by Luxman Aravind
The treatment of former Army Commander and Chief of Defence Staff General Shavendra Silva under the United States’ foreign policy framework represents one of the most uncomfortable contradictions in contemporary international politics: the increasing reliance on administrative designation tools in place of judicial certainty. Under Section 7031(c) of the U.S. Foreign Operations and Related Programs Appropriations Act, the U.S. Department of State may impose visa ineligibility on foreign officials for whom it has “credible information” of involvement in gross violations of human rights, without the requirement of criminal indictment, evidentiary testing in court, or a judicial finding of guilt.
In Silva’s case, this mechanism has been applied not only to him personally, but also extended to his immediate family members, including his spouse and children, who are rendered inadmissible to the United States under derivative restrictions tied to the principal designation. This creates a form of sanctioning that operates outside traditional criminal jurisprudence, relying instead on executive determination and classified or non-judicial assessments. It reflects a broader shift in international practice where judicial certainty is increasingly replaced by administrative conclusions, and where foreign policy tools begin to carry consequences that resemble punishment without the procedural safeguards of a court of law.
General Silva is not a man speaking from the comfort of abstraction. He speaks as someone who has occupied nearly every major pillar of Sri Lanka’s national security and diplomatic architecture, and his public articulation of global security reflects that lived experience. When he states that “the post-Cold War order is giving way to a more fragmented multipolar system marked by strategic competition and geopolitical uncertainty,” he is not offering ideological rhetoric; he is describing the lived reality of smaller states forced to navigate between competing power centres while safeguarding sovereignty in the absence of consistent global rules.
Yet it is precisely this kind of voice that becomes selectively framed, selectively interpreted, and selectively punished in the modern international order. The idea that a state’s senior military leadership can be retroactively encircled by suspicion decades after a conflict, without judicial adjudication, raises a profound question: at what point does “accountability” become indistinguishable from political narrative construction? There is a world of difference between proven criminal responsibility and externally constructed moral liability, yet that distinction is increasingly blurred when diplomatic tools are used as quasi-judicial instruments.
General Silva has repeatedly emphasized that “the defeat of terrorism in 2009 demonstrated the importance of decisive state action while underscoring how modern conflicts are increasingly influenced by international financing networks, propaganda campaigns, illicit arms flows, and external geopolitical pressures.” This framing is not incidental; it reflects a broader doctrine of state survival under asymmetric threats, where conventional legal categories often fail to capture the complexity of wartime decision-making. To retroactively impose simplified moral frameworks on such contexts is to risk misunderstanding the very nature of conflict itself.
The concept of “collective responsibility” is often invoked in such debates, yet it is rarely applied consistently. If collective responsibility is to be meaningfully enforced, then it must extend through verified legal processes, not selectively through diplomatic bans or unilateral designations. Otherwise, it risks becoming indistinguishable from collective presumption of guilt, where entire security establishments are morally indicted without adjudication, and where individual responsibility is assumed by association rather than proven conduct. That is not justice; it is administrative condemnation.
It is also necessary to confront the structural imbalance in how international accountability operates. The same global system that demands absolute legal scrutiny of certain states often relies on internal investigations, political decisions, or classified assessments when it comes to its own military actions abroad. This asymmetry does not automatically invalidate allegations elsewhere, but it does demand consistency in principle. A system that refuses to subject all actors to identical evidentiary standards inevitably weakens its own moral authority.
In this context, General Silva’s advocacy for what he calls “smart multilateralism” becomes particularly relevant. His call for “stronger multilateral cooperation and strategic restraint among nations amid growing geopolitical uncertainties” and for reforms to international institutions reflects an understanding that global governance cannot function on selective enforcement. His emphasis that “smaller nations are increasingly vulnerable to the effects of great-power rivalry and economic dependency” is not a defensive slogan; it is a structural critique of how power is distributed and exercised in international relations.
To reduce such perspectives to simplified moral binaries is to ignore the realities faced by states emerging from internal conflict while attempting to reintegrate into a fractured global order. Legal responsibility in post-conflict environments must be determined through credible, independent, and universally applied mechanisms, not through unilateral administrative measures that carry the appearance of judgment without the substance of adjudication. Diplomatic corps and political leaderships are not exempt from scrutiny, but neither should they be subject to externally constructed narratives that bypass judicial process entirely.
The question is not whether accountability matters—it unquestionably does. The question is whether accountability can remain legitimate when it is detached from consistent legal standards and replaced with politically contingent interpretations of history. General Silva’s public positions on sovereignty, multilateralism, and global security highlight a worldview rooted in state continuity and institutional resilience, not personal vindication. The broader issue, therefore, is not one individual, but the precedent being set: that in the absence of legal determination, reputational judgment alone can function as punishment in the international system.
A rules-based order cannot sustain itself if its rules are applied selectively. And a global justice framework cannot claim moral universality if it increasingly operates through presumption rather than proof.
