Sri Lanka’s historical narrative has been defined by geopolitical rivalry, external aggression and internal resistance to that aggression. The early historical era experienced successive waves of invasion from South Indian kingdoms. These were followed by European conquest and consecutive rule of the coastal lowlands by the Portuguese (1505-1666), the Dutch (1666-1796) and the British (1796-1815)….
Desperate for cash, Tajikistan is about to sell yet another vital asset to China at a time that countries like Sri Lanka and the Maldives are demanding renegotiation of debt settlements that either forced them to surrender control of critical infrastructure or left them with unsustainable repayments. The pending Chinese acquisition of a stake in…
Sri Lanka is a role model for the dictum of diplomacy being the extension of a country’s national policies. Sri Lanka’s performance must be commended since it also grapples with an unresolved nationality question in which its big neighbour India has historically staked claim as stakeholder, a claim that Colombo cannot brusquely repudiate due to…
India’s practice of “military diplomacy” in holding joint drills with a variety of Great Powers and regional states has been a mixed bag of success since the former has resulted in sending positive signals about “multi-alignment” while the latter risks fueling the fears of the domestic political opposition in those states that the South Asian…
Opposition leader and former Defense Minister Lieutenant Colonel Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the first round of elections and will become Sri Lanka’s next president, thus returning his family to power after his brother Mahinda’s 2005-2015 presidency. The latter was narrowly defeated in the January 2015 elections and attributed his surprise loss to foreign meddling, stating in…
In the US-and-allied nations, the standard way of interpreting wars and international relations is archetypally exemplified by the internationally respected award-winning American war-journalist Marie Colvin, of the London Sunday Times. Her career was stellar, if not absolutely unmatched: she won the “Journalist of the Year” award from the Foreign Press Association, plus five other international…
