Moyar Mark. A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq
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MAJOR GENERAL JAMES N. MATTIS
Mattis, who commanded with distinction in both Afghanistan and Iraq, embodied the
reliance of the U.S. Marine Corps on adaptive leadership, having once declared that
“doctrine is the refuge of the unimaginative.” (U.S. Department of Defense)
GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS
While holding a series of key commands in Iraq and the United States, Petraeus (right)
sought to improve the exibility and creativity of Army leaders by challenging the U.S.
Army’s traditional personnel practices. (U.S. Department of Defense)
e Malayan Emergency 125
next morning feeling like an electric torch which has just been lled with new
batteries.”38 Templer’s magnetism and his attentiveness to the soldiers, police,
and civil servants made him a popular man in all of the government’s branches
and at all levels. A young British ocer described Templer as “dynamic, enthu-
siastic, energetic, and for someone in my position a hero, who was always open
to ideas from junior ocers like myself.”39 Templer’s élan was contagious, per-
meating the top levels of the British leadership and working its way through
them and down to the state and district ocials.40
No less energizing were Templer’s appearances before the public. During
trips to the villages, he went into shops and alleys to talk with ordinary citi-
zens, and at their conclusion he gathered the people together for a motivational
speech in which he told them of the critical tasks that lay ahead.41 At planta-
tions and mines he lectured managers on the necessity of improving working
conditions and told the laborers to work hard and resist Communist demands
for strikes, but without coming across as domineering. On hearing Templer,
one planter said, “Here was a man at least who knew what he wanted to do
and how to do it.” Templer’s “visit was greatly appreciated and everyone on the
estate had an opportunity of airing his views, asking questions and meeting
him face to face. No previous High Commissioner had taken the trouble to do
this.”42
In Kuala Lumpur, Templer chided the Europeans for attending parties,
playing golf, and going to the races instead of volunteering for activities in
support of the counterinsurgency. e Communists, he told them, were work-
ing hard to destroy the Europeans and the existing order, not wasting time on
the golf course. Templer published a list of volunteer opportunities, ranging
from health-care providers to the Home Guard, and large numbers of Euro-
peans signed on.43
Templer concluded that the security forces would benet from common
tactical doctrine, so he ordered the production of a doctrinal manual containing
drills and techniques that had proven successful in combating the insurgents
across Malaya. Entitled e Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya,
the manual was sent to army and police units in mid-1952.44 e importance
of this manual has been exaggerated, and the exaggeration has, among other
things, contributed directly to the U.S. Army’s emphasis on counterinsurgency
doctrine in the early twenty-rst century and to the attention aorded the pub-
lication of the U.S. Army /Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual in
2006. Templer’s praise of the 1952 manual and the major improvements in the
126 e Malayan Emergency
British counterinsurgency eort aer the manual’s issuance misled analysts
into believing that the manual was a leading cause of the improvements. e
methods enumerated in e Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya
had, in reality, been disseminated and employed in Malaya long before the
manual was printed. During the rst years of the conict, British veterans of
Burma and Palestine had used many of these methods because they had used
the same ones in those wars. In 1948 the British established a jungle warfare
school in Malaya at which the instructors taught tactics derived largely from
those employed in the war in Burma, and by 1949 the British were circulating
pamphlets and a short manual derived from the experiences in Burma, Pales-
tine, and the Boer War, as well as from discoveries made by innovative ocers
in Malaya.45
Operations in Malaya from 1948 to 1952 had engendered only modest re-
nements of the theories drawn from past conicts. e principles and basic
military methods employed by the British in this period were very similar
to those enumerated in prior treatises, such as the Small Wars Manual pub-
lished by the U.S. Marine Corps in 1940. e prescriptions in e Conduct of
Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya were useful to newly arrived ocers and
soldiers with no knowledge of counterinsurgency but did not provide easy
solutions to most counterinsurgency problems. ey did not give ocers sure-
re methods for accomplishing essential tasks like gaining the cooperation of
allied leaders, organizing self-defense forces, winning the support of the popu-
lation, motivating the troops, persisting in the face of diculty, or adjusting
methods in response to changing enemy tactics.46
e jungle warfare school emphasized to its students that the school could
teach them basic tactics and techniques but that it was up to them to gure
out whether, when, and how to use each one.47 e Conduct of Anti-Terrorist
Operations in Malaya itself acknowledged that successful military operations
demanded excellent leadership, not just comprehension of methods. “Opera-
tions in Malaya largely consist of small patrols,” it stated. “e success or fail-
ure of these operations therefore depends on the standard of junior leaders. . . .
