IS SRI LANKA CHINA’S GEORGIA?

Groundviews
September 22, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Sri Lanka

Seven years after 9/11, we’re in between world orders.

And winds of systemic change grip all nooks of the globe: the
overstretch of America, geopolitical quicksand which is the Middle
East, the benign growth of Brazil and Japan, rise of China and India,
resurgence of Russia, expansion of EU and NATO, petrodiplomacy of
Venezuela, nonviolent nuclear politics of Iran and North Korea.

In this changing world order, for whom is the geostrategic asset of
Lanka more important: China or U.S.-India? If Eelam IV’s end date
pushes well into 2009, is U.S.-India intervention plausible?

World order changes imply a post-Bush II America, in addition to
continuing its "War on Terror" in the Middle East, will seek to
reinvigorate its engagement policy toward Latin America and South
Asia to counterbalance the economic and political expansion of the
China-Russia axis in Europe and Central Asia. Projecting American
power in South Asia is likely to lead to increased U.S.-India
engagement in Lanka. This engagement would test where the economic
and political interests of China in Lanka stand in relation to those
of U.S.-India. The nature of engagement would pivot on the status and
optics of the military solution by year’s end. If Colombo’s "final
battle" isn’t won by then, a protracted victory intersecting with
U.S.-India engagement will internationally politicize Eelam IV in
ways which will not reverse Colombo’s drift into Western isolation
on the international stage.

Changes in world order, and great power dynamics in Central Asia,
Europe, and U.S.-China, demonstrate a possible emergence of a post-2009
international climate incentivizing American engagement in Latin
America and South Asia, and thus Lanka.

The world order is increasingly post-American. The Asias are rising
in places and ways the West is not. Multipolarity has arrived, but
it is incipient, rudderless. Three dominant features characterize the
current world order transition from American hegemony to multipolarity.

First, the rise of new powers is flattening out the hierarchical
orders which followed the end of World War II and the Cold War. The
contemporary butterfly effects triggered by the overstretch of
America on one front and the rise of China on multiple fronts is
altering the structures of global power distribution such that
the historical grip of the West, its aid, its arms, its human
rights/democracy based conditionality underpinning intervention
logic has been loosened in the Developing World. This effect is most
pronounced in the Afro-Asian region, in part due to its distance from,
and ineffective or disinterested engagement by, the main political
centers of power in the system: America, China, EU, Russia. (India is a
regional political non-player, operating within U.S.-China geostrategic
competition). Momentarily liberated from what was a U.S.-led neoliberal
order, Afro-Asian states, like Lanka, have been able to seek new
economic and political alignment in between the old world order led
by America and the new emergent one heralded by the rising Asias.

Second, the space between world orders there is an evident vacuum
of global leadership. Global leadership, vision, authority, and
power have become diffuse, de-centered. This departs from the
ideology-guided orders of American-Soviet bipolarity and post-Cold
War American hegemony demarcating the eras flanking the fall of the
Berlin Wall. America led globally in the post-Cold War world. Now
it is overstretched. In the post-America vacuum, no rising power has
stepped up to lead.

The attendant redistribution of political authority in the system has
been unable to marshal global consensus on global issues. Recent
examples are: EU’s Lisbon Treaty and Ireland, global nuclear
non-proliferation policy (India, Iran, North Korea), collapse of the
Doha rounds, the defunct Kyoto protocol and post-Kyoto framework
talks, Darfur’s genocide, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, energy
and food security, climate change and global warming, humanitarian
responses to flooding in Bihar and Haiti and Burma, Russia’s invasion
of Georgia. Global leaderlessness contributes to the international
community’s non-engagement in Lanka’s war vis-a-vis its humanitarian
dimension.

Third, the political economic dimension of global power has
progressively bifurcated. In the transition to a new order, the
world is increasingly defined by political unipolarity and economic
multipolarity. Political unipolarity lingers from the shadow of
post-Cold War American hegemony. Economic multipolarity has emerged
due to globalization, the decline of the West, and rise of the rest.

