Does 'Hearts and Minds’ Work?

Did the British in Malaya develop a successful form of warfare or simply a more palatable way of withdrawal?

In the early morning hours of June 16, 1948, three Europeans were brutally shot dead in their homes in Sungei Siput, Perak, northern Malaya. The three victims were rubber plantation estate managers; the perpetrators, guerilla ‘mobile corps’ of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). The murders were the culmination of a series of attacks and ‘outrages’ against plantation owners across Malaya in Selangor, Penang and Johore. In the late afternoon that day, the colonial British government declared a ‘state of emergency’ in Perak and Johore—extended two days later to encompass all of Malaya. Under emergency regulations, draconian methods were enacted and enforced: increased coercive powers of detention, arrest, trial, and deportation, the banishment of seditious publications, the death penalty for those carrying unauthorized firearms, and the registration of the entire populace. The government banned the MCP itself, arresting thousands and forcing the communists into the jungle.[1]’[2] The war had begun.

            Of course, it had only been a decade before that the British were in fact funding the MCP, then the MPAJA (Malaya People’s Anti-Japanese Army), after the Japanese routed British rule in 1941. But when the British returned to Malaya following conclusion of the Second World War, tensions rose once more as the Cold War began. While ideology certainly played a factor, the British also sought to retain some semblance of control over Malaya, preferably with a friendly, stable, democratic government. Malaya had been—and in the late 1940s was returning to—one of Britain’s most valuable, ‘dollar-earning’ colonies, due to its abundance of rubber and tin. Although the counterinsurgency against the communist Malaya Liberation National Army (MLNA) began poorly, by 1952 the British began to push them back. Driven further and further into the jungle, plagued by internal division and lack of food, weapons, will and purpose, the communists were far too few to carry on. After a failed peace negotiation, they scuttled off to Thailand to regroup. In 1957 Malaya was officially granted independence and in 1960 the emergency ended.[3] One of the only successful counterinsurgencies to date, historians, think-tanks, and policy-makers rushed to figure out why.[4] What had the Britain done to yield such positive results?

Even though the campaign had been effective, the British did not necessarily develop a successful form of warfare. Nor did they simply find a more palatable way of withdrawing. Rather the Emergency was far more nuanced—the two concepts proposed are not mutually exclusive; there is interplay between them. Encapsulated in the small war was not only the successful use of divide and rule, coercion and indirect warfare, but it was also contingent on the presumption of secession. Britain was able to defeat the communist insurgency through adaptation, adjustment and flexibility of doctrine to meet changing peripheral threats, alongside the promise of Malaya independence. Additionally, British ingenuity cannot take all the glory: the racial situation and relative strategic strength of the MCP in Malaya made the British cause far easier. By first addressing the operational and tactical details of the counterinsurgency, and secondly the political, grand strategic and ideological implications behind withdrawal, this essay will divide into two parts, capturing both sides of the complex Malayan Emergency debate.  

            First, however, it is prudent to define counterinsurgency and insurgency. Insurgency conjures up widely disparate interpretations across academia and politics. As such, a single commonly accepted definition remains obscure, and there is often conceptual confusion around the subject. Indeed, insurgency is often used interchangeably with other terms like unconventional warfare, irregular warfare, revolutionary warfare, guerilla warfare, and even terrorism. This interchangeability is understandable, given the diverse nature and varying tactics used by insurgents.[5] For the purpose of this essay, insurgency will be defined by Scott Moore’s characterization:

An insurgency is a protracted violent conflict in which one or more groups seek to overthrow or fundamentally change the political or social order in a state or region through the use of sustained violence, subversion, social disruption, and political action.[6]

This definition encompasses the multifaceted character of insurgency. While Clausewitz famously asserted, “War is the continuation of politics by other means”, Moore asserts that insurgency “takes it to a new level; it does not distinguish between the two: for insurgents, war and politics are inseparable and concurrent."[7]

