The South Asia nuclear threat and the

Sirimavo Doctrine II (continued)

November 21, 2014, 6:38 pm

Izeth Hussain

In addition to the first part of this article there have been other articles
indicating deep Indian anxieties over the issue of Chinese submarines
docking at Colombo port. Noteworthy articles by Col.R.Hariharan and by
Kanwal Siral a former Indian Foreign Secretary have been reproduced in
the local press. There have also been statements by official spokesmen of
the Sri Lankan and Chinese Governments claiming that nothing really
untoward had occurred, but as far as I am aware there has been no strictly
official statement by the Indian Government. Evidently all three
Governments want to play the issue down. But the stark fact is that there
has been a symbolic projection of Chinese naval power in the Indian Ocean
at a site that is in close proximity to India, the implications of which
require assessment. Very probably the three Governments will work out an
understanding regarding the projection of Chinese naval power at
Colombo.
In the first part of this article I stated that I would focus on certain points,
the first of which is that a successful foreign policy has to be based on an
accurate perception of the world as it is, not on what we would like it to
be, and further that its success would depend on its proper application in
practice. A striking instance of the failure to perceive the world as it is, and
the disastrous consequences that that could lead to, was provided of
course by the assumption of the 1977 Government that it could turn to the
US to counterbalance India. Instead it led to the Peace Accords of 1987
and the IPKF troops being invited into Sri Lanka, most unwelcome
outcomes for most Sri Lankans behind which the prime mover was none
other than the US itself, which far from being the counterbalance to India
turned out to be its ally, as I have pointed out in earlier articles. But the
conventional wisdom at present is that it was all a misunderstanding

because President JR had in mind only the economic dimension, not the
military one, in getting closer and closer to the US. But if that is so, why
did he sign those Peace Accords which have so important a military
dimension to them? We must be clear in our minds that basing our foreign
policy on wishful thinking can lead to disaster.
By contrast, the present Government has based its foreign policy on giving
primacy to relations with India over all other relations. That is sound
policy, but there has been some amount of public unease about our evercloser links with China, even though the Government has been insisting
that those relations are purely economic without any military dimension to
them at all. However, as we have seen, that position has been called into
question by the visitation of the Chinese submarine. Maybe a policy change
is taking place, a possibility that India clearly finds very upsetting. The
change could arise out of a need to refurbish the Presidents Dutugemunu
image as I pointed out earlier, which of course is speculation though
arguably plausible speculation. A more likely possibility, I think, is that our
Government has not understood the implications of the symbolic projection
of Chinese naval power in the vicinity of India. That would be an
illustration of my point that a successful foreign policy has to be based on
an accurate perception of the world as it is, and also on its proper
application in practice.
I must now make a clarification about my use of the term "perception".
There used to be a school of thought way back in the eighties and
nineties as I found through my participation in seminars at that time
which gave central importance to "perception" in the analysis of
international relations. Some would argue that Chinese naval power is
negligible compared to that of the West and also of India in the Indian
Ocean, and the question arises therefore whether India has over-reacted
regarding that single nuclear submarine. It is possible, but I would say
that it is probably a tactical over-reaction meant to counter a trend of
growing Chinese naval power in the Indian Ocean that could turn out to be
dangerous for India. We must bear in mind the factor of perception in our
relations with India. There are facts, there are perceptions of facts, and
there are also misperceptions of facts. The crucial point is that the
misperception of a fact is as much a fact as the fact itself. We must bear
that in mind in working out sound relations with India. In practical terms
there is a need for accommodativeness, transparency, and trust.
The second point on which I want to focus is that there is a distinct

possibility of nuclear war between India and Pakistan. This of course is a

worst case hypothesis, not something round the corner, but certainly a
contingency for which we have to be prepared. Kissinger said some time
ago that an Indo-Pakistan nuclear war was possible within the next twenty
years or so. There is the perennially insoluble Kashmir problem which has
already ignited two Indo-Pakistan wars. I believe that it is practically a
certainty that Afghanistan, after the withdrawal of US troops, will become
the theatre of a proxy war between India and Pakistan. A further factor to
be taken into account is that extremist Islamic fundamentalists could come
to power in Pakistan and get their finger on to the nuclear trigger. We must
bear in mind in particular the fact that India is said to have nuclear
installations in the South, which is supposed to be the reason why India
has been concerned about the possible spread of Muslim extremism in Sri
Lanka. Taking all these circumstances into account I cannot help
wondering whether the recent symbolic projection of Chinese naval power
was meant to convey to India that in connection with an Indo-Pakistan
nuclear war China could become a factor to be reckoned with.
It might seem that I am taking a needlessly apocalyptic view of the
nuclear threat. On the contrary I believe that I am being realistic in taking
into account factors that are usually ignored in the analysis of politics and
international relations. I believe that there is such a thing as human
nature, which includes a propensity in some though not all of humanity to
Evil in a secular sense, meaning a drive to harm and to destroy without
any tangible benefits for the evil-doer. Freuds death wish and Eric
Fromms necrophiliac drive are about Evil in this sense, and there are
accounts of Evil in action in great creative literature, in Shakespeare,
Dostoevsky, Melville and others.
The most horrifying instance of Evil in action in international relations since
the Second World War was the Cuban missile crisis of 1961. Khrushchev
positioned missiles in Cuba, but he agreed to withdraw them in exchange
for Kennedys commitment to withdraw (superannuated) missiles from
Turkey. It was only decades later that the world came to know that if not
for Khrushchevs willingness to compromise there really would have
occurred a nuclear war which earlier seemed doubtful a war in which
both super-powers together with a good part of the globe would have been
destroyed. That would have illustrated the thesis that nuclear war would be
MAD Mutual Assured Destruction. It would also have fitted in with my
conceptualization of Evil as a drive to harm and destroy without tangible
benefits for the evil-doer. After the missile crisis the next most horrible
instance of Evil in action in international relations was the second Iraq war.