The trend of economic multipolarity is particularly visible since
the American hyperpower’s post-9/11 response and overstretch in
Iraq and non-normative war. Since then, the international system has
demonstrably multipolarized, with new centers of power emerging in the
Developing World, namely: Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa,
Mexico (BRICSAM), and ASEAN.

Underneath the poles of BRICSAM plus America, Japan, and the EU are a
subsidiary tier, reaching from Venezuela to Saudi Arabia to Iran to
Turkey to Nigeria, and many states in between. This subsidiary tier
contributes to China’s rise and the erosion of the American political
order, by for example providing arms and aid to states – like Lanka
– that have learned that Western isolationism in multipolarity is
negated by the "China option."

A post-Bush II America will try to reestablish American primacy upon
the global picture described above, within an international system
characterized by global leaderlessness, de-centered political power,
and multiple emergent centers of economic power. Developments in
three regions, Central Asia, Europe, and the U.S.-China sphere, will
pressure America towards consolidating its influence in Latin America
and South Asia to counter the dissipation of its power elsewhere.

In Central Asia, over the past several years, U.S.-Russia
divergence and China-Russia convergence have increasingly supplanted
U.S. influence in the region. China-Russia convergence enjoys bottom-up
support from the Central Asian states which have leaned towards the
China-Russia politico-security umbrella since the end of the Cold
War. It has also been institutionalized. The Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO), comprised of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and the Collective Security Treaty Organization
(CSTO), comprised of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia,
Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, together form a multilateral tier of
convergence. The SCO’s economic mandate, the CSTO’s political-military
mandate as a post-Soviet security alliance, and the bottom-up support
from Central Asian states, secures Central Asia within the China-Russia
orbit, where American displacement of power is likely to increase as
China-Russia cooperation does.

In Europe, American regional influence diminishes. Russia’s 5-day
August invasion of territorial Georgia, though violating international
law, was met with tepid international responses from America and the
United Nations, ambivalence from Central Asia and China. In retrospect,
the invasion and withdrawal conveyed Russia’s re-legitimatized paranoia
that modern Europe’s changing Trans-Atlantic security architecture on
some level still seeks to re-institutionalize Cold War bloc ideology
in a post-9/11 world.

Also, Russian support of Abkhaz/South Ossetian independence could
thaw other "frozen" independence struggles in the Caususes –
Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Kabardino Balkariya, Tartarstan,
Nagorno-Karabakh, Transitrei. However, the Russia-Georgia crisis had
little to do with self-determination, and much to do with Western
encroachment in Russia’s backyard. From post-1991 to present, Russia
has witnessed progressive Westernization of the post-Soviet European
space. This includes: the post-Cold War democratization of the Baltics
(Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the post-2003 Flower revolutions
(Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan), the 2005 American supported regime
changes in Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, the Eastward creep of post-Cold
War NATO (Albania, Croatia, Georgia, Ukraine), the expansion of the EU
(Croatia, Ukraine), international support for Kosovo self-determination
despite Belgrade-Moscow opposition, and recent agreements to place
American anti-ballistic missile shields in Czech Republic and Poland
to protect Europe and American allies from a nuclear Iran.

Russian resurgence and Western impulses to isolate Russia in Europe
will in confluence continue to polarize and consolidate exclusionary
U.S.-EU and Russia-China alliances from Europe to Central Asia,
steadily displacing American influence on the continent.

In the U.S.-China sphere, China is displacing American influence
globally. Containing China’s multi-pronged projection of
multidimensional power remains enigmatic to the West. And aware of
American pretensions of containment, China has been smart in its
growth model. It has created a financial architecture outside of the
Bretton Woods system, relying predominantly on hub-and-spoke bilateral
agreements, instead of being tied down in Western created multilateral
frameworks. It has built alliances with Russia, Germany and the EU,
Asia, East Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, Iran, India.

Furthermore, China’s maritime power is encroaching on America’s along
sea lanes connecting China to energy resources in the Middle East and
Africa. China has built a "string of pearls" through infrastructure
projects, provision of military modernization, and diplomacy, extending
territorially from mainland China to the South China Sea’s littorals,
to the Indian Ocean, to the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf littorals.

