A recent US Pentagon report, referred to in the above mentioned article, narrated all this with some alarm, because the US does not quite know what to do about the rise of China. Is China, the biggest creditor of the US, a collaborator or adversary in global affairs ? In earlier times, multilateral assistance to South Korea by surrogates of the US on its behalf, demonstrated clearly that the US does not want any sort of competition, and that the US will do what it takes to put even allies down when they try to raise their heads! This intense US obsession with self-interest as the only dynamic driving its virtually irrational foreign policy, applies to India as well, and the nuclear fuel agreement does nothing to erode this essential principle. In courting India, the US is only trying to build a buffer to slow the meteoric rise of China, but I don’t see this as leading inexorably to a US-Indian axis on all international issues. The Norwegian sponsorship of LTTE could easily have been nipped in the bud if the US flexed its muscle at a much earlier time, but my belief is that the US did not do so because the LTTE could have become a tool to potentially destabilize India on its southern flank if allowed full reign.

In terms of India’s domestic scenario, another issue is whether the Tamil Nadu view of Sri Lankan politics will carry any weight in Delhi if the BJP or the Congress comes to power as a non-coalition government. Today (17/02), an Indian writer said in The Island that 80% of Indians are opposed to the LTTE. My view is that India decided that the LTTE was getting too powerful the very moment they started flying planes and the sea tigers became a force on the seas, because India’s south became vulnerable, and accordingly, let Sri Lanka exterminate them for India’s own good. India’s soft underbelly, which is its only solidly safe flank became exposed to LTTE intrusion and India cannot afford a weak south, when it has become vulnerable in all other directions and neighbourhoods! I was stunned to read in the current TIME magazine, that India is completing a fortified fence around Bangladesh, which immediately turns that country into an adversary, because no state likes to be hemmed in physically on all sides by a regional power! Every single neighbour has problems with the big elephant in the room and that has to cause a national sense of insecurity in these troubled times, regardless of India’s overwhelming military power. I lived in India in the early 80’s, when Indira Gandhi was using RAW to destabilize Sri Lanka, and the north Indians were telling me I was one of them because Sri Lanka actually belonged to mother India, and our majority race originated there!!

So, in my book all this intimately affects the India-Sri Lanka dynamic, which has become much more complex than in the old Dixit days. Sri Lanka has almost demolished the most ruthless terrorist outfit in the history of the world, without the active assistance of India or the West, which are still grappling with this scourge, despite superior fire power, and this must cause some soul searching both in New Delhi and western capitals. The sole superpower and neighbouring regional power will soon realize that they have succeeded in pushing a strategically located small democratic country, although a confirmed ally, into the arms of China, Pakistan, Russia and Iran. Will they bend over backwards to reverse course ? And what will they do now to gain a foothold here in Sri Lanka ? If it is true that the territorial sea around the north east is replete with strategic minerals offshore, what price will they pay to exploit these resources? All these issues will figure in the future definition of the India-Sri Lanka dynamic in my view. The relationship is much more complicated than the original positioning of the two countries based on geography and demography!