            As such, counterinsurgency is the fight against insurgents. However, due to the difficulty in quelling insurgent guerilla warfare, actors often follow one of two different approaches to countering them. The first, explained in John Nagl’s Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, is the ‘direct approach’—“A war is a war is a war.” In order to defeat the enemy, the direct approach necessitates the conventional destruction of the enemy army. While occasionally successful in ending the insurgency, such an approach often requires the wholesale wanton use of violence against not only the insurgents, but also civilians, and leaves much of the issues that spawned the insurgency in the first place unanswered and festering. The second ‘indirect’ approach, however, seeks to resolve conflict in all its dimensions. While continuing to attack armed elements of the insurgency, the indirect approach recognizes that it is also essential to attack the support of the people for the insurgents. The end goal, moreover, is to establish lasting peace in a region or state.[8] Robert Thompson, who had experience with the British campaign in Burma and later became the permanent Secretary of Defense in Malaya during the Emergency, stressed that winning support among the populace is the critical battle in an insurgency campaign. In his 1966 Defeating Communist Insurgency, Thompson lays out his Five Principles of Counterinsurgency:

1.     The government must have a clear political aim: to establish and maintain a free, independent and united country which is politically and economically stable

2.     The government must function in accordance with law

3.     The government must have an overall plan

4.     The government must give priority to defeating the political subversion, not the guerillas

5.     In the guerilla phase of an insurgency, a government must secure its base areas first [9]

Although the British followed a direct approach in the first phase of the Emergency (roughly 1948-50), in the latter stages they switched to an indirect one under Briggs and Templer.

            It must be mentioned that the British entered the Emergency with previous experience. Having a vast empire spanning the globe in the 18th and 19th centuries, Britain had fought myriad ‘small wars’ against irregulars in their colonial possessions on the fringes of their Empire. At first, as these conflicts were seen as external wars, rather than internal unrest, and were treated without restraint.[10] It is in this context that we find one of the most historically significant efforts to capture the lessons of irregular war: British officer E. C. Calllwell’s book, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, published in 1896. Callwell’s work lays out the procedures for colonial wars in the 19th century, among many of which was the broader strategy of ‘butcher and bolt’.[11] However, as maps soon became fully ‘coloured-in’ and borders were set in the early 20th century, such conflicts became classified ‘internal-security operations’ instead. In dealing with discontent and turbulence in the British Empire, soldiers, like citizens, were bound by the common law of ‘minimum force’: they could do enough to restore order and little more. As the British military pamphlet Imperial Duties in Aid of the Civil Power outlines, “no more force shall be applied than the situation demands.”[12] Moreover, this period saw the primacy of policing and intelligence-based tactics, termed ‘imperial policing’.[13]’[14] Minimum force and civil-military co-operation became enshrined in British counterinsurgency strategy, and it is within this context, as well as these definitions, that the Malayan Emergency is framed. Drawing from this previous experience gave Britain an advantage in decolonial counterinsurgency.[15]

A Successful Campaign

            There is an important distinction between a form of warfare and a war or campaign. What form of warfare did the British fight in Malaya? According to our definitions and the vast historiography surrounding the subject, the British Emergency response was that of counterinsurgency. So, did the British develop a successful counterinsurgency? On some level, yes—but it was a specific type of counterinsurgency—one particular to British experience and colonial history. Yet the assumption implicit in developing a successful form of warfare is that it can be explicated, repeated and replicated. While British officers took many lessons of Malaya to Kenya and Cyprus, these lessons were never expounded upon in any official publication. Moreover, Kenya and Cyprus presented different situations—as have Northern Ireland, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.[16] Especially in the conflicts of the 1950s and 60s, Britain relied heavily on their leaders to respond to contextual issues at hand within the framework of prior small war experience, rather than developing an all-encompassing counterinsurgency dogma that could be used to ensure victory in every situation.[17] Indeed, by the time Britain started publishing manuals on counterinsurgency, the type of colonial insurgency which shaped their unique form of warfare were over.[18] As the Malayan Emergency shows, Britain were instead able to run a successful campaign due to the flexibility in political goals, while the contextual situation of their previous history, and the relative weakness of the MCP also aided it.

