The Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies (BCIS) was established in 1974 during a time of global turmoil, with Sri Lanka experiencing its own upheaval as an armed rebellion erupted against the state. The global context was marked by several important, yet troubling, features. The 1970s belonged to the period of heightened cold war between the USA and the USSR which had divided the world into two antagonistic geo-political camps. The arms race, threat of a nuclear war, direct and proxy wars surging in Asia and Africa, and militarization of superpower relations were developments that pointed to a threat of yet another world war before the end of the century.
This was also the time when the process of decolonization, which began soon after World War II, came to an end. Decolonization had produced many new states with post-colonial political aspirations leading to a wave of non-European nationalism. This movement emphasized national sovereignty, national freedom, economic independence, nativist cultural identity, and non-Western paths to development. The 1970s also saw the emergence of the idea of nonalignment as a powerful normative vision for the ‘new nations’ in Asia, Africa and Latin America that were collectively identified by a new geo-political term, the ‘Third World’. During this period, Sri Lanka was led bya political and bureaucratic class with a belief in what came to be known as a ‘new world order’ where the hegemony of the former colonial powers in the West could be curtailed. Thus, the directions of the developmental futures of the ‘new states’ were to be charted afresh,relatively independent of the West.
It was against such a global backdrop that the following objectives were conceptualized for the BCIS in its founding Act of Parliament:“(i) promoting international peace, understanding and cooperation, and (ii) study and discussion of international problems in the economic, political, educational, cultural and social fields and the dissemination of knowledge on international affairs.” The idea of ‘international peace, understanding and cooperation’ reflected the zeitgeist of the times. It mirrored the recognition generally shared in the non-western world of the need to construct a new framework of relations not only among the world’s big powers and the states, but also among the people committed to transcending the tensions and conflicts among the nation-states.
That was a somewhat idealistic goal of envisioning a new world order from perspectives outside the military-strategic and geopolitical imperatives of rival alliances and groupings that evolved after World War II. That is why the founding document of the BCIS highlighted the goal of studying and disseminating knowledge about international problems in the economic, political, educational, cultural, and social fields. Thus, the BCIS was established with a mandate to re-define the notion of ‘international relations’ on the broadest possible template. That mandate also envisioned an ‘activist role’ for the BCIS as a promoter of international peace, understanding and cooperation. Thus, it is quite interesting, and of course not unusual, for the BCIS to be founded in 1974 with an agenda that can be described in contemporary academic language as ‘de-colonial’.
The founding of a separate institute dedicated specifically to studying and disseminating knowledge in the relatively new academic field of International Studies is a historic first for Sri Lanka. When the BCIS was founded, no Sri Lankan university had yet begun to offer International Relations as a separate field of study. At the University of Peradeniya, the Department of Political Science and at the University of Colombo, the Department of Modern History had offered a few courses in international relations. The first dedicated department for International Relations was not established until 2010 at the University of Colombo.
During the lifespan of fifty years of the BCIS, the political landscape of the world has changed beyond recognition, leading to dramatic shifts in the nature of political relations among the nations and states as well. Similarly, the academic discipline of International Relations has also changed. Radical strands of social science inquiry have re-shaped the agenda of the discipline dominated by the American liberal tradition. Its theories, approaches, analytical focus and conceptual vocabulary have come under the influence of Marxism, Feminism, post-modernism and, of late, postcolonial/decolonial studies.
Meanwhile, with the end of the Cold War, the bipolarity of global politics has also collapsed, creating conditions for a new process of multi-polarity. The Soviet Union and the socialist state system have also disappeared, giving rise to the illusion that the world and human civilization had become unipolar under the hegemony of the Western powers, capitalism and liberalism. Amidst the shifts in the dynamics of world politics, the role of the non-aligned movement in sustaining political hopes for a third way of world politics for the developing world, and its celebration of peace, solidarity and cooperation as normative goals of international relations, began to lose their relevance. The rise of ethnic and cultural nationalisms within nation-states in societies of the global South as well as the North, and the conflicts, violence and civil wars it spawned, began to mark the emergence of a new phase of inter-state and intra-state politics, characterized by a new process of instability and uncertainty. In parallel, economic globalization and later neo-liberalization complicated the world and its politics further. They produced new waves of inequalities among and within states, leading in many instances to grave social discontent and political turmoil.