Bush and Blair lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq because
they wanted an excuse to harm and destroy Iraq. Neither the US nor
Britain gained tangible benefits worth speaking about from that war,
certainly nothing commensurate with the destruction they wrought on
Iraq.
I come now to the third point on which this article has to focus: we have to
forge a foreign policy that takes into account the possibility of a South
Asian nuclear war, and see how best we can secure our legitimate interests
against that possibility. I believe that the answer has to be found through a
reconceptualisation of the traditional notion of "spheres of influence" and
the application of the Sirimavo Doctrine. These are matters that require indepth treatment at considerable length. But I have to be brief and I shall
therefore limit myself to making the essential points.
The problem underlying the Cuban missile crisis was that of spheres of
influence. The Soviet Union in positioning missiles in Cuba was intruding
into Latin America, territory that the US had grown accustomed to regard
as its backyard, its sphere of influence, ever since the enunciation of the
Monroe Doctrine in the nineteenth century; while the Soviet Union in
securing the withdrawal of missiles from Turkey was laying claim to its own
sphere of influence. The deterioration of relations between the US and the
EU on the one hand and Russia on the other also derives from the problem
of spheres of influence. Russia "annexed" the Crimea and took tough
action in other parts of the Ukraine, Georgia, and elsewhere because it is
asserting its right to its sphere of influence.
The rest of the world has not properly understood the Russian position.
During my period in Moscow from 1995 to 1998 it was impossible not to
notice a very deep sense of Russian disappointment and resentment over
the fact that the US was trying to conscript all Russias neighbours into
NATO. That seemed gratuitously hostile because Russia had voluntarily
dismantled its huge Soviet Empire and shown by concrete action that it
had no in-built aggressive drive towards its neighbours. Furthermore there
is in Russian historic consciousness a messianic universalist notion of
Russia as the Third Rome which would usher in a period of peace and
prosperity across the globe. Russia was looking forward to co-operation
with the West in building a better world. Instead it was being treated as a
potential pariah state. It is the disappointment and resentment over that
fact that is to be seen in Gorbachevs recent statement on an impending
new Cold war.

The term "sphere of influence" has negative connotations because it

implies an unequal relationship between countries which could range from
outright domination to a lose hegemony. But the world is changing,
imperialism is today anathematized, and it has been becoming more and
more difficult for the big and powerful to dominate the small and weak.
Over a very long period the US dominated the whole of Latin America
through corrupt and brutal dictatorships, but that is no longer possible.
The US and Britain can destroy Iraq but they cant dominate the Iraqis. It
is possible today for a small and weak country to have an equitable
relationship with a big and powerful neighbour without the intrusive
presence of a third power protecting the former. That is precisely the kind
of relationship that Sri Lanka has had with its big neighbour for most of
the time since 1948.
We must assert what I call the Sirimavo Doctrine. She used to say, "We
must never do anything that might harm another country". I thought that
was pukkah. It seemed to me that an ancient civilization, based on sound
Buddhist morality, was speaking through the voice of one of its finest
daughters. Probably her precept antedates Buddhism and goes right back
to the ancestral human group of around 50,000 years ago which
discovered that human survival required relations of trust and reciprocity.
That has to be the basis on which a society holds together, and it has also
to be the basis for any new world order worth the name. In practice that
precept means for Sri Lanka that in particular it does not do anything
that might harm India. On Indias side, it has to continue the fundamental
principle on which it has been conducting its relations with Sri Lanka: as a
small and weak country Sri Lanka cannot pose a threat to India by itself,
but it can do so if it gets together with a powerful country against India.
The Sirimavo Doctrine, and its application in practice to our relations with
India, could help sort out Russias troubled relations with some of its
neighbours.
(Concluded)
Posted by Thavam