The Myth of British Minimum Force in Counterinsurgency Campaigns during Decolonisation (1945–1970)

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 development as well as for counterinsurgency are identified.

Key Words:

• Counterinsurgency
• Colonial wars
• Doctrine

Acknowledgements

Different versions of this article were presented at a joint King's College/Science Po seminar at Cumberland Lodge (October 2006); at the BISA Conference in Cambridge (December 2007); at the 49th ISA Convention in San Francisco (March 2008); and as part of my PhD. Thanks are due to all those who commented, sometimes very critically, on previous versions of this article, and in particular to Andrew Mumford, Caroline Kennedy-Pipe, Christian Olsson, Didier Bigo, Huw Bennett, John Mackinley, Srinath Raghavan, Theo Farrell, Warren Chin and in particular to my supervisor – Sir Lawrence Freedman. Thanks are also due to two anonymous referees and the editors of the JSS, and friends and faculty at King's College London, as well as at the IEEI and FEUNL for their insights and their support during an especially difficult period of my life. An FCT fellowship of the Portuguese Ministry of Science and EU funding supported research for this article. Last but not least, many thanks to the marvellous staff of the Santa Marta Hospital and to my family, especially Noélia, Sofia and my parents. All deficiencies in this text are despite their best efforts and entirely my responsibility.

Notes

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 <www.sipri.org/contents/publications/yearbooks.html>.

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, ‘The British Adaptation to Low Intensity Operation from Palestine to Northern Ireland’, in David Charters (ed.), Armies in Low-Intensity Conflict (London: Brassey's 1989), 228; Charles Townshend, Britain's Civil Wars: Counterinsurgency in the Twentieth Century (London: Faber and Faber 1986), 19; John Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife (Westport: Praeger 2002), 205.

⁴Thomas Mockaitis, ‘The Origins of British Counter-Insurgency’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 1/3 (1990), 213.

⁵Thomas Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency 1919–1960 (London: Macmillan 1990), 56 passim; Thomas Mockaitis, ‘A New Era of COIN’, RUSI Journal, 136/1 (1991), 75.

⁶Anthony Joes, Resisting Rebellion: The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency (Lexington: U of Kentucky P 2006), 221–2. Pointedly, the author exempts the mature stage of the Algerian campaign from this failure.

⁷Mark Mazower, ‘Violence and the State in the Twentieth Century’, The American Historical Review, 107/4 (2002), 1175.

⁸On Kenya see David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson 2005); Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya (New York: Henry Holt 2005). As example of the debate these books generated see Neal Ascherson, ‘The Breaking of the Mau Mau’, New York Review of Books, 52/6 (2005), <www.nybooks.com/articles/17896>; David Elstein, ‘The End of The Mau Mau’, New York Review of Books, 52/11 (2005), <www.nybooks.com/articles/18096>.

⁹Thomas G. Mahnken, ‘The British Approach to Counter-Insurgency: An American View’, Defense and Security Analysis, 23/2 (2007), 230–31. This introduction syntheses this thematic issue of the journal.

¹⁰Paul Dixon, ‘“Hearts and Minds?” British Counter-Insurgency from Malaya to Iraq', Journal of Strategic Studies, 32/3 (2009), 353–81.

¹¹Rod Thornton, ‘The British Army and the Origins of its Minimum Force Philosophy’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 15/1 (2004), 83–106.

¹²Rod Thornton, ‘“Minimum Force”: A Reply to Huw Bennett’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 20/1 (2009), 215–26.

¹³Huw Bennett, ‘British Minimum Force’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 21/3 (2010), 459–75.

¹⁴John Newsinger, ‘Minimum Force, British Counter-Insurgency and the Mau Mau Rebellion’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 3/1 (1992), 47–57; Thomas Mockaitis, ‘Minimum Force, British Counter-Insurgency and the Mau Mau Rebellion: A Reply’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 3/2 (1992), 87–9.

¹⁵John Newsinger, British Counter-Insurgency from Palestine to Northern Ireland (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2002), 1–2.

