‘Hearts and Minds’? British Counter-Insurgency from Malaya to Iraq

Abstract

This article introduces this special issue of The Journal of Strategic Studies by discussing the British model of counter-insurgency. General (later Field Marshal) Sir Gerald Templer associated the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ with Britain's apparently successful counter-insurgency campaign in Malaya (1948–60). The phrase ‘hearts and minds’ is generally associated with a less coercive approach to counter-insurgency which emphasises the importance of using ‘minimum force’ in order to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the people. This article argues that the phrase ‘hearts and minds’ does not accurately describe Britain's highly coercive campaign in Malaya. The British approach in Malaya did involve high levels of force, was not fought within the law and led to abuses of human rights. Britain's counter-insurgency campaign in Northern Ireland did not deploy the same levels of coercion that were used in Malaya but, nevertheless, considerable levels of coercion were used which did not succeed in winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the local people. The various interpretations of ‘hearts and minds’ leads to confusion about what degree of consent should be expected from the people and the implication of this for the use of force. While the term ‘hearts and minds’ does not accurately represent Britain's experience of counter-insurgency in the retreat from Empire; in the post-Cold War period the British military has been generally more ‘political’ and less coercive in its approach to counter-insurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq than the more conventional US approach to counter-insurgency. The British approach to counter-insurgency has influenced the recent development of US counter-insurgency doctrine but there are still considerable differences in the British and US approach to counter-insurgency which has led to severe tensions in the relationship between these allies. The ‘hearts and minds’ description of the British approach to counter-insurgency may be useful in public relations terms but it undermines the theory as a guide to operations because it can be interpreted in such divergent ways. The future may be to more carefully and practically specify in what contexts and circumstances the deployment of force is legitimate.

Key Words:

• British
• Counter-insurgency
• ‘Hearts and Minds’

Notes

¹I would like to thank the contributors to this issue for their hardwork and patience in staying with this project. Thank you also to Dr Joseph Maiolo, the editor at The Journal of Strategic Studies, for helping me navigate this volume to a successful conclusion. The anonymous referee was generous, insightful and diplomatic in providing suggestions for improvement and I hope s/he will think we achieved ‘touch down'. Jolene Butt and her staff at Taylor and Francis have been incredibly efficient in turning the manuscripts around and producing this special issue. I would also like thank the participants in the conference ‘Hearts and Minds? British Counter-Insurgency from Malaya to Iraq', jointly organised between Kingston University and the Royal United Services Institute on 21 Sept. 2007. Conference details and podcasts are available at http://fass.kingston.ac.uk/activities/item.php?updatenum=533. In particular I would like to acknowledge my co-organisers at RUSI, Michael Codner and Louise Heywood, and Kingston University's Lisa Hall. Professors John Davis and Philip Spencer at Kingston University provide financial and moral support. Thanks also to Brigadier Neil Baverstock, Colonel David Benest, Dr Huw Bennett, Professor Brice Dickson and Dr Karl Hack for their perceptive comments on this article. I am grateful to the ‘War Studies’ students at King's College London, particularly Jo Painter, for the opportunity to present and then refine the arguments in this article. I am solely responsible for the content of this article.

²Rod Thornton, ‘The Role of Peace Support Operations Doctrine in the British Army’, International Peacekeeping 7/2 (Summer 2000), 43, 56.

³See James Fergusson, A Million Bullets (London: Bantam Press 2008) for Britain's use of the ‘Malayan model’ in Afghanistan and for influence on the US military see Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, ‘Fighting “The Other War”: Counterinsurgency Strategy in Afghanistan, 2003–2005’, Military Review (Sept.–Oct. 2007), 34, 40. For the influence of Britain's experience in Northern Ireland on the US military in Iraq see for example, Peter Baker, ‘Commanders Draw Lessons of Belfast in Countering Attacks’, Washington Post, 30 March 2003; Washington Times, 24 Oct. 2006.

⁴Thomas R. Mockaitis, ‘Winning Hearts and Minds in the “War on Terrorism”’, in idem and Paul B. Rich, Grand Strategy in the War against Terrorism (London: Routledge 2004), 21–38; Robert M. Cassidy, Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror (Westport, CT: Greenwood 2006).

⁵David Benest, ‘Aden to Northern Ireland, 1966–76’, in H. Strachan (ed.), Big Wars and Small Wars: The British Army and the Lessons of War in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge 2006), 118–19.

⁶Benjamin Valentino, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2004), 5.

⁷Gen. Sir Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Allen Lane 2005).

⁸T. R. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 1919–60 (London: Macmillan 1990).

