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 chapter 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 chapter 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 6 periods and over 25 years. Drawing on evidence from historical and journalistic accounts, interviews, memoirs, and field research, the chapter 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.
