The second case Basrur examines is India’s intervention

 The second case Basrur examines is India’s intervention in the Sri Lankan civil war under the auspices of the 1987 Indo-Sri Lankan Accord—and the fiasco that followed. Then-Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi got involved in the conflict, which began in earnest in 1983, in part because India was concerned about Sri Lanka’s growing closeness to the United States and other external powers. Gandhi hoped to expand New Delhi’s influence. Under the terms of the accord, India sent a peacekeeping force intended to disarm the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), who were fighting for an independent Tamil state.

Basrur shows that the intervention went awry from the outset. The LTTE only reluctantly disarmed and soon after returned to the battlefield, with disastrous consequences for India’s peacekeeping forces. Once again, the policy drift stemmed from Indian domestic politics. The government in Tamil Nadu, an Indian state home to some 60 million Tamils, had misgivings about New Delhi’s policies toward Sri Lankan Tamils. In the end, the intervention realized few, if any, of India’s initial goals. Worse still, it engendered hostility toward India in Sri Lanka that enabled China to gain a foothold in the country. (Gandhi was eventually assassinated by an LTTE suicide bomber at an election rally in 1991.)

Yet again, domestic political imperatives and interorganizational rivalries, such as that between civilian and military intelligence, contributed to policy drift—in this case, with long-lasting consequences. The resulting rift between New Delhi and Colombo allowed China, India’s principal adversary, to step into the breach.