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Journal of Strategic Studies the Myth of British Minimum Force In This article was downloaded by: [B-on Consortium - 2007] On: 26 April 2011 Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 919435511] Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37- 41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Journal of Strategic Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713636064 The Myth of British Minimum Force in Counterinsurgency Campaigns during Decolonisation (1945-1970) Bruno C. Reisab a Post-Doctoral Researcher, Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Lisbon b Visiting Research Associate, Kings College, London Online publication date: 19 April 2011 To cite this Article Reis, Bruno C.(2011) 'The Myth of British Minimum Force in Counterinsurgency Campaigns during Decolonisation (1945-1970)', Journal of Strategic Studies, 34: 2, 245 — 279 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/01402390.2011.559028 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402390.2011.559028 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material. The Journal of Strategic Studies Vol. 34, No. 2, 245–279, April 2011 The Myth of British Minimum Force in Counterinsurgency Campaigns during Decolonisation (1945–1970) BRUNO C. REIS Post-Doctoral Researcher, Instituto de Cieˆncias Sociais, Lisbon, and Visiting Research Associate, Kings College, London ABSTRACT This article argues that the dominant paradigm in studies of British small wars positing a central role of minimum force in doctrinal guidelines for counterinsurgency needs to be even more fundamentally revised than has been argued in recent debates. More specifically, it argues that minimum force is nowhere to be found in British doctrine during the small wars of decolonisation. The need for revision also applies to the way British counterinsurgency is usually sharply contrasted with French counterinsurgency. British doctrine during this period is better understood when placed in its proper historical context. This means comparing it with the other two most significant examples of doctrinal development for small wars of decolonisation – those of France and Portugal. This comparison shows that British counterinsurgency was not uniquely population-centric, and this characteristic cannot, therefore, be the reason for its arguably superior if far from infallible performance. Evidence for these arguments comes primarily from doctrinal sources developed specifically to deal with counterinsurgency, complemented with insights from key military thinkers and archival sources of relevance practices. Some wider implications of this analysis for the relationship between combat experience and doctrinal develop- Downloaded By: [B-on Consortium - 2007] At: 18:02 26 April 2011 ment as well as for counterinsurgency are identified. KEY WORDS: Counterinsurgency, Colonial wars, Doctrine Challenging the Dominance of Minimum Force in Studies of British COIN Studies of British counterinsurgency have traditionally focused a great deal of attention on the small wars of decolonisation – particularly the success stories of Malaya (1948–60) and Kenya (1952–60) – positing a central role for minimum force in the doctrinal guidelines developed to ISSN 0140-2390 Print/ISSN 1743-937X Online/11/020245-35 Ó 2011 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/01402390.2011.559028 246 Bruno C. Reis deal victoriously with these insurgencies. The present article will argue that a central aspect of this traditional vision is fundamentally wrong: the alleged centrality of minimum force in British counterinsurgency during this period. The core argument of this article is that alongside the failure to practise minimum force in the British small wars of decolonisation, a point that has attracted increasing attention in revisionist analysis, there is an amazingly unnoticed but, in fact, total absence of the principle of minimum force from official British military guidelines developed specifically for counterinsurgency overseas after 1945 and until as late as the early 1970s. Noting this absence is not necessarily a critique of British doctrine; it is, however, a major criticism of the way British counterinsurgency doctrine has so often been portrayed in existing studies, raising a number of important issues. Yet, despite this doctrinal absence, can British counterinsurgency overseas during this period still be characterised as uniquely population-centric, and therefore fundamentally different from more coercive enemy-centric approaches to counterinsurgency? To answer this vital question, British counterinsurgency during decolonisation must be placed in its historical context. This will be done by examining it in comparison to the other two cases of similarly protracted decolonisation campaigns that led to significant doctrinal development for counterinsurgency: the often mentioned case of France, and the often neglected case of Portugal. A comparison between counterinsurgency as practised by Western colonial powers in a period of decolonisation seems to make more sense than to look at very different regimes such as Nazi Germany or the USSR, which were willing to resort to extreme force as a matter of course; or the American superpower in Vietnam, with its massive availability of firepower. But our focus on the period of decolonisation has other reasons. After 1945, insurgents were often armed with modern weapons and Downloaded By: [B-on Consortium - 2007] At: 18:02 26 April 2011 nationalist slogans and benefited from cross-border sanctuaries, in contrast with the isolated, poorly armed, mostly tribal uprisings against colonialism that took place before the Second World War. These decades, therefore, saw the beginning of a trend of increasingly frequent and relevant intrastate wars.1 They also came to be seen as the classical era of counterinsurgency and rich in useful – particularly 1Michael Brown (ed.), Grave New World: Security Challenges in the Twenty-First Century (Washington DC: Georgetown UP 2003, 2–3, points out that only 18 per cent of conflicts between 1945 and 1995 have been conventional wars. For similar data for more recent years see SIPRI Yearbooks 5www.sipri.org/contents/publications/ yearbooks.html4. British Minimum Force during Decolonisation 247 British – lessons on how to win unconventional wars.2 Any significant revision of the dominant analysis of British counterinsurgency during this period therefore has important implications not only for the historical record regarding doctrine in specific decolonisation cam- paigns but also for our understanding of counterinsurgency. More specifically, this article should make us question whether present attempts to emulate past British successes in counterinsurgency have a solid historical basis. A text of this length cannot be expected to offer exhaustive evidence of guidelines and practices in all British, French and Portuguese counterinsurgency campaigns. Still, a comparative analysis focused on supporting the claim that the existing literature on British counter- insurgency has tended to overemphasise its uniqueness in terms of minimum force is indispensable to support our core argument. The key issues addressed in the main sections of this article are: What were the British doctrinal guidelines for fighting insurgencies and what role did minimum force play in them? Was British doctrine significantly different from French and Portuguese doctrine during their largely contemporary decolonisation campaigns? Before trying to offer answers to these questions, however, two subsections will provide a brief review of the relevant literature and definitions of key concepts. Studies of British Counterinsurgency and Minimum Force Where concise definitions of British counterinsurgency in existing studies are concerned, minimum force, or some close equivalent of it, is one of the most dominant labels, if not the most dominant label. A significant number of authors who have analysed British counter- insurgency refer to minimum force as a key doctrinal principle in the main British campaigns fought overseas after 1945.3 Thomas Mockaitis, whose work has rightly been seen as a landmark in the study of British counterinsurgency, has been a particularly strong Downloaded By: [B-on Consortium - 2007] At: 18:02 26 April 2011 advocate of the centrality of minimum force in all major British 2For the salience of this era of classical COIN in today’s strategic debates see, e.g., Frank Hoffman, ‘Neo-Classical Counterinsurgency’, Parameters 37/2 (2007), 71–87. 3E.g., and just to cite some of the most influential works that adhere to this notion: Colin McInnes, Hot War, Cold War: The British Army’s Way in Warfare 1945–95 (London: Brassey’s 1996) 116–17; David Charters,
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