For close to a decade, if not longer, Lakshman Kadirgamar shaped the course of Sri Lanka’s foreign policy. No other political figure exerted as much influence on our relations with the world as he did.
Yesterday (12) marked 18 years since his assassination by the LTTE. On Wednesday (9) the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute (LKI), his brainchild, decided to honour his legacy by inaugurating an annual Foreign Policy Seminar. At the opening address, LKI Executive Director Ravinatha Aryasinha noted the importance of adopting a Sri Lankan perspective in our dealings with the world.
Kadirgamar was aware of this imperative, and, for the better part of his career, he strived to align the shifting currents of world politics and global opinion with Sri Lanka’s interests. Indeed, from the very inception it became his overarching objective, to the extent that it determined whatever policy or reform he proposed.
That the Government of the day did not always listen to him, that ideologues from that Government praise him today, despite not understanding, or worse misunderstanding, his philosophy, says much about our collective amnesia.
For some, Kadirgamar remains a Sri Lankan, for others an internationalist. Yet he was aware that such dichotomies could not serve Sri Lanka’s interests. Those who try to class him in either category have hence misinterpreted him.
Kadirgamar’s diplomacy
Acutely aware of the geopolitics of the region, Kadirgamar knew more than many of his colleagues that Sri Lanka’s strategic importance could only be protected by securing its sovereignty.
His understanding of sovereignty, however, could not be more different from those who saw it as an endgame, an end in itself. For Kadirgamar, diplomacy was not only about protecting the country’s interests, but also about ensuring reciprocity.
This was why, while seeking an international ban on the LTTE before the Western axis began its ‘War on Terror,’ he emphasised a long-term and sustainable solution to Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict. In other words, he knew foreign policy could not be viewed in isolation from domestic politics and issues. The one flowed into the other, constituting a recurring cycle.
Kadirgamar’s achievements have been considerable enough to merit praise from every corner. Two stand out in particular: his handling of the LTTE and his reformation of the diplomatic service. In both, however, he had to reckon with forces that ultimately crippled his vision.
His tenure as Foreign Minister coincided with a series of military successes. Yet these were soon followed by monumental defeats on the one hand and a stalemate in the peace process, along with a worsening in interethnic relations, on the other.
Under him, appointments to the diplomatic service became much more technocratic and meritocratic. Yet that did not prevent the deterioration of the foreign policy bureaucracy later on, a point Rajiva Wijesinha notes in his book ‘Representing Sri Lanka’.
Foreign policy ideals
I think this downward spiral reflected what was unfolding in the rest of the world. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the US as the sole superpower pushed Sri Lanka away from its roots in the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). Though Kadirgamar traced his lineage to the likes of Gamani Corea, who had moored Sri Lanka in the movement, the ideals for which the country once stood quickly went out of fashion.
Corea’s caustic response to critics of institutions like UNCTAD – he contended, correctly, that those who wanted to shut them down had no qualms about military alliances like NATO – echoed the mood of many of his contemporaries, but not so Kadirgamar’s.
It was in this light that Anura Bandaranaike, while praising his father’s foreign policy, could advocate the burial of NAM, a movement he no longer saw as relevant or significant. Such sentiments are shared even today, as witnessed by the Ambassador who told Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka and Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha that Africans could not be trusted and Cubans were not decent.
In other words, the foreign policy ideals that have become so commonplace today – South-South cooperation, multipolarity, strategic autonomy – did not seem important, still less relevant, at the time. Indeed, even the notion of state sovereignty, on which countries like Sri Lanka had stood for decades, seemed open to question.
This is why, while pursuing a successful international campaign against the LTTE, Kadirgamar’s own Government could undermine it by an overtly militant anti-war campaign which discouraged Army recruits and eventually led to the recapture of Jaffna by the LTTE in 2000.
In a similar vein, the same political interests which had prevailed against the Ceasefire Agreement – an agreement Kadirgamar never batted for, still less championed – could try to push through the P-TOMS Agreement, another initiative he never promoted in public.
These contradictions undermined not just Kadirgamar’s intentions, but also the very fabric of the Chandrika Kumaratunga Government. Whatever sanity and sense prevailed in that administration’s foreign policy was solely due to Kadirgamar and no one else. If his policy was ever bungled up, it was the Government, not Kadirgamar, that was to blame.
Right policies at the wrong time
In other words, Sri Lanka’s most respected and most accomplished Foreign Minister found himself promoting the right policies at the wrong time. His vision of the world existed beyond Sri Lanka and his vision for Sri Lanka existed beyond the narrow confines of ethnicity.
At the same time, however, he was no rootless cosmopolitan, detached from his people. Though hailing from an elite milieu, he never failed to acknowledge that, to paraphrase the title of his daughter’s biography of him, “the cake was baked at home”.
It was Kadirgamar’s tragedy that this combination of cosmopolitanism and patriotism lost favour in the very Government he served. Yet, to the last he remained a staunch believer in his cause.
Today we have become more polarised: nationalism has become a byword for chauvinism, internationalism a byword for globalism. Against such a backdrop, I believe Kadirgamar remains our best guide to charting these difficult waters, particularly given the crisis we are undergoing now.
He knew, as few of his successors did not, that Sri Lanka’s future lay in Sri Lanka achieving a balance between our interests and the concerns of the rest of the world. It is this balance that has evaded us for a long time.
(The writer is a freelance columnist who can be reached at udakdev1@gmail.com. He is the Chief International Relations Analyst at Factum, an Asia-Pacific focused foreign policy think tank based in Colombo and accessible via www.factum.lk)