News South Asia and the evolving geopolitics of the Indian Ocean by General (Retd) R. M. Daya Ratnayake

South Asia and the evolving geopolitics of the Indian Ocean by General (Retd) R. M. Daya Ratnayake

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Islamabad, Thursday, April 28 – NUST Institute of Policy Studies (NIPS) organized the high-level lecture on South Asia and the evolving geopolitics of the Indian Ocean by General (Retd) R. M. Daya Ratnayake, the former Chief of the Sri Lanka Army, presently serving as the Secretary, Ministry of Industries, Sri Lanka, on Thursday, the 28th of April. General (Retd) Ratnayake stated that the Indian Ocean had always been an extremely important maritime region, but the 21st century manifestation of great-power competition had literally pushed the region to the center stage of global geopolitics. He cautioned that this prominence had made it incumbent upon the regional states to demonstrate a high level of understanding and skill in dealing with great powers. Appreciating the role of Pakistan and Sri Lanka in working toward greater regional connectivity and collaboration, he said the efforts of middle powers and small states had to be focused on ensuring that their actions and choices lessened rather than heightened the possibility of friction in the region.

Former Defence Secretary Lieutenant General (Retd) Naeem Khalid Lodhi remarked that regional countries like Pakistan and Sri Lanka needed to maximize their domestic development potential by means of optimally utilizing available opportunities for growth in the region such as the development of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Former Foreign Secretary Ambassador (Retd) Riaz Khokhar said that India’s hegemonic aspirations had traditionally been the biggest stumbling block in the development of healthy regionalism in South Asia. He further said that the ongoing great-power competition could further aggravate this negative trend. In his opinion, this aggravation was bound to increase the challenges of other countries in the region.

Commodore (Retd) Bilal Abdul Nasir, Director, National Institute of Maritime Affairs (NIMA), Bahria University, stated that small states and medium-sized states in the region needed to stay away from camp politics to focus on their domestic development.

Ms Xiang Yang, Director China Study Center, NUST, highlighted that China’s peaceful development had been beneficial not only for China but also for the rest of the world, which represented the major development trend of the contemporary era.

Ammar Jaffri, former Additional Director General, FIA, and currently spearheading E-Pakistan Vision 2025, emphasized that developing countries in the region needed to leverage science and technology, especially emerging technologies, to expedite their development and become self-reliant, which was the best chance for such countries to deal successfully with the pressures of great-power competition.

The session was moderated by Director NIPS, Brigadier (Retd) Amir Yaqub, and was attended by veteran diplomats, senior security experts, think tank leaders, scholars, and students.


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