The short answer: take everything the Western powers tell you, do the opposite, and ignore them when they complain. From Indian Defence Review:
"Fundamentals of Victory against terror - Sri Lankan Example."
A few thoughts here.
One is that this model applies best to domestic or contiguous terror or guerilla fights, because those sorts of fights are the most existential, and control of territory for however long it takes is an inherent requirement. That doesn't mean it's impossible to apply to foreign fights, but the question must then be asked: "what for?" There's an answer in a colonialist framework, and there are answers within punitive expedition frameworks (like, "we're going to flatten towns involved in Somali piracy"). I'm not sure the Rajapaksa Model would translate in a place like Afghanistan, though elements of it could still be useful.
Another observation I'll make is the unspoken factor of Sri Lanka's cultivation of China as an alternate source of arms, removing dependency on (and hence pressure from) western suppliers.
That "no dependency" imperative is one I'm already seeing come to the fore in places like Indonesia and Brazil. Sri Lanka's experiences just add more fuel to an emerging consensus that the Western/UN approach just breeds disorder and failure. Now throw in the proliferation of new/revamped defense exporters around the globe in countries like China, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, Brazil, South Africa, et. al. Put that together, and I expect to see more countries take the Sri Lankan approach. The days of Western arms embargoes meaning much, or accomplishing much beyond costing Western jobs, are coming to a close.
Speaking of India, their naval intelligence cooperation, which allowed Sri Lanka to shatter the Tamils' supply network, adds an interesting wrinkle. At the distances involved, it looks like India used its fleet of TU-95 "Bear" long-range maritime patrol aircraft. Those could be considered a strategic national asset, so it was obviously a high priority task. The Tamil Tigers assassinated Rajiv Ghandi back when, so it's not surprising that there might be a bit of a grudge. As paybacks go, this turned out to be a pretty good one.
By the mid-2010s, when India has its new 737-derived P-8i patrol aircraft and a fleet of 3 carriers, it will be positioned to do this sort of thing in an arc extending from the Straits of Malacca to Suez and South Africa.
Yes to everything you said; and a large part of the fun of Winds of Change is your filling in aspects of the material side of war that I would not have thought of, so thanks. :)
The Tamil Tigers were innovators in terrorist war, so I think their military defeat will be studied and admired for a long time.
I think this slightly helps China, because any country that wants to go from the unbearable hell of endless terror-plus-negotiations on the Western model needs a different, more rational and pragmatic patron. That's fine with the Chinese. Their diplomacy will tend to pick up winners just as they start to win, because that's the point at which the West will be applying the most pressure to seek a "political solution" and not win. The growing Chinese "brand image" as a state that gladly supports awful regimes and never turns on its allies for moral reasons will only be useful to them.
I also think it's bad for Islam, because it makes one of Islam's military points of superiority a bit less salient.
Islam has an anti-terrorist doctrine too, in effect, and it works great. It's preemptive and endless crushing of non-Muslim communities, whether majorities or minorities, where the power of Islam holds sway. Muslim minorities in the West are a grave and growing danger, while non-Muslim minorities throughout the Middle East are nothing but victims that are being eliminated and are fleeing. (There is no reason to think they will ever come out of their decline. When have the Copts in Egypt ever really rebounded? Muslim domination means just this: for stubborn non-Muslims, things get worse forever. Sometimes the decline is fast and bloody, sometimes the pace slackens, but things never really become OK.)
That's a huge advantage: "heads I win, tails you lose". It will only grow more important as nuclear proliferation, which Islamic states seek and which the West is in effect consenting to, stymies the conventional mode of war that's the only kind the West is good at.
Now Islamic superiority counts for less, because there's a good model that any nation faced with an existential crisis of terrorism in their own or a contiguous state can resort to, provided that everybody who matters decides in solidarity that their people must have a future and the West can go to heck.
A few thoughts on why this example isn't emulatable for us.
1. as Joe pointed out, this is essentially an 'internal' struggle. The political will and reality on the ground are very different. You can put a squad of soldiers in a village and the residents truly understand that they are there to stay forever if necessary. There is no waiting game. Essentially this is a civil war, and we've got plenty of examples of how to fight those. They do tend to be bloody and brutal and that seems to be effective in the long term to some degree.
2.BUT- if the object of war is to obtain a more perfect peace, we'd do well to be circumspect about our regard for the Tamil issue until we see the long term implications. This fight could flare back up tomorrow for all we know. In our own experience in our civil war we saw how reconstruction led to decades of grief and sometimes violence. We are fortunate it didn't explode back into outright fighting early on (thanks in large part to men like Lee).
3.We cannot underestimate the importance of a safe haven in this type of warfare. If the Tiger's had a border they could safely duck across and receive support and supplies through, this would be an entirely different war. Now unless we intend to invade Pakistan (a terrible, awful, no good idea) we have to consider just what our victory condition can look like. Total eradication or surrender by the enemy does not appear plausible given these circumstances. If so, we are stuck with either unending war or some kind of settlement. And if this is a game of who can outlast the other, we are going to lose.