The new Non-Alignment Lanka faces

The newly independent nations of the post-World War II years ganged up to protect themselves from the pulls and pressures of the victorious superpowers, viz. the United States of America and the former Soviet Union as they were carving up a neo-colonial world with veto powers in the United Nations. These nations banded themselves into the NonAligned Movement (NAM) 60 years ago this month.

There was hardly any meaningful celebration to mark the occasion either locally or abroad.

Sri Lanka was once the chairperson of NAM (1976-79), but the world has changed dramatically in the past six decades when the likes of Nehru, Nyerere, Nasser, Tito, Castro, Sukarno, Kaunda and Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike gave leadership to the Movement comprising more than two- thirds of the world’s countries, especially those in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Somewhere in the late 1970s, early 1980s, NAM began disintegrating as individual member- states started aligning themselves with one or other of the superpowers. President J. R. Jayewardene said that non-alignment was the "golden thread that runs through the fabric of Sri Lanka's foreign policy", but he also cynically noted at the time there were only two NonAligned countries in the world, viz., USA and the former Soviet Union.

As it happened, China -- which took part in the inaugural meeting in Bandung, Indonesia that set the stage for NAM -- is itself a superpower today and dragging countries like Sri Lanka into its orbit. India, which once signed a Friendship Treaty with the Soviet Union while remaining in NAM has now turned to the US for a Quadrilateral Security Dialogue commonly called 'Quad' with Japan and Australia.

These two newly emerging superpowers of today are what are more relevant to Sri Lanka, no longer the former Soviet Union or the US. This is the new era and the new 'Cold War' that confronts Sri Lanka. And how to balance the country's foreign policy staying non-aligned to either while both those countries keep a telescopic watch on the happenings in Sri Lanka offering carrots (loans, aid, currency-swaps) and breathing down with stick (demands for port facilities).

' Soft power' diplomacy is also at work. Come Wednesday (Poya), the Indian Government will be taking a planeload of dignitaries for the opening of an international airport at Kushinagar, where the Buddha passed away. The Indo-Pacific region has widespread Buddhist influence and China will not allow India to outsmart it with any ' Buddhist diplomacy' one-upmanship in Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and other ASEAN countries.

This then, is the new Non-Alignment Sri Lanka faces with the old Non-Aligned Movement quietly fading into extinction.