The opening session of the Day 2 (19 Aug) of the ‘Defence Seminar - 2014’ under the sub theme ‘National Security’, presided by Major General Milinda Peiris, saw Major General Udaya Perera making his presentation on the need of ‘A Land Force Doctrine to Meet New Demands to Secure and Further an Island Nation’s Interests,’ in which he identified several important areas of concern for evolution of a land force doctrine that could safeguard national interests of the country, including five major hubs which are strategically important. ‘Land force doctrine intimately embraces 15 social values, including the three fundamental values as the foundation for the conceptual and moral components to provide the required impetus for the physical component of the fighting power: spirituality, knowledge, self-sufficiency, Inclusiveness, democracy, harmony, discipline, equality, Patriotism, Hospitality, Selflessness, Charity, Tolerance, Unity and clemency.’
While the doctrine facilitates developing an operationally capable force to undertake offensive and defensive missions, it also transforms the Army into a values and ethics based institution that command the respect of the people which is a fundamental necessity in the post-conflict stability operation phase, Major General Perera said.
“Harnessing the will of the nation alone will not help us to sustain in the hostile wind. We need to develop an alliance of nations who share common interests and common thoughts on a mutually supporting platform for the coexistence in the international arena. Military cooperation, joint military training, joint exercises and knowledge and thought sharing platforms similar to this seminar will be helpful to develop military to military relationship and understanding between us and our friends overseas.”
Sri Lankan Land Forces, to that matter the tri services, are complete volunteer forces comprised of individuals who joined the desired services willingly to serve the nation. We are not a conscripted Army, but a citizens’ Army. Therefore, we cannot divorce from the people and their will. In essence, current and future land force doctrine must support the national requirement and should always maintain the physical, conceptual and moral structure in tact to assist the island nation in securing and furthering its interest, he added.
Here follows the full text of his presentation;
A LAND FORCE DOCTRINE TO MEET NEW DEMANDS, TO SECURE AND FURTHER, ISLAND NATION’S INTERESTS
INTRODUCTION
Sri Lankan pluralistic society, today, is blessed with total peace and harmony, thus steadily and progressively moving towards much awaited prosperity after the defeat of the most ruthless and once perceived as undefeatable terrorist outfit, the LTTE, in May 2009. National will that was harnessed to combat terrorism during the previous decade, is now objectively converted to defend the hard earned peace and to absorb the excessive weight of the anti-national activities engineered by an array of extremist elements and other visible and invisible powers, home and abroad. Whilst the political leadership is heavily engaged in projecting the true image of this nation to the international community through information and diplomatic means, the defence establishment under the leadership of HE the President, Secretary Defence and Commander of the army are fully focused in adaptation of a doctrinal foundation to combat present and predicted threats in the ever-changing and complex security landscape.
Further, the national policy statement “Mahiada Chinthanaya” that communicates the future vision of this nation necessitates the mobilization of all national resources, including the armed forces, to achieve national objectives. In line with the national strategy and vision, the land force doctrine which is the most important element of the Conceptual component, provides the legitimacy whilst streamlining the employment of the military power beyond the traditional security related circuit of duties, facilitating to render a greater service to the development of this nation together with physical and moral components of the land force structure.
As described in Mahinda Chinthanaya, the vision for Sri Lanka, this country is envisaged to become the “Wonder of Asia” which would present herself as Naval, Aviation, Commercial, Knowledge and Energy hub whilst becoming the key link between East and West.
By transforming into a strategically important economic centre of the world, and being able to use our strategic geographical location effectively, it will serve as the Pearl of Asian Silk Route. In this process, Sri Lanka Military as the citizen's Army could be in the forefront as it proven to be a highly professional and flexible outfit with great potential as the protectors of the nation.
To assert those aspirations, the land forces should determine to assist the government in multifaceted ways and should be fully prepared to employ its time and energy in all capacities. Therefore, the doctrine must facilitate to maintain a highly motivated force with required attributes and capabilities to engage in nation building process while providing a secure environment as expected by any land force world over.
A LAND FORCE BASED ON VALUES AND ETHICS
Sri Lanka being a country which has over 2500 years of documented history has a society blessed with embedded social and cultural values and ethics that provide a very strong social fabric for her citizenry.
A large proportion of these values are inherited to this culturally rich nation as a part of her long civilization, whilst the balance, which is the smaller segment, was adopted as a results of her 400 years long colonial experience. Strength of our historical social foundation is such that even after such a long continuous western colonization period under 3 influential colonial powers, we continue to remain as true Sri Lankans with its own indigenous language and the script.
Though Sri Lanka is a true plural society, it is understood that together with many other contributory factors, certain misperceptions and misunderstandings grew, initially due to divide-et-impera policy of colonial rulers and later due to a deliberate misinformation campaign by extremist separatists groups. Although those who stepped out of the main stream embraced terrorism, majority of the population living within the Island were with the legitimately elected government at all times which led to isolation and defeat of the same.