            The first years of the Emergency went better for the MCP and MNLA than for the British counterinsurgency. The MCP organized hit-and-run raids from hidden jungle camps with well worked out escape routes. They forced rubber estates, tin mines, police stations and isolated homes into armed camps, constantly on guard in preparation for attack. Planters and miners kept revolvers under their pillows and grenades by their bedside. No stretch of road could be ensured safe.[19] Using a direct approach, the British initially attempted to defeat the communists by use of attrition-based strategies. Success, however, was achieved instead through a change from direct to indirect counterinsurgency, waging a war across a broad spectrum of military, political and social action.[20] Among the many strategies used by the British in this period, four broader principles stand out in ensuring victory: divide and rule, the use of coercive force, civil-military co-operation and organization, and tactical, organizational and strategic flexibility. These principles are clearly present in the appointment of Harold Briggs and his employment of ‘population control’ under the Briggs Plan, and General Templer’s ‘hearts and minds’ campaign.

            It was only under the appointment of Lieutenant-General Sir Harold Briggs as Director of Operations in 1950 that a truly targeted response to the Communist threat was initiated. Briggs brought ‘joint thinking’ by the police and army into planning and coordination against the insurgents, which aligned the previously different directions they took regarding intelligence about the enemy. To Briggs, intelligence was the vital factor in the war, and he established joint police and army operations rooms for this very purpose. In combining the civil service, police and armed forces, he created a ‘war by committee’, in which relative flexibility and compromise led to highly effective solutions to quelling the communists.[21] Increasingly important to the obtaining and accuracy of intelligence was the Malay Police’s Special Branch, which became critical in defeating the communists.[22]

            Perhaps most significant to success against the insurgents was the use of divide and rule. The racial make-up of Malaya was split, with Malays taking up the majority of the population, but only just: Chinese immigrants (who came to work in the tin and rubber industries) took up the other, sizeable portion of the population.[23] Indeed, while most Malays lived in urban centres, there were near 500,000 ungoverned Chinese ‘squatters’ on the outskirts of the jungle. The majority-Chinese MCP used these towns to fund their campaign—living and recruiting from them.[24] As long as the squatter population remained, the revolt would continue. In essence, Briggs planned to ‘starve’ the communists out. This would be achieved by the forced resettlement of the squatters into ‘New Villages’ under what became dubbed the ‘Brigg’s Plan’.[25] As Robert Thompson elucidates: “The purpose of this program…is not just to kill insurgents in the populated areas but to destroy the insurgent subversive organization and infrastructure there.”[26]

By improving their standard of living and disconnecting them from the communist threat, Briggs reckoned he could make supporting the government a more attractive proposition for the squatters whilst increasing the flow of information to government forces. Although the living conditions in the New Villages is contested, the Briggs plan would go on to relocate 425,000 Chinese civilians, severely limiting the MNLA and their resources.[27]

Following the assassination of Sir Henry Gurney in 1951, Britain sought for his replacement. While several men were proposed for the position of High Commissioner, Sir Gerald Templer was eventually chosen. A dynamic, colourful and charismatic leader, Templer was, and still is, a highly controversial figure. Much of the historiography on the Emergency revolves around him. To historians Anthony Short and Richard Stubbs, Templer was the key factor in turning the war around, due to his policy of winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Malayans. Recent revisionists have contended this, not only in arguing he had arrived when the tide was already turning in the war, but also that much of his success was due to the work of his predecessors like Lieutenant General Briggs.[28] Moreover, there is significant debate over whether ‘hearts and minds’ was a legitimate description of the methods used in the Emergency. ‘Hearts and minds’ implies a less coercive form of winning the trust of the populace, but scholars such as Paul Dixon, Christi Siver, and Jacquelin Hazelton argue that the actual policy in Malaya was that of forceful ‘compellence’ and coercion.[29] Although it would appear Templer did seek to change the minds of the people, when it came down to actually carrying this out, coercion became practice—‘hearts and minds’ was a flowery phrase that was really a demand for authority and respect.

One story perfectly captures Templer’s approach to ‘hearts and minds’, and the debate that continues to swirl around him. At one point during the Emergency, Templer visited a town of particularly uncooperative villagers who had refused to relay information about the MNLA. Not speaking Hokkien, Templer was made to rely on a translator. He decided to be blunt with the villagers: “I know you’re a pack of bastards, but just know I’m a bigger bastard than you are.” The translator, momentarily confused, then rendered his warning as follows: “Sir Gerald is aware your parents were not married, but he would like you to know his parents were not married either!”[30] Although comedic, the story is emblematic of the demand for respect Templer sought to get from the Malays, and represents the wider difficulty in changing minds and hearts—especially when language and cultural differences stand in the way. Much of the time coercion became a far simpler solution to keeping people in line.

