Features
All align for Sri Lanka’s Debt, Tanks align in Ukraine, Doomsday Clock ticks to Midnight Hour
by Rajan Philips
Over the last two weeks Sri Lanka has been inundated with assurances of support by the world’s three most populous and powerful countries. India, America and China – all three of them marked their presence in Sri Lanka in one way or another. Japan and UK have also come on board to reinforce Sri Lanka’s pleas for IMF help. Before that on Sunday, January 8, 182 economists, social scientists and development experts, including such generational names in Economics as Jayati Ghosh, Thomas Piketty, and Yannis Varoufakis, issued a statement to the (British) Guardian that “all lenders—bilateral, multilateral, and private must share the burden of restructuring” Sri Lanka’s debt. Both were big news for Sri Lanka. A case of overwhelming global support to a rather underwhelming Sri Lankan government.
The big news for the world this week was the agreement between the US and Germany and the rest of NATO to send Germany’s Leopard 2 and America’s Abram tanks to Ukraine to fight Russia. And Russia is widening the frontiers of an emerging global cold conflict by partnering South Africa to stage joint naval exercises in African waters. There is no comparison between the situations in Sri Lanka and in Ukraine although there have been past linkages between the corrupt regimes of the two countries for private gains of the powerful. However, by all appearances and for the sake of argument while the world appears to be coming together in Sri Lanka, it is getting hopelessly divided over Ukraine. According to Doomsday Clock scientists, the war in Ukraine is triggering the gravest threat to the world since World War II.
Doomsday Clock
The Doomsday Clock was set up in 1947 by a group of atomic scientists to provide a measure of the catastrophic threats facing the planet and humanity. The group included Albert Einstein and others who had worked on the Manhattan project that led to the development of the world’s first nuclear weapons. The clock is run by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, now a Chicago based non-profit organization which includes climate scientists and nuclear experts with 13 Nobel laurates among them. The Bulletin updates the clock annually after assessing a range of significant threats facing the world, and it did so last Tuesday, January 24, moving the clock hands to 90 seconds to midnight, their closest ever to Doomsday – signifying global annihilation.
The planet is not going to explode anytime soon, but the ticking Doomsday Clock provides perspective on the deteriorating global situation in the early 21st century. The farthest the clock has been from midnight is 17 minutes (see illustration), and that was in 1991 when the Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Rather than moving away from midnight and Doomsday, the clock has been ticking closer in the 21st century, getting to 100 seconds to midnight in 2020 and to 90 seconds last Tuesday. The risk level is higher now than it ever was during the Cold War. That is a sad commentary on the world leadership that humankind has been saddled with over the last 25 years.
The latest Doomsday Clock update is a reflection of the confluence of climate furies, pandemic hangovers, spreading food scarcity, the war in Ukraine and the fear of nuclear escalation. The current world leaders cannot be held wholly responsible for the climate crisis, the origins of which go back to the beginning of industrialization. The Covid pandemic might be seen as the revenge of the pathogens for reckless deforestation for global consumption. But world leaders who came after the end of the Cold War must bear full responsibility for bringing back what is now a multilateral war in Ukraine and for reviving the old threat of nuclear confrontation.
The Logic of Cold War
During the Cold War the two superpowers, the US and the USSR, executed the art of containment quite remarkably. Now, the US and post-Soviet Russia are entrenching their standoffs in Ukraine without any thought about an exit door or offramp to get out. As well, there was a somewhat redeeming logic to the Cold War in that it underlaid two competing visions of world society – the trickle-down complacency of market capitalism and the emancipatory assertions of socialism. To make a passing point, even though the diehard decriers of socialism will insist that market has conclusively triumphed over socialism, the truth is that the threat of socialism has transformed the market albeit in different ways in different countries. There is nothing new here, for the origins of market responses to the spectre of revolution go back to the time of Bismarck and the (first) unification of Germany. And the dialectic will continue. The pressing point now is that there are no competing socioeconomic visions to rationalize the current conflict. Putin is a Russian Orthodox hankering to restore not Soviet socialism but Russia’s Tsarist glory. And there might be more socialists in America, at least in the reckoning of the Republican Party, than in Russia.
