How Sri Lankas Ethnic Conflict Became Internationalized Why did a man widely regarded as one of Sri Lankas most sophisticated and astute political leaders fail to achieve the goals he that he had envisioned for decades?
Since the 1950s, J.R. Jayewardene had advocated policies that acknowledged his nation’s economic vulnerability as a small state in a big world. But the policies he pursued as Executive President failed to fully take into account Sri Lanka’s international political vulnerability. The process by which Sri Lankan domestic politics, especially the politics of communal relations, became more vulnerable to outside political forces bears striking similarities to the process of escalating economic vulnerability described above. A topology of how violent conflict escalated in Sri Lanka, shown in Figure 8, is a useful starting point for this comparison. Depicted is an index that measures monthly intensities of violent political conflict. While violent political conflict, including ethnic conflict, has never been absent from Sri Lankan society, violence did not begin to escalate out of control until the 1980s. What factors contributed most to this escalation and what role did external forces play
