Black Tigers,Bronze Lotus: The Evolution and Dynamics of Sri Lanka's Strategies of Dirty War

Although much has been written on the Sri Lankan state's civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), less has been said about how the conflict's dynamics evolved. How did the parties come to utilize the methods they did? Why did the war become so brutal, characterized by a predisposition toward extreme violence on both sides? Using the typology of “dirty war,” this investigation seeks to address such questions, demonstrating how the strategic choices of the main belligerents shaped the conflict. The analysis shows that while the conflict emerged out of deep-rooted social and ethnic divisions, these factors do not account for how the war came to be defined so comprehensively by the methods of dirty war. It finds that dirty war developed from a sporadic tactic to advance political goals to dominant military practice by a reciprocal process of escalation that eventually internalized dirty war as the accepted mode of strategic communication.     

冷战后国际格局的两重性

冷战后的世界既没有形成新的单极格局,也未形成多极格局.现在的世界是一个多极化和单极化两种趋势并存的世界.它既带有单极化的倾向,也具有多极化的发展趋势.但世界终将实现多极格局.