Yet, the rolling of tanks from Germany, the US and other NATO countries into Ukraine will raise the conflict to a different level, as the Russians are already noting as part of their PR exercise for domestic and selected international consumption. The emerging world divisions are already palpable. South Africa has signalled that it is joining hands with Russia to push for a “redesigned global order.” South Africa and Russia are members of BRICS, along with Brazil, India and China. There are also signs that BRICS is looking to expand to include new members such as Nigeria, Egypt, Venezuela, Iran, Argentina and Saudi Arabia.
The map above based on Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations is illustrative of the emerging division, pitting ever more starkly the West (Dark Blue) against the Rest (Light Blue being West-lite, including Catholic Latin America and Orthodox Eastern Europe. Dark Grey is the old Imperial Colonies of Asia and Africa). Notably, while NATO is limited to the West, BRICS includes members from every non-western continent. To me, calling these divisions a clash of civilizations is a copout answer. If at all, there are overlapping civilizations crisscrossing geopolitical boundaries. Such crisscrossing was a feature even during the Cold War years.
Today’s West includes increasing segments of people from outside the West, many of whom are getting to be represented in the echelons of power in the West. In Rishi Sunak, Britain has a person of Indian origin from East Africa as its Prime Minister. The presence of Ukrainians in large numbers in the West is a significant factor in the support that Ukraine is getting for standing up to Russia. This trend is inevitable in spite of the racial-populist backlashes against it.
Sri Lanka and India
Unlike in Ukraine, NATO members (the US and UK) and BRICS members (India, China and even South Africa) are all-aligned in Sri Lanka. India was the first to declare its readiness to stand by Sri Lanka through its visiting Minister of External Affairs, S. Jaishankar. The Minister affirmed his Prime Minister’s commitment “Neighbourhood First” policy and extended “financial assurances to the IMF” to finalize the IMF’s agreement with Sri Lanka. China followed suit but not with unqualified support. Japan was already supportive and has now been joined by UK. The US marked its presence in a different way by staging a joint maritime exercise with Sri Lanka in Colombo, Trincomalee and Mullikullam.
This year’s exercise was apparently to mark the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the United States and Sri Lanka and was joined by participants from the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force and Maldives National Defence Force. Sri Lanka’s naval exercises may not carry too much geopolitical significance but its coincidence with the joint naval exercise involving Russia and South Africa is not likely to go unnoticed. For Sri Lanka, what is critical now is not maritime security but finalizing the IMF bailout package. The question is what help the US will provide to close the deal with the IMF, and the question has been raised in a (un)diplomatic spat involving the US and Chinese Ambassadors in Colombo, and has been lately joined by Dr Gunadasa Amarasekara in his capacity the Convenor of the Federation of National Organisations (FNO) in Sri Lanka.
For all the diplomatic hustle and bustle in Colombo, the Wickremesinghe government is not being transparent about who is doing what, and how and where things are, on the economic front. At the same time, the government is creating a rash of distractions in areas that have nothing to do with the economy and which are only diverting valuable efforts and resources which could otherwise be deployed on the economic front. The government’s shenanigans to stall the local government elections are the biggest unwanted distraction, but they are not the only one. In these circumstances, it will require a massive leap of faith for anyone to think that the government is sufficiently prepared to take maximum leverage of all the support that Sri Lanka seems to be getting now.
What is also not clear is the extent to which President Wickremesinghe and his government are cognizant of the shift in India’s foreign policy under Prime Minister Modi with Foreign Minister Jaishankar as the shift’s chief architect. The shift is defined by what Indian commentators call the new buzzword – all-alignment. It is a rebuke of the old Nehruvian non-alignment, which Mr. Jaishankar dismisses as a failure in his 2021 book, The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World.
