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Abstract
The military effectiveness literature has largely dismissed the role of material preponderance in favor of strategic interaction theories. The study of counterinsurgency, in which incumbent victory is increasingly rare despite material superiority, has also turned to other strategic dynamics explanations like force employment, leadership, and insurgent/adversary attributes. Challenging these two trends, this paper contends that even in cases of counterinsurgency, material preponderance remains an essential—and at times the most important—factor in explaining battlefield outcomes and effectiveness. To test this, the paper turns to the case of the Sri Lankan state’s fight against the Tamil Tiger insurgency, a conflict which offers rich variation over time across six periods and over 25 years. Drawing on evidence from historical and journalistic accounts, interviews, memoirs, and field research, the paper demonstrates that material preponderance accounts for variation in military effectiveness and campaign outcomes (including military victory in the final campaign) better than strategic explanations. Additionally, a new quantitative data-set assembled on annual loss-exchange ratios demonstrates the superiority of materialist explanations above those of skill, human capital, and regime type.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the excellent research assistance of Vinod Kannuthurai and Hamza Shad.
Notes
1. Anderson, “Death of the Tiger,” 41.
2. FBI, “Taming the Tamil Tigers”; Indian Express “LTTE most Dangerous Extremist Outfit: FBI.”
3. Layton, “How Sri Lanka Won the War.”
4. A quote from Zachary Abuza in Mehta, “Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict,” 16.
5. Swamy, The Tiger Vanquished, 105.
6. Pape, “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism”; Bloom, “Ethnic Conflict, State Terror and Suicide Bombing”; Hoffman, “The First Non-state Use of a Chemical Weapon.”
7. Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 34.
8. The Asian Age, “Any Country Facing Terrorism.”
9. Biswas, “The Challenges of Conflict Management.”
10. Luttwak, “Give War a Chance.”
11. Nieto, “A War of Attrition,” 573.
12. Ibid., 584.
13. Clarke, “Conventionally Defeated but Not Eradicated,” 157–88; Chamberlain and Weaver, “Sri Lanka Declares End to War.”
14. Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 2.
15. Moorcraft, Total Destruction of the Tamil Tigers.
16. Wickremesekera, The Tamil Separatist War.
17. Chandraprema, Gota’s War.
18. Weiss, The Cage; Mohan, The Seasons of Trouble; Harrison, Still Counting the Dead.
19. Anderson, “Death of the Tiger.”
20. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict.
21. Background drawn from Mampilly, 96–103; Hashim, 62–84.
22. Staniland, Networks of Rebellion, 155–6; Gunaratna, Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka, 89–134.
23. Kydd and Walter, “The Strategies of Terrorism.”
24. Staniland, “Insurgent Fratricide.”
25. Staniland, Networks of Rebellion, 169.
26. Mampilly, Rebel Rulers, 108–15.
27. Staniland, Networks of Rebellion, 172.
28. Staniland, Networks of Rebellion, 149–152, 156–158.
29. FBI, “Taming the Tamil Tigers.”
30. Vaughn, Sri Lanka.
31. Cochrane, “Home Thoughts from Abroad,” 688; Fair, “Diaspora Involvement in Insurgencies,” 2005.
32. Staniland, Networks of Rebellion, 155–6, 169–70, and 175–7.
33. Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 92.
34. Gunaratna, Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka, 237–316.
35. Rajagopalan, Fighting Like a Guerilla, 82–133.
36. David, “Explaining Third World Alignment.”
37. Gunaratna, Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka, 291–4.
38. Chandraprema, Gota’s War, 237.
39. Ibid., 236; Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 106.
40. Chandraprema, Gota’s War, 232.
41. Editorial, “What Went Wrong with Agni Kheela?”
42. de Silva, Defeat of the LTTE, 170; Chandraprema, Gota’s War, 251–2.
43. Based on World Bank data since 1960, 2001’s growth rate of −1.5% was the worst year of economic growth on record and only the second year which Sri Lanka experienced negative economic growth. For further information on the concern surrounding terrorism’s impact upon Sri Lanka’s economy, see Dugger, “Rebel Attack on Airport Shocks Leaders of Sri Lanka.”
44. Staniland, Networks of Rebellion, 175.
45. Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence; Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War.
46. Arreguín-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars.
47. Arreguín-Toft, “How the Weak Win Wars”; Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam; Pape, Bombing to Win; Stam, Domestic Politics and the Crucible of War.
48. Biddle, Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle.
49. Shashikumar, “Lessons from Sri Lanka’s War”; Anderson, “Death of the Tiger.”
50. Layton, “How Sri Lanka Won the War.”
51. Singh, “Endgame in Sri Lanka,” 8; Mehta, “Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict,” 11.
52. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam; Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam; Kilcullen, Counterinsurgency.
