues to rest on its laurels of having secured 159 seats in Parliament, it must realise that at the rate the world is changing, the power of office comes with a heavy responsibility. Whether a party that is at the helm for the first time has the capacity to deal with the impending crisis and the profound demands the job requires is to be seen, but what is not negotiable is the necessity to insulate the nation from the imminent fallout of a protracted global conflict and its implications.
At the same time, it must not lose focus of the ongoing trade wars in which Sri Lanka has little to brag about as far as gains are concerned. Those in charge must look at the big picture and see to it that the people of this nation are not made to pay for the ineptitude of those charged with forging Sri Lanka’s foreign policy.
In an increasingly lawless world, where leaders of rich and powerful nations act as a law unto themselves, rendering the established systems and protocols redundant for the most part, Sri Lanka should not succumb to geopolitical pressure and become a playground for the powerful.