Instead, Jaishankar advocates a transactional approach to foreign policy and dealing with other countries, in which India will advance its national interests “by identifying and exploiting opportunities created by global contradictions.” To that end, India will “engage America, manage China, cultivate Europe, reassure Russia, bring Japan into play, draw neighbours in, extend the neighbourhood and expand traditional constituencies of support.” Sri Lanka is being drawn in as a neighbour, even a special neighbour, but will Sri Lanka have the proportionate capacity to be transactional in its own way, and to identify and take advantage of global and regional contradictions?
It could be quite premature to claim that the US has closed ranks completely with the world’s foremost fascist states: Russia, China and North Korea. But there is no denying that the US is breaking with tradition and perceiving commonality of policy orientation with the mentioned authoritarian states of the East rather than with Europe and its major democracies at present.
Increasingly, it is seemingly becoming evident that the common characterization of the US as the ‘world’s mightiest democracy’, could be a gross misnomer. Moreover, the simple fact that the US is refraining from naming Russia as the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and its refusal to perceive Ukraine’s sovereignty as having been violated by Russia, proves that US foreign policy is undergoing a substantive overhaul, as it were. In fact, one could not be faulted, given this backdrop, for seeing the US under President Donald Trump as compromising its democratic credentials very substantially.
Yet, it could be far too early to state that in the traditional East-West polarity in world politics, that the US is now squarely and conclusively with the Eastern camp that comprises in the main, China and Russia. At present, the US is adopting an arguably more nuanced approach to foreign policy formulation and the most recent UN Security Council resolution on Ukraine bears this out to a degree. For instance, the UN resolution in question reportedly ‘calls for a rapid end to the war without naming Russia as the aggressor.’
That is, the onus is being placed on only Ukraine to facilitate an end to the war, whereas Russia too has an obligation to do likewise. But it is plain that the US is reflecting an eagerness in such pronouncements to see an end to the Ukraine conflict. It is clearly not for a prolongation of the wasting war. It could be argued that a negotiated settlement is being given a try, despite current international polarizations.
However, the US could act constructively in the crisis by urging Russia as well to ensure an end to the conflict, now that there is some seemingly friendly rapport between Trump and Putin.
However, more fundamentally, if the US does not see Ukraine’s sovereignty as having been violated by Russia as a result of the latter’s invasion, we are having a situation wherein the fundamental tenets of International Law are going unrecognized by the US. That is, international disorder and lawlessness are being winked at by the US.
It follows that, right now, the US is in cahoots with those powers that are acting autocratically and arbitrarily in international politics rather than with the most democratically vibrant states of the West, although a facile lumping together of the US, Russia and China, is yet not possible.
It is primarily up to the US voting public to take clear cognizance of these developments, draw the necessary inferences and to act on them. Right now, nothing substantive could be done by the US voter to put things right, so to speak, since mid-term US elections are due only next year. But there is ample time for the voting public to put the correct perspective on these fast-breaking developments, internationally and domestically, and to put their vote to good use in upcoming polls and such like democratic exercises. They would be acting in the interest of democracy worldwide by doing so.
More specifically it is up to Donald Trump’s Republican voter base to see the damage that is being done by the present administration to the US’ standing as the ‘world’s mightiest democracy’. They need to bring pressure on Trump and his ‘inner cabinet’ to change course and restore the reputation of their country as the foremost democracy. In the absence of such action it is the US citizenry that would face the consequences of Trump’s policy indiscretions.
Meanwhile, the political Opposition in the US too needs to get its act together, so to speak, and pressure the Trump administration into doing what is needed to get the US back to the relevant policy track. Needless to say, the Democratic Party would need to lead from the front in these efforts.
While, in the foreign policy field the US under President Trump could be said to be acting with a degree of ambivalence and ambiguity currently, in the area of domestic policy it is making it all to plain that it intends to traverse a fascistic course. As has been proved over the past two months, white supremacy is being made the cardinal principle of domestic governance.
