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“…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 t