New Delhi, March 24 -- Sri Lanka's foreign policy has long resembled a careful tightrope walk, first between rising Asian giants, and now amid a far more volatile West Asian conflict. For the last three decades it was a strategic balancing act between India and China which, in recent weeks, has evolved into a delicate and potentially dangerous navigation between the United States-Israel axis and Iran.

Since independence, Sri Lanka has publicly adhered to the principle of "friendship towards all, enmity towards none," rooted in its early pioneering role in the Non-Aligned Movement. However, the post-2000 era saw a more pragmatic shift. Colombo increasingly leveraged competition between India and China to secure financing, infrastructure, ...