Trump has made it clear, for example, that his administration would be close to ethnic chauvinists, such as the controversial Ku Klux Klan, and religious extremists. By unceremoniously rolling back the ‘diversity programs’ that have hitherto helped define the political culture of the US, the Trump administration is making no bones of the fact that ethnic reconciliation would not be among the government’s priorities. The steady undermining of USAID and its main programs worldwide is sufficient proof of this. Thus the basis has been adequately established for the flourishing of fascism and authoritarianism.
Yet, the US currently reflects a complex awareness of foreign policy questions despite having the international community wondering whether it is sealing a permanent alliance with the main powers of the East. For instance, President Trump is currently in conversation on matters in the external relations sphere that are proving vital with the West’s principal leaders. For example, he has spoken to President Emmanuel Macron of France and is due to meet Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the UK.
Obviously, the US is aware that it cannot ‘go it alone’ in resolving currently outstanding issues in external relations, such as the Ukraine question. There is a clear recognition that the latter and many more issues require a collaborative approach.
Besides, the Trump administration realizes that it cannot pose as a ‘first among equals’, given the complexities at ground level. It sees that given the collective strength of the rest of the West that a joint approach to problem solving cannot be avoided. This is particularly so in the case of Ukraine.
The most major powers of the West are no ‘pushovers’ and Germany, under a possibly Christian Democratic Union-led alliance in the future, has indicated as much. It has already implied that it would not be playing second fiddle to the US. Accordingly, the US is likely to steer clear of simplistic thinking in the formulation of foreign policy, going forward.
by Upali Gamakumara,
Upali.gamakumara@gmail.com
The Clean Sri Lanka (CSL) is a project for the true renaissance the NPP government launched, the success of which would gain world recognition. It is about more than just cleaning up places. Its broader objectives are to make places attractive and happy for people who visit or use services in the country, focusing more on the services in public institutions and organisations like the SLTB. Unfortunately, these broader objectives are not apparent in its theme, “Clean Sri Lanka,” and therefore there is a misconception that keeping the environment clean is the main focus.
People who realise the said broader objectives are excited about a cleaner Sri Lanka, hoping the President and the government will tackle this, the way they are planning to solve other big problems like the economy and poverty. However, they do not see themselves as part of the solution.
From the management perspective, the CSL has a strategic plan that is not declared in that manner. When looking at the government policies, one can perceive its presence, the vision being “A Prosperous Nation and a Beautiful Life,” the mission “Clean Sri Lanka” and the broader objectives “a disciplined society, effective services, and a cleaner environment.” If the government published these as the strategy, there would have been a better understanding.
Retaining the spirit and expectations and continuing the ‘Clean Sri Lanka’ project is equally important as much as understanding its deep idea. For this, it needs to motivate people, which differs from those motivators that people push to achieve selfish targets. The motivation we need here is to evolve something involuntarily, known as Drivers. Drivers push for the survival of the evolution or development of any entity. We see the absence of apparent Drivers in the CSL project as a weakness that leads to sporadic hiccups and free flow.
Drivers of Evolution
Drivers vary according to the nature of envisaged evolution for progress. However, we suggest that ‘the force that pushes anything to evolve’ would fit all evolutions. Some examples are: ‘Fitting to survival’ was the driver of the evolution of life. Magnetism is a driver for the unprecedented development of physics – young Einstein was driven to enquire about the ‘attraction’ of magnets, eventually making him the greatest scientist of the 20th century.
Leadership is a Driver. It is essential but do not push an evolution continually as they are not sprung within a system involuntarily. This is one of the reasons why CSL has lost the vigour it had at its inception.
CSL is a teamwork. It needs ‘Drives’ for cohesion and to push forward continually, like the Quality Improvement Project of the National Health Service (NHS) in England. Their drivers are outlined differently keeping Aims as their top driver and saying: Aims should be specific and measurable, not merely to “improve” or “reduce,” engage stakeholders to define the aim of the improvement project and a clear aim to identify outcome measures.
