INTRODUCTION
While reams had been written on the politico-economic mismanagement of an island state, few sheets had imprinted the geopolitical implications on the extension of U.S. multilateral networked hub-and-spoke alliances, with India partnering a major role in an architecture of strategic positioning.
1. The island of Sri Lanka floating on the edge of the India Ocean-Bay of Bengal, but within the deepwater of the Indian Ocean Sea sealanes, is - to World Bank and its twin the IMF - a precious pearl.
The Global North corporates supported by the QUAD-AUKUS-I2U2 military alliances-industrial complex are lacing Pearl of the Orient island as part Asia's NATO potential strategic outpost imperative.
2. India - in respond to Sri Lanka’s desperate calls for foreign aid to tackle its crippling debt and economic crisis - was motivated by both the unfolding humanitarian crisis affecting the Sri Lankan people and political pressure from South India. In the first six months of 2022, Indian aid worth US$3.5–4 billion has flowed to Sri Lanka through credit lines, loans and grants, (Ganeshan Wignaraja, NUS).
Besides advancing India’s long-held ambition of securing a seat on the United Nations Security Council by garnering international support, an unstable Sri Lankan economy could pose security risks to India, possibly ensuing a flood of refugees across the Palk Strait.
3. The Ukraine near-border conflict has unleashed a warfare of an unheard-of nature and scope. While the dollar has been weaponized against sanction-hit Russia, Sri Lanka too is starved of Russian oil seemingly to deepen the crisis ex poste facto.
4. The main factor that had triggered the big default and fuel shortage in Sri Lanka is her owing to the International Sovereign Bond (ISB) debt trap, US and EU vulture funds like Black Rock that received huge US-Government Covid-19 bailout funds to debt-trap, and indeed, asset strip in countries like Sri Lanka, reported the Eurasiareview on 08/07/2022.
5. Meanwhile, QUAD cricket teams from India and Australia have played under flood-lit matches despite power outages in Sri Lanka in the past two months to keep the people entertained and distracted from the geopolitics great power contest in the strategic Indian Ocean island as the politico-economic crisis unfolds.
6. The last ship bringing Russian oil to the Sapugaskanda oil refinery docked in the Colombo Port, South Asia’s busiest, at the end of May 2022. Then, not well publicised in western media, but the US Marines surfaced to conduct the Sea Vision training in Sri Lanka, as oil tankers that were supposedly due in the months of June-July in the country somewhat vanished into the horizons.
7. By then the IMF “eagle” team had landed, and there were “special US advisors” in town with Lazard, Clifford and Chance representing vulture capitalism bond traders to bailout ISB holders.
8. Therefore, a question to ask: Was the non-appearance of ships bringing Russian oil and gas to the island state for 6 weeks in June-July 2022 incident-linked to the US Department of Defense Sea Vision operations with the Sea Vision Technical Assistance Field Team?
9. A Russian Aeroflot Airlines plane was also mysteriously grounded at the BIA International Airport. Aeroflot subsequentially suspended all flights to Sri Lanka after a court ordered the seizure of one of its Airbus A330s on June 2nd. 2022. The case was dismissed a month later, but the designed episode seemed to disrupt relations between the two countries in furtherance to impede fuel deliveries from Russia which has de-dollarized its oil sales.
Thus, the staged fuel-crisis looked like pro-US activities beyond Colombo's choice. This is because during the first week of July, 120 flights to the island were diverted to India's Kochi and Thiruvanathapuram airports effectively “marooning" the country from the rest of the world in the midst of a news blackout, too, (according to freepressjournal, India and Darini Rajaisngham-Senanayake in countercurrents).
10. Is Sri Lanka the first domino to fall in America’s ‘free and open Indo-Pacific? Would The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) - comprising, India, Japan, the United States and Australia - a de facto cyber, maritime trade and multimedia embargo destined to starve the island’s economy from Russian oil. Were these acts in pursuit to deepen the debt-trap and enable the IMF to dictate economic and trade policies on this island at the peripheral of the Indian Ocean? Shall India, like in the Middle East I2U2 design, aim to incorporate Sri Lanka into the QUAD partnership - effectively chaining continental India from west Asia to the Pacific as भारतीय पुलिस सेवा, ISO: Bhāratīya Pulisa Sēvā to USA NATOnisation of Asia-Pacific grand imperial design?
CONCLUSION
It is well known fact that “the United States bears a good share of responsibility” for increasingly weaponising trade among most countries” once wrote Dr. Anis Chowdury, and her growing rapacious intent for war (Deborah Veneziale, Guancha 2022), and to be perpetually at war (John Bellamy Foster, Hannah Holleman and Robert W. McChesney 2008).
The recent concluded NATO annual summit in Madrid bears this dictum by essentially projecting a distinctive display of USA-NATO’s commitment to continuously fuel warfare on a global arena. Only that this time, The Strategic Concept Document principal target is not only Russia, but China, too, thus expanding international conflict into the Asia-Pacific Basin.
A crisis cyclone is coming.
Related:
The I2U2 - the Western Indian Ocean QUAD lying between India, the Suez Canal and South Africa, is strategically critical as it contains the key maritime chokepoints of the Bab el-Mandeb and the Suez Canal………
The QUAD in Asia
intends to multilateralise the US-led hub-and-spoke alliance system to enable an networked security architecture which is in furtherance of the military encirclement of China.