¹⁶Larry Cable, ‘Reinventing the Round-Wheel: Insurgency, Counterinsurgency, and Peacekeeping Post Cold War’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 4/2 (1993), 229. For a recent discussion with ample references see David Betz, ‘Insurgency and Counterinsurgency’, in Robert Denemark et al. (eds.), The International Studies Encyclopedia, Blackwell Reference Online, <http://www.isacompendium.com/subscriber/tocnode? id=g9781444336597_chunk_g978144433659711_ss1-10>.

¹⁷See, e.g., Keith Bickel, Mars Learning: The Marine Corps Development of Small Wars Doctrine, 1915–1940 (Boulder: Westview 2001), 4–7; Paul Dixon, ‘“Hearts and Minds?” British Counter-Insurgency from Malaya to Iraq’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 32/3 (2009), 357.

¹⁸Michael Howard, ‘The Military Factor in European Expansion’, in H. Bull (ed.), The Expansion of European Society (Oxford: Clarendon P 1984), 34–35.

¹⁹For data on this imbalance, see Ian Beckett, ‘Low-Intensity Conflict: Its Place in the Study of War’, in D.A. Charters et al. (eds), Military History and the Military Profession (Westport: Praeger 1992), 121–9; for plausible explanations of this fact, see John Shy and Thomas Collier, ‘Revolutionary War’, in P. Paret (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Oxford: Clarendon P 1986), 815–62.

²⁰Townshend, Britain's Civil Wars, 20.

²¹Ibid., 23.

²²Thomas Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency 1919–1960 (London: Macmillan 1990), 134.

²³War Office, Imperial Policing and Duties in Aid of the Civil Power (London: HMSO 1949), ch. III.

²⁴Alun Jones, ‘Training and Doctrine in the British Army since 1945’, in M. Howard (ed.), The Theory and Practice of War (Bloomington: Indiana UP 1965), 318.

²⁵A point made by some historians of the British Empire, e.g., Ronald Hyam, Britain's Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonization (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2006), 36, 57, 264 passim; on brutal repression and official counterterror in Palestine see, e.g., Jacob Norris, ‘Repression and Rebellion: Britain's Response to the Arab Revolt in Palestine of 1936–39’, Journal of Commonwealth Imperial History, 36/1 (2008), 26; Tom Segev, One Palestine, Complete (New York: Owl Books 2001), 415–35; Charles Townshend, ‘In Aid of the Civil Power: Britain, Ireland, and Palestine 1948’, in D. Marston et al. (eds), Counterinsurgency in UK-Modern Warfare (Wellingborough: Osprey 2008), 31–32; for Cyprus see Robert Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus 1954–1959 (Oxford: Clarendon P 1998).

²⁶UK – HQ-Malaya Command, The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya (ATOM), 2nd Rev. Ed. (Kuala-Lumpur: HQ-MC 1954), ch. IV.

²⁷Ibid., ch. IV/1.

²⁸TNA, WO 276/138, Internal Security Publications, e.g., Letter from E.W. Magor UK-MoD Kenya to Mj. Gen. Heyman GHQ EAfrica (27 Aug. 1954).

²⁹TNA, WO 236/18 Report on the Kenya Emergency Gen. Sir G. Erskine 7 May 1953–25 May 1955. UK–East Africa-GHQ, A Handbook of Anti-Mau Mau Operations (Nairobi: EA-GHQ 1954).

³⁰Huw Bennett, ‘The Other Side of COIN: Minimum and Exemplary Force in British Army Counterinsurgency in Kenya’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 18/4 (2007), 638, 657.

³¹UK – Ministry of Defence, Land Operations: Vol. III: Counter-Revolutionary Operations: Part 3. Counter Insurgency, Army Code 70516 (Part 3) (London: HMSO Jan. 1970), 4–5.

³²UK – Ministry of Defence, Land Operations: Vol. III: Counter-Revolutionary Operations: Part 3. Counter Insurgency, Army Code 70516 (Part 3) (London: HMSO Jan. 1970), 57.