So, we think that CSL needs Aims as defined by NHS, built by stakeholder participation to help refine the project for continuous evolution. This approach is similar to Deming’s Cycle for continual improvement. Further, two more important drivers are needed for the CSL project. That is Attitudinal Change and Punishment. We shall discuss these in detail under Psychoactive Environment (pSE) below.
Aside from the above, Competition is another driver in the business world. This helps achieve CSL objectives in the private sector. We can see how this Driver pushes, with the spread of the Supermarket chains, the evolution of small and medium retail shops to supermarket level, and in the private banks and hospitals, achieving broader objectives of CSL; a cleaner environment, disciplined behaviuor, efficient service, and the instillation of ethics.
The readers can now understand the importance of Drivers pushing any project.
Three Types of Entities and Their Drives
We understand, that to do the transformation that CSL expects, we need to identify or adopt the drivers separately to suit the three types of entities we have in the country.
Type I entities are the independent entities that struggle for their existence and force them to adopt drivers involuntarily. They are private sector entities, and their drivers are the commitment of leadership and competition. These drivers spring up involuntarily within the entity.
Type II are the dependent entities. To spring up drivers of these entities commitment of an appointed trustee is a must. Mostly in state-owned entities, categorized as Boards, Authorities, Cooperations, and the like. Their drivers do not spring up within or involuntarily unless the leader initiates. The Government of a country also falls into this type and the emergence of drivers depends on the leader.
Type III entities have neither independent nor dependent immediate leader or trustee. They are mostly the so-called ‘Public’ places like public-toilets, public-playgrounds, and public-beaches. No team can be formed as these places are open to any, like no-man-land. Achieving CSL objectives at these entities depends on the discipline of the public or the users.
Clean Sri Lanka suffers the absence of drivers in the second and third types of entities, as the appointed persons are not trustees but temporary custodians.
The writer proposes a remedy to the last two types of entities based on the theory of pSE explained below.
Psychoactive Environment (pSE) –
The Power of Customer Attraction
Research by the writer introduced the Psychoactive Environment (pSE) concept to explain why some businesses attract more customers than others who provide the same service. Presented at the 5th Global Conference on Business and Economics at Cambridge University in 2006, the study revealed that a “vibe” influences customer attraction. This vibe, termed pSE, depends on Three Distinct Elements, which can either attract or repel customers. A positive pSE makes a business more attractive and welcoming. This concept can help develop Drivers for Type II and III entities.
pSE is not an all-inclusive solution for CSL, but it lays the foundation for building Drivers and motivating entities to keep entrants attractive and contented.
The structure of the pSE
The three distinct Elements are the Occupants, Systems, and Environment responsible for making a pSE attractive to any entity, be it a person, institution, organization, or county. Each of these elements bears three qualities named Captivators. These captivators are, in simple terms, Intelligent, Nice, and Active in their adjective forms.
pSE theorizes that if any element fails to captivate the entrant’s mood by not being Intelligent, Nice, or Active, the pSE becomes negative, repelling the entrant (customer). Conversely, the positive pSE attracts the entrants if the elements are Intelligent, Nice, and Active.
For example, think person who comes to a Government Office for some service. He sees that the employees, service, and environment are intelligent, nice, and active, and he will be delighted and contented. He will not get frustrated or have any deterioration in national productivity.
The Significance of pSE in CSL
The Elements and the Captivators are universal for any entity. Any entity can easily find its path to Evolution or Progress determined by these elements and captivators. The intangible broader objectives can be downsised to manageable targets by pSE. Achievements of these targets make the entrants happy and enhance productivity – the expectation of Clean Sri Lanka (CSL).
From the perspective of pSE, now we can redefine the Clean Sri Lanka project thus:
To make the Elements of every entity in Sri Lanka: intelligent, Nice, and Active.
How Would the pSE be A Remedy for The Sporadic Hiccups?
