By Asoka Bandarage
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Mar 25 2026 (IPS)

Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter prohibits member states from using threats or force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Violating international law, the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, 2026. The ostensible reason for this unprovoked aggression was to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.

The United States is the first and only country to have used nuclear weapons in war, against Japan in August 1945. Some officials in Israel have threatened to use a “doomsday weapon” against Gaza. On March 14, David Sacks, billionaire venture capitalist and AI and crypto czar in the Trump administration, warned that Israel may resort to nuclear weapons as its war with Iran spirals out of control and the country faces “destruction.”

Although for decades Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, opposed nuclear weapons on religious grounds, in the face of current existential threats it is likely that Iran will pursue their development.

On March 22, the head of the WHO warned of possible nuclear risks after nuclear facilities in both Iran and Israel were attacked. Indeed, will the current war in the Middle East continue for months or years, or end sooner with the possible use of a nuclear weapon by Israel or the United States?

Widening Destruction

Apart from the threat of nuclear conflagration—and what many analysts consider an impending ground invasion by American troops—extensive attacks using bombs, missiles, and drones are continuing apace, causing massive loss of life and destruction of resources and infrastructure. US–Israel airstrikes have killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and top Iranian officials.

Countless civilians have died, including some 150 girls in a primary school in Minab, in what UNESCO has called a “grave violation of humanitarian law.” Moreover, the targeting of desalination plants by both sides could severely disrupt water supplies across desert regions.

Iran’s retaliatory attacks on United States military bases in Persian Gulf countries have disrupted global air travel. Even more significantly, Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz—the critical maritime energy chokepoint through which 20% of global oil and liquefied natural gas pass daily—has blocked the flow of energy supplies and goods, posing a severe threat to the fossil fuel–driven global economy.

A global economic crisis is emerging, with soaring oil prices, power shortages, inflation, loss of livelihoods, and deep uncertainty over food security and survival.

The inconsistent application of international law, along with structural limitations of the United Nations, erodes trust in global governance and the moral authority of Western powers and multilateral institutions. Resolution 2817 (2026), adopted by the UN Security Council on March 12, condemns Iran’s “egregious attacks” against its neighbors without any condemnation of US–Israeli actions—an imbalance that underscores this concern.

The current crisis is exposing fault lines in the neo-colonial political, economic, and moral order that has been in place since the Second World War. Iran’s defiance poses a significant challenge to longstanding patterns of intervention and regime-change agendas pursued by the United States and its allies in the Global South.

The difficulty the United States faces in rallying NATO and other allies also reflects a notable geopolitical shift. Meanwhile, the expansion of yuan-based oil trade and alternative financial settlement mechanisms is weakening the petrodollar system and dollar dominance.

Opposition within the United States—including from segments of conservatives and Republicans—signals growing skepticism about the ideological and moral basis of a US war against Iran seemingly driven by Israel.

A New World Order?

The unipolar world dominated by the United States—rooted in inequality, coercion, and militarism—is destabilizing, fragmenting, and generating widespread chaos and suffering. Challenges to this order, including from Iran, point toward a fragmented multipolar world in which multiple actors possess agency and leverage.

The BRICS bloc—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, along with Iran, the UAE, and other members—represents efforts to create alternative economic and financial systems, including development banks and reserve currencies that challenge Western financial dominance.

However, is BRICS leading the world toward a much-needed order based on equity, partnership, and peace?

The behavior of BRICS countries during the current crisis does not indicate strong collective leadership or commitment to such principles. Instead, many appear to be leveraging the situation for national advantage, particularly regarding access to energy supplies.

A clear example of this opportunism is India, the current head of the BRICS bloc. Historically a leader of non-alignment and a supporter of the Palestinian cause, India now presents itself as a neutral party upholding international law and state sovereignty. However, it co-sponsored and supported UN Security Council Resolution 2817 (2026), which condemns only Iran.

India is also part of the USA–Israel–India–UAE strategic nexus involving defense cooperation, technology sharing, and counterterrorism. Additionally, it participates in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) with the United States, Japan, and Australia, aimed at countering China’s growing influence.

In effect, despite its leadership role in BRICS, India is closely aligned with the United States, raising questions about its ability to offer independent leadership in shaping a new world order.

As a group, BRICS does not fundamentally challenge corporate hegemony, the concentration of wealth among a global elite, or entrenched technological and military dominance. While it rejects aspects of Western geopolitical hierarchy, it largely upholds neoliberal economic principles: competition, free trade, privatization, open markets, export-led growth, globalization, and rapid technological expansion.

The current Middle East crisis underscores the need to question the assumption that globalization, market expansion, and technological growth are the foundations of human well-being.

The oil and food crises, declining remittances from Asian workers in the Middle East, and reduced tourism due to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and regional airspace all highlight the fragility of global interdependence.

These conditions call for consideration of alternative frameworks—bioregionalism, import substitution, local control of resources, food and energy self-sufficiency, and renewable energy—in place of dependence on imported fossil fuels and global supply chains.

Both the Western economic model and its BRICS variant continue to prioritize techno-capitalist expansion and militarism, despite overwhelming evidence linking these systems to environmental destruction and social inequality. While it is difficult for individual countries to challenge this dominant model, history offers lessons in collective resistance.

Collective Resistance

One of the earliest examples of nationalist economic resistance in the post- World War II period was the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and the creation of the National Iranian Oil Company in 1951 under Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. He was overthrown on August 19, 1953, in a coup orchestrated by the US CIA and British intelligence (MI6), and Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was installed to protect Western oil interests.

A milestone for decolonization occurred in Egypt in 1956, when President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal Company. Despite military intervention by Israel, the United Kingdom, and France, Nasser retained control, emerging as a symbol of Arab and Third World nationalism.

Following political independence, many former colonies sought to avoid entanglement in the Cold War through the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), officially founded in Belgrade in 1961. Leaders including Josip Broz Tito, Jawaharlal Nehru, Gamal Abdel Nasser, Kwame Nkrumah, Sukarno, and Sirimavo Bandaranaike promoted autonomous development paths aligned with national priorities and cultural traditions.

However, maintaining economic sovereignty proved far more difficult. Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was assassinated in 1961 with the involvement of US and Belgian interests after attempting to assert control over national resources. Kwame Nkrumah was similarly overthrown in a US-backed coup in 1966.

In Tanzania, Julius Nyerere’s Ujamaa (“African socialism”) sought to build community-based development and food security, but faced both internal challenges and external opposition, ultimately limiting its success and discouraging similar efforts elsewhere.

UN declarations from the 1970s reflect Global South resistance to the Bretton Woods system. Notably, the 1974 Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order (Resolution 3201) called for equitable cooperation between developed and developing countries based on dignity and sovereign equality.

Today, these declarations are more relevant than ever, as Iran and other Global South nations confront overlapping crises of economic instability, neocolonial pressures, and intensifying geopolitical rivalry.

Dr Asoka Bandarage has served on the faculties of Brandeis University, Georgetown University and Mount Holyoke College. She is the author of Crisis in Sri Lanka and the World: Colonial and Neoliberal Origins, Ecological and Collective Alternatives and many other publications (De Gruyter, 2023).

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Gampaha, a district on Colombo's outskirts, has been among the areas hardest hit by flooding after Cyclone Ditwah. Credit: UNICEF/InceptChange

By Asoka Bandarage
WASHINGTON DC, Dec 9 2025 (IPS)

Tropical Cyclone Ditwah, which made landfall in Sri Lanka on 28 November 2025, is considered the country’s worst natural disaster since the deadly 2004 tsunami. It intensified the northeast monsoon, bringing torrential rainfall, massive flooding, and 215 severe landslides across seven districts.

The cyclone left a trail of destruction, killing nearly 500 people, displacing over a million, destroying homes, roads, and railway lines, and disabling critical infrastructure including 4,000 transmission towers. Total economic losses are estimated at USD 6–7 billion—exceeding the country’s foreign reserves.

The Sri Lankan Armed Forces have led the relief efforts, aided by international partners including India and Pakistan. A Sri Lanka Air Force helicopter crashed in Wennappuwa, killing the pilot and injuring four others, while five Sri Lanka Navy personnel died in Chundikkulam in the north while widening waterways to mitigate flooding.

The bravery and sacrifice of the Sri Lankan Armed Forces during this disaster—as in past disasters—continue to be held in high esteem by grateful Sri Lankans.

The government, however, is facing intense criticism for its handling of Cyclone Ditwah, including failure to heed early warnings available since November 12, a slow and poorly coordinated response, and inadequate communication with the public.

Floodwaters entered several hospitals across Sri Lanka, further straining the health system. Credit: UNICEF/ InceptChange

Systemic issues—underinvestment in disaster management, failure to activate protocols, bureaucratic neglect, and a lack of coordination among state institutions—are also blamed for avoidable deaths and destruction.

The causes of climate disasters such as Cyclone Ditwah go far beyond disaster preparedness. Faulty policymaking, mismanagement, and decades of unregulated economic development have eroded the island’s natural defenses. As climate scientist Dr. Thasun Amarasinghe notes:
“Sri Lankan wetlands—the nation’s most effective natural flood-control mechanism—have been bulldozed, filled, encroached upon, and sold.

Many of these developments were approved despite warnings from environmental scientists, hydrologists, and even state institutions.”

Sri Lanka’s current vulnerabilities also stem from historical deforestation and plantation agriculture associated with colonial-era export development. Forest cover declined from 82% in 1881 to 70% in 1900, and to 54–50% by 1948, when British rule ended. It fell further to 44% in 1954 and to 16.5% by 2019.

Deforestation contributes an estimated 10–12% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Beyond removing a vital carbon sink, it damages water resources, increases runoff and erosion, and heightens flood and landslide risk. Soil-depleting monocrop agriculture further undermines traditional multi-crop systems that regenerate soil fertility, organic matter, and biodiversity.

In Sri Lanka’s Central Highlands, which were battered by Cyclone Ditwah, deforestation and unregulated construction had destabilized mountain slopes. Although high-risk zones prone to floods and landslides had long been identified, residents were not relocated, and construction and urbanization continued unchecked.

Sri Lanka was the first country in Asia to adopt neoliberal economic policies. With the “Open Economy” reforms of 1977, a capitalist ideology equating human well-being with quantitative growth and material consumption became widespread. Development efforts were rushed, poorly supervised, and frequently approved without proper environmental assessment.

Privatization and corporate deregulation weakened state oversight. The recent economic crisis and shrinking budgets further eroded environmental and social protections, including the maintenance of drainage networks, reservoirs, and early-warning systems. These forces have converged to make Sri Lanka a victim of a dual climate threat: gradual environmental collapse and sudden-onset disasters.

Sri Lanka: A Climate Victim

Sri Lanka’s carbon emissions remain relatively small but are rising. The impact of climate change on the island, however, is immense. Annual mean air temperature has increased significantly in recent decades (by 0.016 °C annually between 1961 and 1990). Sea-level rise has caused severe coastal erosion—0.30–0.35 meters per year—affecting nearly 55% of the shoreline. The 2004 tsunami demonstrated the extreme vulnerability of low-lying coastal plains to rising seas.

The Cyclone Ditwah catastrophe was neither wholly new nor surprising. In 2015, the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) identified Sri Lanka as the South Asian country with the highest relative risk of disaster-related displacement: “For every million inhabitants, 15,000 are at risk of being displaced every year.”

IDMC also noted that in 2017 the country experienced seven disaster events—mainly floods and landslides—resulting in 135,000 new displacements and that Sri Lanka “is also at risk for slow-onset impacts such as soil degradation, saltwater intrusion, water scarcity, and crop failure”.

Sri Lanka ranked sixth among countries most affected by extreme weather events in 2018 (Germanwatch) and second in 2019 (Global Climate Risk Index). Given these warnings, Cyclone Ditwah should not have been a surprise. Scientists have repeatedly cautioned that warmer oceans fuel stronger cyclones and warmer air hold more moisture, leading to extreme rainfall.