The fundamental social unit of the country, the Village is constituted on three significant elements, namely, the place of worship, seat of learning and the reservoir. These fundamentals’ stand the pivot of the physical, spiritual and conceptual development of inhabitants. In a nutshell, spirituality, knowledge and prosperity through self sufficiency represent the core of Sri Lankan traditional social values. Therefore, land force doctrine intimately embraces 15 social values including the three fundamental values as the foundation for the conceptual and moral components to provide the required impetus for the physical component of the fighting power: spirituality, knowledge, self-sufficiency, Inclusiveness, democracy, harmony, discipline, equality, Patriotism, Hospitality, Selflessness, Charity, Tolerance, Unity, clemency.
While the doctrine facilitates developing an operationally capable force to undertake offensive and defensive missions, it also transforms the army into a values and ethics based institution that command the respect of the people which is a fundamental necessity in the post-conflict stability operation phase.
STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENT THREATS AND CHALLENGES
Diagram on the screen depicts the envisaged Strategic environment designed for development of operational strategies and doctrines. Elements in local, regional and global scene divides into three significant divisions horizontally, whilst vertically, elements with national consensus in the local environment and moderates in regional and global scene in the extreme left, vulnerable and neutral in the centre and extremist elements that is a challenge and a threat to national security are on the extreme right. Therefore, elements that may influence the course of the nation are organized into nine different combinations. Nation’s future land force operations should and be essentially based on the important elements within the strategic environment over and above the threat perception of individual elements therein. The current strategic environment seems more ambiguous, presenting multiple layers of complexity and a multiplicity of actors challenging the Nation to prepare her military beyond traditional war fighting skills.
A wide range of actors across the current and projected Strategic Environment – friendly and neutrals, malicious actors will interact, often in an uncoordinated manner, to produce a complex environment with interrelated and interactive issues and challenges.
Each element in the environment has verity of influence over National Security or protecting the interest of the Nation to prosper as a developing state. Intensity of such influence and degree of involvement of elements of national power is reflected by the shared views or perception of elements, towards Sri Lanka and her micro and macro affairs. Moderate or even friendly actors will proceed in accord with their own organizational goals and interests that may be contrary to our national interests causing friction. Malicious actors will use violence or will be involved in an active misinformation campaign in pursuit of their goals and will potentially challenge national interests and vulnerabilities. Hardliners who are at the extreme right of the construct will use this complexity to their advantage and often employ hybrid asymmetric strategies to obstruct national development and interest. This multiplicity of actors will continue to operate across potential operational environment during all possible eventualities in the process of becoming a developed country. The anticipated strategic environment will remain intricate and ambiguous at all times and to reach consensus on how to approach current and future adversaries is a challenge. Therefore, doctrine needs to address the requirement of establishing a rock solid mechanism to respond for all or the most important eventualities.
Strategic environment is able to picture complex and multifaceted relationships between elements across all the divisions through verity of medium. Such relationships also affected by the interplay of state and non-state actors and further shaped by a number of strategic drivers. The connectivity and complexity of the environment can only be adequately understood by interacting with the environment, negotiating the issues with resolute mind and readily adapting to the changes with the progress. Therefore, doctrine should focus on moulding members of the military to considerate on the complexity of operating environment by understanding the relationships between environmental elements and influences, and the trends that modulate their interactions by a process of continuous enrichment of knowledge through learning organisation concept that is similar to what Peter Senge advocates in fifth discipline.
State actors in the global scene who act contrary to our national interest could be further defined as slackers, enables and aggressors as described by James Jay Carfarno in the book how to win the long war.
Sri Lanka has been actively and passively dealing with such actors since the outbreak of the conflict way back in 1980s. Diplomatic and informational instruments should be supported by the land force doctrine to overpower the adversaries and to influence and shape the global perception to our advantage. Though land force doctrine does not cater for force projection overseas it should cater to strengthen and reorganise the information operations to reach the full spectrum of the information domain to fight the perception war. Concurrently the “whole of society approach” will harness the will of the whole nation, not only to reject the enforcement of counterproductive mechanism by political means to achieve the lost objective of a separate state but also to absorb the impact of extremist international opinions as a coherent, unified, patriotic and a single nation.
Under the circumstances, military being one of the most credible, dependable and efficient instrument of a nation state, will inevitably bear a greater responsibility in post conflict nation building through inter-communal harmony in a plural society that is penalized by some western nations. Sri Lanka will not and cannot be an exception to this norm. Sri Lankan Post conflict land force doctrine should, not only accommodate this national need, but enthusiastically facilitate the nation building effort directly.
Harnessing the will of the nation alone will not help us to sustain in the hostile wind. We need to develop an alliance of nations who share common interests and common thoughts on a mutually supporting platform for the coexistence in the international arena. Military cooperation, joint military training, joint exercises and knowledge and thought sharing platforms similar to this seminar will be helpful to develop military to military relationship and understanding between us and our friends overseas.