53. Byman, “The Authoritarian Model of Counterinsurgency”; Lyall, “Does Indiscriminate Violence Incite Insurgent Attacks”; Downes, “Investigating the Effectiveness of Indiscriminate Violence”; Zhukov, “Examining the Authoritarian Model of Counter-insurgency.”
54. Karunatilake, “The Tigers Return.”
55. “Army Chief Confident of Rebels Defeat.”
56. Marks, “Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” 519.
57. Mehta, “Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict," 11.
58. Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 101.
59. Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 113.
60. Arreguín-Toft, “How the Weak Win Wars.”
61. Layton, “How Sri Lanka Won the War.”
62. Chandraprema, Gota’s War, 197–201; Gunaratna, Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka, 438–48.
63. Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 180.
64. Rotberg, Creating Peace in Sri Lanka, 2.
65. Mehta, “Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict,” 12.
66. de Silva, Defeat of the LTTE, 202–4; Shashikumar, “Winning Wars: Political Will is the Key,”; Singh, “Endgame in Sri Lanka”; Smith, “Understanding Sri Lanka’s Defeat of the Tamil Tigers,” 43; DeSilva-Ranasinghe, “Maritime Counter-Terrorism and the Sri Lanka Navy”; Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 174–7.
67. Welch, “Infantry Innovations: Sri Lanka’s Experience,” 28–31; DeSilva-Ranasinghe, “Strategic Analysis of Sri Lankan Military’s Counterinsurgency Operations.”
68. Mehta, “Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict,” 13.
69. Shashikumar “Winning Wars: Political Will is the Key,” 18.
70. Ranasinge, “Sri Lanka Looks to Special Forces,” 39.
71. Welch, “Infantry Innovations: Sri Lanka’s Experience,” 28–9.
72. Marks, “Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” 498–9; Miller and Syal, “Britain Allowed Ex-SAS Officers to Train Sri Lankans.”
73. Layton, “How Sri Lanka Won the War.”
74. Pape, “The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism”; Krause, “The Political Effectiveness of Non-State Violence.”
75. Kydd and Walter, “The Strategy of Terrorism.”
76. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion.
77. Huang, “Rebel Diplomacy in Civil War”; Mampilly, Rebel Rulers.
78. Arreguín-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars.
79. Abrahms, “Why Terrorism Does Not Work”; Abrahms, “The Political Effectiveness of Terrorism”; Fortna, “Do Terrorists Win?”
80. Staniland, Networks of Rebellion; Weinstein, Inside Rebellion; Johnston, “The Geography of Insurgent Organization.”
81. Cunningham et al., “A Dyadic Analysis of Civil War Duration and Outcome.”
82. Mehta, “Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict,” 17; de Silva, Defeat of the LTTE, 203.
83. Oakford, “For Years After a Tamil Defeat.”
84. Mehta, “Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict,” 18; Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 35.
85. Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 193.
86. Harihan, “Why LTTE Failed.”
87. Posen, “Command of the Commons”; Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War.”
88. Harihan, “Why LTTE Failed”; DeSilva-Ranasinghe, “Strategic Analysis of Sri Lankan Military’s Counterinsurgency Operations”; Wickremesekera, The Tamil Separatist War in Sri Lanka.
89. Weintraub, “Lush Beauty of Sri Lanka Hides Warfare.”
90. Marks, “Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” 511.
91. Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 29–33 and 98–113; Wickremesekera, The Tamil Separatist War in Sri Lanka.
92. Marks, “Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” 506–9 and 516–7.
93. De Silva, “An Examination of the Lifecycle of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” 245; DeSilva-Ranasinghe, “Strategic Analysis of Sri Lankan Military’s Counterinsurgency Operations”; de Silva, Defeat of the LTTE, 187.
94. I derived these figures from dividing the total number of assassinations in 1983–2005 and 2006–2009 by the number of years in each time period respectively (thus, 1.3/yr. from 1983 to 2005 and 1.5 yr from 2006 to 2009). This calculation originated from data available from South Asia Terrorism Portal, “Prominent Political Leaders Assassinated by the LTTE.”
95. Harihan, “Why LTTE Failed.”
96. On plane attacks, see South Asia Terrorism Portal, “Aerial Attack by the LTTE, 2007–2009”; on LTTE weapons, see Waduge, “Q&A with Facts about the LTTE.”
97. de Silva, Defeat of the LTTE, 185.
98. In their appendix, Kalyvas and Balcells initially code Sri Lanka 's civil war with the LTTE as a conventional civil war but acknowledge that it also could be coded as an irregular civil war. For more on this, see Kalyvas and Balcells, “International System and Technologies of Rebellion.”
