Club member, panelists to discuss his book on 'China’s Sri Lanka Foray'

National Press Club member Asanga Abeyagoonasekera will discuss his latest book, “Teardrop Diplomacy: China’s Sri Lanka Foray” on Friday, May 19, at 5:30 p.m. in the Cosgrove Lounge.

Sri Lanka native Abeyagoonasekera, an author and researcher, will be on a panel with Millennium Project CEO Jerome Glenn and Jeffrey Payne, an assistant professor at the National Defense University's Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies. Global Strat View editor Poonam Sharma, who is the Club's Membership Secretary, will moderate the discussion. The event is organized by the Club’s International Correspondents Committee.

Sri Lanka, the teardrop-shaped island in the Indian Ocean, is facing its worst political-economic crisis since independence. This book is a compilation of essays on several themes that trace the nation's recent journey, from the rise of the Rajapaksa regime in 2019 to the people’s uprising in 2022. The essays explain how the nation moved from a democratic country to a full-scale autocratic, militarized nation. The U.S.-India-China triangulation and its impact on Sri Lanka are also captured in this book, bringing a unique Sri Lankan perspective. Is there a debt trap in Sri Lanka? Why was China’s spy ship given permission to enter Sri Lankan Port despite multiple warnings from India? Is China part of Sri Lanka’s economic crisis?

“Teardrop Diplomacy” aims to give the reader a better understanding of the underlying political and social distress for Sri Lankans and what brought the fragile state to a political and economic disaster within a short period of three years. This is a lesson for many developing nations, especially those under debt-distress in the post-pandemic environment.

Abeyagoonasekera is a senior fellow at the Millennium Project in Washington and is currently a technical adviser to the International Monetary Fund. He led two government think tanks on foreign policy and security in Sri Lanka and served as founding director general of the national security think tank at the Sri Lankan Ministry of Defense. Internationally, he has experience as a strategic adviser and senior researcher. He has written for many international research institutes on geopolitics and international security and has authored four books.

In April 2022, Abeyagoonasekera led an online discussion with Club members of another of his books, “Conundrum of an Island: Sri Lanka’s Geopolitical Challenges.”

Club members and their guests are invited.

The book is available at Politics & Prose and will be available at the event for $20 special cash-only price.