Malayan strategy in Vietnam

[Flocculencio]

In the late 1940s and 1950s, British forces fought a war against Communist guerillas in the jungles of Malaya. This Malayan Emergency as it was called was very different from the later american experience in Vietnam.

The Communists in Malaya were recruited mainly from the Chinese who were a large minority. the majority of the population who were Malays did not really support the guerillas.

'In 1949, an intense campaign was mounted against the guerrillas, hundreds of whom were slain or captured. One effect of the jungle warfare was to bring leaders of the various ethnic and religious communities closer together with more mutual understanding. The communists waged a violent and ultimately unsuccessful struggle supported by only a minority of the Chinese community. The British struggled to suppress the insurgency by military means, including an unpopular strategy that the government-implemented entitled Briggs plan (1950) that resettled so-called "squatter" Chinese farmers, who were easy prey for raiding guerrillas, in protected Malay areas, basically a controlled scheme of New Villages. Although this policy isolated villagers from guerrillas, it also increased the government's unpopularity. Also in 1950 Britain, as leader of the Commonwealth, requested Australian and New Zealand assistance in countering the communist terrorists. Unlike the American policy in Vietnam of "search and destroy" and then return to base, the British and Commonwealth soldiers in Malaya played the guerrillas at their own game by living out in the jungle for weeks on end and ambushing them' (1).

In addition to this, the British authorities addressed the concerns of the Malayan people, fighting a propaganda war to claim their hearts and minds.

If the US authorities had followed a pattern something like this might they have been able to win in Vietnam or were the two situations too different?

What would South-East Asia look like today with an existing communist North Vietnam and a democratic South Vietnam?

(1) quoted from http://www.myfareast.org/Malaysia/emergency.html

[Zach Rosen]

The US actually tried one of the devices the British used, strategic hamlets, and they were an unmitigated disaster. This is probably due to the corruption and unreliability of the South Vietnamese government, who if I recall correctly, were the ones who actually carried out the policy, and not the Americans. Had they been properly defended, armed, fed, etc., the idea probably would have worked as well in Vietnam as in Malaya.

[Hymie Goldberg]

The "Strategic Hamlets" idea was from the Phillipines War. It worked against the Filipino freedom fighters because they couldn't get outside assistance.

Strategic hamlets kept the guerrillas from being resupplied by the general population; it worked there because the Phillipines are islands.

[aghart]

The real British success in the Malayan emergency was preventing the situation from escalating to an all out war, keeping it to an annoying insurgency. It took the Brits years but they graduly squeezed the life out of the enemy. The British tactics helped ensure that the communist guerilla's were never more than small groups of activists and this stopped them growing in strength.

By the time the US entered the Vietnam war, the Viet Cong were already launching battalion sized attacks against targets, the conflict had already escalated beyond a Malayan type situation, and Malayan type tactics were no use in this "war zone"

[Kome]

The Americans tried to 'out guerrilla' the Vietcong as well with Tiger Force.

They became notorious for brutality and warcrimes. Were the British the same?

Also nice bump we got here.

[Simon]

The real British success in the Malayan emergency was preventing the situation from escalating to an all out war,
Well to be fair it was a fairly serious military conflict, the main reason that it was called an Emergency rather than Conflict or War was thanks to lobbying on the part of the local planters and land owners - if it was classed as one of those then their insurance premiums would of skyrocketed at best or more likely become void.

[gigalocus]

As much as I'd like to say Britain won their 'Vietnam War', as I have argued on other forums, I now have to point out why the two wars were very different conflicts.

Mainly, the majority of communist insurgents in Malaysia were the ethnic Chinese minority, whilst in Vietnam, the communists had the support of the majority of the population.

Furthermore, aid could flow directly in to North Vietnam (And through it the VC) by China and the USSR. Malaysia had no border with a friendly communist neighbour and so did not have this luxoury.

Finally, Malay insurgents had no 'neutral' friendly nations to flee to, as the Vietnamese did with North Vietnam, that the US had difficulties in spreading conflict over borders.

[Flocculencio]

As much as I'd like to say Britain won their 'Vietnam War', as I have argued on other forums, I now have to point out why the two wars were very different conflicts.

Mainly, the majority of communist insurgents in Malaysia were the ethnic Chinese minority, whilst in Vietnam, the communists had the support of the majority of the population.

Furthermore, aid could flow directly in to North Vietnam (And through it the VC) by China and the USSR. Malaysia had no border with a friendly communist neighbour and so did not have this luxoury.