99. Smith, “A National Liberation and Oppression Movement,” 100.
100. For instance in January 2006, a notable Indian think-tank, the Strategic Foresight Group, anticipated the Sri Lankan Armed Forces to growth rate of 8% per year (when in fact they grew at about 38% per year). It also assumed the ceasefire would hold but in the scenario that conflict resumed, the report predicted a lengthy and bloody stalemate for both sides with no clear victor and a loss of about 4000–5000 personnel each. For more on this, see Bhatt and Mistry, Cost of Conflict in Sri Lanka, 16–8 and 72. An International Crisis Group report similarly argued, “There is little evidence that either side can win militarily.” For more on this, see ‘Sri Lanka: The Failure of the Peace Process.” Finally, as mentioned earlier, Nieto, “A War of Attrition’ writes ‘after more than 25 years of conflict … the Sri Lankan civil war cannot be won through military means.”
101. DeVotta, “The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.”
102. Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 190.
103. There is also a recency bias in terms of data collection that tends to undercount historic incidents since there was far less media coverage.
104. Mampilly, Rebel Rulers.
105. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion.
106. Staniland, Networks of Rebellion, 135–58, 74–175.
107. Mampilly, Rebel Rulers.
108. Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 35 and 193.
109. Mampilly, Rebel Rulers, 128.
110. Smith, “A National Liberation and Oppression Movement,” 102.
111. Gourevitch, “Tides of War”; Author Interview with Sri Lanka based researcher who traveled to LTTE held regions, Colombo, Sri Lanka, February 26, 2015.
112. Sanjaya, “Karuna: From Tiger to Non-Cabinet Minister”; Mamphilly, Rebel Rulers, 124.
113. Byman and Pollack, “Let Us Now Praise Great Men.”
114. Moyar; A Question of Command; for a critique of this perspective, see Rovner, “The Heroes of COIN.”
115. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine; Cohen, Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime.
116. Krause, “Playing for Breaks.”
117. Kumar, “Endgame in Sri Lanka?”
118. Chandraprema, Gota’s War, 13.
119. Harihan, “Why LTTE Failed.”
120. Welch, “Infantry Innovations.”
121. Interview with Sri Lankan scholar, Colombo, February 27, 2015.
122. Chandraprema, Gota’s War, 244.
123. Jha, “Why Sri Lanka Ousted Mahinda Rajapaksa.”
124. These growth rates are estimated based on data from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators database.
125. These export estimates are based upon World Bank World Development Indicators data and Atlas OEC data. The WDI data record a slight dip in exports in 2009 below 2005 levels while the Atlas OEC data does not.
126. SeeTrading Economics http://www.tradingeconomics.com/sri-lanka/foreign-direct-investment.
127. In sum, Rajapaksa’s Sri Lankan government suffered no economic hardships for its strategic decisions.
128. Mehta, “Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict,” 15.
129. Smith, “Understanding Sri Lanka’s Defeat of the Tamil Tigers,” 44.
130. de Silva, Defeat of the LTTE, 202–4.
131. Singh, “Endgame in Sri Lanka.”
132. Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 191–2; Harihan, “Why LTTE Failed.”
133. Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 35, 122–3, and 191.
134. Staniland, Networks of Rebellion, 163–8.
135. Mehta, “India’s Counterinsurgency Campaign in Sri Lanka,” 161; Krause, “The Political Effectiveness of Non-State Violence.”
136. Smith, “A National Liberation and Oppression Movement,” 101.
137. Smith, “Understanding Sri Lanka’s Defeat of the Tamil Tigers,” 44. See also Rajagopalan, Fighting Like a Guerilla, 99; Mehta, “Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict,” 17.
138. Friedman, “Manpower and Counterinsurgency.”
139. Beckley, “Economic Development and Military Effectiveness.”
140. Sullivan and Karreth, “The Conditional Impact of Military Intervention.”
141. Interview with a local journalist, Colombo, February 24, 2015.
142. Shashikumar, “Winning Wars: Political Will is the Key,” 18.
143. Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 187.
144. Other sources are less generous but still report the army doubled to 200,000, and total military strength increased from a previous level of 179,000 to 350,000. Manpower jumped 80% in 2008 alone. The SIPRI data shows a lower (but still significant) rate of growth of 14% over this period.
145. See IISS, “The Military Balance, 2005,” 246–8; Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 188; Moorcraft, Total Destruction of the Tamil Tigers, 71.
146. The GoSL estimated the LTTE had 25,000 by 2006. Mehta estimated this dropped to 15,000 by 2006 following the losses from the Karuna defection, the Tsunami, and low-level conflict. See Waduge, “Q&A with Facts about the LTTE”; Mehta, “Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict’ 17. See also, Buerk, “Tamil Tiger ‘Forced Recruitment’.”
