ISAS Working Papers

The Sri Lankan navy was invited to be part of the world’s largest maritime exercise, the Rim of the Pacific Exercise, this year. The invitation followed a period of continuous military engagement between the United States (US) and Sri Lanka in the last few years. The growing US engagement in Sri Lanka is viewed as a shift of Washington’s policy towards the island nation, almost a decade after the latter ended its conflict with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam through a military victory. Against this backdrop, this paper examines the evolution of the bilateral military relations between the two countries since the Maithripala SirisenaRanil Wickramasinghe government came into power