As the Ceylon Today editorial of December 1, 2025 also observed: “…our monsoons are no longer predictable. Cyclones form faster, hit harder, and linger longer. Rainfall becomes erratic, intense, and destructive. This is not a coincidence; it is a pattern.”

Without urgent action, even more extreme weather events will threaten Sri Lanka’s habitability and physical survival.

A Global Crisis

Extreme weather events—droughts, wildfires, cyclones, and floods—are becoming the global norm. Up to 1.2 billion people could become “climate refugees” by 2050. Global warming is disrupting weather patterns, destabilizing ecosystems, and posing severe risks to life on Earth. Indonesia and Thailand were struck by the rare and devastating Tropical Cyclone Senyar in late November 2025, occurring simultaneously with Cyclone Ditwah’s landfall in Sri Lanka.

More than 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions—and nearly 90% of carbon emissions—come from burning coal, oil, and gas, which supply about 80% of the world’s energy. Countries in the Global South, like Sri Lanka, which contribute least to greenhouse gas emissions, are among the most vulnerable to climate devastation.

Yet wealthy nations and multilateral institutions, including the World Bank, continue to subsidize fossil fuel exploration and production. Global climate policymaking—including COP 30 in Belém, Brazil, in 2025—has been criticized as ineffectual and dominated by fossil fuel interests.

If the climate is not stabilized, long-term planetary forces beyond human control may be unleashed. Technology and markets are not inherently the problem; rather, the issue lies in the intentions guiding them. The techno-market worldview, which promotes the belief that well-being increases through limitless growth and consumption, has contributed to severe economic inequality and more frequent extreme weather events.

The climate crisis, in turn, reflects a profound mismatch between the exponential expansion of a profit-driven global economy and the far slower evolution of human consciousness needed to uphold morality, compassion, generosity and wisdom.

Sri Lanka’s 2025–26 budget, adopted on November 14, 2025—just as Cyclone Ditwah loomed—promised subsidized land and electricity for companies establishing AI data centers in the country. President Anura Kumara Dissanayake told Parliament: “Don’t come questioning us on why we are giving land this cheap; we have to make these sacrifices.”

Yet Sri Lanka is a highly water-stressed nation, and a growing body of international research shows that AI data centers consume massive amounts of water and electricity, contributing significantly to greenhouse gas emissions.

The failure of the narrow, competitive techno-market approach underscores the need for an ecological and collective framework capable of addressing the deeper roots of this existential crisis—both for Sri Lanka and the world.

Ecological and Human Protection

Ecological consciousness demands recognition that humanity is part of the Earth, not separate from it. Policies to address climate change must be grounded in this understanding, rather than in worldviews that prize infinite growth and technological dominance.

Nature has primacy over human-created systems: the natural world does not depend on humanity, while humanity cannot survive without soil, water, air, sunlight, and the Earth’s essential life-support systems.

Although a climate victim today, Sri Lanka is also home to an ancient ecological civilization dating back to the arrival of the Buddhist monk Mahinda Thera in the 3rd century BCE. Upon meeting King Devanampiyatissa, who was out hunting in Mihintale, Mahinda Thera delivered one of the earliest recorded teachings on ecological interdependence and the duty of rulers to protect nature:

“O great King, the birds of the air and the beasts of the forest have as much right to live and move about in any part of this land as thou. The land belongs to the people and all living beings; thou art only its guardian.”

A stone inscription at Mihintale records that the king forbade the killing of animals and the destruction of trees. The Mihintale Wildlife Sanctuary is believed to be the world’s first.

Sri Lanka’s ancient dry-zone irrigation system—maintained over more than a millennium—stands as a marvel of sustainable development. Its network of interconnected reservoirs, canals, and sluices captured monsoon waters, irrigated fields, controlled floods, and even served as a defensive barrier.

Floods occurred, but historical records show no disasters comparable in scale, severity, or frequency to those of today. Ancient rulers, including the legendary reservoir-builder King Parākramabāhu, and generations of rice farmers managed their environment with remarkable discipline and ecological wisdom.

The primacy of nature became especially evident when widespread power outages and the collapse of communication networks during Cyclone Ditwah forced people to rely on one another for survival. The disaster ignited spontaneous acts of compassion and solidarity across all communities—men and women, rich and poor, Buddhists, Christians, Muslims, and Hindus.

Local and international efforts mobilized to rescue, shelter, feed, and emotionally support those affected. These actions demonstrated a profound human instinct for care and cooperation, often filling vacuums left by formal emergency systems.

Yet spontaneous solidarity alone is insufficient. Sri Lanka urgently needs policies on sustainable development, environmental protection, and climate resilience. These include strict, science-based regulation of construction; protection of forests and wetlands; proper maintenance of reservoirs; and climate-resilient infrastructure.

Schools should teach environmental literacy that builds unity and solidarity, rather than controversial and divisive curriculum changes like the planned removal of history and introduction of contested modules on gender and sexuality.

If the IMF and international creditors—especially BlackRock, Sri Lanka’s largest sovereign bondholder, valued at USD 13 trillion—are genuinely concerned about the country’s suffering, could they not cancel at least some of Sri Lanka’s sovereign debt and support its rebuilding efforts?

Addressing the climate emergency and the broader existential crisis facing Sri Lanka and the world ultimately requires an evolution in human consciousness guided by morality, compassion, generosity and wisdom.

Dr Asoka Bandarage is the author of Colonialism in Sri Lanka: The Political Economy of the Kandyan Highlands, 1833-1886 (Mouton) Women, Population and Global Crisis: A Politico-Economic Analysis (Zed Books), The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka: Terrorism, Ethnicity, Political Economy, ( Routledge), Sustainability and Well-Being: The Middle Path to Environment, Society and the Economy (Palgrave MacMillan) Crisis in Sri Lanka and the World: Colonial and Neoliberal Origins, Ecological and Collective Alternatives (De Gruyter) and numerous other publications. She serves on the Advisory Boards of the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate and Critical Asian Studies.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

The Amazon rainforest, covering much of northwestern Brazil and extending into other South American countries, is the world’s largest tropical rainforest and is vital to fighting climate change. Credit: CIAT/Neil Palmer Source UN News

By Asoka Bandarage
WASHINGTON DC, Nov 11 2025 (IPS)

My recent visit to Brazil coincided partly with the Conference of the Parties (COP) 30, the 30th United Nations Climate Conference in Belém. Although I did not attend COP 30, I was very fortunate to visit the Amazon.

It was both awe-inspiring and humbling to experience —even briefly—the mystery and stillness of nature, and the ebb and flow of life in the Amazon: the largest tropical rainforest in the world, sustained by the ever-flowing Amazon River, the largest and widest river on Earth.

The magnificent forest, the river, and its tributaries, such as the black-water Rio Negro, teem with countless interdependent species. The great Samaúma—the “tree of life,” or giant kapok tree—stands tall above innumerable other trees, vines, and plants.

Many trees provide homes for birds and other animals that build their nests high among the branches or near the roots. Sloths do not build nests; instead, they spend their entire lives in the forest canopy, hanging upside down from branches while resting or sleeping.

In contrast, capuchin and squirrel monkeys leap from tree to tree in search of food, while birds—from the tiniest short-tailed pygmy tyrant to the colorful red-crested, green, and black Amazon kingfishers—flit from branch to branch, each awaiting its own prey. As night falls, the beautiful white owl-like great potoo emerges and sits patiently, seemingly forever, waiting for its turn to hunt.

In the river, silvery flying fish—sometimes in droves—leap from the water to catch insects, while gray and pink dolphins bob up and down, chasing fish or simply playing. Along the banks, proud egrets and fierce spectacled and black caimans lie in wait for their prey. Overhead, flocks of birds, including parakeets, fill the sky with song as vultures descend to feed on the remains of fallen animals below.

Humans have also lived in the Amazon for tens of thousands of years, in close symbiosis with other species, hunting in the forest and fishing in the river for their survival. Petroglyphs—carvings of human and animal figures, along with abstract shapes etched into rocks along the Amazon River—speak of their deep respect for nature and their ways of communicating with one another.

Even today, many of the indigenous communities who inhabit the Amazon remain devoted to protecting Mother Earth, upholding their eco-centric values and traditional ways of life.

There are also the river people (ribeirinhos), many of mixed indigenous and Portuguese descent, living along the Amazon River—often in floating homes or houses built on stilts. Their livelihoods and cultures are deeply intertwined with the river and forest, making the protection of the Amazon essential to their survival.

The Amazon lost an estimated 54.2 million hectares of forest—over 9% of its total area—between 2001 and 2020, an expanse roughly the size of France. The Brazilian Amazon, which makes up 62% of the rainforest’s territory, was the most affected, followed by Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. Along with deforestation, the Amazon is estimated to lose 4,000 to 6,000 plant and animal species each year.

COP 30

At the opening of the COP 30 Conference in Belém last week, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, the President of Brazil pointed out that concrete climate action is possible and that deforestation in the Amazon has been halved just in the past two years. He declared that the “era of fine speeches and good intentions is over” and that Brazil’s COP 30 will be a ‘COP of Truth and Action’, “COPs cannot be mere showcases of good ideas or annual gatherings for negotiators. They must be moments of contact with reality and of effective action to tackle climate change.”

President da Silva also emphasized that Brazil is a global leader in biofuel production—renewable energy derived from organic materials such as plants, algae, and waste—stressing that “a growth model based on fossil fuels cannot last.” Indeed, at COP 30, the future of the world’s tropical forests, vital ecosystems, and the shared climate of humanity and other species is at stake.

“Truth and Action”

Notwithstanding President da Silva’s optimistic pronouncements at Belém, troubling developments continue on the climate front in Brazil and around the world. In preparation for COP 30, the Brazilian government—along with India, Italy, and Japan—launched an ambitious initiative in October 2025: the “Belém 4x” pledge, which aims to quadruple global sustainable fuel use by 2035. This goal is projected to more than double current biofuel consumption.

However, environmentalists have expressed concern that a massive expansion of biofuel production, if undertaken without strong safeguards, could accelerate deforestation, degrade land and water resources, harm ecosystems, and threaten food security—particularly as crops such as soy, sugarcane, and palm oil compete for land between energy and food production.

Just days before COP30, the Brazilian government granted the state-run oil company Petrobras a license to drill for oil near the mouth of the Amazon River. The government, including Minister for the Environment Marina da Silva, has defended the move, claiming that the project would help finance Brazil’s energy transition and help achieve its economic development goals.

Environmentalists have criticized the decision, accusing the government of promoting fossil fuel expansion and worsening global warming. They warn that drilling off the coast of the world’s largest tropical rainforest—a crucial carbon sink—poses a serious threat to biodiversity and indigenous communities in the Amazon region.

According to environmental activists, in the Amazon, “31 million hectares of Indigenous Peoples’ territories are already overlapped by oil and gas blocks, with an additional 9.8 million hectares threatened by mining concessions.”

Moreover, a controversial four-lane highway, Avenida Liberdade, built in Belém in preparation for the COP30 climate summit, is being defended by the Brazilian government as necessary infrastructure for the city’s growing population. Environmentalists and some locals are alarmed that clearing more than 100 hectares of protected Amazon Rainforest to build the road will accelerate deforestation, harm wildlife, and undermine the climate goals of the COP summit.

The onus of protecting the Amazon Rainforest—often called “the lungs of the planet”— cannot rest on Brazil alone; it is a shared responsibility of all humanity. Numerous studies show that the world can thrive without fossil and biofuels by adopting alternative renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydroelectric power.

The global order, led by the United States and other Western nations, bears primary responsibility for the climate and environmental crises, as well as for deepening global inequality. Emerging powers from the Global South—particularly the BRICS nations, including Brazil—are now called to move beyond rhetoric and take concrete action. As President Lula da Silva himself has stated, COP 30 presents a critical opportunity to move decisively in that direction.