³³See, e.g., John Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife (Westport: Praeger 2002), 36–7 passim.

³⁴NAM, Templer Papers 7410-29-1-10, LHCMA-KCL LH 1/682 Letter Templer to Liddell Hart LHCMA – KCL, Stockwell Papers 7/4 LHCMA-KCL, Stockwell Papers, 6/29/2, I.S. Lecture Staff College [Mar. 1950].

³⁵LHCMA-KCL, Stockwell Papers, 6/3, Training for Anti-Guerrilla Warfare (s.d.), IDEM, Stockwell Papers, 6/7, Vade-Mecum: The Army in the Cold War Operations (Malaya).

³⁶Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 134.

³⁷Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations: Subversion, Insurgency, Peacekeeping (London: Faber and Faber 1971), 3, 69–70, 90.

³⁸Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam (London: Chatto and Windus 1966), 50–5.

³⁹Robert Thompson, No Exit from Vietnam (New York: David MacKay 1969), 163.

⁴³Julian Paget, Counterinsurgency Campaigning (London: Faber and Faber 1967), 15.

⁴⁰Jenny Ash, Empire Warriors (London: BBC 2004) [2 DVDs – 2006], the four episodes are on Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Aden and South Arabia.

⁴¹Jonathan Walker, Aden Insurgency: The Savage War in South Arabia 1962–1967 (Staplehurst: Spellmount 2005), 288.

⁴²Townshend, ‘In Aid of the Civil Power’, 36.

⁴⁴Dixon, ‘“Hearts and Minds?”’, 359.

⁴⁵George Erskine, ‘Foreword’, in A Handbook of Anti-Mau Mau Operations (Nairobi: EA-GHQ 1954).

⁴⁶Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, 61.

⁴⁷Sir Gerald Templer, ‘Foreword’, in The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya [ATOM] (Kuala-Lumpur: HQ-MC 1954), xi.

⁴⁸TNA, WO 32/21748 Counter Revolutionary Operations Study, Directorate of Army Training, Note on Terminology (13 Oct. 1972, emphasis in original).

⁴⁹NAM, Templer Papers 7410-29-1-10, Gerald Templer – Address to the [Malayan] Chamber of Commerce (25 Apr. 1952). The audience of businessmen is also significant: they could help him in this regard, by improving the lot of the common people.

⁵⁰SHD 1H 2403 Commander-in-Chief X RM-EM, Directive pour l'Action Psychologique … (2 July 1955); SHD 1H 2408, EMGFA-BP, Directive sur la Guerre Psychologique (4 Oct. 1955). Two important works of reference are: Pierre Pahlavi, La guerre révolutionnaire de l'armée française en Algérie (1954–1961): Entre esprit de conquête et conquête des esprits (Paris: L'Harmattan 2002); and Paul and Marie Villatoux, La Republique et son armée face au peril subversif: guerre et action psychologiques en France, 1945–1960 (Paris: Les Indes Savantes 2005).

⁵¹10H 346 EMIFT, Note de service 800 (4 Apr. 1953); see also SHD 10H 983 EMAT, Enseignements de la Guerre d'Indochine, Vol. 2: 11–29, 68. Raoul Salan, Mémoires: Fin d'un Empire, (Paris: Presses de la Cité 1970), Vol. 2, 306–9.

⁵²France-Ministère de l'Algérie-Service Affaires Algériennes, Guide de l'officier des affaires algériennes (Paris: SAA 1959).

⁵³Portugal-EME, O Exército na Guerra Subversiva [The Army in Subversive Warfare] (EGS), 5 vols. (Lisboa: EME-IAEM 1963), Vol. 3, chs. III to VI.

⁵⁴SHD 1H 2524, XRM – CIPCG (Arzew), L'Activité Operationnelle en Algérie, 2.

⁵⁵E.g., Col. Nemo, ‘La Guerre dans le Milieu Sociale’, Revue de Défense Nationale, 12 (1956), 622.

