The US is threatening to use economic means to pressure Sri Lanka’s “deep state” into reversing its decision to appoint Shavendra Silva as its new army chief, which if successful would amount to the country’s strategic capitulation to the Pentagon and the likely clinching of a new “Status Of Forces Agreement” later this year after…
The Easter Sunday terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka on 21st April in which 259 people were killed and over 500 injured were initially attributed to the Islamic State (IS). But no hard evidence is available to substantiate such a reading and it remains an open question as to the perpetrators. The Sri Lankan President Maithripala…
The US’ interest in replacing the 1995 Status Of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Sri Lanka stems from its desire to turn the island nation into its unsinkable aircraft carrier in South Asia and possibly even the base of a prospective “Eighth Fleet” tasked with controlling the so-called “Indian Ocean”, but its long-term strategic plans won’t…
Indian Prime Minister Modi will pay his first foreign trip since re-election to the Indian Ocean island states of the Maldives and Sri Lanka from 8-9 June in showcasing the geostrategic importance that these two countries have for India’s foreign policy during the next five years of his second term in office. Indian think tanks…
The US’ recently released “Indo-Pacific Strategy Report” envisages India playing a key role in this vast transregional space in order to “contain” China, while Pakistan is conspicuously absent from the text despite being one of the few nuclear weapons states, among the most populous countries in the world, and the transit route for China’s overland…
India is carefully crafting the implied narrative that the Sri Lankan terrorist attacks wouldn’t have happened had the island’s authorities acted on the tips that its intelligence agencies shared with them, with it being very likely that New Delhi will incorporate this notion into a forthcoming anti-Pakistani infowar in order to pressure other countries into…