Negotiators and policymakers at COP 30 must take firm, principled moral action—resisting pressure from the fossil fuel lobby and prioritizing the interests of the planet and its people over short-term, profit-driven growth.

Dr Asoka Bandarage is the author of Women, Population and Global Crisis: A Politico-Economic Analysis (Zed Books, 1997), Sustainability and Well-Being: The Middle Path to Environment, Society and the Economy (Palgrave MacMillan, 2013) and numerous other publications on global political economy and the environment including “The Climate Emergency And Urgency of System Change” (2023) and ‘Existential Crisis, Mindfulness and the Middle Path to Social Action’ (2025). She serves on the Steering Committee of the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on "Implementation of the Declaration of the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace" following a report of the First Committee during the sixty-second plenary meeting of the 72nd session of the General Assembly. The resolution was adopted with a vote of 132 in favour, 3 against and 46 abstentions. 4 December 2017. Credit: United Nations

By Asoka Bandarage
WASHINGTON DC, Mar 27 2025 (IPS)

Following independence from Britain, both India and Sri Lanka emerged as leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement, which sought to advance developing nations’ interests during the Cold War. Indeed, the term “non-alignment” was itself coined by Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru during his 1954 speech in Colombo.

The five principles of the Non-Aligned Movement are: “mutual respect for each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty; mutual non-aggression; mutual non-interference in domestic affairs; equality and mutual benefit; and peaceful co-existence.”

Later, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi played a key role in supporting Sri Lankan Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s 1971 proposal to declare the Indian Ocean a Zone of Peace at the United Nations.

Such progressive ideals are in stark contrast to the current neocolonial negotiations between the two countries.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s forthcoming visit to Sri Lanka on April 4, 2025, is presented as representing a mutually beneficial partnership that will bring economic development to debt-burdened Sri Lanka. However, the details of the strategic agreements to be signed during Modi’s visit remain undisclosed to the public. This opacity cannot be a good sign and should not be accepted uncritically by the media or the people of either nation.

The Indo-Lanka Agreement of July 29, 1987, was also crafted without consultation with the Sri Lankan people or its parliament. It was signed during a 48-hour curfew when former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi arrived in Sri Lanka. This agreement led to the imposition of the 13th Amendment to the Sri Lankan Constitution and established the Provincial Council system.

The political framework it created continues to challenge Sri Lanka’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. Rather than bringing peace, India’s 1987 intervention resulted in one of the most violent and chaotic periods in the island’s recent history.

Will these agreements being finalized with Prime Minister Modi also lead to a period of pillage and plunder of the island’s resources and worsening conditions for its people, rather than delivering the promised economic benefits?

It is crucial that any bilateral agreements include enforceable measures to stop Indian bottom trawlers from illegally fishing in Sri Lankan territorial waters. This decades-long practice has caused severe damage to Sri Lanka’s marine resources and inflicted significant economic losses on its fishing communities.

Facing an increasing Chinese presence in Sri Lanka and the Indian Ocean, India has sought to strengthen its political, economic, strategic and cultural influence over Sri Lanka through various overt and covert means. During Sri Lanka’s 2022 economic crisis, for example, India provided $4 billion in financial assistance through currency swaps, credit lines, and loan deferrals that enabled Sri Lanka to import essential goods from India.

While this aid has helped Sri Lanka, it has also served India’s interests by countering China’s influence and protecting Indian business in Sri Lanka.

Prime Minister Modi’s upcoming visit represents the culmination of years of Indian initiatives in Sri Lanka spanning maritime security, aviation, energy, power generation, trade, finance, and cultural exchanges. For example, India’s Unified Payment Interface (UPI) for digital payments was introduced in Sri Lanka in February 2024, and in October 2023 India provided funds to develop a digital national identity card for Sri Lanka raising concerns about India’s access to Sri Lanka’s national biometric identification data.

Indian investors have been given preferential access in the privatization of Sri Lanka’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in key sectors like telecommunications, financial services, and energy. The Adani Group’s West Terminal project in Colombo Port is explicitly designed to counter China’s control over Sri Lanka’s port infrastructure, including the Colombo International Container Terminal, Hambantota Port, and Port City Colombo.

India and Sri Lanka have recently agreed to resume negotiations on the Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement (ECTA), which focuses primarily on the service sector and aims to create a unified labor market.

However, Sri Lankan professional associations have raised concerns that ECTA could give unemployed and lower-paid Indian workers a competitive advantage over their Sri Lankan counterparts. These concerns must be properly addressed before any agreement is finalized.

On December 16, 2024, India and Sri Lanka signed several Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) in New Delhi to enhance cooperation in defense, energy, and infrastructure development. These include plans for electricity grid interconnection and a multi-product petroleum pipeline between the two countries. Building on these agreements, construction of the Sampur power plant in Trincomalee is expected to begin during Prime Minister Modi’s April visit.

The Sampur power plant project, combined with India’s takeover of the Trincomalee Oil Tank Farm, represents a significant step toward integrating Sri Lanka into India’s national energy grid. This development effectively brings Trincomalee’s strategic natural harbor – often called the “crown jewel” of Sri Lanka’s assets – under Indian control, transforming it into a regional energy hub. In 1987, during India’s military intervention in Sri Lanka, New Delhi pressured Colombo into signing a secret agreement stipulating that the British-era Trincomalee oil tank farm would be jointly developed with India and could not be used by any other country.

While India promotes its energy interconnection projects as enhancing regional energy security, recent experiences in Nepal demonstrate how electricity grid integration with India has made Nepal dependent on and subordinate to India for its basic energy needs. Similarly, Bangladesh’s electricity agreement with the Adani Group has created an imbalanced situation favoring Adani over Bangladeshi power consumers. What collective actions could Sri Lanka and other small nations take to avoid such unequal “energy colonialism” and protect their national security and sovereignty?

India’s emergence as a superpower and its expansionist policies are gradually transforming neighboring South Asian and Indian Ocean states into economically and politically subordinate entities. Both Sri Lanka and the Maldives have adopted “India First” foreign policies in recent years, with the Maldives abandoning its “India Out” campaign in October 2024 in exchange for Indian economic assistance.

India’s “Neighborhood First Policy” has led to deep involvement in the internal affairs of neighboring countries including Sri Lanka. This involvement often takes the form of manipulating political parties, exploiting ethnic and religious divisions, and engineering political instability and regime changes – tactics reminiscent of colonial practices. It is well documented that India provided training to the LTTE and other terrorist groups opposing the Sri Lankan government during the civil war.

Many in Sri Lanka also suspect, though without conclusive evidence, that India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) was involved in both the 2019 Easter Sunday bombings and the 2022 Aragalaya protest movement during Sri Lanka’s economic crisis.

Contemporary Indian expansionism must be viewed within the broader context of the New Cold War and intensifying geopolitical competition between the United States and China. Given its strategic location along the vital east-west shipping routes in the Indian Ocean, Sri Lanka has become a pawn in this great power rivalry.

In addition to granting China extensive control over key infrastructure, Sri Lanka has signed the Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) and Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the United States, effectively allowing the use of Sri Lanka as a U.S. military logistics hub.

It was reported that during a visit to Sri Lanka in February 2023, Victoria Nuland, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs of the United States strongly suggested the establishment of a joint US-Indian military base in Trincomalee to counter Chinese activities in the region.

As a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) – a strategic alliance against Chinese expansion that includes the United States, Australia and Japan – India participates in extensive QUAD military exercises like the Malabar exercises in the Indian Ocean.

However, India’s role in QUAD appears inconsistent with its position as a founding member of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), which was established to promote the interests of emerging economies and a multipolar world order.

Unfortunately, BRICS appears to be replicating the same patterns of domination and subordination in its relations with smaller nations like Sri Lanka that characterize traditional imperial powers.

India presents itself as the guardian of Buddhism, particularly in its relations with Sri Lanka, to foster a sense of shared cultural heritage. However, it was Sri Lanka – not India – that preserved the Buddha’s teachings as they declined and eventually disappeared from India. Sri Lanka maintained the Buddhist tradition despite seventeen major invasions from India aimed at destroying the island’s Buddhist civilization.

Even today, despite its extensive influence, India has not taken meaningful steps to protect Buddhist temples and archaeological sites in Sri Lanka’s north and east from attacks by Tamil separatist groups. Instead, India appears focused on advancing the concept of Akhand Bharat (Undivided India) and Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation), which seeks to incorporate neighboring countries like Sri Lanka into a “Greater India.” The promotion of the bogus Ramayana Trail in Sri Lanka and the accompanying Hinduization pose a serious threat to preserving Sri Lanka’s distinct Buddhist identity and heritage.

Indian neocolonialism in Sri Lanka reflects a global phenomenon where powerful nations and their local collaborators – including political, economic, academic, media and NGO elites – prioritize short-term profits and self-interest over national and collective welfare, leading to environmental destruction and cultural erosion. Breaking free from this exploitative world order requires fundamentally reimagining global economic and social systems to uphold harmony and equality.

In this global transformation, India has a significant role to play. As a nation that endured centuries of Western imperial domination, India’s historical mission should be to continue to lead the struggle for decolonization and non-alignment, rather than serving as a junior partner in superpower rivalries. Under Mahatma Gandhi’s leadership, India championed the worldwide movement for decolonization and independence in the modern era.

Upholding the principles of the Non-Aligned Movement could forge a partnership benefiting both nations while preserving Sri Lanka’s independence and Buddhist identity. Otherwise, the New Cold War will continue to trample local sovereignty, where foreign powers vie to exploit the island’s resources, subjugate local communities and accelerate environmental and cultural destruction.

Dr Asoka Bandarage has served on the faculties of Brandeis, Georgetown and Mount Holyoke and is the author of several books, including Colonialism in Sri Lanka.; The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka and Crisis in Sri Lanka and the World and numerous other publications on global political economy and related subjects.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka on April 13, 2022. Credit: Wikipedia

By Asoka Bandarage
WASHINGTON DC, Aug 25 2023 (IPS)

Sri Lanka has been faced with an unprecedented political and economic crisis since the beginning of 2022.

The dominant narrative attributes the crisis to the confluence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukraine conflict, China’s ‘debt trap diplomacy’ and – most importantly – the corruption and mismanagement of the ruling Rajapaksa family.

Western mainstream media celebrated the so-called aragalaya (struggle, in Sinhala) protest movement that led to the ouster of the Rajapaksas and upholds the IMF bail-out as the only solution to the dire economic situation.

The aragalaya protests emerged from genuine economic grievances, but failed to develop an analysis beyond the ‘Gota, Go Home’ demand for Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign. Influenced by local and external interests with their own agendas, the protestors exhibited little-to-no awareness or critique of the global political economy and the financial system at the root of the country’s crisis.

In 2022, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) reported that 60 percent of low-income countries and 30 percent of emerging market economies are ‘in or near debt distress.’ While the details differ from country to country, the historical patterns of subordination that have given rise to global crises are the same.

The Sri Lankan crisis is an illustrative example of convergent global debt, food, fuel and energy crises facing much of the world. It is corporate media bias and narrative control that deflects from this analysis.

The island’s severe debt and economic crisis must be seen in a broader global context as the culmination of several centuries of colonial and neo-colonial developments, and the disastrous and inevitably self-destructive capitalist paradigm of endless growth and profit. Debt is not “a straightforward number but a social relation embedded in unequal power relations, discourses and moralities…and…institutionalized power.”.

Colonialism and Neocolonialism

The development of export agriculture and the import of food and other essentials under British colonialism turned Sri Lanka into a dependent ‘peripheral’ unit of the global capitalist economy.

Adopting ideologies of modernization and development and theories of comparative advantage, the capitalist imperative integrated self-sustaining indigenous, peasant, and regional economies into the growing global economy, through the appropriation of land, natural resources, and labor for export production.

