One of the important diplomatic events in the lead up to the presidential elections of the United States of America was the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent Indian Ocean region visit. This high-profile visit attempted to integrate US’s efforts to increase its influence in the strategic island countries of the Indian ocean region with India’s intent to gravitate towards the QUAD alliance. Expectedly, as noted in the previous article, this trip was unsuccessful due to the lack of sufficient recognition of the factors that are subverting the US influence in South Asia. Excluding the conclusion of BECA agreement, which was the result of India’s increased anxiety with respect to its border disputes with China, Pompeo had failed to achieve America’s objectives in the Indian ocean island countries such as Maldives, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka during his visit. The successful defiance of these small countries against America’s Indo-Pacific policy is the outcome of the reticent Indian involvement. India always considers a bilateral relationship between these islands and an external power as an intrusion in its sphere of influence and strives to attenuate such relationships. As a much-delayed initial step in reprimanding this nexus, Pompeo had unveiled an US Embassy in Maldives to decouple American involvement in that country from India-Lanka partnership. A contemplation about US’s blunders in Asia will reveal the intensity of the failure of Pompeo’s visit as China is solidifying its hold in the region.
LASTING EFFECTS OF KISSINGER’S FIASCO IN HIS ASIA POLICY
The rift between the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China about the political interpretation of the Marxist ideologies had transformed into a geopolitical rivalry during the second half of 1950s and precipitated a border conflict between the two Communist powers in 1969. As these two communist rivals were drifting apart in the early seventies, American strategists interpreted it as a conducive political environment for a decent exit from their misadventures in Vietnam with a help from China. Acting as the National security advisor to the Nixon administration, Henry Kissinger had proposed a radical improvement in the relations with the People’s Republic of China as a policy overture to counter the influence of Soviet Union. The American motives for this cooperation were: Securing China’s help for a decent exit from Vietnam, a mitigation in Beijing’s anti US stand, and a mediation in future Sino-Soviet Relationship.
In return China expected from United States the following: Protection from a Soviet attack, Isolation of Taiwan, and Participation in the western financial order and trade institutions.
This relationship was conjured by Kissinger, who then persuaded Nixon towards its successful implementation, for the containment of the Soviet Union’s power projection and the proliferation of the Communist Ideology into rest of Asia and other zones of Western Influence. His gamble opened the gates, for the civilizational behemoth that is China, to the western trade system which Beijing used expediently to grow its economic might at unprecedented levels in the years that followed. Regrettably for the United States, when Kissinger unfairly equated a rising China to the declining military state of Soviet Union, his underestimation of the growth potential of the Chinese had extirpated the possibility of a Unipolar world in the aftermath of the disintegration of Soviet Union. At the end of five decades since the normalization of USA-PRC relations, China has achieved all its objectives for the commencement of its association with the west and America is apprehensively gauging the abiding effects of its strategic oversight.
Pompeo’s Indian Ocean visit was a part of the broader US strategy that categorically aims to rectify the blunders of his predecessor Henry Kissinger. When Pompeo returned Washington from his failed Sri Lankan visit, America has again started gyrating towards the initial point in the replication of its worst geopolitical crisis: an Asian version of its Cuban problem.
AMERICA’S ISLAND CONUNDRUM
From its heydays at the beginning of Cold war till the dissolution of the Soviet Union, America had wistfully tried to bring the strategic Island of Cuba under its ambit of influence. Albeit being a small island with a paucity of Economic resources, it demonstrated the fragility of US’s military preparedness. The idea that a small island can plunge a global power into a security crisis dealt a blow to America’s stature as a Super Power in the perception of other countries.
Cold war era Cuba and contemporary Sri Lanka have many parallels between them. Sinhalese population detest the American presence in the Indian Ocean region. They denounce America every time an US official visits their country, the latest occurrence being the Sinhala communists protest outside the US embassy in Colombo against Pompeo’s visit. Blinded by their enmity towards America, Cuban rulers directly took part in the Cold war by hosting the Soviet Nuclear missiles. Likewise, the Sinhala Buddhist rulers also have a strong proclivity to push their country away from west. They have successfully evaded American attempts for influence in the past. But American strategists have not so far recognized the destabilizing abilities of the Sinhala regime as they continue to engage them only in futile ways.
SINHALA BUDDHIST REGIME IS A NEO-NAZI THREAT FOR AMERICA
In the last ten years, the American attempts such as a human rights violation resolution in the Human rights council, preference for Maithiripala Sirisena government over Mahinda Rajapaksa’s, IMF bailouts, and designation of certain military officers for their brutalities in the Eelam war have all failed considerably in providing the intended outcome for the US. This is because, neo-Nazi Sinhala regime is reliant on the Indian Support which it believes will give immunity from all the western initiatives that scrutinizes their genocidal military conquest of Tamil homeland in the island.
For the US to make any substantial progress in the island it has to overcome this overt partnership. As America is trying to increase its military support to Taiwan and upgrade its maritime activities in the South China Sea, the island of Sri Lanka is where it will face the Chinese response for its Indo Pacific domain. It was clearly evident this time from a sharp and pointed Chinese response during Pompeo’s visit to the island. It has become apparent that the US cannot depend anymore on the Sinhala authoritarian government for a favourable stand as it has consolidated its ethno-religious majoritarian rule across the entire island and yet it seems that American policy makers have not learnt their lessons from Nazi Germany, Myanmar, Cuba, and Iran.
PREVENTING A GEOPOLITICAL CRISIS: A PRIORITY FOR THE BIDEN HARRIS ADMINISTRATION
With India becoming more and more religiously polarized, the neo-Nazi Sinhalese government would feel highly motivated to convert the island into an anti-thesis of liberal, democratic, and secular values. As they construe West as the promotor of these inclusive principles, the Sinhala Buddhist government is likely to undertake presumptuous steps that aims to prevent US involvements in the future. Whilst the incumbent administration’s failure in alleviating the awaiting crisis, the incoming Biden-Kamala Harris government should recognize the scale of the threat and neutralize the neo-Nazi threat that is aiming to utilize the super power rivalry to its benefit without considering the stability of this region. The aids released by the US and other western institutions are utilized by the Sinhala regime to pay its debt to China and therefore are not reflected on the economic growth in the island which the US is trying to promote.
The incoming administration should consider potent ways to bring stability to the Indian ocean region, and it also should stop paying the costs for the incompetence of the Sinhala government. The Cuban missile crisis implicated that when US’s focus is concentrated in a specific region, other powers can exploit it to their advantage, as in this case the Sino-Indian war boosted China’s influence in Asia. Since America is directly involved in east Asian region quite extensively, the south Asian region is where the opportunities lie for other powers to intercede with Indo-Pacific policy and Sri Lanka’s proximity to the geo-economic power centre of Indian ocean region, Tamil Mainland (Tamil Nadu), makes it imperative for America to pragmatically engage mainland Tamils when it calibrates to intensify the South Asian involvement.