e type of junior leader required is a mentally tough, self-reliant hunter, de-
termined to close with, and kill, the CT [Communist Terrorists].” e manual
also noted that commanders above the platoon level had as a principal duty
the monitoring, selection, and coaching of the platoon leaders. “e company
commander plays the major part in the selection and training of the junior
leader,” it explained. “By operating with each platoon in turn, he can give help
e Malayan Emergency 127
and advice to junior leaders, earmark future leaders and can generally do more
in a few days to improve junior leadership than a cadre [training group] could
do in three weeks.”48
Templer considered his mission to be the implementation of the Briggs
plan through better employment of methods already in place, rather than
through major changes to those methods. Although he promoted doctrine,
Templer was not doctrinaire but pragmatic and suspicious of abstractions, par-
ticularly theories that purported to apply everywhere. Rather than forcing his
commanders to adhere closely to the new counterinsurgency manual, Templer
granted them freedom to adapt general counterinsurgency principles to the
specic environments they faced and the specic forces they possessed, both
of which varied from one part of Malaya to another. So conscious was Templer
of the dangers of imposing doctrine and micromanaging that he made special
eorts to give key commanders maximum freedom of action. In the case of
the district ocers, the most critical of all the commanders, Templer removed
both vertical and horizontal fetters, freeing them from the dictates of higher
headquarters and other district ocials. He gave them his phone number and
told them to call if anyone interfered with their work so that he could put an
end to the interference. To unblock district interagency committees that had
been clogged by lack of consensus among members, Templer informed the
committee members that they would be red if they failed to reach agree-
ment. is threat eliminated most of the gridlock; rings eliminated the re-
mainder.49
Replacing poor leaders with good ones, unshackling leaders, and provid-
ing inspiration—that was the potent combination that enabled Templer to
succeed where others had failed. Within a few months of his arrival, the re-
sults could be seen across the spectrum of counterinsurgency activities. In the
eld of intelligence collection, the heightened drive and ingenuity of Special
Branch ocers yielded more agents among the Min Yuen. Improved training
inculcated intelligence tradecra into the Special Branch ocer corps more
eectively, but without the right types of ocers conducting and receiving the
instruction, the training regimens would have achieved little more than previ-
ous ones.50
More and better intelligence meant more fruitful operations against the
insurgents, but it did not guarantee success, for exploitation of the intelligence
oen required considerable skill on the part of the armed forces. Nor did it
eliminate the need for patrols of the jungle based on educated guesses rather
128 e Malayan Emergency
than rm intelligence, a type of operation that, as has been seen, demands
leaders with particular attributes. In 1954, by which time the Special Branch
had become highly productive, the average soldier still spent 1,000 hours on
patrol before making contact with the enemy.51 Fortunately for the British, im-
provements on the military side were as substantial as those on the intelligence
side. Under Templer, military commanders evidenced increases in exibility
and creativity as well as initiative and dedication. As one of Templer’s senior
eld commanders said, “Most ocers I met were singularly free from hide-
bound prejudice. ey rejoiced to use any conventional weapon in an uncon-
ventional way; and they were always ready to have a try with any unconven-
tional weapon too.”52
Because of the leadership upgrades in the civil service, police, and Home
Guard, the counterinsurgents turned the New Villages and other resettlement
areas from fertile insurgent breeding grounds into well-organized armed
camps where insurgents could tread only at considerable peril. e police, as-
sisted by civil ocials and Home Guardsmen, investigated and rounded up
thousands of members of the Min Yuen. With civil liberties still in suspense,
the police employed searches without warrants, detentions without trial, and
other police-state techniques, but they committed fewer abuses than before
because of Young’s overhaul of the police leadership. Policemen and civil ser-
vants were energetic and creative in restricting the movement and consump-
tion of food. ey established central kitchens and forbade citizens from pur-
chasing any rice other than rice that had been cooked at the kitchens, which
sharply reduced the amount of rice available to an individual and provided it
in a form that spoiled in a few hours, before it could reach famished guerrillas
in the jungle. Village shops were required to puncture cans at the time of sale
to necessitate prompt consumption. As an additional means of increasing gov-
ernmental control over the population, civil servants organized the election
of village councils and authorized them to impose taxes and carry out public
works projects. Templer’s eorts to initiate larger social welfare programs were
frustrated by a scarcity of funds, but the lack of such programs did little to in-
hibit the government’s securing of control over the villagers.53
In Templer’s rst year, the government’s armed forces not only halted the
ascent of their Communist adversaries but shoved them down a precipitous
decline. Whereas the government in 1951 had captured 927 weapons and lost
770, in 1952 it captured 1,170 and lost 487. e New Villages slowed the transfer
of food from the Min Yuen to the guerrillas, severely impeding insurgent mili-
e Malayan Emergency 129
tary operations. Since the jungle’s few edible plants could at best sustain thirty
guerrillas in one place for about two weeks, the guerrillas began to operate in
groups of only three to een people and spent most of their time looking for
food instead of conducting military and political activities. In October 1952
the Communist Party ordered the guerrillas to undertake more ambitious at-
tacks, believing that a shortage of attacks had undermined the guerrillas’ mo-
rale and aided the government, but the guerrillas could not operate in groups
of sucient size to carry out the order. Government security forces easily re-
pulsed their few feeble attempts to overrun the resettlement areas. In 1952 the
insurgents for the rst time failed to recruit as many people as they lost, begin-
ning a trend that continued for the rest of the war. When Templer rst arrived,
insurgent incidents had averaged over 500 per month, and civilian casualties
had averaged 100 per month. When he le, insurgent incidents were down to
fewer than 100 per month, and civilian casualties to fewer than 20 per month.
