Saturday, September 5, 2009

Fundamentals of victory against terror: The Sri Lankan example

Last week's Sunday Leader newspaper had a reprint of an Indian Defence Review article about the war in Sri Lanka. The eight fundamentals they had identified were:
  • Political Will
  • Go To Hell (to the international community ;-))
  • No Negotiations
  • Regulate Media
  • No Cease-fire
  • Complete Operational Freedom
  • Accent on Young Commanders
  • Keep Your Neighbors In Loop
I can't find the article on the Indian Defence Review site (they only publish a subset there). You can read the article here:

I also saw this article: Requiem for Prabhakaran by Brig. S.P. Sinha there today. Another good read.


Liberal Lanka said...

//Go To Hell (to the international community ;-))

Don't you think specially this and some other things are too dangerous and should not be encouraged by any reasonable global citizen?

For example what if a powerful nation tell the IC to go to hell and invade us?

Sanjiva Weerawarana said...

@Liberal Lanka - no,I don't think so at all.

In fact, I'd argue its the opposite. We have lived for a long time with the idea that other countries will help us improve ourselves. That is simply naiive and not the way the world works. Of course it would be ideal if that were to be the case, but that's not the way it works.

The best foreign policy for every country is one of enlightened self interest. Its not pure self interest, but rather one that realizes that you can't expect other people to look after your interests - you have to do it yourself.

I'm about to post a blog entry on a related topic - pointing to today's editorial in the Daily Mirror. That's related to energy independence.

In any case, if a powerful nation wants to invade us, what can we do? Let's look at recent examples, Kuwait (by Iraq), Iraq (by US++), Afghanistan (by US), and the Russian examples - there ain't nothin' the poor guy at the other end can do. The international community has proven that its a joke - the entire UN system is a joke, especially the security council with world war II remnants holding veto (UK and France in particular - who died and made them king? At least the other 3 are major global players).

The only thing that (IMO) prevented the US from going after the rest of Bush's "axis of evil" (Iran and North Korea) was the whooping they received in Iraq. The practical reality of invading a country simply ain't easy as it used to be; technology has even made us little guys quite formidable.

Liberal Lanka said...

No I don't think it would be ideal if successful countries help other countries. That is not how the world works simply because that is not how the nature works.

If I can remember right the Iraq invasion of Kuwait was halted by USA. And powerful countries have the ability to blow weaker countries into bits in a matter of minutes. The only reason USA can't do that in Iraq and Afghanistan is the International Community.

This is the kind of superior complexity and arrogance that paved the way for Nazis to rise in Germany and Germany had to learn their mistakes at the cost of total destruction of the country. Right now Sri Lanka doesn't need that.

Sanjiva Weerawarana said...

Here's a relevant comment from today's Daily Mirror editorial:

Let’s speak the truth. There are no Good Samaritans in today’s world and every country is ambitiously working with its own interests in view. No State has fallen head-over-heels in love with beautiful Lanka to work in the best interest of the island nation, ignoring their own.

Sanjiva Weerawarana said...

@Liberal Lanka Maybe we have different views of what "International Community" means.

I agree the only reason the US doesn't pulverize Afghanistan is because of the international community - that is, people of the world who'd boycott the US, attack them and never forgive them. Plus, sane people in the US (and MOST people in the US are indeed very sane!) know that doing so simply doesn't solve the problem they set out to solve (which I do agree is a good problem to solve). In other words, the only reason they don't do it is because they know that technique won't solve the problem.

World War II, on the other hand, was indeed ended by pulverizing two cities (Hiroshima and Nagasaki). That had the desired effect of ending the war.

However, that's not the same "international community" pressures we Sri Lanka face. Instead, we face things like fake videos being used to trigger attempts at starting war crimes trials (remember those videos of innocent Tamil people being killed and hospitals being bombed? All turned out to be fake). [Yes I'm aware there's another video making the rounds now.] We face joker lawyers like Bruce Fein trying to indict our Army Commander and Defence Secretary in the the US. We face threats of not extending the GSP+ trade benefits if we didn't stop the war on a legitimate terror outfit.

If Sri Lanka Army did kill innocent people like the latest video is claiming then that's wrong.

Telling the world to "Go To Hell" is not saying we don't abide by basic human rights, its not saying we are doing ethnic cleansing or trying to hide it. Hurting our Tamil brethren to destroy the LTTE does not solve the problem we face.

All it is is saying "let us take care of ourselves for our interests - you keep your interests out of the picture".

Sanjaya Ratnaweera said...

I think this is the full article.

There're 3 parts of this article and "The Eight Fundamentals of Victory" is under "2".


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