Sri Lanka’s Problem Isn’t Military Boots on the Street
When Cyclone Ditwah hit Sri Lanka, the institution that did most of the heavy lifting was the military. They carried out search-and-rescue operations, moved supplies, and restored access. The military was the first to respond whenever the government wanted to do something fast, technical, and coordinated.
For critics, this is proof that Sri Lanka is sliding deeper into militarization – the so-called militarization of Sri Lankan society.
However, this is the result not so much of the military creeping into civilian functions as it is the outcome of the military being the one institution the state could deploy cohesively, and at scale, whether to run logistics in an emergency or fill the gaps left by a hollowed-out civilian bureaucracy.
Since 1977, successive governments have allowed state capacity to atrophy by recruiting hundreds of thousands of their unqualified supporters, while getting rid of competent officers. There has been chronic underinvestment in the boring parts of the state, i.e., data systems, middle management, procurement, and technical cadres. The military would have gone the same way but for the civil war, which required merit-based recruitment, building logistical capacities and capital expenses.
The civilian bureaucracy faced opposite pressures, i.e., politicization, churn and cuts to capital expenditure and organizational development. A large number of competent civil servants either retired or migrated. The recruitment freeze from 2020 to 2025 made matters worse, although the shortage of middle management in areas needing a high degree of technical capability could be dated back much further.
Following the end of the war, the army too has been slowly hollowed out, but it is by far the most competent instrument the government has at its disposal. This was proven once again during the recent Cyclone Ditwah, where the troops did the heavy lifting during search and rescue operations. It continues to play a major role in rehabilitation initiatives.
The National People’s Power (NPP) government has acknowledged the need to rebuild state capacity. But this will take time, money, and capacity – things Sri Lanka has in short supply.
The Research Handbook on Civil–Military Relations says that material militarization concerns resources, roles, and force structure. Militarization concerns prerogatives, such as who gets to decide, who is accountable, and whether the security sector becomes a governing pillar rather than an instrument. Social militarization concerns the everyday seepage of military logic into civilian spaces, education, welfare, development, public health, and administration. This framing matters because a country can simultaneously move in different directions across these dimensions.
One reason the militarization debate goes in circles is that although troop numbers have declined, reliance on the institution increases. Following the defeat of the LTTE in 2009, Sri Lanka has been downsizing its military. The army, which has about 300,000 troops in 2009, was downsized to about 180,000 by 2015. At the end of 2024, it stands at 135,000. However, the military’s mission has expanded. In 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was even called in to support vaccination drives and contract tracing. In recent years, the military seems to be more involved in disaster management and it has been called to tackle the drug menace.
Thus, the slogan “cut the budget, reduce the troops” has never been politically or socially simple. Successive governments have been reducing troop numbers and cutting capital expenditure since 2009. But until the NPP came to power, no government has done much to strengthen the capacity of the civilian segment of the state.
Rebuilding civilian capacity requires money. Debt restructuring, IMF commitments, and tight budgets leave little room for capital spending. In such an environment, the cheapest short-term solution is to continue using the military as a ready-made logistics machine.
Critics who call for immediate demilitarization without confronting these realities are asking for something the state cannot deliver. Simply cutting the defense budget or reducing troop numbers further will not produce competent civilian institutions. If anything, they will destroy the existing capacity of the military and leave the country less capable of responding to emergencies.
If Sri Lanka genuinely wants the military to retreat from everyday governance, it must first build alternatives. That means sustained investment in public administration, technical recruitment, training, and systems – the slow, unglamorous work of rebuilding the state itself.
Until then, the military will continue to do the heavy lifting, not because it seeks to govern, but because no one else can.