ROLE OF THE LAND FORCES IN FURTHERING NATIONAL INTERESTS
Once Lord Palmerston said, I quote - “Nations have no permanent friends or foe, they only have permanent interests” unquote. Every sovereign nation, big or small, powerful or weak, rich or poor has the wilful right to pursue and further its national interest. Sri Lanka is no exception to this universal norm. National interest of Sri Lanka remains to rise as a potential nation harnessing her geopolitical supremacy inherited by being situated in a strategic location in the Indian Ocean region. She will be no more the tiny island nation with 65,500 sq km territory but expanding to be a country with 1.3 million Sq Km area when taking the continental margin into consideration. The expansion is 21 fold. It is the size of the 20 largest country of the world vis-a-vis the 122 nd. This Geographical advantage, demands naval and air forces to be more and more effective in sea and air domains while the land force should be able to operate in a true joint environment to enhance capability. Vision to the nation is on a path to be Naval, Air, Knowledge, Energy and Commercial Hubs also, demands an array of capabilities of the security establishment as a whole and of the land forces in particular which may not be classic conventional military capabilities in the eyes of many. This approach unfortunately viewed by hawkish as militarisation which is totally a wrong judgement and a misconception.
Sri Lanka's interests also underpinned by the lasting peace with inter communal harmony and economic prosperity whilst maintaining territorial integrity and sovereignty of the nation. In persuasion of Sri Lanka's national interest and wellbeing, it compels the state to harness all its potentials, tangible or intangible to solidify its mechanism. Military is essentially a part of this inclusive whole of society mechanism.
Developing trends injurious to national interests can be established by studying past data to extrapolate such trends in linear manner due to their natural conclusions. Although some long term strategic trends are stable and can be predicted with a high degree of confidence, many trends defy the expected linearity thus unexpected events can, and do occur resulting in Strategic Shock. Out of all other components, military has a great role to play in absorbing such shocks and maintaining the stability to ensure uninterrupted development. Although primary role and most basic strategic interest of the Land Force remains the defence of Sri Lanka against directed armed attacks, its involvement in safeguarding the National interest extend beyond the expected classic military contribution.
War fighting or projection of military power beyond the territorial boundaries is left out of discussion as it will take place in a very rare situation and only in a combined environment or as part of UN. Latest doctrine is to provide a firm platform to realize each and every aspect of the national interest. Application of the land power is the employment of the land forces. As such, Sri Lankan Land Forces will essentially consist of task organized elements drawn from all fundamental units and formations which can be linked to other government agencies and, potentially, non-government agencies and other actors important for the purpose which is a requirement of the whole of society approach. This is a far more inclusive approach by Sri Lanka's "Citizen's Army" than the whole of government approach by many others. In one aspect, the land force will be optimized for joint operations, operating in a joint environment and relying on joint concept enabling capabilities for full effect. On the other hand, land force is also to be trained, equipped and resourced for effective interaction with other governmental agencies and commercial entities, partnering in development where applicable. Task oriented elements that are conventionally and traditionally regarded as non-military will also be equally placed in the overall land force enabling them to operate effectively as part of the overall force structure. It aims at a force, unrelenting in its continuous application in multifaceted activities, pervasive in its presence with abilities and proportionate in its response to the national call for security, safety, disaster relief, development and other assistance. Doctrine of the Land force basically caters to safeguard and further the island nation’s interest in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous global environment. This environment throws many demands and challenges to a country that is being steered for prosperity in a post-conflict environment which is more complex and ambiguous in scale and proportion than the global environment. In order to achieve the nations demand for prosperity through harmony and peace, land force should be determined to deter and defeat armed attacks to include protection of the Sri Lankan people, infrastructure and resources from domestic or external threats with wide range of active and passive measures through a mechanism to detect, prevent, deter, defeat, mitigate and investigate the effect of such threats. The land force will maintain time tested formalities and procedures that facilitates investigative case studies at all times in order to identify root causes and to revisit the doctrine. In the past wars were fought in different domains and victory was established on the land but in the future wars will be fought in multiple domains and victory will be determined in the information domain. Therefore information should be essentially a branch of any doctrine or a strategy.
Supplementary disciplines are to shape the same force effective in nation building effort by being a strong working force capable of undertaking a task in complete form within the internal resources and knowhow. Eventually the land force has the capabilities to undertake a wide range of combat and non-combat roles both in Sri Lanka and overseas as required.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion. Sri Lankan Land Forces, to that matter the tri services, are complete volunteer forces comprised of individuals who joined the desired services willingly to serve the nation. We are not a conscripted army but a citizens’ Army. Therefore, we cannot divorce from the people and their will. In essence, current and future land force doctrine must support the national requirement and should always maintain the physical, conceptual and moral structure in tact to assist the island nation in securing and furthering its interest.
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