Monocultural agriculture, mining, and other export-based production disturbed traditional patterns of crop rotation and small-scale subsistence production that were more harmonious with the regional ecosystems and cycles of nature.

Plantation development contributed to deforestation, loss of biodiversity and animal habitats. While a small local elite prospered through their collaboration with colonialism, most people became poor, indebted, and dependent on the vagaries of the global market for their sustenance.

Although colonized countries including Sri Lanka gained political independence following World War II, unequal exchange continued under neo-colonialism. Terms of trade disadvantaged the ‘Third World’ with their labor, resources and exports grossly undervalued and imports overvalued.

The dynamic is better understood as poorer countries being over-exploited rather than under-developed. Rising populations combined with corruption and inefficiency of local governments gave rise to endemic foreign exchange shortages and economic crises in Sri Lanka and many other countries.

The debt relief and aid given by the IMF, the World Bank and bilateral institutions from the Global North have been mere band-aids to keep the ex-colonial countries tethered to the global financial and economic structures. Post-independent Sri Lanka went to the IMF 16 times before the current 2023 bail-out which seeks to further perpetuate the county’s cycle of debt dependence.

The transfer of financial and resource wealth from poor countries in the global South to the rich countries in the North is not a new phenomenon. It has been an enduring feature throughout centuries of both classical and neo-colonialism. Between 1980 and 2017, developing countries paid out over $4.2 trillion solely in interest payments, dwarfing the financial aid they received from the developed countries during that period.

Currently, international financial institutions – notably the IMF and the World Bank – remain outside political and legal control without even ‘elementary accountability’. As critics from the Global South point out, “The overwhelming power of financial institutions makes a mockery of any serious effort for democratization and addressing the deteriorating socioeconomic living conditions of the people in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in the Global South.”

Financialization and Debt

Corporate and financial deregulation which accompanied the rise of neoliberalism starting in the 1970s has given rise to financialization, and the increasing importance of finance capital. As more and more aspects of social and planetary life are commoditized and subjected to digitalization and financial speculation, the real value of nature and human activity are further lost.

As a 2022 United Nations Report points out; food prices are soaring today not due to a problem with supply and demand but due to price speculation in highly financialized commodity markets.

A handful of the largest asset management companies, notably BlackRock (currently worth USD $ 10 trillion) control very large shares in companies operating in practically all the major sectors of the global economy: banking, technology, media, defense, energy, pharmaceuticals, food, agribusiness including seeds, and agrochemicals.

Financial liberalization advanced when interest rates dropped in the richer countries after the global 2008 financial crisis. Developing countries were encouraged to borrow from private international capital markets through International Sovereign Bonds (ISBs) which come with high interest rates and short maturation periods.

Although details are not available to the public, BlackRock is reportedly the biggest ISB creditor of Sri Lanka. Most of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt is ISBs, with over 80% of Sri Lanka’s debt owed to western creditors, and not – as projected in the mainstream narrative – to China.

IMF debt financing requires countries to meet its familiar structural adjustment conditions: privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs), cutbacks of social safety nets and labor rights, increased export production, decreased import substitution and alignment of local economic policy with US and other Western interests.

These are the same aims as classical colonialism, they are just better hidden in the more complex modern system and language of global finance, diplomacy and aid.

A vast array of policies exacting these aims are well under way in Sri Lanka, including the sale of state-owned energy, telecommunications and transportation enterprises to foreign owners, with grave implications for Sri Lanka’s economic independence, sovereignty, national security and the wellbeing of her people and the environment.

The IMF approach does not address long-term needs for bioregionalism, sustainable development, local autonomy and welfare. A small vulnerable country such as Sri Lanka cannot change the trajectory of global capitalist development on its own.

Regional and global solidarity and social movements are necessary to challenge the deranged global financial and economic system that is at the root of the current crisis.

Global South Resistance

Since the 1970s, major collaborative projects have been initiated by developing countries and the UNCTAD to develop a multilateral legal framework for sovereign debt restructuring. Yet they are futile in the face of the powerful opposition of creditors and the protection given to them by wealthy countries and their multilateral institutions, and the UN has failed to uphold commitment and implement a debt restructuring mechanism.

Sri Lanka was a global leader in efforts to create a New International Economic Order, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace in the 1960s and 70s. In the early years of their political independence, countries throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America sought to forge their own paths of economic and political development, independent of both capitalism and communism and the Cold War.

These included African socialist projects such as Tanzania’s Ujamma, import substitution programs in Latin America and left-wing nationalism and decolonization efforts in Sri Lanka and many other countries.

Almost without exception, these nationalist efforts failed, not only due to internal corruption and mismanagement but also due to persistent external pressure and intervention. Massive efforts have been taken by the Global North to stop the Global South from moving out of the established world order.

A case in point is the nationalization of oil companies owned by western countries in Sri Lanka in 1961 and the backlash against the left-nationalist Sri Lankan government which dared to take such a bold move.

The western response included the 1962 Hickenlooper Amendment passed in the U.S. Senate stopping foreign aid to Sri Lanka and to “any country expropriating American property without compensation.” As a result, Sri Lanka lost its credit worthiness, the domestic economic situation worsened, and the left-nationalist government lost the 1965 elections (with some covert US election support).

Observing those developments, political economist Richard Stuart Olsen wrote: “…the coerciveness of economic sanctions against a dependent, vulnerable country resides in the fact that an economic downturn can be induced and intensified from the outside, with the resulting development of politically explosive ‘relative deprivation’…”

These observations resonate with Sri Lanka’s current repetition of the same vicious cycle: an externally dependent export-import economy; worsening terms of trade; foreign exchange shortage; policy mismanagement; external political pressure; debt crisis; shortages of food, fuel and other essentials; mass suffering; and political turmoil.

Geopolitical Rivalry

Sri Lanka’s present economic crisis – the worst since the country’s political independence from the British – must be seen in the context of the accelerating neocolonial geopolitical conflict between China and the USA in the Indian Ocean. Many other countries across the world are also caught in the neocolonial superpower competition to control their natural resources and strategic locations.

There is much speculation as to whether the debt default on April 12, 2022 and political destabilization in Sri Lanka were ‘staged’ or intentionally precipitated to further the US’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ policy, the Indo-Pacific Strategy and the Quadrilateral Alliance (USA, India, Australia and Japan) in its competition to confront China’s $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative and counter China’s presence in Sri Lanka.

It is widely recognized in Sri Lanka that ‘The policy of neutrality is the best defence Sri Lanka has to deter global powers from attempting to get control of Sri Lanka because of its strategic location.’ Although President Gotabaya Rajapaksa claimed to pursue a ‘neutral’ foreign policy, the Rajapaksas were seen as closer to China than the west. After Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa were forced to resign, Ranil Wickramasinghe – a politician who was resoundingly rejected in the previous elections by the electorate but is a close ally of the west – was appointed as President in an undemocratic transition of power.

To what extent were Sri Lanka and her people victims of an externally manipulated ‘shock doctrine’ and a regime change operation, sold to the world as internal disintegration caused by local corruption and incapability?

While it is not possible to provide definitive answers to these issues, it is necessary to consider the available credible evidence and the geopolitics of debt and economic crises in Sri Lanka and the world at large.

Paradigm Shift

As the locus of global power shifts from the west and a multipolar world arises, new multilateral partnerships are emerging for development financing, such as the New Development Bank (NDB) – formerly referred to as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Development Bank – as alternatives to the Bretton Woods and other western dominated institutions.

However, given controversial projects, such as China’s Port City and India’s Adani Company investments in Sri Lanka as well as their projects elsewhere, it is necessary to ask if the BRICS represent a genuine alternative to the prevailing political-economic model based on domination, profit and power?

Dominant political power in our era is about propaganda, control of narratives and exploiting ignorance and fear. In the face of worsening environmental and social collapse across the world, there is a practical need for a fundamental questioning of the values, assumptions and misrepresentations of the dominant neoliberal model and its manifestations in Sri Lanka and the world.

At the root of the crisis, we face is a disconnect between the exponential growth of the profit-driven economy and a lack of development in human consciousness, i.e., in morality, empathy, and wisdom.

Ultimately, dualism, domination and the unregulated market paradigm need to be questioned to find a balanced path of human development, based on interdependence, partnership and ecological consciousness. Such a path of development would uphold the ethical principles necessary for long-term survival: rational use of natural resources, appropriate use of technology, balanced consumption, equitable distribution of wealth, and livelihoods for all.

This article is derived from the author’s new book: Asoka Bandarage, CRISIS IN SRI LANKA AND THE WORLD: COLONIAL AND NEOLIBERAL ORIGINS: ECOLOGICAL AND COLLECTIVE ALTERNATIVES (Berlin: De Gruyter,2023) https://www.degruyter.com/document/isbn/9783111203454/html?lang=en]

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Credit: IMF

By Asoka Bandarage
WASHINGTON DC, Dec 5 2022 (IPS)

On September 1, 2022, debt-trapped Sri Lanka reached a preliminary agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a 48-month Extended Fund Facility of $2.9 billion, which hardly covers the country’s outstanding debt, nor its immediate survival needs.

Nevertheless, IMF structural adjustment requires the country to meet its familiar debt restructuring conditions: privatization of state-owned enterprises, cutbacks of social safety nets and alignment of local economic policy with US and other Western interests.

There are already signs that these policies would be detrimental to the well-being of ordinary Sri Lankans and the sovereignty of the country and will inevitably lead to more wealth disparity and repeat debt crises.

The most important source for generating state revenue identified in the 2023 Sri Lanka budget is the privatization of SOEs (State Owned Enterprises), a primary strategy of IMF structural adjustment and neoliberal economics.

The 2023 Sri Lankan budget states:

“The government is currently maintaining 420 State-owned enterprises. 52 of these generate over Rs. 86 Billion in losses… A Unit has now been established at the Ministry of Finance with the specific task of restructuring SOEs. Initially, measures will be taken to restructure Sri Lankan Airlines, Sri Lanka Telecom, Colombo Hilton, Waters Edge, and Sri Lanka Insurance Corporation (SLIC) along with its subsidiaries, the proceeds of which will be used to strengthen foreign exchange reserves of the country, and strengthening the Rupee.”

The left-wing and nationalist Bandaranaike governments established many SOEs between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s, many of them import substitution industries to replace foreign imports with domestic production.

Many SOEs were privatized after the introduction of the Open Economy in 1977, and privatization (or commercialization) has continued steadily since then, with successive governments selling SOEs outright or turning them into Public Private Partnerships (PPP).

There are 55 strategic SOEs, 287 SOEs with commercial interests and 185 SOEs with non-commercial interests in Sri Lanka. The 55 strategically important SOEs are estimated to employ around 1.9 percent of the country’s labor force. The total state sector workforce is estimated to be about 1.4 million people, which accounts for over one in six of the country’s total workforce.

Many Sri Lankans prefer to work for the government sector given job security, retirement and other benefits. There are concerns that “…privatization can result in lower salaries and benefits as well as retrenchment and high employee turnover,” and that privatizing SOEs that enjoy monopolies can result in “corporations making decisions based on profits rather than on public benefit.”

Unlike the private sector, many of the SOEs in Sri Lanka have powerful trade unions, with workers at different skill and professional levels, which have fought for workers’ rights and the country’s sovereignty for decades.

Privatization is likely to lead to the elimination of many trade unions, strikes and other forms of labor resistance. In October 2022, Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) workers held a protest strike against the proposed privatization of the CPC.

Similarly, 1200 union workers of the Government Press plant – also targeted for privatization and cutbacks in wages, work conditions and jobs – went on strike in November 2022.

The CPC, a vital enterprise in the island’s oil supply and energy security, has been targeted for privatization under the IMF restructuring program. Lanka India Oil Company (LIOC), China’s Sinopec, Petroleum Development Oman and Shell have expressed interest in this deal.