⁵⁶For an obviously partial but rich account see Charles Lacheroy, De Saint-Cyr à la Guerre Psychologique: Mémoires d'un Siècle (Panazol: Lavauzelle 2003).

⁵⁷A. Sourys, ‘Les conditions de la parade et de la riposte à la guerre révolutionnaire’, Revue Militaire d'Information, 281 (1957), 92.

⁵⁸Paul Aussaresses, Battle of the Casbah: Counter-Terrorism and Torture (New York: Enigma 2005).

⁵⁹Roger Trinquier, La Guerre, (Paris: Albin Michel 1980), 173.

⁶⁰Salan, Mémoires, Vol. 3, 76.

⁶¹General Paul Ély, ‘Preface’, Reglement de l'Action Psychologique, in M. Faivre (ed.), Le Général Paul Ély et la Politique de Défense (1956–1961) (Paris: Economica 1998 [Orig. Ed. 1958]), 14.

⁶²Cited in Maurice Faivre (ed.), Le Général Paul Ély et la Politique de Défense (1956–1961) (Paris: Economica 1998), 77, reproduces Ély's diary of 5 Mar. 1960.

⁶³Particularly in-depth – and with references to Indochina – is Raphäele Branche, La Torture et l'Armée pendant la Guerre d'Algérie (1954–1962) (Paris: Gallimard 2001), 424–35; see also, on how the legal system dealt with the war, Sylvie Thénault, Une Drôle de Justice: Les Magistrats dans la Guerre d'Algérie (Paris: La Découverte 2004). For a rare example of some resistance to this trend, see Henri le Mire, Histoire Militaire de la Guerre d'Algérie (Paris: Albin Michel 1982), 105–16 passim.

⁶⁴SHD 1H 1115, XRM–CIPCG, Dossier d'Instruction, 130–31. All sections in this instruction manual are numbered in sequence, except this one: 51 bis.

⁶⁵SHD 1H 2524, XRM – CIPCG (Arzew), Charles Lacheroy, La Guerre Révolutionnaire: Leçons de l'action Viet-minh et communiste en Indochine.

⁶⁶Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, 52–3.

⁶⁷E.g., Huw Bennett, ‘“A very salutary effect”: The Counter-Terror Strategy in the Early Malayan Emergency, June 1948 to December 1949’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 32/3 (2009), 433.

⁶⁸Kitson, Low Intensity Operations, 3.

⁶⁹Julien Paget, Last Post: Aden 1964–1967 (London: Faber and Faber 1969), 128–9.

⁷⁰Roderick Bowen, Report on Procedures for the Arrest, Interrogation and Detention of Suspected Terrorists in Aden (London: HMSO 1966); see also TNA: citations from DEFE 24/253 UK-Army, Comments of the Section of the Bowen Report Entitled ‘Allegations of Cruelty and Torture’: Idem, H.C. Turnbull, Note on the Security Situation in Aden in December (25 Jan. 1966);

⁷¹Rod Thornton, ‘Getting it Wrong: The Crucial Mistakes in Early Stages of the British Deployment in the Northern Ireland Campaign (August 1969 to March 1972)’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 30/1 (2007), 94 and footnote 104; see also Peter Taylor, Brits: The War against the IRA (London: Bloomsbury 2001), 65.

⁷²Hermes de A. Oliveira, Guerra Revolucionária (Lisboa: [s.n.] 1962), 229–30.

⁷³Portugal-EME, O Exército na Guerra Subversiva [The Army in Subversive Warfare], Vol. 1, xi.

⁷⁴Ibid., Vol. 4, I/3. Significantly this is the very same page where the principle of minimum force is mentioned.

⁷⁵Ibid., Vol. 5, I/8–9.

⁷⁶Ibid., Vol. 5, I/8–9.

⁷⁷Probably the first to make the case in these terms is Peter Paret, French Revolutionary Warfare from Indochina to Algeria: The Analysis of a Political and Military Doctrine (London: Pall Mall P 1964), 104–5. But he is also careful to note that this does not mean that a strong coercive dimension was exclusive to French counterinsurgency campaigns.