We have seen two possible reasons for sporadic setbacks and the discontinuity of some projects launched by the CSL. They are:
The absence of involuntary Drivers for evolvement or progress
Poor attitudes and behaviors of people and leaders
Remedy for the Absence of Drivers
Setting up a system to measure customer or beneficiary satisfaction, and setting aims can build Drivers. The East London NHS principles help build the Aims that drive type II & II entities. The system must be designed to ensure continual improvement following the Deming Cycle. This strategy will create Drivers for Type I & II entities.
This process is too long to explain here therefore we refrain from detailing.
Attitudinal Change
The most difficult task is the attitudinal and behavioural change. Yet it cannot be postponed.
Punishment as a strategy
In developed countries, we see that people are much more disciplined than in the developing countries. We in developing countries, give credit to their superior culture, mitigating ours as rudimental. The long experience and looking at this affair from a vantage point, one will understand it is not the absolute truth. Their ruthless wars in the past, rules, and severe punishment are the reasons behind this discipline. For example, anyone who fails to wear a car seatbelt properly will be fined 400 AUD, nearly 80,000 LKR!
The lesson we can learn is, that in Sri Lanka, we need strong laws and strict punishment together with a type of strategic education as follows.
Psychological Approach as a Strategy
The psychological theory of attitude formation can be used successfully if some good programmes can be designed.
All attitude formations start with life experience. Formed wrong or negative attitudes can be reversed or instilled with correct attitudes by exposure to designed life experiences. The programmes have been developed using the concepts of Hoshin Kanri, Brainstorming, Cause-and-Effect analysis, and Teamwork, in addition to London NTS Quality Improvement strategies.
The experience and good responses we received for our pSE programs conducted at several institutions prove and have built confidence in our approach. However, it was a time, when governments or organisations did not pay much attention to cultural change as CSL expects in the country.
Therefore, we believe this is a golden opportunity to take the CSL supported by the pSE concept.
Although they are visually impaired youngsters, under the guidance of renowned musician Melantha Perera, these talented individuals do shine bright … hence the name Bright Light.
Says Melantha: “My primary mission is to nurture their talent and ensure their sustainable growth in music, and I’m thrilled to announce that Bright Light’s first public performance is scheduled for 7th June, 2025. The venue will be the MJF Centre Auditorium in Katubadda, Moratuwa.”
Melantha went on to say that two years of teaching, online, visually impaired youngsters, from various parts of the island, wasn’t an easy ride.
There were many ups and downs but Melantha’s determination has paid off with the forming of Bright Light, and now they are gearing up to go on stage.
According to Melantha, they have come a long way in music.
“For the past few months, we have been meeting, physically, where I guide them to play as a band and now they show a very keen interest as they are getting to the depth of it. They were not exposed to English songs, but I’ve added a few English songs to widen their repertoire.
Melantha Perera: Invented a notation
system for the guitar
“On 7th June, we are opening up for the public to come and witness their talents, and I want to take this product island-wide, giving the message that we can do it, and I’m hoping to create a database so there will be a following. Initially, we would like your support by attending the show.”
Melantha says he didn’t know what he was getting into but he had confidence teaching anyone music since he has been in the scene for the past 45 years. He began teaching in 2015,
“When I opened my music school, Riversheen School of Music, the most challenging part of teaching was correcting tone deaf which is the theoretical term for those who can’t pitch a note, and also teaching students to keep timing while they sang and played.”
Melantha has even invented a notation system for the guitar which he has named ‘MelaNota’. He has received copyrights from the USA and ISO from Australia, but is yet to be recognised in Sri Lanka.
During Covid-19, Melantha showcased MelaNota online and then it was officially launched with the late Desmond De Silva playing one of his tunes, using MelaNota.
Melantha says that anyone, including the visually impaired, can play a simple melody on a guitar, within five minutes, using his notation system.
“I’ve completed the system and I’m now finalising the syllabus for the notation system.”
Melantha has written not only for the guitar, but also for drums, keyboards, and wind instruments.
For any queries, or additional information, you could contact Melantha at 071 454 4092 or via email at thebandbrightlight@gmail.com.
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