Our power game in the post-modern context
One per cent of all Americans own 40 per cent of all the wealth in the United States of America. That's this week's statistic.

This makes very clear the long held fear that neo-liberal capitalism means the impoverishment not only of the world's poor countries at the expense of the rich, but also that domestic reality is becoming rather unpalatable in the capital of the empire. Americans are gradually being impoverished with their wealth going into the hands of a handful of the hyper-wealthy, and this is the American contagion. It is the American contagion that the IMF and the World Bank want the rest of the world desperately to catch.

But these are strange times. There is no need for an economist icon such as Amarthya Sen to explain that there is something wrong with an economic system that parcels off 40 per cent of a country's wealth to 1 per cent of the population. There is no need for a Marxist or a Maoist to say that such an economic system is a disaster for the people.

But this is the economic system that the IMF wants to sell us. This is the economic system that is giving over our water-management rights to a handful of privately owned companies, which will soon dictate how much water we will consume, and at what price.

That's the reality of the post modern world where borders are receding, and in Sri Lanka that post modern reality is becoming starker in the way our conflict is playing out in the glare of the international spotlight. The post modern ideal is an international order where there is no conflict. The post modern state talks the language of human rights etc., instead of talking the language of weapons and ammunition.

Norway is the quintessential post modern state. Sri Lanka for instance is an extension of the Norwegian domain, and these are the conditions of borderlessness that obtain in the reality of the post modern state.

Today, Vidar Helgesen is as important to Sri Lanka reality as Chandrika Kumaratunga is or Ranil Wickremesinghe is or Prabhakaran is. He makes a statement at the Hilton saying "if we can have clarity we can start talks tomorrow.''
The Americans have issued a statement to the effect that the two political factions in Sri Lanka should reconcile in the interests of the peace process.

But the Norwegians aren't even saying that. This is because the Norwegians are too much in the thick of it in Sri Lanka; Vidar Helgesen is already a fellow actor. He is too close to all this to tell the other actors what to do or how to behave themselves.
In Asia, one does not get many post modern countries. There are in fact pre-modern ones, such as Afghanistan for instance, where 'modern' forms of government are prevalent only intermittently.

But Sri Lanka is a darling test case on the other hand for the post modern powers that are involved in the Sri Lankan reality. For example, today, the future of Sri Lanka seems to hang almost totally on the international reactions and perception to Sri Lanka's 'political turmoil.'' "Political turmoil'' was the cliché that was turned out by CNN to go with the current Sri Lankan drama.

Prabhakaran has taken over the moral high ground, and he has done so with a public appearance (all of his public appearances are instantly dubbed "rare public appearances'') that coolly underscores it all. Last month Velupillai Prabhakaran was the problem child. To get him to talk peace was as difficult as getting the horse to the water and then getting it to drink. The international community was going into terrible contortions to try and get this man back to the table.

But today, that table has turned. Prabhakaran is ready to talk, and he is telling this to anybody who will listen. But his problem is the Sri Lankan state. The international community now says (particularly the Americans say) that the Sri Lankan government should put aside its squabbles in the interests of peace. The Norwegians have already withdrawn (temporarily of course) their good offices.
Therefore, the internalisation of the current stage of the Sri Lankan conflict is complete. But, the precipitating factors as we all know are totally domestic. Chandrika Kumaratunga took over three Ministries of government, and started all this 'political turmoil.''

But in post modern reality, that will never play-on as a domestic scenario. A cornerstone of the doctrine of the post modern state is that the concept of sovereignty is old. All post modern states (Norway, UK, all our friends incidentally from the West ) swear by the fundamental that in today's world, human rights and issues dealing with rule of law etc., take precedence over the 'sovereignty' of states. Therefore, of course, they are for intervening in any country as long as it is in the pursuance of human rights.

But the President's whole power exercise of taking over certain functions of the Wickremesinghe government, we are told, is in the background of steady erosion of our sovereignty. Lakshman Kadirgamar would have used the word sovereignty at least a good 40 times, at the news conference held the day after President Kumaratunga staged her political comeback.

So sovereignty being the operative word in the whole domestic shove for power, it's a small wonder that "sovereignty'' looks increasingly an irrelevant consideration in the international theatre where the conflict is eventually being played out. Our post modern friends don't give a fig leaf's worth for "sovereignty'' and those kinds of concepts which for them are modern means of power transaction, now very passé in the post modern world.

Both Ranil Wickremesinghe and Prabhakaran are creatures of this post modern reality. They operate in the state of post modern fluidity in international realpolitik, which is why they are cool to the developments here, and seem to be more tuned to what the Norwegians and the Americans have to say.

But Sri Lanka is a modern state, and there are still two countervailing forces in operation -- the domestic facets of modernism, and the opposite international pressures for post modernism. What will prevail, only time will tell, but for the immediate term, it looks very much as if there is going to be an election.

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