            Shortly following his arrival in Malaya, Templer declared: “Any idea that the business of normal civil government and the business of the Emergency are two separate entities must be killed for good and all. The two activities are completely and utterly interrelated…The shooting side of this business”, he continued, “is only 25 per cent of the trouble and the other 75 per cent lies in getting the people of this country behind us.”[31] Templer not only refused to see the Emergency as a military problem but did not even view it primarily as such. He came to Malaya with no clear-cut solution, and instead relied on flexibility to counter changing threats.[32] In merging the offices of High Commissioner and Director of Operations, he received a higher degree of authority, and under his command police and military units continued to exploit the advantages of the Briggs plan. They also formed better bases of operation and received new equipment. Instead of large unit sweeps, small unit jungle operations were used to chip away at the communists. Punishment for information and torture were still used, although it was not institutionalized.[33] Templer brought a reinvigoration to the army, and like Briggs stressed civil-military co-operation, used coercion, and continued to divide the populace with the defining of ‘white’ areas where communists had been routed.[34]

            Above all else, the British were able to learn and adapt. The British army encouraged its junior officers to seek out organizational performance gaps and alternative paths of action. As Nagl argues, the military, like the unwritten British Constitution, provided flexibility precisely because it also did not have a written doctrine of operations. The British understood that every foreign country was its own unique entity—guidelines and political goals change with context. These changes are perhaps best shown on a tactical level by Colonel Walter Walker, who sought to out-guerilla the guerilla, and Brigadier Michael Calvert.[35] Individual experimentation was promoted in the army, and this spirit guided the British to victory as innovative ways to defeat the enemy were tried and tested.

            There were, of course, other procedures that abetted British success, like the use of targeted aerial bombing and the extensive psychological, propaganda aspect of the war, which assisted defections.[36] However, a point often missed when comparing the Malaya case study to other counterinsurgencies is the relative strength of the MCP. Much of the time, scholarship that seeks to draw lessons from Malaya focuses solely on British ingenuity. Yet one of the largest factors in British success was the insurgent’s positional weakness. The MCP had no friendly cross-border sanctuary, nor were they receiving external source of equipment and arms from friendly communist powers. As has been mentioned above, over half of the population in Malaya were Muslim Malays, for whom communism did not have the same appeal. There was no impetus for mass revolution amongst the Malayans, and indeed many of the Chinese residents were generally reticent to help—in most cases they only did so out of fear. Moreover, the MCP’s leadership was poor, their communications were easily disrupted, and their application of insurgency did little to sway the government, or the populace, into concessions. Indeed, the entire point of their insurgency was resistance to British imperial rule—an argument that began to lose potency once Britain promised independence.[37]

A Strategic Withdrawal

The Malayan Emergency was not solely an operational and tactical success, for it had broader political, grand strategic, and ideological implications as well. When Britain returned to Malaysia, they did it based on financial interest—their colonies were subsidizing them. The Emergency, however, presented the challenges of ideological battle on the stage of the Cold War, as well as the pervading question of independence and withdrawal. The Emergency can be considered a satisfactory, but primarily strategic, withdrawal.

It is important to provide further historical context. Before the second World War, Malaya was split into nine Malay states and three British Settlements. Whereas the British Crown directly controlled these three settlements, its influence over the Malay states was fed through the respective rulers. In return for guaranteeing their sovereignty and privileges, the British were able to exercise control over trade, policy, and defense. This configuration allowed the British to benefit from Malaya’s rich rubber and tin assets in a cost-effective way. Three things overturned this order, however: the influx of Chinese (and Indian) workers, the Second World War, and the rapid rise of communism in Southeast Asia.[38]