It is important to note that, in the name of privatization, the CPC is being handed over to state owned enterprises of powerful foreign countries. The parent company of LIOC is the Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOC) which is owned by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas of India.

Similarly, Sinopec Group is the world’s largest oil refining, gas and petrochemical conglomerate and is wholly owned by the Chinese state; and Petroleum Development Oman is owned by the Government of Oman, Royal Dutch Shell, Total Energies and Partex.

Parasites and Vultures of Privatization

Sri Lanka must take lessons from privatization episodes in other parts of the world. According to a 2016 study, ‘The Privatising Industry in Europe’ by the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam, privatization in Europe has failed to produce the expected revenue as only “profitable firms are being sold and consistently at undervalued prices.”

The study notes that privatized firms are no more efficient than state-owned firms and that, under the rubric of privatization, many European energy companies in Portugal, Greece and Italy, have been sold off to state-owned corporations from China.

The Study also states that privatization in Europe has “encouraged a growth in corruption, with frequent cases of nepotism and conflicts of interest” in Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the UK.

We must also be vigilant for conflicts of interest in such large deals involving public money and wellbeing. For example, the financial and legal advisory firms Clifford Chance and Lazard have been hired by the Sri Lankan government to assist with IMF debt restructuring.

The Transnational Institute Study lists Clifford Chance as part of a small group of privatization advisory law firms, with annual revenues of more than a billion Euros, “reaping huge profits from the new wave of crisis-prompted privatisations.”

Lazard is reputed to be both “the number one sovereign advisory firm” and “the world’s largest privatization advisory player.” Lazard’s operational global headquarters are in New York City, but the company is officially incorporated in Bermuda – always a warning sign when it comes to (lack of) financial ethics.

In previous government advisory contracts, Lazard has taken advantage of its prominent position by involving itself not only its advisory services branch, but also its asset management branch. According to the Study, “Upon the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of important state companies, Lazard has on a number of occasions undervalued the price of a company, which has allowed its asset management branch to buy up the stock at low prices which have then been sold for considerable profit when stock prices soared.”

The practice of both advising on processes of privatization and then profiting from that advice, raises ethical questions about Lazard. Questions are also raised about the entire global financial industry responsible for creating debt crises in the first place, and then finding devious ways to benefit from them, at the expense of debt-trapped countries.

Despite such serious concerns over privatization, there is now an enormous push by local and international actors that the solution to Sri Lanka’s debt and economic crises is to privatize the remaining SOEs, and no doubt a select few profit greatly in the process.

A key local player in this is the Sri Lankan NGO, the Advocata Institute in Colombo, which is associated with the Mont Pelerin Society and the Atlas Network and their neoliberal agenda.

Advocata is spearheading a major campaign to convince the public that privatization of SOEs is the path to ‘reset Sri Lanka’ for solvency and prosperity. The ‘Great Sri Lanka Fire Sale’ of state owned enterprises and strategic assets is now on, with huge returns expected for colluding local and global financial and corporate elites and pauperization for ordinary people.

Land Privatization

One key state-owned resource at risk is land, such that commoditizing state-owned land is a major aspect of privatization in Sri Lanka. Not only the land, but water – indispensable for survival of life on Earth – is threatened by privatization and commoditization in Sri Lanka and around the world.

This is not new; privatizing and commoditizing state land for export production has been going on in Sri Lanka since the British colonial era. Although the more recent neoimperial US Millennium Corporation Compact agenda, initiated under George W. Bush in 2002, has not been officially signed by Sri Lanka, contemporary Sri Lankan governments have been advancing its agenda of privatizing state land to prioritize export production over local food production, despite rising prices of imported food and the food crisis facing the country.

Two very important proposals in this regard have been slipped into the 2023 budget proposals without public discussion. Firstly, Clause 12.1 on ‘Lands for Agricultural Exports’ states:

“A vast amount of land belonging to Janatha Estate Development Board [EDB), Sri Lanka State Plantation Corporation (SPC), and Land Reform Commission (LRC) remains without being cultivated or productively utilized for a long time, ….. Accordingly, a programme will be devised to allow investors to productively utilize them in a manner to increase both the production and exports. Hence, it is expected that large parcels of unutilized/unproductively used lands will be leased out on long-term basis to grow exportable crops…”

Secondly, Clause 13.1 of the 2023 Budget on ‘Disposal of Government Lands’ states:

“…activities related to the disposal of government lands are carried out by District Secretaries/Government Agents through Divisional Secretaries/ Additional Government Agents…, , such duties were also allocated to Sri Lanka Mahaweli Authority and Land Reform Commission which were established for special requirements at a later stage…there are occurrences of discrimination and malpractice as …activities related to disposal of lands … Therefore…, a programme will be prepared during the next year to enable preliminary activities in relation to disposal of all government lands including the disposal of lands under the above two institutes only by the Divisional Secretaries.”

Nationalist members of Parliament and the Federation of National Organizations have criticized the move to place state land under Divisional Secretaries as a ploy for land grabbing, and that the move to deliberately privatize state land may have ‘irrevocable consequences.’

While recognizing the need to reform the existing Land Reform Commission, they point out that solely empowering Divisional Secretaries would encourage partisan land distribution.

The 2023 Budget seems to put the MCC Compact into effect although activists challenging the Compact have warned of a neocolonial agenda for a massive modern-day land grab, displacement and peasant pauperization.

There is great concern over the legitimacy of crucial land and other privatization decisions taken by President Wickremesinghe as neither he nor his United National (UNP) Party have a mandate to do so from the people. The land, the ports and the state enterprises do not belong to politicians but to the people and to future generations of Sri Lankans.

Clearly, there needs to be careful deliberation of alternatives before the IMF dictated ‘Great Sri Lanka Fire Sale’ is allowed to proceed.

Asoka Bandarage PhD has taught at Brandeis, Mount Holyoke, Georgetown and other universities. She is currently Distinguished (adjunct) Professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies. She is the author of Colonialism in Sri Lanka, The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka, Women, Population and Global Crisis Sustainability and Well-Being: The Middle Path to Environment, Society and the Economy and many other books and publications. She serves on the advisory boards of the Interfaith Moral Action on Climate and Critical Asian Studies

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

World Bank, Washington DC.
The multilateral Asian Development Bank and the World Bank owns 13% and 9% of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt, respectively.

By Asoka Bandarage
WASHINGTON DC, May 11 2022 (IPS)

Sri Lanka is in the throes of an unprecedented economic crisis. Faced with a shortage of foreign exchange and defaulting on its foreign debt repayment, the country is unable to pay for its food, fuel, medicine, and other basic necessities. Notwithstanding the austerities that would be entailed, a bail out by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been accepted as the only way out of the dire economic situation.

Opposition political parties and citizens across the country blame the Rajapaksa government’s widespread corruption and mismanagement for the crisis, and demand that the President and the Parliament resign.

The Prime Minister, Mahinda Rajapaksa did so on May 9th, 2022. However, the protesters at Galle Face Green and elsewhere have not been able to put forward an alternative leadership or a viable road map for the future. The country remains mired in confusion, chaos and a highly volatile political impasse.

To understand the complexity of the current crisis, and to prevent us falling back into the same paralyzing debt-cycle, it is necessary to move beyond domestic politics and the relentless news cycles of corporate media and explore some of the commonly overlooked yet basic global economic and geopolitical dimensions.

Debt Crises and Global Inequality

The transfer of financial and resource wealth from poor countries in the global South to the rich countries in the North is not a new phenomenon. It has been an enduring feature throughout centuries of both classical and neo-colonialism.

At the start of 1989, developing nations owed foreign creditors $1.3 trillion US dollars. That is, “just over half their combined gross national products and two thirds more than their export earnings.”

Recently, the effects of the war in the Ukraine and the Covid-19 crisis have worsened the high debt burdens of developing countries. These countries were already struggling to pay accumulated debts stemming from the expansion of capital flows from the high-income countries to lower income countries after the 2008 global financial crisis. Financial liberalization was fostered by powerful global interests, including the IMF, when interest rates dropped in the richer countries.

This facilitated borrowing by developing countries from private international capital markets through International Sovergein Bonds (ISBs), which come with high interest rates and short maturation periods.

Financial liberalization facilitated by the IMF and the developed countries working with the domestic elites of poor countries has created a “hierarchical and asymmetrical international financial architecture.”

As a December 2021 Report published by the Bretton Woods Project points out, this unequal framework creates “macroeconomic imbalances, financial fragilities, and exchange rate instability that can trigger debt and/or currency crises and curb the economic policy autonomy of affected countries to pursue domestic goals.”

The international NGO Debt Jubilee Campaign (soon to be called Debt Justice) has pointed out that 54 countries are now experiencing a debt crisis. According to the World Bank, Sri Lanka owes $15 billion in bonds, mostly dollar-denominated, out of a total of $45 to 50 billion in long-term debt.

The country needs $7 to 8.6 billion to service its debt load in 2022, whereas it had just $1.6 billion in reserves at the end of March 2022. The downgrading of Sri Lanka by rating agencies such as Moody’s added to the difficulty of further borrowing to pay off the debt.

The devaluation of the Sri Lankan rupee by 32% since the beginning of the year has made it the ‘world’s worst performing currency,’ exacerbating the plight of the Sri Lankan people.

The multilateral Asian Development Bank and the World Bank owns 13% and 9% of Sri Lanka’s foreign debt, respectively. Currently, China is Sri Lanka’s largest bilateral lender, owning about 10% of its total foreign debt, followed by Japan which also owns 10%.

Approximately half of Sri Lanka’s total foreign debt (55% according to some estimates) is market borrowings through US- and EU-based ISBs. Asset managers BlackRock, Inc. and Ashmore Group Plc., along with Fidelity, T Rowe Price and TIAA are among Sri Lanka’s main ISB creditors. However, the information on the ownership of ISBs – including one worth $1 billion that is maturing on July 25, 2022 – is not publicly revealed.

Sri Lanka is in negotiations with the IMF to restructure and repay its massive debt. IMF structural adjustment will include the familiar privatization, cutbacks of social safety nets and alignment of local economic policy with U.S. and western interests, to the further detriment of local working people’s standard of living and inevitably leading to more wealth disparity and repeat debt crises.

Debt Crisis and Geopolitical Rivalry

Economic crises create opportunities for external powers to expand economic exploitation and geopolitical control. In Sri Lanka’s context, this means India, the US and China.

Sri Lanka’s big neighbor India has extended a $1 billion credit line to provide essential food and medicine. The Sri Lankan government has stated that there are no conditions attached to the Indian loans. However, Sri Lankan analysts believe that agreements have been made giving Indian companies exclusive access to investments on the island.

Sri Lanka is strategically located in the sea lanes of the Indian Ocean. Over 80% of the global seaborne oil trade is estimated to pass through the choke points of the Indian Ocean. Although bizarrely overlooked by the global media, a Cold War is already in place between China and the Quadrilateral Alliance (United States, Japan, Australia and India) over the control of Sri Lanka and the Indian Ocean.

Sri Lanka is part of China’s $1 trillion Belt and Road Initiative, which includes the island’s Hambantota Port and Port City. The United States, on the other hand, signed an open-ended Acquisition and Cross Services Agreement (ACSA) with Sri Lanka on August 4, 2017, facilitating military logistic support.

The US is also seeking to sign a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which would effectively turn Sri Lanka into a US military base. While the proposed United States Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact has not been signed due to local protests, the pact’s objective – US control over the land, transportation and communication infrastructure in Sri Lanka – continues unabated.

In this context of Sri Lanka as a tense theater of geopolitical rivalry, the Sri Lankan debt crisis cannot be understood simply as an economic crisis. Could it, in fact, be a ‘staged default’ designed to push Sri Lanka into an IMF bailout which would complete the island’s subservience to the US dominated economic and political agenda?

