Indian Ocean: Need for a National Security Advisor

With Sri Lanka’s proposal at the 26th UN General Assembly sessions to declare the Indian Ocean a Zone of Peace (IOZOP) now submerged in history, these seas have seen an escalation of tension and muscle-flexing by countries with large navies and an eye for securing trade routes in the future. All said and done about modern long distance transportation, maritime transportation is still seen as the mode of moving goods in the future.

When Mrs. Sirimavo Bandaranaike made that proposal in 1971 to determine the limits of airspace and the ocean floor, India was not happy with the adoption of a Resolution. India felt it had the legitimate right to control the Ocean named after it. But its strategists of yesteryear did not anticipate at the time, the emergence of a blue water navy by China at the turn of the century.

There are the warships of the US-India-Japan axis zigzagging these waters to keep the PLA-N, the Chinese navy, from grabbing all the ports in the area and establishing their presence, nay their dominance. If the Indian Ocean is to service more than half the world’s population by way of trade, and the supply of energy to fuel the economies therein, the sea lanes need to be secured.

At this week’s Track 1.5 conference in Colombo organised by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the President of Sri Lanka had nothing to say. He is seemingly too embroiled in domestic compulsions. The Prime Minister, however, was to speak of this issue that relates to the future of this country. He was to say, what he said earlier in the week at the Oxford Union, that advantage must be taken of the currently “somewhat benign strategic atmosphere” in the region to create a maritime order that can withstand future challenges that could emerge.

Just last month, speaking on the same topic in Viet Nam, he asked the pertinent question; should countries like Sri Lanka be expected to take a stand in this big power rivalry in the waters that surround us.

In our editorial of September 2 this year, we recommended that it was time Sri Lanka had a high calibre National Security Minister or Adviser in the PMO to monitor the ‘big picture’ around the Indian Ocean - so that it is not caught wrong- footed in the not too distant future as big nations play their cards, and the stakes are very high.