⁹Julian Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning (London: Faber 1967); Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency (London: Chatto 1967) and No Exit From Vietnam (London: Chatto 1969); Richard Clutterbuck, The Long Long War (London: Cassell 1967); Frank Kitson, Low Intensity Operations (London: Faber 1971).

¹⁰Robert Thompson's five basic principles of counter-insurgency are:

1.	The government must have a clear political aim.
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 guerrillas.
5.	In the guerrilla phase of an insurgency the government must secure its base.

¹¹Frank Kitson, A Bunch of Five (London: Faber 1977), 283.

¹²Ministry of Defence, Land Operations (London: MOD 1970), 2, 4.

¹³Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency; Thompson, No Exit From Vietnam; Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 186; Paget, Counterinsurgency Campaigning. Paget was a Coldstream Guards lieutenant colonel with 28 years service.

¹⁴Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, 168. Intelligence was identified as key by Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency.

¹⁵Ministry of Defence, Land Operations, 1970, 3.

¹⁶Paget, Counter-Insurgency Campaigning, 167.

¹⁷Ibid., 169.

¹⁸Paul Dixon, ‘Britain's “Vietnam Syndrome”? Public Opinion and Military Intervention from Palestine to Yugoslavia’, Review of International Studies 26/1 (Jan. 2000), 99–121; Susan Carruthers, Winning Hearts and Minds: British Governments, the Media and Colonial Counter-Insurgency 1944–1960 (London: Leicester UP 1995), 2, 16–17; Rupert Smith, The Utility of War, 205.

¹⁹Ministry of Defence, Land Operations, 1970, 2, see also 16.

²⁰Dixon, ‘Britain's “Vietnam Syndrome”?'.

²¹Brig. G.L.C. Cooper, ‘Some Aspects of Conflict in Ulster’, British Army Review 43 (1974), 73.

²²D. Anderson and D. Killingray (eds.), Policing and Decolonisation: Nationalism, Politics and the Police, 1917–65 (Manchester: Manchester UP 1992).

²³Ministry of Defence, Land Operations, 1970, 2.

²⁴Hew Strachan, The Politics of the British Army (Oxford: Oxford UP 1997), 172–3.

²⁵Mockaitis, ‘Winning Hearts and Minds in the “War on Terrorism”’; Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 1919–1960; Thomas Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency in the Post-Imperial Era (Manchester: Manchester UP 1995). For a more critical perspective see John Newsinger, British Counterinsurgency: From Palestine to Northern Ireland (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan 2001).

²⁶Thomas Mockaitis, ‘The Origins of British Counterinsurgency’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 1/3 (Dec. 1990), 215.

²⁷Quoted in Brian Lapping, End of Empire (London: Granada 1985), 224. John Cloake, Templer, Tiger of Malaya: The Life of Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer (London: Harrap 1985), 477 fn 1 records Templer's first use of the term as 26 April 1952.

²⁸John Cloake, Templer, Tiger of Malaya: The Life of Field Marshall Sir Gerald Templer (London: Harrap 1985), 262. The French soldier Lt. Col. David Galula, argued similarly that counterinsurgency was 20 per cent military and 80 per cent political, Counterinsurgency Warfare: Theory and Practice (Westport, CT: Praeger 1964 repr. 2006), 63.

²⁹John Nagl, Learning to East Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press 2002), passim.

³⁰Marilyn B. Young, ‘Counterinsurgency, Now and Forever’, in idem and Lloyd C. Gardner, Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn from the Past (New York: The New Press 2007).

³¹Richard Stubbs, Hearts and Minds in Guerrilla Warfare: Malayan Emergency, 1948–60 (Oxford: Oxford UP 1989), 3. See Peter Davis' Academy Award winning documentary ‘Hearts and Minds’ (1974) which contrasts the phrase with the violent reality of US policy in Vietnam.

³² Straits Times, 27 March 1968, quoted in Stubbs, Hearts and Minds, 1; Cloake, Templer, 2.

³³Brig. (ret.) Gavin Bulloch, ‘Winning “Hearts and Minds”– An Evolving Concept’, notes from a presentation to the joint Kingston Univ./Royal United Services Institute ‘Hearts and Minds’ conference, RUSI, London, UK, 21 Sept. 2007.

³⁵Ministry of Defence, Land Operations, Volume III – Counter Revolutionary Operations, Part 3 – Counter Insurgency Army Code No. 70516 (Part 3) (London: Ministry of Defence 1970), 4.

³⁴Stubbs, Hearts and Minds, 249–50.

³⁶Thomas R. Mockaitis, Iraq and the Challenge of Counterinsurgency (London: Praeger Security International 2008), 23–4.

³⁷Hew Strachan, ‘British Counter-Insurgency from Malaya to Iraq’, Royal United Services Institute Journal 152/6 (Dec. 2007), 8.

