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It might seem strange that the Trump-inspired Iran war—which poured military power into the Indian Ocean, blowing up innocent Iranians from their unarmed ship—reminds me so much about the gangsterism that haunts Sri Lanka today.

Sri Lankan gangster warlords enjoy a good life and live in luxury mainly in Dubai and other Middle Eastern desert cities, ordering their local gunmen to eliminate their enemies in Sri Lanka.

Like the desert rats of the past, a presidential Al Capone who lives in Washington today peremptorily is throwing orders at his underlings to let loose the dogs of war so that millions of innocents will die while no leaders of those small but rich nations would come together and resist this loud- mouthed piece of discardable boorishness.

If anybody had a sense of humanitarianism ingrained in him, he would have done what the civilised would do. That would be to plead mea culpa and do what the Japanese had been taught to do. Pick up a harakiri and do what needs to be done.

Unfortunately, the other day, when the new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi was paying a courtesy call on Trump, harakiri, which the courageous and civilised Japanese would do, was not on the agenda.

Instead, this world has to live in fear that one day this bagful of garbage will threaten and acquire for himself thousands of hectares of land or rid the vast properties of their legitimate owners and seek their territory.

So what happens today might be one of two paths of action. One would be the civilised way. But then one would run into a real one or two. The other path is to eliminate this rubbish from the presidency, but there needs to emerge political alliances that would not surrender to his thuggish terror. It seems there are few options left for the civilised people of this world.

Some of you might, but the majority would hardly wish to hear his name at home or abroad, for Trump has fast turned into an obnoxious name even though it also refers to a lovely musical instrument.

Each passing day now, his one-time allies in the Gulf and other parts of the world come to realise that this wimp used the American military forces to build a reputation and used that paper-tiger image to cow others into submission.

I wish I had time to show how he misled his people and the world — staging his own breaking news and shooting his mouth off in two-sentence posts — to spread the claim that the news of Iran’s defeat would soon arrive at the Oval Office for him to sign the letter of surrender.

But strangely (or not so strangely with his kind of past), my media colleagues and friends in Staten Island and around have spotted some of those who had been wiped out moving rather fleet of foot, if I might say so.

While I am not particularly enamoured of Trump’s fairy tales, which probably came from a collection of tales from the past, I am trying to unravel where Sri Lanka stands when it comes to the NPP/JVP government declaring its position on foreign affairs.

What leaves me especially concerned is that in the initial months and then for the first year in office one has heard little or nothing about foreign policy and relations with countries to the east and west, above and below the equator or, to make it easier, the global south.

Since Sri Lanka picked up the oar along with Tanzania, in the 1970s, I have been writing about the Chagos Islands, the tussle between the British government and Mauritius for ownership, and the Chagossian people’s struggle to return home.

While this legal battle ended up before the International Court of Justice — which ruled in favour of Mauritius and the Chagossians — there was more to the story, particularly the role of Sri Lanka and Tanzania in a hard‑fought campaign to have the Indian Ocean declared a peace zone — formally, the Indian Ocean Peace Zone.

This effort came at the height of the Cold War when the two superpowers were competing among others for the control of the Indian Ocean.

Given the geopolitical positioning of Sri Lanka, India and several littoral states, the presence of the US military base under British control in Diego Garcia, not too many nautical miles from the international maritime sea lanes and so quite close to Sri Lanka’s territorial waters, was naturally of concern for these small nations and for other non-aligned nations trying to keep aloof from the major power attempting to get a foothold in our soil.

While Sri Lanka played a prominent role in the Non-Aligned Movement, even hosting the 6th Non-Aligned Summit in Colombo in 1976, the governments then were held in high esteem for the role they played on the international arena, particularly because of the quality of the diplomats who represented the country at the UN and international fora.

But the importance of the Non-Aligned Movement quietly lost its significance when the Cold War ended, when, in 1991, the Soviet Union imploded and its satellite states also went their own way.

This left the US the dominant power, and the presence of Diego Garcia in a central gateway to the Indian Ocean, now turning into a vital passage between east and west, was a matter of growing importance. But how much did our newly elected leaders and their aides know about these bases that some had not heard of when they came to power, not fully aware of what our foreign policy was?

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor, Diplomatic Editor and Political Columnist of the Hong Kong Standard before moving to London, where he worked for Gemini News Service. Later he was Deputy Chief of Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London before returning to journalism.)