By Surendra Ajit Rupasinghe –

Ajit Rupasinghe

The Geneva stakes center around the 3^rd US resolution presented to the UNHRC against the Mahinda Rajapaksa Regime that was adopted by 23 countries voting in favor, 12 abstaining and 12  voting against. The resolution established an international mechanism for investigating violations of international humanitarian and human rights law, including war crimes, to be supervised by the Commissioner of the UNHRC.

For the US, the so-called Western bloc, and including Japan and India, the agenda is set on either prying the Rajapaksa Regime from its increasing gravitation into the Chinese sphere of influence, or to replace it by a more pliant Regime. It is to be recalled that following a recent visit by President Mahinda Rajapaksa to China, both states declared that they had decided to raise their relationship to one of strategic cooperation.  Already, China, a rising imperialist power, has gained effective financial, economic and strategic influence over the island, as a vital link in its ‘string of pearls’.

This development contributed towards a signal change in the strategic balance of power in the whole Asian Pacific/ Indian Ocean region in favor of China. China is now a rising imperialist power with a growing potential to challenge US global hegemony and Indian regional hegemony and to dictate the structure of a new international order. At the same time, the US, EU, Japan, Russia, China and India are locking horns to establish their domain as against rival imperialist blocs and their coalitions. There is both collusion and contention between and within these rival imperialist blocs in their struggle for survival, ruled by the law : ”Expand or Die”. This rivalry and contention between and among imperialist blocs for supremacy drives all imperialist states towards the need to re-divide the world and  recast the international political order. This is the law and logic of Capital under imperialism – a permanent state of intensifying competition for the ever expanding need to secure raw materials, harness exploitable labor and conquer new markets to maintain an average of profit. Those that fail to advance shall be devoured. This basic contradiction of the system of imperialism is ultimately resolved through world wars for the violent re-division of the world- as two world wars have already attested. This law and logic of inter-imperialist rivalry  underlies the emerging political conjuncture, the emerging global geo-political configuration and defines the Geneva Stakes.  More fundamentally, this logic defines the basic dynamic in the politics of the Middle-East, and now, in the Ukraine, where the contest is between two rival imperialist blocs represented by the US/EU alliance and Russia.

This is the 3^rd consecutive resolution brought against the Rajapaksa Regime by the US and its allies in the guise of ‘accountability’ issues. The foremost criminal-genocidal -terrorist state in the world and in history, the US has accused its erstwhile junior neo-colonial partner of war crimes. For this purpose, the US has exploited the genuine grievances of the Tamil nation, including its demand for self-determination, to advance its overriding strategic agenda for maintaining global strategic superiority. This policy consists primarily in isolating and encircling China and securing and expanding undisputed control over strategic resources vital for the world economy, including vast oil and mineral resources in the China Seal and control over the vital Indian Ocean sea lanes. Geneva is about prying Sri Lanka as a vital link in the US global strategic chain.

The sustained Geneva initiative  has resulted in cornering the Rajapaksa Regime into two possible options. Either capitulate to the US driven agenda, fall in line by distancing itself from China and move into some form of a strategic cooperation with the US: Or, defy the US led imperialist bloc and hope for some strategic alliance with both China and Russia and other states in conflict with the US to bail it out. Capitulating to the US and the UNHCR would spell the death knell for the Regime. It will be seen and projected as an act of national betrayal by its own chauvinist political base. It will be seized upon by rival fractions within the Regime and outside, including the armed forces to eliminate the Rajapaksa Regime- physically, if not politically. Defying the US and moving into a China-Russia-Iran strategic orbit would have its own dire, if not fatal,  consequences. The US and its allies could impose selective sanctions and travel bans, freeze assets and target key representatives of the Regime, including the President. It would certainly antagonize India and may provoke even a military intervention- as it had in the past in the form of the Indian Peace-Keeping Force (IPKF), which earned the inglorious reputation as the Indian People-Killing Force.

India abstained from voting for the US resolution, which it had previously supported. This is an abject lesson for all those who placed their faith in India- and world imperialism – to deliver justice to the Tamil nation. India abstained mainly due to the fact that the US resolution calling for an international investigating mechanism could ricochet on its own State and open the door to international investigations against the horrible genocidal  crimes against humanity, including war crimes and atrocities, within its own borders. The Indian state is also concerned about its strategic partnership with the US that would undermine its own status as the regional hegemonic power in South Asia. The whole Geneva scenario is to be primarily explained in terms of the politics of global geo-political/strategic inter-imperialist rivalry. This is the fundamental logic and motion that governs world politics and the life and future of every state, nation and individual, and ultimately, the survival of Planet Earth and Humanity. Sri Lanka is no exception, but the rule.

The Regime has declared its rejection of the US resolution, including any form of an international mechanism. It would also reject an internal mechanism where the UNHCR (and the US) would play any monitoring/supervising role. For its survival, the Rajapaksa Regime, would have to mobilize its chauvinist ‘patriotic’ political base against the Tamil nation and other oppressed national minorities, while at the same time appearing to move in the direction of national reconciliation, truth, justice and democracy. It would have to appease the US, while keeping China and Russia on line. This is an untenable contradiction of irreconcilable class interests and it is bound to explode in its own face with untold fury.

The incontrovertible result would be that the masses of exploited workers and oppressed masses, including the oppressed national minorities would be fed as cannon fodder and played in a deadly game of imperialist chess for the sake of the survival and perpetuation of the Regime and its ruling dynasty. Whatever the outcome and however the game is to be played, the masses will only suffer even more intolerable misery, degradation and violent suppression, while the country shall be plunged deeper  into crisis and left to the mercy of rival predator states.

The only bright side of this emerging scenario is that will offer rare and historic opportunities to educate, unite,  organize and mobilize the masses for a determined revolutionary struggle to break their chains of ignorance and oppression, overthrow the oppressor and establish their own people’s democratic state, as the first step in marching towards Socialism and Communism, in unity with the international proletariat and oppressed people of the world.  That would be up to the role of a genuine vanguard Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party, armed with the most advanced scientific revolutionary theory, line, strategy, program and plan to lead the proletarian revolution to victory.

 *Surendra Ajit Rupasinghe – Secretary: Ceylon Communist Party (Maoist)