            When Japan invaded Malaya in December 1941, Britain failed to mobilize and within two months were expelled from the country. During this period, they actively funded the communist, majority Chinese immigrant MPAJA, who fought the Japanese from the jungle. When the Japanese surrendered, however, Britain was taken by surprise and scrambled to resume control over its economic ‘dollar earner’. But when they arrived, the MPAJA had already assumed control over large swathes of Malaya. Luckily, the British were able to coax the group into a disarmament agreement rather easily, most likely owing to the dubious, double-sided nature of their leader, Lai Tek, who later made haste to Bangkok in 1947.[39] As such, the MPAJA was made to formally disband, and the MCP was legitimized. Still, the communists continued to resist the imposition of British rule before the Emergency through acts of sabotage, strikes and violence. Malay-Chinese violence was also increasing as racial tensions created during Japanese occupation came to bear.[40]

The Cold War brought another ideological aspect to the Emergency and British grand strategy. In mid-1948, Clement Attlee and his Labour government were preoccupied with containment of the Soviet Union in Europe as the Iron Curtain began to tighten. When crisis broke out in Malaya, however, Britain was obliged to also look eastward; the Cold War in Southeast Asia became a reality. Britain’s interest was not only economical, but also strategic and ideological. Hence, British officials during the Emergency considered success in Malaya as a “vital step in the Cold War against communism in the Far East.”[41] The Cold War framework invariably shaped their response to, and understanding of, the Malayan Emergency.

            It is of interest to note that the orthodox view of the Malayan Emergency, forwarded by historians and commentators who wrote at the time or shortly after, was purely framed around the Cold War. This was due to the belief that the MCP, as well as several other communist organizations around Asia, received instructions from the Soviets to begin insurgent action, following the Calcutta Conference of 1947. Recent historiography, on the other hand, is sceptical of this ‘Cold War orthodoxy’. Little evidence points to MCP and Soviet collusion. Regardless, it appears that at the time of the Emergency the external threat of Communist encroachment was ever present in British policy-makers’ minds. In order to ensure Malaya was able to continue providing Britain with valuable resources, much of which aided the Korean War, communist insurgency had to be quashed.[42]’[43]

            The Communist threat from the MCP was founded on anti-colonial rhetoric as much as it was around communist ideals. Ironically, working towards an eventual Malayan independence was the original British intent. Weakened financially and militarily by the war and realizing it had lost its grip on world affairs, Britain attempted to create a new, centralized political unit capable of representing British interest—and defending themselves—from 1942 onwards.[44] Yet this task, if anything, had only increased in complexity: Britain needed to regain confidence and control first, then wrestle power from the current Malay rulers, centralise this power within a new union of Malaya’s many states, organize a national election, and finally pass control on to the legitimate winning party. It goes without saying that the victor also had to be friendly to the Crown.[45] Moreover, the new government could not be one that simply accepted a subordinate, client position in Britain’s ‘informal’ empire—it needed to be able to maintain law and order, protecting their populace and private property.[46] Britain could not withdraw without this assurance. The whole issue was a delicate process, and it didn’t make it any easier that the British lacked legitimacy following their ousting during the war. Additionally, the rulers of Malaya guarded their power closely, and the unresolved question of ethnic disparity between the dominant Malays and the financially stronger Chinese would cause further snags and hitches.[47]

            Initially, Britain laid the premise of independence far in the future—some 25 years, give or take. The first step in the process was unfortunately in the wrong direction. The Malayan Union of 1946 established a new political settlement, but it was prepared with minimal consultation and opened a path to citizenship for the Chinese community. Needless to say, the Union did not go down well with Malayans and their rulers, and a number of political organizations boycotted it. In an attempt to learn from their mistakes, in 1948 the ‘Federation of Malaya’ restored powers to Malayan rulers and strictly limited ethnic-Chinese citizenship. This mediated Malay grievances, but only served to incense the Chinese, specifically the radical MCP, which set the stage for the Emergency.[48]

            In order to stabilize Malayan politics, the British had to somehow lure the Chinese community away from the MLNA (while also suppressing the insurgency) and press the Malayan elite to grant concessions for the sake of a federal multi-ethnic democracy. This was facilitated through ‘elite bargains’ between the Malayan Chinese Association and the United Malays National Organization. The British attempted to demonstrate that politics in the independence era could mean gains for all. The Malaya that emerged in 1957 was certainly more inclusive and secure than that of 1946/48. [49]‘[50]

