India is often perceived as a regional power, but a closer look reveals that it is in a disadvantageous position vis-à-vis China in South Asia. The first reason is that Indian governments never had the political, economic, and military capacities to pursue their regional power ambitions with their neighbours in the long run. South Asian countries could always play the China card in order to evade India’s influence. Second, India’s new South Asia policy with the focus on trade and connectivity has improved regional cooperation since 1991.

This article explores the backdrop of the engagement between the International Community (IC) and the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) over the conduct of the military during the last stages of its engagement with the secessionist Tamil militants which (especially from January to May 2009) led to a humanitarian crisis. The efforts of the IC to persuade the GoSL to halt the military operations and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to concede defeat, to ensure human security, were a failure.

This article argues that while the concept of peace building proved beneficial to Western society, it drew flak in pre-2014 Afghanistan for its inbuilt faults, the overarching US–Taliban conflict and the state failure towards meeting the prerequisites of the coalition strategy. It also argues that peace building in the immediate future of post-2014 Afghanistan is improbable due to the existing and likely conflicts between and among the Afghan government, the Taliban and the newly emerging Daesh or IS group for power, group and ideological domination.

Since the fall of the Mahinda Rajapaksa government, there has been an apparent foreign policy shift in Sri Lanka. There is a growing view that the new National Unity Government (NUG), which came to power in January 2015 with Maithripala Sirisena as President, has shown its proclivities towards India and the US and moved away from China, especially under Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.