INVOLVEMENT WITHOUT ENGAGEMENT: THE BRITISH ADVISORY MISSION IN SOUTH VIETNAM, 16 SEPTEMBER 1961–31 MARCH 1965

Abstract

This is an account of the origins and history of the little-known British Advisory Mission in Vietnam (BRIAM), which sought to transfer to Vietnam the techniques used in the Malayan Emergency to isolate insurgents from the population at large, while at the same time winning the loyalty of that population. This article looks first at the situation in South Vietnam and second at how the US and the UK viewed that situation and what they were doing about it. The third section deals with what BRIAM itself tried to do in introducing the process labelled “strategic hamlets”. The final section seeks to explain why the process failed.

Notes

D. F. Murray. Short Summary of Mr Thompson's Work in BRIAM. National Archives, FO371/180520, internal Foreign Office memorandum, 29 March 1965.

Ibid.

“British Mission to South Vietnam”, The Times, September 18, 1961.

Neil Sheehan, Hedrick Smith, E. W. Kenworthy and Fox Butterfield, The Pentagon Papers as Published by the New York Times. New York: Bantam Books, 1971, pp. 69–72.

David Halberstam, The Making of a Quagmire. New York: Random House, 1965, pp. 52–53.

Sheehan et al., The Pentagon Papers, p. 76.

Ibid., p. 78.

Dennis J. Duncanson, Government and Revolution in Vietnam. Issued under the auspices of the Royal Institute of International Affairs. London: Oxford University Press, 1968, pp. 266–267.

Sheehan et al., The Pentagon Papers, p. 86.

Halberstam, Quagmire, p. 59.

Louis Heren, No Hail, No Farewell. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970, p. 28.

Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, Robert Kennedy and His Times. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1978. pp. 703–704.

Harold Macmillan, At the End of the Day, 1961–63. London: Macmillan, 1973, pp. 238–239.

Peter Hennessy, The Prime Minister, the Office and its Holders since 1945. London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 2000, p. 351.

Sheehan et al., The Pentagon Papers, p. 108.

Dominic Sandbrook, Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles. London: Abacus, 2010 [2005], p. 240.

Ibid., p. 529.

Ibid., p. 77.

James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland SouthEast Asia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009, p. 85.

Bernard B. Fall, The Two Viet-Nams: A Political and Military Analysis, 2nd revd edn. London: Pall Mall Press, 1967, p. 375.

Duncanson, Government, p. 261.

Ibid., p. 262.

Sir Robert Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency: Experiences from Malaya and Vietnam. Studies in International Security 10. London: Chatto & Windus, 1966, pp. 122–125.

Douglas Pike, Viet Cong: The Organization and Techniques of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam. Studies in International Communism, No 7. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966, p. 67.

Thompson, Defeating, pp. 130–133, 138.

Fall, Two Viet-Nams, p. 382.

Thompson, Defeating, p. 138.

Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. London: Picador in association with Cape, 1989, p. 310.

Pike, Viet Cong, p. 68.

Michael Maclear, Vietnam: The Ten Thousand Day War. London: Eyre Methuen, 1981, p. 58.

Thompson, Defeating, p. 139.

Anthony Short, ‘The Malayan Emergency and the Batang Kali Incident’. Asian Affairs, Vol. 41, Issue 3 (2010): 350.

Ibid., pp. 350–351.

John A. Nagl, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2005, p. 105.

Heren, No Hail, p. 43.

Dennis J. Duncanson. Interview with the author, 22 December 1964.

Halberstam, Quagmire, p. 57.

Nagl, How to Eat, p. 130.

Ibid., p. 131.

E. T. Peck, untitled comments. National Archives, FO371/180520, C405529, March 31, 1965.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Cheeseright

Paul Cheeseright is a former correspondent of the Financial Times. As a young journalist, working for the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, he visited the British Advisory Mission in December 1964 for an informal briefing and found it in a state of frustrated despair. As a national serviceman, a lowly soldier in the Intelligence Corps, he served in Malaya during the latter stages of the Emergency, 1957–58.