Chapter 4 War-Stopping and Peacemaking during the (1948-1960)

Colby E. Barrett*

I. Introduction In 1948, ethnic Chinese Maoist insurgents began a campaign of violence and ter- rorism in the Malayan Peninsula before suffering defeat at the hands of British and Malay security forces twelve years later. Dozens of books and articles recount the events of the Malayan Emergency (the “Emergency”)—how it was shaped by waves of immigration, geography, colonialism, and world events like WWII and the Korean War—and many authors juxtapose the Emergency’s successes against later failures in Vietnam. More recently, U.S. policy makers and leaders in the armed forces have come to understand the strategies used during the Emergency as “[t]he purest example of the clear, hold, build model” against a determined . This model is championed both in the recently published U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual as well as the November 2005 National Strategy for Victory in . The reliance on strategies used during the Emergency in present- day operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is no coincidence; influential military lead- ers such as General and Colonels H.R. McMaster and John Nagl have studied the Emergency at length. Nagl even published a book on the subject. But is the victory in Malaya repeatable in other settings? With the currently fighting two wars against insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, a candid discussion of the Emergency, with an emphasis on the strategy and tactics employed, is particularly pertinent. After twelve years, 300,000 mostly British troops were able to rout a determined insurgency and create an independent Malayan state,

* The author would like to thank Professor Reisman for his assistance and encourage- ment and Leslie Barrett for her editorial assistance.  Colin H. Kahl, COIN of the Realm: Is There a Future for Counterinsurgency?, Foreign Aff., Nov./Dec. 2007, available at http://www.foreignaffairs.org/ 20071101fareviewessay86612a/colin-h-kahl/coin-of-the-realm.html.  U.S. Department of the Army, U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, U.S. Army Field Manual No. 3-24, Marine Corps Warfighting Publication No. 3-33 (2007); National Security Council, National Strategy for Victory in Iraq, at 8 (Nov. 2005), available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/iraq_ national_strategy_20051130.pdf.  John A. Nagl, Learning To Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (2002). K. Eichensehr and W.M. Reisman (eds.) Stopping Wars and Making Peace: Studies in International Intervention © 2009 Koninklijke Brill nv. Printed in The Netherlands.isbn 978 90 04 17855 7. pp. 121-146. 122 Colby E. Barrett one that has been described as “one of the least worst Islamic states in the world.” How this was accomplished is enormously relevant today. War-stopping and peacemaking are not synonymous, but efforts on both fronts were successful during the Emergency years and complemented each other. Unlike in many struggles against insurgencies, the first real war stoppage in Malaya coin- cided with a peace system vis-à-vis the Communist insurgents. War-stopping efforts in the conflict included the strategic, operational, and tactical victories that deprived the Communists, led by Chin Peng, of medicine, equipment, and recruits; resulted in killed or captured Communist troops; and eventually convinced the Communists that the struggle was unwinnable and that their only option was surrender. In short, total military victory. Peacemaking efforts contributed to military victory but cen- tered on addressing the historic grievances of the Chinese residents of Malaya, improving their lot economically, and empowering them politically. Perhaps the most important realization during the Emergency was that the efforts directed at the economic and political welfare of those who would support the insurgents were at least as important—and perhaps more so—than efforts directed at killing, captur- ing, or starving the insurgents themselves. Less apparent in 1960, but very impor- tant today, is the lesson that sometimes negotiations, international intervention, and other war-stopping efforts are not the best means to end an insurgency and create a stable, independent state. In struggles where a mostly “legitimate” government can be identified and the other party lacks significant external support, allowing violent struggle to run its course may precipitate the best long-term conditions for a peace system. This is especially true when the violence employed by the legitimate side is “constructive” and unlikely to foster lingering grievances. For example, direct mili- tary action against armed insurgents would be an example of “constructive” violence, unlike, for example, indiscriminate reprisal killings of civilians. The latter form of violence would likely foment long-term grievances while the former may contrib- ute to a peace system in the long term. The Emergency may be the clearest example of a struggle of a mostly legitimate government against an internal foe without sig- nificant external support—a struggle that employed “constructive” violence, avoided negotiations, and produced a long-term peace system. British efforts were mostly conducted without international scrutiny—the few media sources not controlled by the British were unlikely to find much audience outside the region and were cer- tainly unlikely to garner much sympathy from Western viewers at the height of the Cold War. An important disclosure is warranted before proceeding. Like most sources on the subject, this chapter is unavoidably pro-British in perspective. The reason for this viewpoint is more than simple victor or pro-Western bias and stems from the fact that the British perspective is virtually inseparable from that of the international

 Mark Steyn, All the Good Things They Never Tell You about Today’s Iraq, available at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/09/19/do1902. xml.  War-stopping is any cessation of active violence, whereas peacemaking is “a qualitative change in the objectives and expectations of the belligerents.” W. Michael Reisman, Stopping Wars and Making Peace: Reflections on the Ideology and Practice of Conflict Termination in Contemporary World Politics, 6 Tul. J. Int’l & Comp. L. 5, 16, 24 (1998).