Sri Lanka’s Defense Cooperation with India: Strengthening Ties or Strategic Dependence?

Defense cooperation between Sri Lanka and India is growing. This is significant as India’s defense engagements with other countries in the region, such as the Maldives, for example, are reducing.

This is a strategic move on India’s part to strengthen its influence in the Indian Ocean island at a time when the Chinese presence in the region has grown manifold.

By providing specialized training and military aid, India aims to foster a closer relationship with Sri Lanka, akin to the historical precedent set by the United States through its military aid programs with developing countries since 1880.

In the last few weeks, at the request of Sri Lanka, India has announced specialized capacity-building training courses for Sri Lankan officers at premier defense institutions across India. These include the Central Detective Training Institutes and the National Security Guard.

India is funding these programs, making them free for the Sri Lankan Police. The training covers a wide range of topics such as crime scene investigation, utilizing artificial intelligence to combat cybercrime, and VIP security.

In 2024 alone, over 130 Sri Lankan police officers — from junior to senior ranks — will benefit from this training. A group of 23 senior officers has just arrived in New Delhi for a two-week program focusing on counter-terrorism techniques, internal security threats, and religious extremism.

The Indian government offers these courses under the Indian Technical and Economic Cooperation (ITEC) and the “Aid to Sri Lanka” program.

Additionally, the Indian Coast Guard Ship (ICGS) Sachet arrived in Colombo to deliver spare parts for the Sri Lanka Coast Guard ship Suraksha. The Indian government provided these spare parts, valued at $1.2 million, as a grant. A formal handover ceremony attended by the High Commissioner of India to Sri Lanka Santosh Jha, Sri Lanka’s Defense Secretary Kamal Gunaratne, the Commander of the Sri Lanka Navy Vice Admiral Priyantha Perera and senior officers from both countries, was held to mark the occasion.

This follows a 2023 Indian assurance to Sri Lanka that it will allocate additional military funding.

One of the main reasons for the strengthening India-Sri Lanka relationship is the ascension of Ranil Wickremesinghe as the president of Sri Lanka in 2022. Wickremesinghe is said to be pro-India and far more so than his Sri Lankan contemporaries. Indian presence in Sri Lanka has seen a dramatic increase whenever Wickremesinghe holds the reins of power in the South Asian nation.

Under President Wickremesinghe’s leadership, Sri Lanka has significantly strengthened its economic and political ties with India. India’s Adani Group has been granted a monopoly on large-scale renewable energy projects in Sri Lanka. Additionally, there are plans to hand over the management of Sri Lankan airports to Indian companies and to establish a land bridge and grid connectivity between the two nations. Despite some setbacks with certain projects, these bilateral ties are expected to grow if Wickremesinghe, who became president in 2022 with the support of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP), the political party of the Rajapaksa family, wins the highly anticipated presidential election in October 2024.

Training and equipping an armed force by a foreign country is nothing new. It has been a foreign policy tool of many countries that aspire to be regional hegemons, who attempt to increase their influence on their neighbors by making them dependent on their assistance. This is also a way to minimize other foreign powers’ influence on small countries.

For example, the United States has been providing military aid to its allies since 1880, when Congress authorized United States Army Lieutenant Henry Lemly to serve as an engineering professor at the new military academy in Bogota, Colombia. This action was a manifestation of the Monroe Doctrine, which promised to protect the Western Hemisphere from European interference. Since then, military aid has become a crucial element in U.S. strategy to resist the expansion of potential challengers and to increase its influence over partner nations.

India’s aims are similar to the United States. As the largest country in South Asia, it wants to dominate its smaller neighbors. It is naïve to believe that India would behave differently from the U.S. or any other major power, which has explicitly linked military aid or arms transfers to a quid-pro-quo expectation of compliance from a government.

This growing dependency on Indian military support carries potential risks. It may lead to significant shifts in Sri Lanka’s internal dynamics and foreign policy orientations. Increasing dependence on one type of weapon system as well as exposing a large segment of your military officers to the thinking and training of a foreign power, especially one so near, can have significant consequences.

In the past year, Maldives stopped all exchange programs with India and asked Indian military personnel to leave the country as they feared these developments had reached a critical stage that could have an impact on the internal workings of the country. Given that the Modi government is likely to assert its dominance on its periphery as it faces reduced popularity at home, Sri Lanka needs to carefully evaluate its available options and develop a transparent policy regarding its defense cooperation with foreign nations.