When Anura Kumara Dissanayake takes wings to Europe

By N Sathiya Moorthy

Incumbent Anura Kumara Dissanayake has chosen Germany for his first European destination as President, his fourth this year, and fifth since assuming office. All five have been state visits, starting with neighbouring India in end-2024, followed by China, the UAE and Vietnam, in that order.

It is not unlikely that the President may choose to visit the US, if not officially or on a state visit, but to deliver his maiden UN General Assembly (UNGA) later this year. For most parts, the local media in every country plays up the US speech of their Head of State and/ or Government. Elsewhere, it may or may not get a line’s mention, unless on the side-lines, he gets to meet the leaders of the US, China, and now India – an emerging power.

In context, Dissanayake’s choice of Germany for his fifth state visit in his first year in office makes a lot of sense – and raises more questions. Of course, critics nearer home feel that he has let down the Sri Lankan State as he has accepted an invitation that did not include a meeting with Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the decision-maker, though he still had a meeting with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, whose is a ceremonial post with certain constitutional authority in the domestic context.

But if one considered that the taste of the pudding is in the eating, and if President Dissanayake’s meetings with German economic ministers in particular can yield results, the rest of it then becomes a formality, so to say. Yet, the question still arises if those businesses could not have been transacted by despatching line ministers at different times, or despatching a team under Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya.

Host’s discretion

Yet, it goes without saying that state visits are organised not at the desire of the guest, but at the discretion of the host. The status of such visits – whether semi-official, official or state visit – is discussed threadbare inside those foreign governments before they take a decision.

It was understandable in the case of India, the closest neighbour, where both sides had to display greater warmth for their peoples, too, to witness, after long  years of perceived hostility on the part of one, and consequent suspicion in the other. Where India is there, China cannot be far off.

The South Asian dynamics have been working this way for nearly two decades – and India’s neighbours especially have been bending backwards to accommodate China, especially in matters of photo.ops. This is especially so when China willingly dumps them with ‘developmental’ gifts that the other may not always has use for.

Sri Lanka has been a key player in this kind of Russian roulette involving India and China, where the latter gets more than what it has invested for – strategic space as in Hambantota. Though not yet of the strategic kind, Dissanayake choosing China for his second overseas / state visit was unexpected or at times unavoidable.

The choice of the UAE can be linked to the financial mess that Sri Lanka continues to be in. As may be recalled the UAE forms a part of the trilateral with India over the upcoming energy hub in eastern Trincomalee. That leaves on with Vietnam, which historically can be identified with the left ideology of Dissanayake’s JVP than possibly even China – where the role of ideology, if any, in bilateral relations has been more complex and complicated.

Why so early?

But Germany is a different cuppa in every respect. Compared to India, and China, the economic assistance, including investments from Germany, may not be too big. Or, not until visible.

Politically from a Sri Lankan State perspective, Germany as a nation has been active on the human rights front over the past several decades. In Sri Lanka during the war and afterwards, German and Germany-funded rights organisations have been active.

On the political front, especially flowing from allegations of war crimes and accountability issues, Germany does not have the veto-vote in the UNSC that China and Russia have – or, the overall influence that proximity in the South Asian context gives India. Why then Germany? – or, that is the question.

More especially, why the invitation for a state visit by the Sri Lankan Head of State and Government, so early in his career? Dissanayake has a five-year term that is not in jeopardy, and he has not completed the first year as yet. It is another matter that if an incumbent leader is found shaky and unstable, foreign governments hold back invitations, for obvious reasons.

Balance-of-power

For the uninitiated, Germany separately and along with France, so to say, have been looking at the future of politics of and by the western hemisphere on the global theatre for some years now. Every time some western experts, more so an American, talks about the imminent collapse of the US and the implosion of the US hegemony, in decades, if not years to come, there seems to be an Europe-centric assessment about global realignment.

If nothing else, Europe cannot afford to let the western system collapse just because one cog in the wheel – the strongest of them – was unable to stand the test of time and of longevity and strength. There is a need for someone waiting out there to step in, to fill the vacuum, if and when it arises.

Without attributing it to western theoreticians, it should be conceded that the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union created a vacuum in global balance-of-power.  The US possibly thought that it was now the king of all it surveyed and did not. Europe, in the normal course, should have considered stepping in, but it was too ensconced still in the anti-Soviet NATO bogey that it could not wean itself away, too quick, too early.

At least reasons did not exist at the time for anyone to predict or justify the possibility – barring the possible acceptance of euro as an alternate global currency to the US dollar. That too was too weak, too early.