At the end of Templer’s tour, insurgent strength stood at less than half of what
it had been at the start.54 Templer had turned the war around decisively, and
for good.
Upon Templer’s decision to step down in the middle of 1954, London de-
cided to discontinue the concentration of military and civil powers in one
man, convinced that improvements in the situation had rendered it unneces-
sary. Templer’s civilian deputy, Sir Donald MacGillivray, assumed control of
the civil side, while Lieutenant General Sir Georey Bourne took command
of military operations. is division of powers substantially reduced the e-
cacy of the counterinsurgency eort because the absence of a strong military
leader at the top of the civil side led to regression. e civil service dried back
toward a business-as-usual attitude, and the district ocers and other civil
servants appointed under Templer were eventually rotated out and replaced
by men of lesser aptitude.55
In the years following Templer’s departure, the government was unable to
deal a mortal blow to the Communists, but it did continue to make progress.
By the end of 1956, the guerrillas had barely more than 2,000 men.56 Malaya
gained its independence on August 31, 1957, removing much of the Malayan
Communist Party’s appeal and drawing many Communist sympathizers to
the parties of the non-Communist le. Malaya’s rst prime minister, Tunku
Abdul Rahman, shared Templer’s view that good government deserved prece-
dence over self-government in a time of civil war, so he hired into his govern-
ment the British, Australian, and New Zealand ocers who until now had
130 e Malayan Emergency
been conducting the war for the British government, a group that included
most of the top ocers in the army and police. In addition, large numbers of
British, Australian, and New Zealand troops continued the hunt for the guer-
rillas.
In late 1957 and 1958 counterinsurgency operations destroyed some of the
remaining guerrilla pockets, which allowed the government to concentrate
its counterguerrilla forces in the few areas where the guerrillas refused to lay
down their arms. Casualties and lack of food led to the surrender of several key
guerrilla leaders, who convinced other guerrillas to surrender and provided
information that led to further military reverses for the insurgency. Five hun-
dred guerrillas surrendered in 1958, more than in any previous year. By the end
of 1958, the number of guerrilla ghters had fallen to 350, which prompted the
Communist Party to move most of its armed forces into southern ailand,
where they could recuperate and launch small attacks into Malaya. Scattered
guerrilla and counterguerrilla operations persisted in the ai-Malay border
region into 1959 and beyond, but the insurgents ceased posing a signicant
threat to the well-being of the country.57
e perceived lessons of the Malayan Emergency have informed much of
the advice provided to American counterinsurgents in the twenty-rst cen-
tury. As the foregoing assessment indicates, these lessons are in need of some
revision. Contrary to popular belief, the ineectiveness of the British counter-
insurgents from 1948 to 1951 did not result from a failure to understand the
problem or to identify appropriate countermeasures. Rather, it resulted from
weak leadership. Following the outburst of Communist violence in June 1948,
the British multiplied the number of policemen, but without sucient at-
tention to the quality of their leaders, committing the common error of pre-
suming that eective forces can be created simply by providing funds and as-
signing a certain number of new personnel. Because of poor leadership, the
expanded police forces were generally inept and, aside from occasional acts of
indiscriminate brutality, inert. rough the Emergency regulations, the British
government denied the people the protections of civil liberties, an appropri-
ate enough response to the Communist threat, but one that allowed abuses to
ourish in the absence of good leadership. e government’s armed forces had
considerably better ocers than the police did at the start of the war, which
translated into vigorous military operations and, in some cases, rapid adap-
tation of tactics to local conditions. Although the police failed to provide the
armed forces with much intelligence on the insurgents, military operations
e Malayan Emergency 131
succeeded in disrupting major guerrilla activities and denying the guerrillas
the military initiative.
e Malayan Emergency demonstrates the critical importance of leader-
ship at the top and the dierences between good and poor leadership at that
level. By refusing to visit the insurgency’s equivalent of front lines—the vil-
lages and outposts and local headquarters—Gurney failed to inspire subor-
dinates in the eld or appraise their performance. Because of Gurney’s pre-
ferred management style and the inferior quality of many junior leaders, the
central headquarters micromanaged and produced an excess of paperwork at
the expense of action. e addition of Briggs, a ne leader, to Gurney’s leader-
ship team failed to remedy this condition because Briggs was not given the
authority required to impose change on sluggish bureaucrats. Nor, at the dis-
trict level, did the district ocers have the latitude to exert strong leadership,
having been placed on interagency committees without the power to override
uncooperative committee members.
When Gerald Templer took the helm in February 1952, he had the good
fortune of receiving supreme authority over all civil and military organiza-
tions, which gave him the freedom of action that Briggs had never possessed.
Templer, in turn, provided freedom to those below him. Although Templer
issued doctrinal publications, he did not attempt to force specic methods
upon local commanders, for he knew that success required autonomous and
adaptive local leaders, capable of using their own judgment to determine
whether, when, and how to apply doctrinal concepts.
By leaving the administrative duties of Kuala Lumpur to others, Templer
was able to devote his time to the more important task of touring the coun-
try, primarily for the purpose of identifying leaders who deserved removal or
promotion. He red civil and military leaders at all levels, without concern
for whether they were pleasant people or what it would do for their careers.
Such callousness can be hard for compassionate people to stomach, but it did
promote the greater good of eective counterinsurgency, and it saved the lives
of counterinsurgents. e police and the civil service beneted the most from
Templer’s pitiless axe, for their leaders had never before been subjected to rig-
orous screening of the sort employed by vigilant military ocers. To ll many
of the holes created by the sackings, Templer brought in proven men from
across the empire, a feat that depended upon a cooperative national govern-
ment and a generally high level of talent among the ocers and ocials pro-
duced by British society and government in years past. Templer’s accomplish-
132 e Malayan Emergency
ments also illustrate superbly the value of energy and charisma in winning
support from both government personnel and the population at large.
Templer did not introduce new counterinsurgency tactics or strategy. He
executed existing tactics and strategy more eectively than before, by chang-
ing and inspiring the eld commanders. rough this approach, Templer in-
creased the initiative and inventiveness of the armed forces. e Special Branch
of the police acquired much more intelligence thanks to Templer’s addition
of talented intelligence ocers, and that intelligence presented new opportu-
nities for the armed forces to eliminate Communists. Population relocation,
which initially failed to stem the insurgency because of inadequate adminis-
trators and security forces, thrived under Templer because the new leaders of
the civil service, the police, and the Home Guard possessed the attributes re-
quired to gain control of the resettlement areas and prevent misdeeds by local
personnel. e government’s leaders gained the support of much of the rural
Chinese population through the establishment of security and the demonstra-
tion of integrity and empathy in governance—and not through the institution
of social and economic reforms.
One more critical and underappreciated aspect of the Malayan Emergency
was the strong performance of indigenous forces under foreign command-
ers. Both Templer, as British high commissioner, and Tunku Abdul Rahman,
as the prime minister of independent Malaya, attained favorable outcomes
by putting British and other foreign ocers into leadership positions in the
Malayan military, police, civil service, and Home Guard. Choosing good gov-
ernment over self-government in the short term, they defused the immediate
Communist menace and ultimately attained a peace that would provide a long
term in which Malayans could work on self-government free of the scourge
of subversion.
133
I
n the early twentieth century, as in previous centuries, most of Vietnam’s
leaders belonged to a very small elite that exceeded the rest of the popula-
tion in social status, education, and wealth. Although the French had par-
titioned Vietnam into three colonies in the late nineteenth century, they had
not displaced the Vietnamese elite or fundamentally altered its relationship
to the Vietnamese masses. Concentrated in the urban population centers of
Vietnam, the members of the elite became more Westernized and modernized
with each year of French colonization, widening the gulf that separated them
from the peasants, who composed the vast majority of the populace.
As fate would have it, however, South Vietnam’s rst president, Ngo Dinh
Diem, grew up astride this gulf. Diem’s father had served in the imperial court
as a traditional mandarin ocial, but he quit out of opposition to French poli-
cies, moved his family to the countryside, and took up farming. Diem learned
to grow rice in the premodern way, driving the plow with a water bualo.
At the same time, he gained an understanding of the Vietnamese peasant’s
mind, giving him a decided advantage over the Westernized Vietnamese elites
of Hanoi, Saigon, and other cities who aspired to guide the country’s political
course.
Diem attended the School for Law and Administration in Hanoi and n-
ished at the head of his class, which brought him an appointment as a district
chief, a position of considerable authority. Riding a horse in mandarin garb,
Diem crisscrossed his district to administer public projects and resolve dis-
putes. A devout Catholic who shunned worldly possessions, he projected an
CHAPTER 7
e Vietnam War