Manoj Ambat's Blog dealing with Defence, Foreign Affairs, Strategic Affairs and Politics

Image credits- Flickr / PMO, Government of India Source- The Diplomat Author- Kadira Pethiyogoda John Kerry’s visit to Sri Lanka, the first by a U.S. Secretary of State in 11 years, recognizes country’s geopolitical importance. It also highlights the outcome of the recent tussle over the island state by two emerging global powers. This is a contest in which India has now gained the upper hand over China, offering important lessons for rising powers as they begin a “Great Game” in Asia. Sri Lanka sits at the heart of the Indian Ocean, adjacent to major shipping routes, within the world’s most strategically and economically dynamic region – the Indo-Pacific. Long described as the “pearl of the Indian Ocean,” Sri Lanka was, until the January election defeat of President Mahinda Rajapaksa, drifting out of India’s orbit and increasingly seen as part of China’s “string of pearls.” But while increasingly solid economic links correlating with China’s rise will change little r

Image source- Flickr / Credits- Presidency of Sri Lanka Source- The Diplomat Author- Nilanthi Samaranayake Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent trip to Sri Lanka highlights New Delhi’s reawakening to the strategic position that Sri Lanka holds in India’s neighborhood. Since 2008, India has watched as China built port facilities, highways, and other major infrastructure in Sri Lanka. People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy warships have also paid port visits to Sri Lanka, even taking in Trincomalee, where India has been sensitive to any extraregional presence for decades. Most recently, in September and October 2014, New Delhi became unsettled at the sight of a conventional Chinese submarine and a tender ship openly paying port visits in Colombo on the way to counter piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden. Despite the public nature of the docking and advance notice, Indian policymakers appeared to be taken by surprise and feared India had lost strategic ground to China re

Source- Flickr (Image credits- The Presidency of Sri Lanka) Source- Eurasia Review Author- P.S Suryanarayana Neighbourhood diplomacy can be tricky even at the best of times, because any two neighbours will have common but differing expectations of a good bilateral relationship. Viewed in this light, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s latest visit to Sri Lanka has gone off well, without setting the Palk Strait on fire. This sums up the outcome, in a positive turn of the Thames-metaphor for the narrow waterway that bridges (or segregates) the two countries. To be sure, no diplomatic breakthroughs were announced during the two-day visit hat concluded on 14 March 2015. By all accounts, however, the diplomatic mood and political atmospherics toned up the quotient of Indo-Sri Lankan neighbourliness. Apart from holding talks with Sri Lanka’s relatively new executive President, Maithripala Sirisena, Modi met a number of leaders, including those out of office, across the p

Image credits- Indian PMO Source- The Eurasia Review Author- By Col R.Hariharan China’s ambition to further its interests in Sri Lanka has suffered a setback after people elected the common opposition candidate Maithripala Sirisena as President in preference to two-term President Mahinda Rajapaksa in the election held in January 2015. China is probably familiar with President Sirisena as he had served as a senior minister and close aide of Rajapaksa during the last ten years. He was high in the hierarchy and served as the defence minister when President Rajapaksa was absent from the country during the Eelam War. However, China’s personal equation with Rajapaksa was tailored to cultivate him, taking advantage of his highly personalised style of governance. Rajapaksa and his two brothers controlled the government and managed key ministries e.g., development finance, internal security, defence and urban development immensely benefiting China in furthering its strateg

Image credits- President of Sri Lanka Source- The Diplomat Author- Sudha Ramachandran Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena’s recent visit to India was aimed at mending bilateral relations that had deteriorated under his predecessor, Mahinda Rajapaksa, on account of the latter’s close embrace of China. During Sirisena’s visit, India and Sri Lanka signed four agreements that are expected to strengthen bilateral co-operation. However, whether these can counter effectively China’s enormous presence in the island seems doubtful. India is still a long way from matching or reducing China’s role in Sri Lanka. Of the four agreements, the most significant is that on civilian nuclear co-operation, which envisages an “exchange of knowledge and expertise, sharing of resources, capacity building and training of personnel in peaceful uses of nuclear energy.” Other agreements deal with co-operation in the fields of culture and agriculture, and will enable Sri Lanka to participat

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena  ( Image credits- Wikimedia Commons / Author MaithriPala Sirisena Official) Source- The Diplomat Author- Shannon Tiezzi While Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena is in India on his first official trip abroad, Beijing wants to make sure no one thinks China is being left out. With Sirisena in India, China’s Foreign Ministry announced that Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera will travel to China at the end of February. As Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying pointed out, Samaraweera will be the first cabinet minister from Sri Lanka to visit China since Sirisena’s government took office. “Both sides attach great importance to the visit,” Hua said, adding China’s “hope that the visit by Foreign Minister Samaraweera will be an opportunity for the two sides to exchange views on the development of China-Sri Lanka relations under the new circumstances.” Those “new circumstances” – namely, the election of a n