Alternative Sustainable Approaches

The young ‘Gotta Go Home!’ protesters who demand President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation seem to be unaware of the global dynamics of the Sri Lankan crisis. Perhaps local and foreign interests guiding the protests may want to keep it that way.

They are certainly not encouraging the protestors to join global calls for much-needed debt cancellation, debt swaps and regulation of capital market borrowing to prevent debt crises occurring in the first place.

However, at least a few Sri Lankan professionals concerned about the implications of an IMF bailout have put forward alternative short and long-term solutions. They recognize that while exploitative colonial and neocolonial policies have turned Sri Lanka into a poor and desperate country, the island is rich with abundant natural resources and human capital.

If the land and ocean and the graphite, ilmenite and the other mineral resources are sustainably utilized, Sri Lanka can be economically self-sufficient and prosperous. There is also much to be learned from Sri Lanka’s pre-colonial history in this regard, not least its hydraulic civilization.

The Committee on Public Accounts (COPA) has revealed that there are enough fuel and natural gas deposits in the Mannar Basin to meet the entire country’s needs for 60 years. If the abundant sustainable solar and wind power are also utilized, Sri Lanka can become not only energy self-sufficient, but an exporter of energy as well.

Bioregionalism, economic democracy, and food and energy sovereignty are the only route to a sustainable future for Sri Lanka and other debt-trapped countries, and indeed the world at large. To overcome the dominant forces seeking to monopolize control over the natural environment and humanity, people – especially the young – need to awaken and work in partnership with each other to fight the destructive greed that ensnares and threatens to destroy us.

Asoka Bandarage is Distinguished (Adjunct) Professor at the California, Institute for Integral Studies. She is the author of Colonialism in Sri Lanka (Mouton), The Separatist Conflict in Sri Lanka (Routledge), Women, Population and Global Crisis (Zed), Sustainability and Well-Being (Palgrave McMilllan) and many other publications on global political-economy and South Asia.

IPS UN Bureau

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Secretary-General António Guterres and Donald Trump, at a UN briefing. Credit: UN Photo/Manuel Elias

By Asoka Bandarage
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Jan 19 2021 (IPS)

According to the mainstream narrative, President Trump’s incitement of his supporters during the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory led to the ‘insurrection’ at the US Capitol on January 6, resulting in the banning of Trump’s social media accounts and his second impeachment by Congress.

According to so-called ‘conspiracy theories,’ however, the victory of the November Presidential elections was ‘stolen’ from Trump through electoral fraud and the storming of the Capitol was staged or allowed to happen in order to impeach Trump and prevent him from coming back to power in 2024.

It may be even more complicated; a report by the Swiss Policy Research website, for example, suggests that the right-wing QAnon movement, heavily supportive of Trump and prominent at the event, like Russiagate, is the product of an FBI psyop (psychological operation) launched to discredit Trump.

The public may never know the truth behind the January 6 events, the mysterious ‘Deep State’ or the growing polarization between so-called pro-Trump white supremacist, ‘domestic terrorists’ and the anti-Trump multicultural, progressive liberals.

However, the search for peace, justice and democracy at this critical time requires transcending simplistic polarizations and understanding the systemic roots of the conflict that is tearing America apart.

Polarization

Donald Trump is a member of the ruling elite representing its own interests. His assaults on the environment and mismanagement of the Covid pandemic has put the entire country at risk. While claiming to represent the interests of the alienated and underprivileged white population, he introduced massive tax cuts and corporate deregulation worsening their social and economic position.

His rhetoric against minorities and immigrants has exacerbated racial and ethnic tensions and political extremism.

Joe Biden and the Democratic Party, heavily funded by the billionaire class, also represent elite interests at the expense of the general population. Under the Obama administration, economic inequality increased and Black poverty, mass unemployment and police brutality persisted.

The identity-focused rhetoric of liberals has stimulated racial and ethnic politics, and the rise of groups like Black Lives Matter (BLM). Often portrayed as progressive and “radical,” BLM has been significantly co-opted by corporate liberal interest and has received extensive funding from leading corporations including Amazon and Microsoft.

The corporate media has aided and abetted disunity and violence by silencing moderate and alternative voices that seek to understand and question the motives and strategies of both pro and anti -Trump extremists.

The polarization of politics and media hinder and mask an understanding and dialogue needed to move forward. For example, is there an equal risk of fascism, albeit more insidious, arising from the corporate liberals opposing Trump?

Reclaiming Perspective

A handful of corporations led by big tech and finance control the US political process and practically all aspects of society. The overwhelming focus on identity politics deflects attention from the dangers of deepening techno-corporate control and the destruction of freedom of speech.

The events of January 6 have already contributed to plans for a federal law against ‘domestic terrorism’ and the criminalization of dissent, which would likely be based on the 2019 Confronting the Threat of Domestic Terrorism Act introduced by California Representative Adam Schiff. Anti-terrorism acts, such as the Patriot Act, are notorious for their use in crushing dissent and marginalized groups.

Systemic violence and repression are not new to the United States. The noble ideals of democracy, freedom and human rights aside, the United States was founded on plunder of the land and exploitation of people ¬– Native Americans, Blacks, Asians as well as underprivileged whites.

Likewise, the American Empire was established and maintained with systematic plunder and exploitation and massive military and political interventions around the world that continue today.

The costly military adventures (now up to 2021’s approved $740 billion military budget), along with global economic shifts such as manufacturing and job outsourcing and displacement by technology, impoverished large segments of the US population, both white and people of color.

Corporate deregulation and the decimation of labor unions weakened the working class and strengthened corporate authoritarianism. In recent decades, Republican and Democratic parties have differed little in their pursuit of corporate and imperial interests.

While the United States has had a history of social movements for people’s rights including labor and civil rights, recent initiatives for systemic change have experienced serious setbacks. The anti-globalization movement that came to prominence during the WTO (World Trade Organization) meetings in Seattle in 1999 was undermined by the Patriot Act (with Joe Biden being a key architect) and other policies introduced soon after the 9/11 terror attacks.

The Occupy Wall Street movement that emerged following the 2008 financial crisis and its slogan ‘We are the 99%’ brought attention to the excesses of the financial sector and growing economic inequality. But this movement also dissipated, largely due to state and corporate tactics of division, repression and propaganda to reinstate the narrative.

In the electoral realm, despite an unprecedented grass roots movement backing him, Bernie Sanders was blocked from winning the Democratic presidential nomination by the party elite in both 2016 and 2020.

The ideals of true socioeconomic reform have been squashed and subverted by the liberal establishment adopting the language of the progressive left but equating justice with racial and gender diversity and downplaying economic equality. This reframing channels the progressive energy away from threatening corporate control and profit, into a safe zone of identity politics, which only further divides and disempowers the general population.

Techno-oligarchy

Just as unemployed and uninsured Americans are pleading for support during the Covid crisis, the combined wealth of US billionaires ‘surpassed $1 trillion in gains since March 2020 and the beginning of the pandemic,’ according to a study by the Institute for Policy Studies.

The top five US billionaires – Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett and Larry Ellison – saw their wealth grow by a total of $101.7 billion, or 26%, during this short period. The increasing digitalization of life during this period represent an enormous augmentation of the political and ideological power of the technocratic oligarchs.

Silicon Valley tech firms, financial supporters of Joe Biden, withdrew attention from issues potentially harmful to his campaign. Even some left-leaning media platforms like the Intercept refused to publish an article critical of Biden just before the election. It led its co-founder, investigative journalist, Glen Greenwald to resign from the Intercept.

Social media companies swiftly deleted the accounts of President Trump and thousands of others following the January 6 event in Capitol Hill on grounds that they incite violence and extremism.

While hate speech and incitement of violence should not be allowed, should a handful of unrepresentative, unregulated tech corporations, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube exercise social and political control that exceed that of the state elected to represent people’s interests? Who decides what is appropriate and inappropriate and on what grounds?

Clearly, democratic policies and institutions are needed to oversee the First Amendment right of free speech. Elizabeth Warren, a candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination, called for corporate accountability and planned to introduce policies for deregulation including the break-up of monopolistic companies like Facebook, Amazon and Google.

However, given lack of support from the dominant corporate wing of the Democratic party, Warren was not able to secure even the Vice-Presidential nomination over Kamala Harris, the choice of the liberal corporate establishment.

System Change

The mainstream narrative propagated around the world paints a rosy picture of a return to a post-Trump era of freedom and democracy with the Biden-Harris inauguration on January 20. However, even if Trump is debarred from running for office in 2024, the attitudes and grievances of 70 million or more Americans who voted for him are unlikely to dissipate without serious efforts for change from those in power, and not just a return to corporate-dominated gesture-liberalism.

Indeed, all the issues of polarization and the inherent racism of society cannot be reduced to economic inequality and corporate dominance. Yet there has to be a recognition of the suffering and despair of ordinary people on both sides, be they incarcerated Blacks or unemployed whites.

As economic inequality deepens and the middle class disappears, vast segments of people of color as well as whites have become economically desperate and politically alienated from the status quo.

In the absence of genuine leaders to unite people and bring fundamental change, self-interested parties exploit and fuel discontent, anger and hatred by directing it towards each other. Use of epithets such as, ‘criminals and rapists’ against Latino immigrants by Trump and ‘basket of deplorables’ against Trump supporters by Hillary Clinton, have only fueled division and animosity.

Political ‘street warfare’ between the extreme right Trump supporters and extreme left antifascist groups is now a common occurrence across the US.

It is urgent that more and more people speak up and help move society beyond the polarization that is helping solidify techno-corporate totalitarianism and the police state. The us vs. them, good vs. bad dualism needs to be overcome with an appreciation of inherent human and planetary interdependence and the need for freedom and justice for all.

To quote the words of Robert F. Kennedy on the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on June 6, 1968:

“In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. [Y]ou can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization…filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort … to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love… What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.”

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

A mother and doctor tend to a young girl with COVID-19 at an intensive care ward in the western region of Chernivtsi, Ukraine. Credit: UNICEF/Evgeniy Maloletka

By Asoka Bandarage
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka , Dec 1 2020 (IPS)

According to the Center for Systems Science at Johns Hopkins University, as of November 29th, there have been 62,150,421 COVID-19 cases, including 1,450,338 deaths.

And according to the latest ILO reports, as job losses escalate due to lockdowns, nearly half of the global workforce is at risk of losing livelihoods, access to food and the ability to survive. The World Economic Forum states that ‘With some 2.6 billion people around the world in some kind of lockdown, we are conducting arguably the largest psychological experiment ever.’

As governments and corporations tighten political authoritarianism and technological surveillance, curtailing privacy and democratic protest, much of humanity is succumbing to anxiety, depression and a sense of powerlessness. Countries with some of the harshest lockdowns, such as India, have seen significant increases in suicides.

Pandemic Narrative and Dissent

Dominant global political and economic institutions and the media present their pandemic narrative as based on scientific authority. However, there is increasing dissension on the origin and prevention of the virus within the biomedical profession. Many physicians and scientists are questioning if COVID-19 is a natural occurrence or the product of a leak from a lab experimenting with coronaviruses and bioweapons.

There is concern over the accuracy of PCR tests and false positives, as well as the classification of deaths simply as COVID-19 deaths when an overwhelming number of deaths are related to pre-existing illnesses or comorbidities, such as diabetes and heart disease. Even according to November 25, 2020 CDC statistics, COVID-19 was the sole cause of death mentioned in only 6% of the deaths.

The disproportionately higher rates of Covid deaths among American Indians and Alaska Natives, for example, are due to higher rates of obesity, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease than among more privileged U.S. communities.

The Covid pandemic has not been the ‘Great Equalizer’ as suggested by the likes of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and members of the World Economic Forum. Rather, it has exacerbated existing inequalities along gender, race and economic class divides across the world.

