Almost Done in Sri Lanka

The government is on the verge of crushing the last remnant of the Tigers in Sri Lanka. The military defeat of the Tigers won’t exactly solve the political issues in Sri Lanka, as the Tamil minority continues to have serious, legitimate grievances with the government. Those grievances may eventually result in the development of a new insurgent organization, or in the re-emergence of the Tigers organization from its base in the diaspora. Organizational dynamics matter, however, and the idiosyncratic set of strategies that the Tigers used probably won’t be replicated. These strategies included a focus on maritime power and suicide attacks. Hopefully, the latter will not be a primary tactic of any future Tamil politico-military strategy. The former probably will be, if only because of the dependence of any Tamil insurgency on support from the disapora in southern India. The Tigers are one of the few insurgent organizations in history that would have won the applause of Alfred Thayer Mahan.

War has been given a chance; I suspect that Edward Luttwak is smiling. People will occasionally suggest insurgencies don’t often lose, but that’s not quite right. Governments often fail to win, but usually because they fail to address the underlying causes of an insurgency, rather than failing to crush the insurgent organizations themselves. Moreover, insurgency is an incredibly expensive way to achieve political goals even when successful.