Eurasia rising, Anura’s SCO absence, strategic-security blindness, and NPP-Israel axis

Every country, especially every small country, needs every bit of space it can get in the international system. Even as Ceylon, Sri Lanka engaged in a strategy of international participation. This enhances our bargaining power and autonomy.

- By Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka

Whoever the leader and whatever the ideological bent, Ceylon/Sri Lanka never forfeited the chance to be represented and participate globally. Sir John Kotelawela blundered in Bandung in 1955, but he was there. Madam Bandaranaike was at the founding on the Nonaligned Conference in Belgrade in 1961. When JR Jayewardene, nicknamed Yankee Dicky won the 1977 General Election and inherited the chairmanship of the Nonaligned Movement, he was under pressure either to absent himself from the Havana summit or take an adversarial stand towards Fidel Castro and Cuba. Instead, he went to Cuba, addressed the conference, complimented Fidel and emerged firm, lifelong friends with him.

I was there when President Maithripala Sirisena attended the 5th Summit Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia CICA) in Dushanbe, Tajikistan in June 2019 with Presidents Putin, Xi Jinping, Tayyip Erdogan, Hassan Rouhani et al. At short notice I arranged the bilateral meeting with President Putin.

President Anura Dissanayake chose not to attend the BRICS Plus summit he was personally invited for. Neither the PM nor the Foreign Minister represented him. Now he's outdone himself by failing to attend the enormously successful 25th Conference of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tianjin, China, which was followed by the spectacular military parade in Beijing marking the 80th anniversary of China's victory in WWII.

The SCO summit, the in-gathering hosted and powered by China in August 2025 marked an inflection point in world affairs. As important as the Bandung summit 70 years ago and potentially even more so, it revealed Eurasia rising.

If Anura Dissanayake, Tilvin Silva and Bimal Rathnayake had (actually) studied Lenin, they'd know that in his very last essay he had identified the decisive importance of the Eurasian core --Russia, India, China-- in determining world history: