The Impact of Leader Images in Sri Lanka’s Foreign Policy Making from 2005 to 2019

Abstract

Any leader of a country, as its foreign policy executive (FPE), may perceive systemic stimuli with surgical precision, hence positioning his country in a foreign policy trajectory, which in turn facilitates the realization of its goals and aspirations. However, a nation state, since its inception in 1648, will encounter dire political repercussions if the said systemic signals are perceived with abject failure by the FPE thus plunging the country into a vortex of self – destruction. In this backdrop, this article attempts to examine whether Mahinda Rajapaksa (MR), between 2005 and 2015 as well as Maithripala Sirisena (MS) inconjunction with Ranil Wickremesinghe (RW), between 2015 and 2019, as FPEs, were successful in grasping systemic stimuli, hence exercising a pragmatic foreign policy. The authors shall further discuss the above with a particular emphasis on Sri Lanka’s relations with the United States (US), China and India between 2005 and 2019 amidst their great power play in the theatre of the Indian Ocean. Furthermore, this research shall attempt to examine whether leader perceptions are the sole determining factors of a foreign policy which alternated between pro – China and pro – West. This is a qualitative case study which involves the deductive method. The authors will analyze both primary and secondary data in the adoption of a qualitative approach. The research will derive its propositions from Neo – Classical Realism in the discipline of international relations, particularly in analyzing the correlation between foreign policy and the domestic intervening variable of leader images in foreign policy making of Sri Lanka.