147. Mehta, “Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict.”
148. Gunaratna, Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka, 258.
149. Lawson-Tancred, “Army Says it Has Hold on Tamil Tigers.”
150. Singh, “Endgame in Sri Lanka.”
151. Interview with Sri Lankan defense analyst, Colombo, February 25, 2015.
152. “The Battle Progress.”; Jayasundera, “Government’s War of ‘Attrition’.”
153. Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 42.
154. This statement is based on comparing average annual data between Eelam IV and previous campaigns Eelam I-III. Sri Lankan military annual casualty rates estimated based on data reported by Ferdinando, “A Battering for the Luckless People of B’loa.” LTTE fatality rates derived from data reported in Gunaratna, Indian Intervention in Sri Lanka, 465; Bhatt and Mistry, Cost of Conflict in Sri Lanka,18; and “Sri Lankan Army Deaths Revealed.”
155. de Silva, Defeat of the LTTE, 102; Interview with Sri Lankan scholar, Colombo, March 3, 2015.
156. DeSilva-Ransinghe, “Maritime Counter-Terrorism and the Sri Lanka Navy.”
157. Specifically, the number of naval personnel increased from 10,000 to 15,000 and the number of patrol boats from 39 to 130. For more on this, see IISS, “Military Balance.”
158. DeSilva-Ransinghe, “Maritime Counter-Terrorism and the Sri Lanka Navy,” 32.
159. Marks, “Sri Lanka and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam,” 516.
160. Smith, “Understanding Sri Lanka’s Defeat of the Tamil Tigers.”
161. Interview with Sri Lankan scholar, Colombo, February 27, 2015.
162. Wickremesekera, The Tamil Separatist War, 178; Harihan, “Why LTTE Failed”; Smith, “A National Liberation and Oppression Movement,” 99; Balachandran, “Karuna’s Defection Reduced LTTE’s Manpower.”
163. Staniland, Networks of Rebellion, 174.
164. Harihan, “Why LTTE Failed.”
165. “Indian Ocean Tsunami Anniversary”; Nizam, “Sri Lankans Paid Tribute to Over 40,000 Persons Lost.”
166. Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 122 and 172.
167. Kumaratunga, “We Know Terrorism.”
168. Smith, “Understanding Sri Lanka’s Defeat of the Tamil Tigers,” 42.
169. de Silva, Defeat of the LTTE, 181.
170. National Intelligence Council, “Mapping the Global Future”; Zakaria, The Post-American World; Khanna, “Waving Goodbye to Hegemony”; Barma et al., “A World Without the West.”
171. For additional information on the strategic implications of the Indian Ocean, see Kaplan, “Monsoon: the Indian Ocean,” 195–6, 207–8.
172. Smith, “Understanding Sri Lanka’s Defeat of the Tamil Tigers,” 43.
173. Kaplan, “Monsoon: the Indian Ocean,” 207; Mehta, “Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict,” 14; SIPRI Arms Transfer Database (https://www.sipri.org/databases/armstransfers).
174. Destradi, “India and Sri Lanka’s Civil War,” 595–616.
175. Mehta, “Sri Lanka’s Ethnic Conflict” 20–1; Author Interview with Ashok Mehta, New Delhi, India, March 10, 2015.
176. Smith, “A National Liberation and Oppression Movement,” 106; Layton, “How Sri Lanka Won the War.”
177. Biddle, Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle.
178. Full list available upon request.
179. Friedman, “Manpower and Counterinsurgency.”
180. The correlations are driven in part by three observations from 2007–09 which register extreme values. There is good reason not to exclude them as outliers as they are not random but all observations from a period of deliberate material buildup. Nevertheless, as a robustness check, excluding these from the analysis still generates moderate positive correlation coefficients greater than 0.3 for all four measures of force.
181. Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War”; Beckley, “Economic Development and Military Effectiveness.”
182. Stam, Domestic Politics and the Crucible of War.
183. Biddle and Long, “Democracy and Military Effectiveness,” 525–46.
184. Reiter and Stam, Democracies at War.
185. The initial threshold placed 14 observations in the “high” force ratio sample and 16 in the “low” sample. Redefining the threshold so that four more observations moved into the “high” sample still retained statistical significance at the .01 level. Only after redefining the threshold so that three observations moved into the “low” sample did one T test reveal the difference to be statistically significant at the .05 level.
186. Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins, 101.
187. Lower levels based on figures from International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance 2013. Higher levels based on total military figures (450,000) provided in Hashim, When Counterinsurgency Wins. I counted active military and paramilitary (not reserves). Though a cursory look, only North Korea, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Singapore surpassed Sri Lanka in the percentage of military personnel as a percentage of the overall population. Sri Lanka is one of the most densely militarized countries with 1.4% of the population (305,000) in the military; in comparison, Taiwan is 1.3%, South Korea is 1.35%, and Cambodia is 1.27%.
188. Brömmelhörster and Paes, The Military as an Economic Actor.