Moreover, the emergence of new and independent nations that flowed from the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugosolavia, for instance, strengthened the US hands within what once used to be considered as a uni-vocal EU. This made consensus-based decision-making at EU, that too in favour of a stronger Europe viz all others, including the US leader of the NATO and the political West, difficult. The old world Europe was not ready for a showdown.

To  the emerging vacuum that occurred, China was at a distance to assume such a role – more importantly in matters of self-belief and self-propagation, which is how it began, post facto. In the interim, it was the non-state actors in Al Qaeda and Osama-bin-Laden, who offered the inevitable alternative focus to the US in what otherwise became a unipolar world.

Multi-polar model

Today, the world is ready to accept the possible emergence of a bi-polar world through Europe and nations like India have not given up on a multi-polar model for the future. Unbeknown to themselves, Europe has got too involved in the Ukraine War, and against Cold War adversary, Moscow.

It is easy for them to accept the role, it is easier for them to digest the US leadership, politically, even if NATO per se is not directly involved on the side of Ukraine. Rather, Ukraine’s acceptance as a NATO member was the cause for the war.

Looking dispassionately over events and developments centred on the Ukraine War, Europe may have got its moment, unplanned. Whether it wants to build up on the opportunity may not be for the EU to consider and decide upon, for reasons already mentioned. Instead, it will be for individual nations, one-time European powers, to decide if they want to play a global role, if it becomes available — without having to work too much, risk too much.

The return of Donald Trump as the US President is both an opportunity and risk for Europe, rather for nations like Germany and France, which still wallow in their old world glory, pre-Second World War especially. After all, that war was centred on an individual’s greed, which transmuted as national ambition.

Today, when the Trump administration is playing hide-and-seek with Ukraine, European powers, especially, the UK, Germany and France, are seeking to take up a part of the role that America had played in European affairs in the past. What is in store in the future is another matter, but they seem to be living the day.

Their apprehension seems based on the historic past when each of them looked the other way when a third nation targeted them individually, one after the other. They do not want the fate of Ukraine to befall them in the future.  But that is only a part of the present.

Playing around…

Germany’s invitation for President Dissanayake has to be viewed in context. The Indian Ocean, in the post-Cold War stratagem, has received more attention, supposedly in terms of trade and hence trade-related security. It is also true that in the name of competing for global supremacy, the US and the wannabe super-power in China have taken their new Cold War away from their shared Pacific Ocean to the distant Indian Ocean.

Their academics have built their theories centred on such constructs for the rest of the world to believe, and behave accordingly. In context, Sri Lanka’s locational advantage has got accentuated more than already. The fact remains that in this world of fly-by-wire battles and massive drone-strikes, more and more governments that have future ambitions in mind are opting not for land bases, but aircraft-carrier groups.

The earlier strategically ambitious nations realise this, lesser will be the locational importance of those like Sri Lanka. What they still can offer is ‘denial’, of its territory and territorial waters to one or other mutually antagonistic powers that want to fish in Sri Lanka, after troubling its waters and polluting its politico-economic environment.

Yet, it is also in this context, nations like Germany are beginning to show greater interest in distant island-nations like Germany. France, Germany’s European adversary in a bygone era, already has its Reunion Island with a military base in these parts.

After the UK conceded sovereignty over Chagos Islands to Mauritius, their bilateral agreement has extended the life for the US military base in Diego Garcia by 99 years. It is the same as China’s lease lien on Hambantota, which however commenced a decade or so earlier.

Before the Ukraine War broke out, you had a European Union workshop in Colombo to discuss and debate the EU’s very own ‘Indo-Pacific strategy’. They did not seem to have looked elsewhere in the region. Germany too has fashioned one of its own.

Jointly and severally, they are over and above the US-led Indo-Pacific, of which India is a part. However, India, which is a part of the US-led Quad has since clarified that they are not for the Quadrilateral, also involving Japan and Australia, going militaristic. With this, the US was quick enough to rope in the Atlantic ally UK, to form the AUKUS military tie-up along with Australia.

It is in this overall background, Germany’s growing interest in Sri Lanka needs to be viewed. If however any government in Colombo has more interest to play around, apart from India and China, then they may look smart for a time – but would end up being too smart for Sri Lanka’s very own comfort, over the medium and long term.

That kind of decision should involve the Sri Lankan State and not stop with any incumbent ruler of the day, as was the case with Hambantota decisions, which involved two regimes, respectively under Presidents Mahinda Rajapaksa and Maithripala Sirisena, where Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe actually called the shots.

(The writer is a Chennai-based Policy Analyst & Political Commentator. Email: sathiyam54@nsathiyamoorthy.com)