ABSTRACT
This chapter develops a biopolitical account of some strategic position. It begins with an analysis of the efforts of the Kumaratunga regime before the 2002 ceasefire agreement to project to the Western liberal world that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) constituted a ‘bad’ species that had to be eliminated. The chapter analyses the use of diplomacy as war during the ‘peace’ process by the regimes of Wickremesinghe and Kumaratunga, followed by that of the Rajapaksa, to weaken the LTTE militarily, or in biopolitical terms, to produce an effect of battle. It explores Sri Lanka’s strategy for defeating the LTTE militarily. The chapter addresses the period commencing the resumption of full scale armed hostilities in July 2006 to the LTTE’s military defeat in May 2009. Regardless, in convincing the US to proscribe the LTTE, the Kumaratunga regime can be attributed with having set the stage for the LTTE’s international isolation and thus its eventual military defeat.