Just as unemployed and uninsured Americans are pleading for support, the combined wealth of U.S. billionaires ‘surpassed $1 trillion in gains since March 2020 and the beginning of the pandemic,’ according to a study by the Institute for Policy Studies. The top five U.S. billionaires – Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett and Larry Ellison – saw their wealth grow by a total of $101.7 billion, or 26%, during this period.

Among the pandemic profiteers are CEOs of companies like Zoom and Skype providing video conferencing, and Amazon providing online shopping to citizens under lockdown. Yet the success of these companies has not translated into better wages and safety conditions for their employees.

However, the political and ideological power of the billionaire class and their influence over domestic and global policymaking are increasing. Relevant in this regard is billionaire Bill Gates’ central role in the development and marketing of vaccines and interest in use of vaccines as a method of population control.

The pharmaceutical industry, i.e. Big Pharma, (including vaccine manufacturers) are known for inflating prices, avoiding taxes and manipulating the political process to maximize profit. Unfortunately, this corrupt industry is a key player in the race to end the COVID-19 pandemic.

The incoming Biden administration in the US has received extensive funding from the pharmaceutical industry, yet they have not agreed to cut the cost of a possible coronavirus vaccine developed with federal research dollars.

Rather, the Biden administration, also heavily funded by the big tech, finance and defense sectors, is poised to facilitate ‘The Great Reset;’ the initiative to remake the post-pandemic world order by the World Economic Forum.

The ‘Great Reset’

The World Economic Forum (WEF), which identifies itself as ‘the international organization for public-private partnership,’ (i.e., like the Council on Foreign Relations, a geopolitical corporate power agency) sees the social and economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic as a ‘unique window of opportunity to shape the recovery.’

Speaking at a conference organized by the WEF in June 2020, former US Secretary of State, John Kerry expressed concern:

“Forces and pressures that were pushing us into crisis over the social contract are now exacerbated……The world is coming apart, dangerously, in terms of global institutions and leadership.”

The ‘Great Reset’ envisioned by the WEF seeks to address these challenges by radical global restructuring. It seeks to reinvent ‘the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global commons…to build a new social contract…,’ with sustainable development and resilience as its ultimate objectives.

At its next annual gathering of the rich and powerful in Davos, Switzerland in January 2021, the WEF is expected to adopt the Great Reset and also incorporate youth leaders from around the world into the initiative through a virtual summit.

The stated goals of sustainability and resilience are laudable, but many are questioning the true objectives of both the WEF and the Great Reset. The pandemic simulation called Event 201, for example, was conducted in October 2019, about three months before the COVID-19 outbreak by the World Economic Forum in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The simulation predicted up to 65 million deaths due to a coronavirus. Many are wondering why these powerful organizations, having apparently already run the exact scenario as a test, failed to prevent or at least prepare the world for the imminent viral outbreak.

The global political economy has been moving in the direction of increasing technological and market integration through social media, artificial intelligence and biotechnology. In the wake of COVID-19, the trends towards digitalization and commoditization of economic and social relations have increased.

The ‘Great Reset’ seeks to accelerate and solidify these trends as well as expand corporate control of natural resources and state surveillance of individuals. In the post-pandemic ‘Great Reset,’ there would not be much life left outside the technological-corporate nexus dominated by monolithic agribusiness, pharmaceutical, communication, defense and other inter-connected corporations, and the governments and media serving them.

The proponents of the ‘Great Reset’ envisage a Brave New World where, ‘You will own nothing. And you will be happy. Whatever you want, you will rent, and it will be delivered by drones…´ But it is more likely that this elite-led revolution will make the vast majority of humanity a powerless, appendage of technology with little consciousness and meaning in their lives.

Resistance

The mainstream media establishment tends to cast all critiques of the dominant Covid narrative and solutions as ‘conspiracy theories.’ Yet, more and more people are questioning the narrative on the origin and management of the pandemic and, instead, see the need to shift to a truly democratic, just and ecological civilization.

Many of the anti-lockdown protests around the world have had a limited focus on social restrictions and personal freedom, desires usually in tune with the individualism of globalized consumer culture. While these have gained some attention in the mainstream media by their acceptability, the more focused and progressive demands for social and economic rights by civil society groups have received scant attention.

These include demands by numerous groups, such as Oxfam International, to make COVID-19 medicines and vaccines free and fair for all. There is also a demand for a global public inquiry, to be led by independent scientists, to gather evidence on the origin and evolution of COVID-19. In addition, there is a call for an International Biowarfare Crimes Tribunal, to bring perpetrators of the pandemic to justice, whether they be from the US or China.

The overall objective of these demands is in greater transparency, ethics and accountability in the use of technology, especially biotechnology and vaccines against COVID-19 and other viruses. The demand for enforcement of the Biological Weapons Convention calls on the ‘nations of the world, China, Russia, the US, to come together to enforce better verification systems for preventing the production of biological weapons in the future, before the world is put through multiple pandemics to come’. These are concerns to be included in an alternative ethical, wise and compassionate ‘Great Reset.’

The Covid pandemic is a turning point, an opportunity to change. The reset we need now is not the creation of a ‘post-human, post-nature’ world defined by unregulated corporate-led growth of artificial intelligence and biotechnology. We need to balance digitalization and commoditization with an ecological reset, a way of living that respects the environment, promotes agroecology, bioregionalism and local communities.

We need to raise our consciousness and understanding of humanity as a species in nature, our connectedness to each other and the rest of planetary life.

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

Thailand’s COVID-19 response an example of resilience and solidarity: a UN Resident Coordinator’s Blog

By Asoka Bandarage
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Nov 10 2020 (IPS)

SARS-CoV-2, the corona virus that causes COVID-19, has been spreading exponentially across the world over the last ten or so months. As of November 6th, according to the Center for Systems Science at Johns Hopkins University, there have been 49,195,581 cases of COVID-19, including 1,241,031 deaths.

More than a third of the global population has been placed on lockdown. The global economy is experiencing the deepest global recession since World War 2 and massive numbers of people are losing livelihoods and suffering serious effects on their physical and mental health.

The pandemic has allowed states and corporations to tighten technological surveillance and authoritarianism, curtailing privacy and democratic protest. As virulent second and even third waves of the pandemic speed across countries, people are gripped with fear and despair over their own survival and what the future holds for humanity.

The origin and prevention of the virus are mired in controversy and conflict between conventional and ‘conspiracy’ theories.

This unprecedented, multi-faceted global crisis, however, calls for deeper exploration and broader discourse on its causes and long-term solutions. Biomedical science, social science and ecological and ethical perspectives need to be integrated to overcome this pandemic as well as other pandemics predicted in the years ahead.

Controversy over Origin and Prevention

Given the lack of media coverage, there is scarce public awareness of the likely laboratory origins of previous pandemics like the H1N1 outbreak of 1977-78. The global scientific and media establishments attribute the origin of COVID-19 to an animal-to-human (i.e. zoonotic) transmission at a seafood market in Wuhan, China, in December 2019.

While US intelligence sources also originally asserted this, they conceded in March 2020 that the pandemic may have originated in a leak from the lab at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

The Wuhan Institute is linked to the US army’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which does research and testing involving bats and coronaviruses and gene editing ‘bioweapons’.

The Wuhan Institute also has a close, decades-old partnership with the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) in Maryland, the leading US military laboratory for ‘biological defense’ research. USAMRID is known for periodic shutdowns due to its problematic record on safety procedure.

Gain-of-Function Research (GOF) involves “manipulating viruses in the lab to explore their potential for infecting humans.” This type of research is criticized by many scientists on ethical grounds because of the risks GOF viruses pose for human health from accidental release. Due to public health concerns, in October 2014, the US government banned all federal funding for efforts to ‘weaponize three viruses’: influenza, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).

In the face of this ban in the US, Dr Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), reportedly “outsourced in 2015 the GOF research on bat coronaviruses to China’s Wuhan lab and licensed the lab to continue receiving US government funding.”

In early 2018, US embassy officials in China raised concerns about “inadequate safety” at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. US science diplomats warned that, due in part to a lack of adequate safety personnel, the research that the lab was conducting in relation to bats “represented a risk of a new SARS-like pandemic.”

Yet, action was not taken and despite the controversies, Dr. Fauci was appointed as the leading doctor in the US Coronavirus Task Force and continues to function in that position.

Hollywood films, such as 2011’s Contagion presented eerie premonitions of the COVID-19. In 2015, billionaire and global population control proponent, Bill Gates warned of a huge threat of a global pandemic.

A pandemic simulation called Event 201 was conducted in October 2019 by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum projected up to 65 million deaths due to a coronavirus.

However, the global biomedical, political and business leaders who were well aware of the impending Covid pandemic did not take the precautionary action needed to safeguard people. The United States, Europe and other countries found themselves without adequate testing kits, respirators, hospital beds and medical personnel when the virus started to spread.

A failure of leadership lies behind the massive destruction of human life, livelihoods and social life that we are experiencing today.

Controversy over Mitigation

While lockdowns, curfews and the isolation of entire communities and regions seem to be the norm, the effectiveness of this approach and its enormous negative consequences on the economy, society and mental health are coming into question.

The success of the mainstream approach depends on a host of local socio-economic factors, such as the age of the population, health infrastructure, leadership, mobilization of people as well as just, uniform and compassionate enforcement of preventative measures.

Double standards in enforcing Covid health protocols can contribute to resentment and weaken overall conformity jeopardizing the health and safety of entire populations. Apparently, under strict Covid guidelines in Australia, some individuals have been prevented from visiting with dying family members while at the same time, VIPS and celebrities have been exempt from strict quarantine measures.

Likewise, in Sri Lanka, high powered delegations from China and the United States (led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo) arrived in the midst of the worsening second wave in October 2020, seemingly foregoing national Covid guidelines.

Many countries in the global south, such as, Vietnam, Cambodia, Senegal and Rwanda have contained the pandemic more successfully than the United States and the rich European countries.

As of November 1, Rwanda and Senegal, reported 0.28 and 2.04 Covid deaths per 100,000 people respectively, whereas the corresponding number for the US is a staggering 70.4.

The vast majority of those infected recover easily and only the elderly and those with other pre-existing illnesses are the most vulnerable. Thus far, on November 6th, of the total confirmed 49,195,581 cases, 32,368,883 have recovered.

Given this reality, many epidemiologists are suggesting ‘focused protection’ of the most vulnerable groups, allowing the rest of the population to develop ‘herd immunity;’ the point at which the majority of a population becomes immune and limits the spread to those that are not immune.

Sweden is the leading example of a country that went against the global norm of mandatory lockdowns, social distancing and use of face masks. Sweden experienced much higher numbers of cases and deaths than its Scandinavian neighbors during the first wave of the pandemic.

However, Sweden has had relatively fewer deaths during the current second wave while other Scandinavian and European countries which imposed strict lockdowns early in the pandemic are facing massive spikes in infections and deaths.

Given the relative failures of the mainstream lockdown approach and its negative socio-economic and psychological impacts, alternative long-term approaches like that of Sweden warrant consideration.

A May 2020 report from the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in the US suggested that the COVID-19 outbreak will not end until 60% to 70% of the human population becomes immune to the virus, which could take anywhere from 18 to 24 months.

Meanwhile, many virologists and global leaders argue that the only way to eradicate the virus would be with a vaccine ‘delivered to every human being’ as quickly as possible. Pharmaceutical companies are now racing to provide a vaccine, the magic bullet to end the pandemic, and a highly profitable one at that.

However, there is no certainty that a vaccine against COVID-19 would act as effectively as previous vaccines against viruses such as smallpox.

The Gates Foundation, which has funded the UK’s Pirbright Institute that is currently working on a vaccine against COVID-19, stands to benefit from vaccine marketing. Bill Gates is calling for a ‘digital certificate’ to identify individuals receiving the upcoming COVID-19 vaccine.

Backed by a massive organization called ID2020, these certificates are expected to grant access to other social and economic rights and services. Mass vaccination to eradicate COVID-19 is seen as the opportunity to introduce a worldwide digital ID, and ID2020 is already testing one in Bangladesh that is ‘biometrically-linked’ to fingerprints.

