Civil Military Relations under Democracy with Special Reference to the Countries of Facing Internal Conflicts: A New Model Based on Sri Lanka's Experience

A civil military relation towards sustainable peace and development in democratic countries is a current topic, and as per the views of different stakeholders, the role of Military as a component of government in socio-economic development, especially in developing countries, has been questionable. The availability of gaps in civil military relations as evidenced in both theoretical and empirical literature as well as in the experiences of different countries is one of the major concerns of peace and national development. Having reviewed the literature on civil military relations and the experience of Sri Lanka as a democratic country under both peace and conflict environments, a new model of social transformation and civil military relations is developed. Here, the social transformation of a country is explained in line with Contextual Formations (CFs) that are available both retrospectively and prospectively. The CFs are identified as conflicted CFs and normalcy CFs. Both CFs are formed against the socio-economic, political, technological, cultural and other factors that are possible to be engineered and reengineered via ontological, epistemological and ethnological forces. The conflicted CFs interrupts socio-economic relationships and prevent a country from achieving peace and development. In order to convert conflicted CFs to normalcy CFs there should be civil military relations that are compatible with the security challenges in the respective country. Such civil military relations is possible only when the particular nation is equipped with a constructive philosophy that is compatible with socio-economic and cultural conditions of the particular country. The philosophy referred here could be generated by exploiting the same factors aligned with ontological, epistemological and ethnological forces as referred in CF formation. When such conditions are in place, the continuity of the normalcy CF can be ensured and the result would be sustainable peace and development in the country. In the case of Sri Lanka, the absence of such a philosophy acceptable for the stakeholders of the nation was the main reason for the prevalence of conflicted CFs in most part of its post-independent period. This was clearly observed during the period under LTTE threat. The available information reveals that during the period from 2006-2009, the basic conditions for the nation to integrate its stakeholders for a common goal against the LTTE threat were available for the government to engineer and reengineer its military and civilian apparatus to defeat terrorism. Yet, the country was not able to maintain such national integration in the post conflict era, and the normalcy CF created by the nation was challenged by the subsequent socio-economic and political developments in the country. The empirical evidence of Sri Lanka in relation to civil military relations that ushered to defeat terrorism during the peak period of LTTE threat and the evidence of lost opportunity in the post conflict era as explained in the experimentation of the new model on social transformation and civil military relations illustrate lessons for other countries to tailor-make conducive strategies for those countries to defeat national security threats, and to usher in necessary conditions for sustainable peace and development of those countries.