³⁸Col. I.A. Rigden, ‘The British Approach to Counter-Insurgency: Myths, Realities, and Strategic Challenges’, Strategy Research Project, US Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA, 2008, 12.

³⁹Ashley Jackson, ‘British Counter-insurgency in History: A Useful Precedent?’, British Army Review 139 (Spring 2006), 12–22.

⁴⁰The US Army and Marine Corps, Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press 2007), 294.

⁴¹Merriam-Webster, Dictionary of Allusions (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster 1999).

⁴²Ministry of Defence, The Army Field Manual, Volume 5, Operations Other than War, Part 2, Wider Peacekeeping, 1994, 1–2.

⁴³Alex J. Bellamy, Paul Williams and Stuart Griffin, Understanding Peacekeeping (Cambridge: Polity Press 2004), 128–9, 165.

⁴⁴Oliver Ramsbotham, Tom Woodhouse and Hugh Miall, Contemporary Conflict Resolution (Cambridge: Polity Press 2005), 143.

⁴⁵Bellamy et al., Understanding Peacekeeping, 170–1.

⁴⁷Stubbs, Hearts and Minds, 256.

⁴⁶The sources for this list are Hack and Bennett in this issue; Stubbs, Hearts and Minds; Newsinger, British Counter-insurgency.

⁴⁸Smith, The Utility of Force, 202–6.

⁴⁹Richard Stubbs, ‘From Search and Destroy to Hearts and Minds: The Evolution of British Strategy in Malaya 1948–60’, in D. Marston and C. Malkasian, Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare (London: Osprey Publishing 2008), 114.

⁵⁰Stubbs, ‘From Search and Destroy’, 127.

⁵¹Fergusson, A Million Bullets.

⁵²Karl Hack, ‘Screwing Down the People: The Malayan Emergency, Decolonisation and Ethnicity’, in H. Antlov and S. Tonnesson (eds.), Imperial Policy and Southeast Asian Nationalism (Richmond, UK: Curzon Press 1995), 95.

⁵³Lt. Col. Wade Markel, ‘Draining the Swamp: The British Strategy of Population Control’, Parameters 36/1 (Spring 2006), 44, 47.

⁵⁴R. Popplewell, “‘Lacking Intelligence”: Some Reflections on Recent Approaches to British Counterinsurgency, 1900–1960’, Intelligence and National Security 10/2 (April 1995), 337.

⁵⁵David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: Britain's Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (London: Phoenix 2005); Huw Bennett, ‘The Other Side of the COIN: Minimum and Exemplary Force in British Army Counterinsurgency in Kenya’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 18/4 (Dec. 2007), 638–64.

⁵⁶Brig. Bulloch argues of Northern Ireland, ‘In the end, weariness and a recognition that it was impossible to change people's hearts and very difficult to alter minds and thinking resulted in a fresh approach.’‘Winning “Hearts and Minds”– An Evolving Concept’.

⁵⁷Brig. Nigel R.F. Aylwin-Foster, ‘Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations’, Military Review (Nov./Dec. 2005), 2–15.

⁵⁸Carter Malkasian, ‘Counterinsurgency in Iraq’ in Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian (eds.), Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare (Oxford: Osprey Publishing 2008); Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (London: Penguin 2006).

⁵⁹Col. A.R.D. Sharpe, Royal College of Defence Studies, 2005 course; Warren Chin, ‘Examining the Application of British Counterinsurgency Doctrine by the American Army in Iraq’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 18/1 (March 2007), 9–10.

⁶⁰House of Commons Defence Committee, Lessons of Iraq (London: TSO 2004), 53.

⁶¹Glen Rangwala, ‘Deputizing in War: British Politicians and Predicaments in Iraq, 2003–07’, International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies 1/3 (Oct. 2007), 293–310. For a controversial critique of the US Army by Brig. Aylwin-Foster see ‘Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations’.

⁶²Sean Rayment, ‘US tactics condemned by British officers’, Daily Telegraph, 11 April 2004.

⁶³Paul Dixon, Northern Ireland: The Politics of War and Peace, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan 2008), 106–7.

⁶⁴Richard Norton-Taylor, ‘General hits out at US tactics’, The Guardian, 21 April 2004.

⁶⁵ The Economist, 31 Jan. 2009, see comments by Linda Robinson at <www.usacac.army.mil/CAC2/cgsc/events/MHLS/RobinsonTranscript.doc> and also NavyTimes, 28 May 2007.

⁶⁶Eric Herring and Glen Rangwala, Iraq in Fragments (London: Hurst 2006), 89.

⁶⁷Gen. Dannatt interview with Sarah Sands, Daily Mail, 12 Oct. 2006.

⁶⁸Antonio Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan (London: Hurst 2007), Ch. 6.