            Crucially, the assurance of withdrawal and a peaceful transition from colonial to independent status took wind out of the insurgency’s sails, undermining their cause. It became increasingly difficult for the MCP to rally support for independence when it seemed progressively likely that independence would be achieved through peaceful means. Moreover, UMNO, which had seen electoral successes in 1952 and 1955, had convincingly demonstrated that they had no intention of disenfranchising the Chinese minority, much to the chagrin of the communists.[51] As Hew Strachan notes, one of the major factors that ensured victory in Malaya was that “Britain was getting out.”[52] Not only did Britain fight a successful campaign, but its success relied upon withdrawal as well. War and politics became deeply interrelated in the Emergency.

 Conclusions

            Ultimately, the Emergency in Malaya illustrates the continuity of British small war procedure from the past, as well as their grand strategic, decolonial approach to the future. After WWII, Britain sought to loosen their ties with their vast empire, but not without ensuring these colonies would be able to fend for themselves, whilst remaining loyal trading partners. Moreover, this specific type of decolonial counterinsurgency was successful because of the presumption of Britain’s ‘defeat’.[53] In the face of diminishing power across the world, counterinsurgency provided a way to ‘get out’, and to do so in a convincing manner. Britain was ‘good’ at counterinsurgency not only due to their colonial small war history and existing practices, but also a realization of their grand strategic outlook, which provided clear political aims.

This essay has sought to tread the fine line between the operational level of success on one hand, and the strategic decision of withdrawal on the other. While Britain did not create a magic formula of warfare for counterinsurgency, the advantage of previous experience, as well as their ability to remain flexible and adapt on an operational and tactical level, ensured a successful campaign. They had a clear political objective: to guarantee a Malaya safe from communist rule which might destabilize the region and wound Britain economically. The promise of withdrawal and elite bargains aided this process, as did the principles of divide and rule, civil-military operations, coercion and flexibility. In the end, Malaya was left with a nationalistic government, but one that would continue to be friendly to the Crown. On the ideological front, they defeated the communists. Yet they achieved these things at the expense of countless innocent lives, and their policies left friction and rifts between the remaining ethnically split population in Malaya, which would continue to cause uprisings until 1989.[54] To say that Britain concluded the Malayan Emergency utterly victorious and completely content would be an overstatement.[55]

            In the end, Malaya answered few questions about how counterinsurgency should be done. In the 1960s, it became a model—the poster child for other campaigns—but by then, it was far too late; colonial withdrawal and its subsequent counterinsurgency operations were over. Britain might have taken some lessons from Malaya into Kenya and Cyprus, but not all elements of the success in Malaya were present.[56] Although the United States sought to emulate and learn from the British, hiring think-tanks like the RAND Corporation to secretly provide insight, the situation in Vietnam was vastly different.[57] In a small war, political context is vastly more important than in a conventional one. Each campaign has its own features, which is why a general theory for counterinsurgency continues to prove so elusive.

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Footnotes

[1] Phillip Deery, “Malaya, 1948: Britain’s Asian Cold War?” Journal of Cold War Studies 9, no. 1 (2007): 29–30.

[2] Edgar, O’Ballance, Malaya: The Communist Insurgent War, 1948-60: Edgar O'Ballance. Faber and Faber, 1966: 82-3.

[3] John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency: From Palestine to Northern Ireland. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015: 34-62.

[4] Bernard Z. Keo, “A small, distant war? Historiographical reflections on the Malayan Emergency.” History Compass, 17, (2019).

[5] R. Scott Moore, “The Basics of Counterinsurgency.” Small Wars Journal, (2007): 2-3

[6] Ibid., 2.

[7] Ibid., 3.

[8] John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam. University of Chicago Press, 2009: 26-30.

[9] Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam. Macmillan Press, 1987, 50-60.

[10] Thomas, R. Mockaitis, “The origins of British counter‐insurgency.” Small Wars & Insurgencies, 1:3, (1990): 210.