⁷⁸Cf. John Cann, Counterinsurgency in Africa: The Portuguese Way of War, 1961–1974 (Westport: Greenwood P 1997), 189, on data on deaths per day of war per thousand combatants – 0.0017 British Malaya, 0.0075 Portuguese Africa, 0.0107 French Algeria, 0.0365 US war in Vietnam, 0.0691 French Indochina. Kenya was so insignificant in this respect that it is not even listed by Cann and others; data is not contested as to the number of British (63) and local allied combatants killed (1200), but estimates range from 11,000 to 20,000 insurgents/suspects killed or even 100,000s, cf. Daniel Branch, ‘The enemy within: loyalists and the way against Mau Mau in Kenya', Journal of African History, 48/2 (2007), 292 footnote 6.

⁷⁹It is revealing that similar arguments regarding the prevalence of state security are held by men with deeply opposed views on counterinsurgency in Algeria; Antoine Argoud, La Décadence, l'Imposture et la Tragédie (Paris: Fayard 1974), 157; and General de Gaulle, cited in Alain Peyrefitte, C'Était de Gaulle (Paris: Fayard 1995), 126; for the denouncing of this Realpolitik by one of the most vocal intellectual critic of the Algerian War see Pierre Vidal-Naquet, La Raison d'État (Paris: La Découverte 2002 [Orig. Ed. 1962]).

⁸⁰On the normally close relationship between Whitehall and Fleet Street see Susan L. Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds: British Governments, the Media and Colonial Counterinsurgency, 1944–1960 (London: Leicester UP 1995), 266–7.

⁸¹Bernard Fall, ‘Introduction’, in Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (London: Pall Mall P 1964 [Orig. Fr. Ed. 1961]), xv.

⁸²Portugal-EME, O Exército na Guerra Subversiva [The Army in Subversive Warfare], Vol. 4, II/22.

⁸³TNA CAB 21/1681 Federation [of Malaya], Plan for the Elimination of the Communist Organization and Armed Forces in Malaya [Briggs Plan]. See also The Briggs Plan, UK-HQ-Malaya Command, III/2–5.

⁸⁴Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, 57.

⁸⁵Ibid., 111–12, 116.

⁸⁶See, e.g., Douglas Porch, ‘Bugeaud, Gallieni, Lyautey: The Development of French Colonial Warfare’, in P. Paret (ed.), Makers of UK-Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Oxford: OUP 1986), 389 passim; François-Marie Gougeon, ‘The Challe Plan: Vain Yet Indispensable Victory’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 16/3 (2005), 293–316. Challe explains his approach and cites in extenso from key documents in Maurice Challe, Notre Révolte (Paris: Presses de la Cité 1968), 91–105; see also SHD, 1H 1930, Note C-e-C X Region Militaire, 10 Dec. 1959, appendix La Méthode de pacification generale; Claude Delmas, ‘Interview avec le Générale Challe’, Revue Défense Nationale, 17 (1961), 577–94.

⁸⁷Roger Trinquier, Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (London: Pall Mall P 1964 [Orig. Fr. Ed. 1961]), 8–9, 48–9.

⁸⁸Portugal-EME, O Exército na Guerra Subversiva [The Army in Subversive Warfare], Vol. 1, xi.

⁸⁹In 1974, with 31 military per thousand Portugal was only surpassed by Israel and Vietnam, cf. Kenneth Maxwell, The Making of Portuguese Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1995), 35.

⁹⁰Kitson, Low Intensity Operations, 134–5 passim; Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, 58.

⁹¹Templer, ‘Foreword’, xi. See also Erskine, ‘Foreword’.

⁹²UK-MoD, Land Operations: Vol. III, 5, 17–21.

⁹³General André Beaufre, La Guerre Révolutionnaire: Les Nouvelles Formes de la Guerre (Paris: Fayard 1972), 227–9.