In the Indian Ocean region sensitive to Lankan security, between the
straits of Hormuz and the Straits of Malacca, the string of pearls
links ports in Pakistan’s Gwadar to Lanka’s Hamabantota to Bangladesh’s
Chittagong to Burma’s Sittwe. China’s investments in Africa are also
likely to lead to coastal bases on the continent, to further diversify
energy supply routes for its growing economy and energy needs.

However, China’s Indian Ocean presence may become problematic. For
American maritime interests from Hormuz to Malacca, the "string of
pearls" could mature into a noose of energy dependencies held in
China’s palm. By 2030, BRIC economies are expected to eclipse the
rich economies of Europe and North America, which will stress energy
security equations of every status quo and rising power. While the
global media fixates on diminishing American credibility and the
Iraq/Afghanistan/Iran conundrum, China is economically crowding
America out of Africa, the Asias, the trans-Pacific, and Latin America.

Overall, the overstretch of America, rise of China, and broad-based
multipolarization of the global economic system has created a global
leadership vacuum within the international system. The political
economic developments in Central Asia, Europe, and within the U.S-China
sphere, have in aggregate, weakened America’s influence globally. Since
America will likely seek to re-establish its primacy and leadership
role in the system, this trend makes Latin America and South Asia
viable candidates for the re-projection of American power in the
early months of a new Obama/McCain Presidency in 2009 to counter
diminishing U.S. dominance in China-Russia spheres of influence.

America can project power elsewhere, but these regions have fewer
impediments. Latin America is attractive because it’s in America’s
hemispheric reach, with only Venezuela to isolate, and an eager ally
in Brazil, the world’s 5th largest economy. South Asia is attractive
because U.S.-India convergence would feed off China-India regional
competition, making the projection of American power, directly, or
via India, sustainable and in American and Indian self-interest. The
recent U.S.-India nuclear deal and smaller developments like the
Hindu-Muslim riots in Orissa, flooding in Bihar, if a pattern, are
harbingers of a future bilateral climate conducive to cooperative
efforts in global issues such as counter-terrorism and climate change.

Consequently, increased U.S.-India cooperation in South Asia will
increase the probability of U.S.-India engagement in Lanka. If the
Tiger’s defensive war and Colombo’s scant regard for human rights
persist to 2009, a U.S.-India axis impelled to consolidate influence in
South Asia via Lanka to balance the China-Russia factor in Europe and
Central Asia becomes more probable. Because U.S.-India engagement would
arise from great power competition more than political considerations
towards Eelam IV or human rights, issues of Colombo’s acquiescence
and Lankan sovereignty would be rendered peripheral.

U.S.-India would likely engage upon an anti-GoSL anti-LTTE platform
promoting human rights and counter-terrorism, while endorsing that
the protection of international humanitarian norms trumps sovereignty
in certain cases. This plausible future is inherently dubitable. But
a post-Bush II America will search for ways to re-establish itself
as global leader. In this regard, the Lankan case is evocative for
U.S.-Indian intervention which would also send a global message
apropos Chinese expansion in South Asia.

Whether China will protect Colombo in this scenario remains
unclear. The direction of Lanka’s human rights record, from the
UNCHR rejection to the Defense Secretary’s recent request for
removal of NGOs, INGOs, and the UN from the Northern theatre,
is less so. Whether or not U.S.-India will engage, Eelam IV and
its human rights albatross will likely qualify Lanka by 2009 as a
place for U.S.-India engagement on humanitarian grounds, even in
violation of Lankan sovereignty. U.S.-India engagement policy with
Lanka would also test whether states like China, Iran, and Pakistan,
will support Lanka not only in aid and arms, but also politically,
in standing up against powers like the U.S., India.

America abandoned Georgia when Russia invaded.

What will Beijing do if U.S.-India engage on the island in 2009?

Is Lanka China’s Georgia?

Or is the China-Lanka alliance more than just an economic, military,
and geostrategic marriage of convenience?

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress