June 23, 2026

Navigating the Currents: Sri Lanka’s National Security Debate in the New Indian Ocean Order

By: Keerthi Martyn

This article was originally published on Observer Research Foundation.

Sri Lanka’s national security discourse is increasingly being defined by the intersection of global strategic shifts, regional competition, and changing domestic imperatives that have shaped the country in its new chapter of governance and foreign policy. Its location at the crossroads of the Indian Ocean, just 10 nautical miles from major sea lanes carrying a substantial portion of global energy and container traffic, positions it as both a vital maritime actor and a focal point of strategic contestation. The intensifying United States (US)-China competition, manifested most visibly through Beijing’s infrastructure investments and Washington’s partnerships on maritime domain awareness and freedom of navigation, has forced Sri Lanka to navigate a delicate balance between economic opportunity and security calculations.

Sri Lanka’s national security debate in 2026 is ultimately between whether the country can break from the institutional pressures that have constrained previous reform attempts, and whether it can do so before both the internal and external environments foreclose the option.

Regionally, India’s neighbourhood doctrine has also increasingly influenced Colombo’s decisions on maritime security and defence cooperation. These strategic pressures are compounded by non-traditional threats, such as IUU (Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated) fishing, drug trafficking, transnational crime, and climate-induced disasters that constitute Sri Lanka’s acute and emerging national security challenges, alongside the fiscal fragility and governance tensions left by the 2022 Aragalaya movement.3 The election of President Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) in September 2024 represented the most critical political rupture in the island’s postwar history, carrying a democratic mandate for clean governance, reconciliation, economic recovery, and institutional renewal that has proven considerably harder to deliver as time passes

Read the full report on Observer Research Foundation.

More from CNAS

View All Reports View All Articles & Multimedia