These changes, tensions, conflicts and their consequences have provided new impetus for students as well as analysts of international relations to critically introspect the nature and content of their discipline. International relations as an academic discipline had earlier evolved within a framework of politics among the nation-states with an exclusive focus on national security, inter-state conflict and war, diplomacy and foreign policy making. Although the states constitute the politically organized world, the state is no longer the primary unit of analysis of what we conventionally understood as the ‘international.’ Moreover, world politics need not be understood only through the lens of politics among the nation-states. Indeed, the state-centricity of the discipline of International Relations and its sub-fields such as peace, diplomacy and security, have come under critical scrutiny, suggesting the value of deconstructing the dichotomies such as national-international, state-non-state, security-insecurity, and war and peace.
There is also an increasing recognition of the plurality of actors that shape how the politics of the world is determined, shaped and even complicated. Although it was not initially recognized when the discipline of International Relations began to develop during and after World War II, the state has never been the sole actor to determine inter-state or world relations. In the modern world, it is evident that numerous non-state actors significantly shape and even reshape global politics. International relations is also about inter-civilizational relations. This compels us to reconsider the meanings of the conceptual categories ‘international’ and ‘relations.’ Two contrasting examples are the global civil society movements committed to defending human rights or environmental rights, and the anti-systemic violent militancy popularly known as ‘terrorist’ movements. In other words, what we generally understand as ‘world affairs’ is in fact not the privileged domain of the states, political elites, military forces or well-dressed diplomats. Dispossessed families hailing from countries of the Global South take enormous risks to trek vast deserts and navigate treacherous oceans in search of safety in the Global North. They are also human collectives that have re-defined what world affairs or international politics should mean.
The current developments in some parts of the world have begun to pose very serious questions to students of world politics. The ongoing conflict and the war in the Middle East are showing that the concept of the rule-based international order has become an illusionary myth. If there has been one at all, it is now in disarray. Similarly, the efficacy of the United Nations in ensuring world peace and order is under serious scrutiny. The liberal goal of perpetual peace is being dramatically challenged by the threat of perpetual war, producing waves of unmitigated brutality and genocidal triumphalism. It is a cruel irony of history that the savagery which the world ignored in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s is now being re-enacted in the Middle East with alarming fervour. Meanwhile, in both Europe and America, the rise of rightwing populism at the expense of both liberalism and social democracy seems to suggest that the West is approaching a new phase of acute social and political turmoil. Deep economic inequalities and acute social discontent within states, and between states and regions, seem to have already created conditions to produce neo-fascist alternatives with popular backing. Civilizational dystopia may no longer be confined to Hollywood movies.
The BCIS has also been a witness to some significant changes in the way South Asia has contributed to shaping world politics. Sri Lanka and India have played pioneering roles in advancing the vision of Asian solidarity and the doctrine of non-alignment. When regional cooperation became a notable global trend in advancing cooperation among states and peoples, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was established in 1985. It gave new hope for regional solidarity for the states as well as peoples in South Asia, particularly given the decline of the spirit of non-alignment. However, the promise of SAARC began to decline after about two decades of great optimism, largely due to inter-state tensions within the region, thereby exposing the fragility of the state-centric vision for South Asian solidarity. While there were many attempts to sustain initiatives for people-to-people relations among the states of South Asia through civil society networks and citizens’ groups, the gradual decline of SAARC had a negative impact on these non-state mechanisms of South Asian solidarity.
Amidst the convulsions, uncertainties and atrocities in today’s world politics, we might find some solace in seeking out a few normative guidelines and visions for a world in distress. Returning for some inspiration to the founding vision of the BCIS, conceptualized some fifty years ago, may not at all be a bad idea.
Jayadeva Uyangoda is a member of the Academic Board, Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies(BCIS). He is also Emeritus Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, University of Colombo. This essay appears in the commemorative volume The BCIS at Fifty: a Journey of Learning and Dialogue that will be launched on December 9, 2024.