[11] Daniel Whittingham, “‘Savage warfare’: C.E. Callwell, the roots of counter-insurgency, and the nineteenth century context.” Small Wars & Insurgencies, 23:4-5, (2012): 591-593.

[12] Imperial Policing and Duties in Aid of the Civil Power, National Archives in Kew, United Kingdom, 1949, in Siver, Military Interventions, War Crimes, and Protecting Civilians, 61.

[13] Mockaitis, “The origins of British counter‐insurgency,” 210-212.

[14] Siver, Military Interventions, War Crimes, and Protecting Civilians, 60-62.

[15] David French, “Nasty not nice: British counter-insurgency doctrine and practice, 1945–1967.” Small Wars & Insurgencies, 23:4-5, (2012): 744.

[16] Ibid., 744-761.

[17] Mockaitis, “The origins of British counter‐insurgency.” 220.

[18] Hew Strachan, “British Counter-Insurgency from Malaya to Iraq.” The RUSI Journal, 152:6, (2007): 11.

[19] Robert Jackson, The Malayan Emergency: The Commonwealth's Wars 1948-1966. Routledge, 1991: 115.

[20] Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, 191.

[21] Harry Miller, Jungle War in Malaya: The Campaign against Communism, 1948-60. Eastern Universities Press, 1981: 71-73.

[22] Leon Comber, Malaya's Secret Police 1945-60: The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency. Singapore: ISEAS Publishing, 2008: 25-27.

[23] Karl Hack, “‘Iron Claws on Malaya’: The Historiography of the Malayan Emergency.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 30, no. 1 (1999): 99.

[24] Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya, London, 1975: 174.

[25] Roger C. Arditti, Counterinsurgency Intelligence and the Emergency in Malaya. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019: 132-140.

[26] Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, 51.

[27] Deborah Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral Wars. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019: 120.

[28] Simon Smith, “General Templer and Counter-insurgency in Malaya: hearts and minds, intelligence, and propaganda.” Intelligence and National Security, 16:3, (2001): 60-64.

[29] Paul Dixon, “‘Hearts and Minds’? British Counter-Insurgency from Malaya to Iraq.” Journal of Strategic Studies, 32:3, (2009): 353-370.

[30] Cliff Goddard, Minimal English for a Global World: Improved Communication Using Fewer Words. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, 71.

[31] Smith, “General Templer and Counter-insurgency in Malaya,” 65.

[32] Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, 197.

[33] Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency, 55-57.

[34] Ibid., 58.

[35] Nagl, 192-195.

[36] Newsinger, 57.

[37] Jackson, The Malayan Emergency, 117-118.

[38] David H. Ucko, “Elite Bargains and Political Deals Project: Malaya Case Study.” United Kingdom Stabilisation Unit, (2018): 6-8.

[39] Newsinger, 38-42.

[40] Ucko, “Elite Bargains and Political Deals Project,” 6-8.

[41] Deery, “Malaya, 1948,” 29.

[42] Ibid., 31-33.

[43] Karl Hack, “The Origins of the Asian Cold War: Malaya 1948.” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 40, no. 3 (2009): 473-476.

[44] A. J. Stockwell, Malaya. Part 1: the Malay Union Experiment, 1942-1948. British Documents on the End of the Empire, HMSO, London, 1995: xiii.

[45] Ucko, 7.

[46] Newsinger, 43.

[47] Ucko, 7.

[48] Ibid., 8.

[49] Ibid., 19-20.

[50] Jacqueline Hazelton, Bullets Not Ballots: Success in Counterinsurgency Warfare, 47-48.

[51] Robert O. Tilman, “The Non-Lessons of the Malayan Emergency.” Asian Survey 6, no. 8 (1966): 419.

[52] Strachan, “British Counter-Insurgency from Malaya to Iraq,” 10.

[53] Ibid., 11.

[54] Stanley S. Bedlington, Malaysia and Singapore: The Building of New States. Cornell University Press, 1978: 83.

[55] Stockwell, Malaya. Part 3, xxxvi.

[56] Strachan, 11.

[57] R. W. Komer, “The Malayan Emergency in Retrospect: Organisation of a Successful Counterinsurgency Effort.” The RAND Corporation, (1972): 1–98.