Reportedly, a ‘covert way to embed the record of a vaccination directly in a patient’s skin’ – called a ‘quantum dot tattoo’ – is also being researched at MIT with support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

What would happen to those who refuse to get vaccinated for COVID-19, or other mandatory, possibly gene-altering, vaccines in the future? Will they be denied access to essential services and cast off from society?

Do the kind of research and practices introduced in the name of disease prevention, such as Gain-of-Function Research and bioweapons development, pose greater threats than they provide protection of human and planetary life?

And how do the unprecedented shifts in human behavior seen this year, with increasing reliance on artificial intelligence, undermine age-old patterns of human connectedness to nature and to each other?

Moving Forward

Notwithstanding political and cultural differences, the rising economic power of China is pursuing the same growth driven developmental model as the declining Euro-American alliance. The pandemic has brought to light the dangers inherent in this technology- and market-driven system.

While conventions against biological weapons and bans of Gain-of-Function Research and the like are necessary, the multifaceted Covid crisis calls for a fundamental change of the global military-industrial system.

It is said that a crisis is a turning point, an opportunity to change. To understand where and how to turn, it is necessary for more and more people to question the values of the dominant globalization paradigm, including the management of the Covid crisis.

How has prioritizing unbridled economic growth over environmental sustainability and human wellbeing contributed to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic? How have deforestation, climate change and human expansion into the habitats of other animals contributed to easier transmission of viruses between species?

How has the pollution of the earth’s water, air and soil by industrialized agriculture and militarism, led to the depletion of human immunity and increase susceptibility to new viruses and diseases?

How has the reliance on the globalized import and export economy resulted in massive losses of employment and shortages of essential food and medicine during the Covid crisis?

It is time to fashion a more balanced, ecological way of living that respects the environment, upholds bioregionalism and local communities. More and more people are questioning the prevailing notions of success and development and shifting to agroecology, community-based and healthier ways of living.

These developments need to be complemented with demands for greater transparency, ethics and accountability in the use of technology, especially biotechnology and vaccines against COVID-19 and other viruses.

The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic is making people more sensitive to the fragility and insecurity of life and our physical and emotional interconnectedness to each other and the rest of nature.

The crisis can teach us to overcome fear, excessive greed and individualism and develop compassion for the suffering of humanity and other species of life. It offers an opportunity to overcome despair and powerlessness and to collectively challenge oppressive political and economic structures and turn the world in a more equitable, ecological and healthier direction.

* Asoka Bandarage’s new book ‘Colonialism in Sri Lanka” examines the political economy of 19th century British Ceylon and includes a discussion of the neocolonialism that has followed and continues. It is available as an ebook or paperback here from September 14th

Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
  

Excerpt:

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa of Sri Lanka. Credit: Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka to the United Nations

By Asoka Bandarage
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka, Aug 31 2020 (IPS)

On August 5, 2020, a new government was elected in Sri Lanka, bringing down the previous regime associated with the Central Bank bond scam, the Easter Sunday bomb attacks and controversial international agreements.

The new government has come into office with a two thirds majority in parliament, promising to bring prosperity, security and communal harmony to the beleaguered country. The achievement of these goals depends to a large extent on how neocolonialism and sovereignty are addressed.

Colonialism involves control of a less powerful country by a powerful country to exploit resources and increase its power and wealth. Essentially, neocolonialism involves the same factors: militarism, external expropriation of natural resources, deception and manipulation, collusion with local elites, incitement of ethnic and religious differences (and other forms of balkanization and destabilization) and consequential local resistance to external aggression.

Neocolonialism and Geopolitical Rivalry

Today, strategically located in the ancient east-west Indian Ocean maritime trade route, Sri Lanka faces a competition for control by China on one side and the U.S.-led Asia-Pacific Quadrilateral Alliance (including India, Japan and Australia) on the other.

The new Sri Lankan government says it will reconcile competing external interests. Speaking on behalf of Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the recently appointed Foreign Secretary, Retired Navy Commander, Prof. Jayanath Colombage states: ‘Sri Lanka should be a neutral country. Sri Lanka does not want to be caught up in the power game. Sri Lanka wants to develop friendly international ties with everybody. Sri Lanka should have Sri Lanka-first policy.’

Is Sri Lanka’s current foreign policy moving in this direction?

Chinese Expansion

Sri Lanka has been a participant in China’s $4 trillion Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) since 2005. In January 2017, the previous Sri Lankan government granted an 85 percent stake of the Hambantota port, in the most strategic central point in the Indian Ocean, to the China Merchant Port Holding Company in a 99-year lease.

China is Sri Lanka’s largest creditor and has provided generous support during the Covid-19 pandemic. Given local concerns over the Hambantota port deal, President Gotabaya has previously stated that, on election, he would revisit the lease agreement and renegotiate it.

More recently, he has stated that his government is not planning to amend the commercial terms of the agreement, but wishes to amend agreements concerning port security.

While Sri Lankan activists have been protesting the environmental and social impact of expanding Chinese projects, the Quadrilateral Alliance is seeking to involve Sri Lanka in countering Chinese expansion in Asia, making Sri Lanka a key battleground of geopolitical rivalry.

Allaying the fears of India and the U.S. that the Hambantota port could become a Chinese military base, the new Sri Lankan government has stated that the port should be ‘…limited to commercial activities only. It is zero for military purposes…Sri Lanka will not afford any particular country to use Sri Lanka as a staging area to do anything against another country- especially so India.’

But how would the Quadrilateral Alliance respond if there is real or perceived military activity? It is not hard to imagine a dangerous military situation escalating far beyond Sri Lanka’s control.

Indian Expansion

The policy of the Sri Lankan President, articulated by Foreign Secretary Colombage is that ‘…as far as strategic security is concerned, Sri Lanka will always have an India-first approach. That means Sri Lanka will not do anything harmful to India’s strategic security interests. As far as economic development is concerned, we cannot depend on one country. We are open to anyone.’

However, India’s political and military involvement during the separatist war, especially its impositions of the 13th Amendment on the Sri Lankan Constitution and the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) on Sri Lankan soil, have left fear and antipathy towards India.

The Indo-Lanka Accord that introduced these developments was hammered out in secrecy and signed without parliamentary consultation on July 29, 1987 during a 24-hour curfew. It faced massive resistance and ushered in one of the most violent and anarchic periods in the island’s modern history.

Despite India’s failure to curb Tamil militancy and the failure of the Provincial Council system, India wants Sri Lanka to maintain the 13th Amendment and the provincial councils that it introduced to appease Tamil separatist sentiments.

However, the new Sri Lankan government is under increasing domestic pressure to abrogate the 13th Amendment and to assert Sri Lanka’s sovereignty and political independence from India.

Concerned at Chinese encroachment at the Hambantota port, India is pursuing control over Sri Lanka’s other strategic seaports and to develop the British colonial era Oil Tank Farm in the eastern seaport town of Trincomalee, through a subsidiary of the Indian Oil Corporation, despite protests by Sri Lanka’s petroleum trade unions.

Port Power

External powers are also keen to gain control over the Colombo port, one of the busiest in South Asia, and an important transit hub in the region. Japan is keen for access given its high dependency on energy supplies via the Indian Ocean. There is now a push by the U.S. and India to privatize the Colombo port’s Eastern Container Terminal (ECT) and hand it over to an Indian company.

The Sri Lankan President remains committed to honor a memorandum of understanding signed in 2019 by Sri Lanka, India and Japan on the ECT. According to Foreign Secretary Colombage, ‘the policy of the President was that no national asset would be given in total control to any country’ and the MOU is being honored because it is ‘an arrangement between the two countries. The only thing is that there is opposition to it from port workers.’

On July 31, 10,000 Colombo port workers resisting the privatization of state assets began a strike blocking all roads into and inside the port, completely paralyzing it. President Rajapaksa refused to talk to the unions. Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, the President’s brother, did meet with union leaders and indicated that their key concern was to not antagonize India. Is this an indication of further Sri Lankan subservience to external power, at the cost of local agency and sovereignty?

U.S. Expansion

Given the history of U.S. hegemony and foreign interventions, there is a justified fear in Sri Lanka of U.S. interference in local governance and control of resources. Unsurprisingly, the country is experiencing intense pressure via multiple U.S. military, and economic development treaties.

On Nov. 6, 2019, ten days before the elections that brought Gotabaya Rajapaksa to power, the Government Medical Officers Association filed a Fundamental Rights Petition seeking to halt progress of three pending treaties with the U.S.: the MCC (Millennium Challenge Corporation) Compact on infrastructure development, and two military treaties; the ongoing ACSA (Acquisition and Cross Service Agreement) and new SOFA (Status of Forces Agreement).

The petitioners stated that the MCC compact would violate fundamental Sri Lankan sovereignty and independence, clearly upheld by the constitution. There is also concern at the irreversible nature of such far-reaching treaties.

Among other objectives, the MCC Compact seeks to privatize and commodify state land for investors, including foreign corporations. Gotabaya Rajapaksa promised to discard the MCC Compact during his election campaign, and since in office his government appointed the Gunaruwan Committee to study the issue. Its final report in June raised serious issues on its implications to social, economic and security interests of the country.

The Sri Lankan government plans to submit the report to the cabinet and then to the parliament for debate on a compromise, i.e., as Foreign Secretary Colombage indicates, the government plans to go ahead with the MCC Compact in some form or other.

There have also been clear reports that, whether or not the compact is signed, certain elements will proceed regardless. For example, ‘the e-land registry, cadastral mapping, parcel fabric map, deed registry scanning and digitizing, state land information & valuation are being outsourced to multiple private parties selected by the U.S. embassy Colombo.’

Are external pressures so great that they will inevitably find a way to mold Sri Lanka’s future?

Military engagement with Sri Lanka is considered vital to U.S. objectives in the region. The Acquisition and Cross Services Agreement (ACSA) signed by the previous Sri Lankan government on Aug. 4, 2017 provides the basis to set up a U.S. ‘logistic hub’ in Sri Lanka to secure support, supplies and services at sea.

Similarly, the proposed Status of forces Agreement (SOFA) would allow U.S. military personnel to operate in any part of Sri Lanka, without restriction. Sri Lankans fear that SOFA would make “the whole island … a US-controlled super state operating above the Sri Lankan laws and state….” A Cabinet spokesman suggested on July 1 that the SOFA has already been signed but the new government has made no denial or retraction. Meanwhile the Sri Lankan public is left completely in the dark.

‘Sri Lanka First’

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa have been voted in with the faith and respect of most Sri Lankans, not least for their roles in ending the thirty-year war with the LTTE. Most do not doubt their devotion to the country. Their exemplary management of the Covid-19 pandemic has reinforced this respect.

However, there is a growing sense in the country that the overt and covert pressures from external powers, exemplified by these impending agreements, are so great that a path of neutrality will require deep resolve and conviction. It is, then, the democratic responsibility of Sri Lankans to stay informed, see through the bias of power, and exercise their freedom of expression non-violently.

Our ancestors sacrificed their blood, sweat and tears to safeguard the sovereignty and independence of our country, and it has no price. A luta continua.

Footnote: A luta continua was the rallying cry of the FRELIMO movement during Mozambique’s war for independence. The phrase is in the Portuguese language a slogan coined by the first president of FRELIMO, Dr. Eduardo Chivambo Mondlane, which he used to rally the population in the liberated zones of Mozambique during the armed struggle against Portuguese colonial rule. Following his assassination in 1969, his successor, Samora Machel, continued to use the slogan to cultivate popular support during …

* Asoka Bandarage’s new book ‘Colonialism in Sri Lanka” examines the political economy of 19th century British Ceylon and includes a discussion of the neocolonialism that has followed and continues. It is available as an ebook or paperback here from September 14th

Excerpt: