“…to let the military direct the entire process…is so dangerous that it must be resisted at all costs.”

― David Galula, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice

The gradual end of European colonialism and the advent of the modern international system following the second world war led to a significant change in the nature of war worldwide. In particular, there was an unprecedented rise in the frequency of asymmetric wars between global powers and local insurgencies. Especially in the period immediately following World War II, many of these conflicts were anti-colonial revolutionary wars, as was the case in British Malaya from 1948 to 1960, the Malayan Emergency. These changes necessitated new schools of revolutionary theory, and in the case of insurgency and counterinsurgency. Two have developed. The first – based initially in the writing of Antoine-Henri Jomini – holds that a guerilla war should be treated like any other, that military and political goals are distinct, and that success even against an insurgency is contingent on destroying the enemy. While some notable examples of success in what has come to be known as “direct” counterinsurgency, most historical examples point to “indirect” counterinsurgency as the more effective strategy. This philosophy, attributed originally to Carl von Clausewitz, holds that guerilla war is not like any other physical conflict because the goals are just as political as they are military. Moreover, victory in an insurgent war hinges on winning the support of the people. Though both members of this Clausewitzian school of thought, the theories of John Nagl and Mao Zedong, come from opposite sides of a conflict to help explain the British counterinsurgency success during the Malay Insurgency.

Historical Background

The Malayan Communist Party formed from the remnants of the Chinese “South Seas” Communist Party in 1930, which had been established in Singapore six years earlier. One of the main reasons the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) began this fight for independence was that they wanted to establish a socialist economy, in part a response to the significant economic problems which existed following World War I. In particular, the Malayan economy was very vulnerable to shifts in the world market due to its reliance on the export of primary commodities, especially tin and rubber (Economic History Association).

When the British first took control of the economy, they had imposed significant taxes on Malayan goods, affecting traditional industries. This block caused an increase in poverty for the people of Malaya, as many of the ethnic Chinese subsequently found employment in tin mines or fields of trade of materials, and Malay people were in turn forced into the rubber industry, which was particularly sensitive to volatile world prices. Many impoverished Malays felt as if the Chinese people had replaced them in the only good jobs available, making finding work difficult for them. The only jobs left for the Malay people were in the rubber industry, which aggravated ethnic tensions between the two communities.

Malaya’s economy took an even greater turn for the worse during World War II during the Japanese occupation. Beginning in 1941, the occupation created significant limitations on the export of primary products, which led to many instances of rubber plantations being abandoned and mines closing. Limited trade also resulted in a shortage of imported rice, a significant portion of the Malayan diet, forcing the population to concentrate simply on subsisting and further harming the economy. Even the Japanese withdrawal at the end of World War II further contributed to this economic disorder. The Japanese left Malaya with a range of problems, including high food inflation, unemployment, and low wages.

This disorder resulted in labor unrest in Malaya, and many strikes occurred between the years 1946 and 1948. The reestablished British government struggled with addressing these underlying economic issues, and the communist party was able to take advantage and promote its agenda. The mostly Chinese party, inclined towards ethnic-nationalism elements, successfully rejected the first British program for decolonization—this Malayan Union intended to provide all citizens with equal rights. In response, the British replaced it with The Federation of Malaya in 1948 to reduce Chinese influence. However, this caused a feeling of betrayal from many in the Chinese community in Malaya. These ethnic tensions combined with economic instability led people from all sides to view British control negatively.

Thus, the MCP had enough support to engage in a protracted insurgent war with the British, in the form of their military wing, the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA). On June 16th of 1948, the British declared a state of emergency in several districts after the Sungai Siput Incident in 1948, which involved the murder of three British Plantation owners by the MNLA. Two days later, a state of emergency was declared for all of Malaya by Malayan Governor Sir Edward Ghent, marking the beginning of The Malayan Emergency. Within a week, the MCP and affiliated organizations were declared illegal. (Australian War Memorial) The first MNLA military campaign took place in 1948-1949, as did the initial terrorist activity and guerilla fighting, primarily against Chinese civilians. 1949-1951, the MNLA launched successful assaults on government outposts, plantations and created 1195 government security force casualties.

The MCP and MNLA intended to follow the example of Mao’s Chinese Communist Party and defeat the British through a strategy of protracted insurgent warfare. (Shaw, 1993) Their early strategy involved striking the British revenue sources, which they hoped would cause the British to tire of counterinsurgency. They first focused primarily on destroying the means of production, but over time they began to realize this was alienating the people whose support they needed to win the war. Popular support was required both because it would grant prestige and honor the MNLA and because they relied on the people, especially in rural squatter villages, to give them resources such as food and information. (Shaw, 1993)

The Briggs Plan

A lack of coherent strategic plans defined the beginning of the counterinsurgency for the British. The British’s strategy first focused on conventional strategies founded on their experience fighting the Germans in World War Two. The resulting tactic, known as “Jungle Bashing,” was virtually worthless against insurgents on their home turf in the jungle.

However, after identifying Malaya’s political climate, the British found their strategic direction with Harold Briggs. Briggs, a British lieutenant-general, had served as a key figure in Britain’s counterinsurgency efforts in the Burma Campaign against the Japanese in WWII. Nagl describes him as having an “unusual grasp of the political nature of the insurgency and measures required to defeat it” (Nagl, 2002, p.71), ultimately introducing the idea that winning over local support was paramount to success. The “Briggs Plan” involved dominating the populated areas and building up a security feeling in them, which would then isolate the insurgents from food and information supply. This plan worked for some time, but the rising success of Communist movements in China further inspired the Malayan Communist Party to continue their guerrilla efforts. The British concluded that they needed to get the local Chinese population on their side to win and further separate this population from the Malayan insurgents and China’s influence.

An in-depth analysis of the seven key points of the “Briggs Plan” is crucial to understanding British success in Malaya. First, the British needed to prove that public security could be guaranteed by democracy and convince the Chinese population in Malaya that a transition to a communist government would prevent that security. A vital aspect of the British strategy was to re-settle the Chinese villagers in “new villages” they could secure. As will be explained, the new villages effectively separated the insurgents from the people – the ‘fish’ from the ‘sea’. Secured by an ethnic Chinese police force, the insurgents were prevented from moving in and out of the villages under cover of night, and therefore lost much of their effectiveness. The second point covers the expansion of security to the rest of Malaya, using a section-by-section removal of insurgents starting in the South and moving North. Once a populated area such as a city had all insurgents removed or deported, the third point centered on maintaining security in that area. Starting at the fourth point, the “Briggs Plan” becomes more specific to the Malaya insurgency. The counterinsurgency agreed to concentrate first on insurgents in populated areas, such as the Min Yuen factions. This specification would cut the rest of the insurgents off from access to supplies and reinforcements (Shaw, 1993, p.4).

The fifth point is that once the security has been established, it should be maintained by ethnic Chinese police forces rather than the British military. This alteration is an important distinction: a strong military presence, especially a foreign military presence, promotes fear, involving associations of weapons, tanks, and danger. On the other hand, a police force is normal and expected in communities. It is ultimately more successful at providing a sense of security than would a military presence. This heavy presence of ethnic Chinese police in highly populated areas allowed the British to maintain control and security while not instilling fear in the Malayan people that would alienate them and drive them into the insurgents’ arms. It was easier to convince the general public to go against the insurgency if the communists were brought in for criminal charges by the police (Shaw, 1993). In contrast, the military against insurgents glorified and justified their cause and portrayed their violence as military rather than criminal. This psychological component of counterinsurgencies is critical to prevent the insurgents from growing in number.

The Briggs Plan’s sixth point created the “Federal War Council,” designed to implement the plan effectively by overseeing both the military and the police force (Shaw, 1993, p.5). This precise organization of the counterinsurgency campaign would benefit both the military and police force to act effectively, helping the British provide security to the general public and prevent Malayans from joining the insurgents. The seventh and final point created an intelligence effort led by Sir William Jenkins. Jenkins’ experience came from time spent running the “Indian Police Special Branch,” which was extremely useful, as he was able to bring professional intelligence training to the British effort in Malaya (Guan, 2009, p.193). This third branch of the British counterinsurgency efforts held the responsibility for gaining information about guerrilla movements and became a sub-branch of the police force to maintain a low profile and prevent further public fear (Shaw, 1993).

While this plan is lengthy and detailed, the British identification of the Malayan political climate and preparation for potential problems contributed significantly to their success. Early on, the importance of patience was recognized because they were essentially fighting two fronts: the military fighting the guerilla insurgents in the jungle and the police maintaining security in highly populated cities while preventing the number of insurgents from growing. This sense of security was ultimately obtained by creating “new villages” in the dense jungle to provide safety and security to the local population, which further isolated the guerillas from resources and reinforcements.

Mao and the Chinese Communist Insurgency

Most of the theory surrounding this type of war – going back to Clausewitz and Jomini and including Nagl – has come from the side of the counterinsurgency. However, there have also been significant revolutionaries like Mao Zedong who work on a strategy for insurgency success. Mao’s ultimately successful Guerilla war for China’s control began as early as 1927 and did not end until his declaration of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. Over the course of Mao’s over two decades fighting a Marxist-Leninist insurgency against the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and the Japanese during WWII. He developed sophisticated theories on revolution, which have come to be known collectively as Maoism (Schram, 2020).

Mao divides a successful “people’s war” into three stages. He described the first stage as “organization, consolidation, and preservation.” It begins with acknowledging that the revolutionaries have a massive disadvantage in terms of power and resources and is focused primarily on winning the people’s support. Without this support, surviving in the later stages is extremely unlikely, and success is impossible. The Clausewitz idea that popular support is paramount to success in a revolutionary war is shared by both Mao, Nagl and shows that despite coming from opposite sides, they both have the same fundamental philosophy: whoever wins the most hearts and minds is likely to win the war (Nagl, 2002).

The second stage is the Guerilla campaign, which Mao referred to as “progressive expansion.” The idea fundamentally is to weaken the people’s faith in the government’s ability to provide security. During this stage, the insurgents remain weaker in an immediate sense than government forces, but they nonetheless have significant advantages. The first is their ability to hide from government forces; Mao famously described the insurgents as fish swimming in the people’s sea. This assumption argues that the revolutionary force chooses the battlefield. They can attack poorly supported outposts and weapons stores while avoiding direct engagement with the army’s strength. By doing this carefully, insurgents theoretically can avoid defeat altogether. A string of victories like this, primarily if they successfully draw widespread attention to them, can simultaneously increase the prestige of the revolutionary force while displaying the government’s weakness (Nagl 2002). Mao believed this would start a positive feedback loop in which a victory would increase the insurgency’s popular support and boost its arms and resources, making the next victory easier, and over time they will be able to strike more and more valuable targets.

Once the revolutionaries had gained enough support, and enough weaponry and other resources, and had sufficiently weakened or demoralized the army, phase three would begin, in which the revolutionaries could engage in an actual direct battle with the state and defeat them (Nagl 2002). To Mao, the critical mistake made by revolutionary leaders who fail is skipping two quickly to stage three. Amid a revolt, with passions and emotions running extremely high, it can be difficult not to overestimate one’s abilities after a string of successes. Avoiding this, to Mao, was critical.

The story of the Malayan Communist Party is “almost entirely a Chinese one” (Nagl, 2002). As such, the party was undoubtedly aware of Mao’s history and theories and fully intended to follow his example. The MCP recognized that people’s support, especially the Chinese people, was critical to its success. At least in principle, they understood that this first stage was necessarily the foundation of later stages.

The revolutionaries’ ultimate failure is thus a result of their failure in this stage. While Mao focused on indoctrination rather than intimidation, the MCP did not have the same success with indoctrination. Arguably by necessity, they relied primarily on their ability to intimidate the Chinese peasants. This intimidation provided the British (and the British-employed Chinese) with the opportunity to play the role of protectors through strategies such as the secure new villages. Though the MCP made significant efforts to move to Mao’s second stage and prosecute a guerilla war against the British, their lack of popular support hamstrung their efforts and led to a British victory- just as both Mao and Nagl would predict.

Nagl’s Analysis of British Counterinsurgency Efforts in Malaya

John Nagl examines the British colonial government’s new counterinsurgency methods in Malaya between 1948 and 1951 as a learning institution for the future. Fresh from their victory against Japan and Germany’s conventional armies, British army commanders at first focused their attention on battalion sweeps aimed at the insurgent forces. The British soon realized that the insurgents were not partaking in conventional style warfare instead using small blitz attacks common in guerilla-style warfare. The British military needed a new strategy to tackle the unpredictable nature of guerrilla warfare and lack of formal intelligence about the insurgents’ strategy. Two competing schools of thought were combined as a foundation for British involvement in Malaya; the obvious nature that a military solution was needed and the less conventional nature of the insurgents’ political ideology. Innovative younger officers then developed more effective techniques to defeat the guerrillas at their own game by gaining the local people’s support; flexible senior officers emphasized analyzing political and military goals and encouraged the creation, testing, and implementation of more effective counterinsurgency doctrine.

A vital component of the British counterinsurgency plans recognized Mao’s influence and the Chinese population. As noted in the previous section, the Malayan Communist Party was guided by the example set by Mao’s Chinese Communist Party, with their plan centralized on getting the British to tire of their counterinsurgency efforts by striking at their revenue sources. The British quickly recognized this influence, and they immediately sent in troops to protect the general public from the campaign of terror by deporting Chinese supporters when they were captured. Without this clear identification of Mao’s influence in Malaya, the later efforts to reestablish democracy would have been unsuccessful.

The counterinsurgency in Malaya experienced many ups and downs throughout the efforts to convince the Malayan local population to go against the Communist insurgents by implementing the Briggs Plan. The high commissioner of the Federation of Malaya, Sir Henry Gurney, created “new villages,” which were rural villages set up for the local population with protection from the police force and a new security force called home guards (Nagl, 2002). These villages became a crucial aspect of the Biggs Plan, creating a safe area for Chinese squatters and allowing them to live a safer and more peaceful life. This shift in Chinese squatters’ support made it more difficult for the guerilla forces to hide in jungle villages, forcing them towards the shore. The creation of “new villages” continued to allow for the British to connect politics, military, and police in Malaya by trying to create safe environments for the locals opposed to killing them, eventually trying to sway the local population to support a democratic political shift.

In October of 1951, Gurney was murdered by communists, and Briggs retired due to illness. Oliver Lyttelton took control of implementing his plan. A large hurdle the British faced was still trying to convince the Chinese population not to support the Chinese Communist efforts. To win over the Chinese population, Lyttelton explained that the home guards need to have a larger Chinese population because Chinese home guards only took up only a small proportion of the force. Lyttelton continued putting in police-heavy policies which worked to sway local Chinese and Malayan populations against Communism.

From 1952 to 1954, Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer built on Briggs plan, and by 1955 “the back of the Communist insurrection was broken,” the British were able to get the support of the Chinese people and cut off the insurgents from the support they needed, effectively rendering them irrelevant (Shaw, 1993, pg. 127). By 1957, the Malay Insurgency was nearly over, with only 3,000 communist guerrilla fighters left in 1956. The period between 1957 and 1960 included consistent government effort, and finally, the communist party was deemed defeated by 1960 (Shaw, 1993). This success was a product of the British forces carrying out Briggs plan, using indirect COIN to patiently turn the local population against the Communist insurgents, rather than the juxtaposing method of direct COIN through strong military and quick actions. Although ultimately successful in stopping the insurgents, British efforts had much pushback on being both too costly and timely inefficient (Nagl, 2002).

Although the methods provide a successful outcome, in theory, the counterinsurgency results were surprisingly mixed. Nagl concludes that this British doctrine on counterinsurgency was not wholly successful. The geographical and jungle-dense nature of Malaya put a strain on the military, and the British failed to identify whether Communist supporters still existed in Malaya in the end. Additionally, Nagl reveals that this effort in Malaya was not an effective learning institution. The British forces in Malaya were divided and all over the place, and perhaps a single commanding officer with a united force could have changed this outcome (Nagl, 2002). In terms of just monetary value, this counterinsurgency can be seen as outrageously expensive and financially harmful to the British. On the other hand, others believed that the British’s implication of the counterinsurgency principles are highly effective and resulted in a significant victory in Malaya.

The ineffective side of learning from this effort in Malaya is shown clearly through the vastly different outcome of the American Counterinsurgency efforts using the Briggs Plan in Vietnam. In response to the recent success in Malaya, the United States attempted to follow along with the Briggs plan’s indirect COIN strategy in their counterinsurgency efforts in Vietnam. Nevertheless, the United States both had a complete lack of “an overarching strategy” and quickly became impatient, making unorganized and more militarized decisions (Shaw, p.118). Indirect counterinsurgency requires a significant investment in time, troops, and money, and this American impatience led them back to a much more Jominian strategy, and arguably their counterinsurgency failure.

Conclusion

Mao’s insurgency efforts in China and Britain’s counterinsurgency actions towards implementing a secure democracy in Malaya prove how vital patience and well thought out strategy is in a guerilla war. Both Mao and Nagl agree with Clausewitz’s emphasis on guerilla warfare’s political goals, minimizing the military’s use, and creating better thought-out strategies when engaging in warfare. British actions in Malaya prove how successful the use of indirect COIN can be in counterinsurgency actions. Through the Briggs plan’s execution, Britain slowly gained local Malayan populations’ support, isolating, and rendering irrelevant the Communist insurgents. The use of indirect COIN in Malaya took a long time and proved to be very expensive but was ultimately successful.

Work Cited

Australian War Memorial. “Malayan Emergency.” https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/atwar/malayan-emergency

Drabble, John H. “Economic History of Malaysia.” EH.Net Encyclopedia, July 31, 2004, http://eh.net/encyclopedia/economic-history-of-malaysia/

Guan, Kwa Chong. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 82, no. 2 (297) (2009): 193-95. Accessed December 4, 2020. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41493757.

History of the Cold War Podcast. “Harold Briggs” May 14, 2017. https://www.historyofthecoldwarpodcast.com/episode-28-malaysia-malayan-emergency-part-one-1948-1951/sir-harold-briggs/

Lockard, Craig A. “Malaysia.” Encyclopedia Britannica, December 3, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/place/Malaysia

Nagl, John A. “British Army Counterinsurgency Learning During the Malayan Emergency, 1948- 1951” Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. 2002.

National Army Museum. “Malayan Emergency.” https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/malayan-emergency.

Schram, Stuart R. “Mao Zedong | Biography & Facts.” Encyclopedia Britannica, September 5, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mao-Zedong.

Shaw, Geoffrey D. “British Counterinsurgency Methods: Their Use in Malaya and The Possibility of Their Successful Transfer to Vietnam” Paris +20 Conference. Pg. 113-130. September 7, 1993.

Image Attribution

In Memory of the Malay regiment at Bukit Chandu by Soham Banerjee is licensed under CC BY 2.0