⁶⁹ The Times, 5 Oct. 2008; The Daily Telegraph, 22 June 2008, the Obama administration may be changing this approach; The Guardian, 9 March 2008; The Observer, 23 March 2009.

⁷⁰ The Observer, 4 Feb. 2007; New York Times, 3 and 5 Feb. 2007; Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop, 211–12; Fergusson, A Million Bullets, 272.

⁷¹ Daily Mail, 9 Aug. 2007.

⁷²‘Britain's armed forces: losing their way’, The Economist, 31 Jan. 2009.

⁷³ The Guardian, 17 Sept. 2008.

⁷⁴John Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam (Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press 2002); New York Times, 13 Nov. 2004; Eric Herring and Glen Rangwala, Iraq in Fragments: The Occupation and its Legacy (London: Hurst 2006), 172, 178. On US welcome of British criticisms, see The Economist, 31 Jan. 2009. Chin, ‘Examining the Application of British Counterinsurgency Doctrine by the American Army in Iraq’.

⁷⁵Michael R. Gordon and Thom Shanker, ‘Bush to name a new general to oversee Iraq', New York Times, 5 Jan. 2007; Bruce Hoffman, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corp. 2004), 9.

⁷⁶Tim Shipman, ‘British forces useless in Basra, say officials’, Daily Telegraph, 20 Aug. 2007.

⁷⁷ Los Angeles Times, 16 Jan. 2008. Capt. Leo Docherty of the Scots Guards was also critical at the levels of force used by British troops in Afghanistan, Leo Docherty, Desert of Death: A Soldier's Journey from Iraq to Afghanistan (London: Faber 2007).

⁷⁸ The Times, 16 Dec. 2008. See the transcript of the book launch of Marston and Malkasian, Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare for criticisms of British counterinsurgency practice, <http://www.cna.org/documents/counterinsurgency%20transcript.pdf>, downloaded 23 March 2009.

⁷⁹ The Daily Telegraph, 11 Jan. 2009; The Economist, 31 Jan. 2009.

⁸⁰Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt, ‘Foreword’, in Charles Reed and David Ryall, The Price of Peace: Just War in the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2007), xiv.

⁸¹Fergusson, A Million Bullets, 172; The Guardian, 20 March 2009 for the diversity of international approaches to counterinsurgency see Guistozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop, Ch. 6.

⁸²Herring and Rangwala, Iraq in Fragments, 192–4; Rachel Kerr, The Military on Trial: The British Army in Iraq (Nijmeguen: Wolf Legal Publishers 2008).

⁸³Lt.-Gen. Sir John Kiszely, ‘Post-Modern Challenges for Modern Warriors’, Shrivenham Papers No. 5, Dec. 2007. Kiszely was Deputy Commanding General Multinational Force, Iraq, Oct. 2004 to April 2005.

⁸⁴Gen. Dannatt interview, Daily Mail, 12 Oct. 2006.

⁸⁵Sarah Sewell, ‘Introduction to the University of Chicago Press Edition: A Radical Field Manual’, in The US Army and Marine Corps, Counterinsurgency Field Manual (Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press 2007), xxiv.

⁸⁶Sewell, ‘A Radical Field Manual’, xxxvi.

⁸⁷David Benest, ‘Aden to Northern Ireland, 1966–76’, in H. Strachan (ed.), Big Wars and Small Wars: The British Army and the Lessons of War in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge 2006), 118–19.

⁸⁸See Thornton, ‘Peace Support Operations Doctrine in the British Army’, for some of these uses of doctrine. The Daily Telegraph of 22 June 2008 reports a delegation of British military officers travelling to Washington to meet members of conservative think-tanks to explain British policy in Afghanistan.

⁸⁹Or indeed US soldier, in Iraq Gen. Petraeus pursued a less coercive approach that was criticised by some of his fellow officers for its' ‘softly, softly’ approach, The Times, 11 Jan. 2007; Malkasian, ‘Counterinsurgency in Iraq’, 243–4.

⁹⁰See for example Alex J. Bellamy's discussion of aerial bombing in Afghanistan in Just Wars: From Cicero to Iraq (Cambridge, UK: Polity 2006), Ch. 9; and C.A.J. Coady, Morality and Political Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2008) on morality in war. For interesting and contrasting analyses of US operations in Iraq and civilian casualties see Thomas W. Smith, ‘Protecting Civilians … or Soldiers? Humanitarian Law and the Economy of Risk in Iraq’, International Studies Perspectives 9 (2008), 144–64; and Colin H. Kahl, ‘In the Crossfire or the Crosshairs? Norms, Civilian Casualties, and US Conduct in Iraq’, International Security 32/1 (Summer 2007), 7–46.