Finally, Malay insurgents had no 'neutral' friendly nations to flee to, as the Vietnamese did with North Vietnam, that the US had difficulties in spreading conflict over borders.

The insurgents were Chinese not Malay.

Your most important point is the fact that the insurgents were drawn from the Chinese minority, not the Malay majority and so didn't really have that much of a base of support.

[HeavyWeaponsGuy]

The US did attempt to copy British tactics from the Malayan Emergency, as Zach pointed out, they mostly resulted in disaster because of the incompetence of South Vietnam.

Fundamentally, it's a different conflict though, Vietnam is a bigger country than Malaya, and Malaya had none of the baggage of the North-South divide that Vietnam did.

Fundamentally, "winning" Vietnam as we knew it was next to impossible, South Vietnam was fighting and losing a battle for its own public support.

The insurgents were Chinese not Malay.

Your most important point is the fact that the insurgents were drawn from the Chinese minority, not the Malay majority and so didn't really have that much of a base of support.

I think he was referring to Malays as in "the rebels in Malaya" as opposed to "people of Malayan descent".

[Tyr]

A thought; perhaps we could play to South Vietnam's strengths as a right wing dictatorship?
If we can push the north more towards the Chinese sphere than the Soviet sphere then perhaps the South could whip up anti-Chinese rhetoric to gain the support of the people. Vietnam has a long history of resisting Chinese occupation...if North Vietnam could be seen as a continuation of this....

The US actually tried one of the devices the British used, strategic hamlets, and they were an unmitigated disaster. This is probably due to the corruption and unreliability of the South Vietnamese government, who if I recall correctly, were the ones who actually carried out the policy, and not the Americans. Had they been properly defended, armed, fed, etc., the idea probably would have worked as well in Vietnam as in Malaya.

On this, the featured article on wikipedia a few days ago was rather interesting. It was about some guy who was one of the leading figures in charge of implementing the strategic hamlets inititive...and who was actually working for North Vietnam.
He forced the plan along in a too rapid, too incompetent fashion, forcing it to fail.
If it had went at a more sustainable pace and with someone who wanted the south to win in charge it may actually have worked.

[Matt Wiser]

Not just that particular fellow, but the VC had several other assets very high in the RVN Government and military. One of the latter wound up a Corps Commander in 1971-72, and a three-star general. How's that for penetration of an adversary's command structure?

The Malayan insurgency and the insurgency mounted by the VC were two different animals. There was no safe haven the Communists in Malaya had available, while the VC had areas under their control since the early '60s (parts of the Central Highlands, the U-Minh Forest in the Mekong Delta, and other parts of the delta as well), along with their safe havens in Cambodia and Laos-later available to the NVA.

[Flocculencio]

I think he was referring to Malays as in "the rebels in Malaya" as opposed to "people of Malayan descent".

Yes I understood at but its important to get the terminology right. Malay is very specifically an ethnic designator. Ethnic Malays include Javanese, the Riau, Filipinos, Boyanese, Balinese etc. The insurgents were mostly Chinese and its probably easier just to call tham Communist insurgents rather than trying to use an ethnic designator. Saying that the insurgents were Malay is like saying that Custer was attacked by Americans at the Little Bighorn

Even in modern Malaysia the national designator is Malaysian not Malay

[Cook]

Far from being incompetent, the South Vietnamese army was very effective and, after the fundamental change in doctrine and strategy following General Westmoreland’s replacement by General Abrams, able to supress the insurgency and also defeat the initial North Vietnamese conventional invasion in 1972, when the ARVN constituted the sole ground forces involved and American involvement was restricted to air power and logistics support.

The insurgents in the Malaya conflict were just that: insurgents. There were no Main Field Force elements from a neighbouring country involved, no neighbouring country was providing massive logistic support and no long land border easy to cross. Vietnam did not fall to insurgents; it fell to an invasion by North Vietnam’s conventional army consisting of 20 divisions, several of them mechanised. This invasion was only successful following the failure to continue providing support by the US Congress, contrary to US undertakings at the Paris Peace Conference.

[Matt Wiser]

Correct. Marshal Ky wanted to do away with the corruption, clean out the deadwood in the whole RVNAF (Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces), and bring many ARVN units up to NATO standards. And some of them were: the 1st Infantry, 2nd Infantry, 21st, 22nd, and 23rd Infantry, along with the Marine Division and the Airborne would've made any NATO commander proud.

Cook's thesis is basically sound: the ARVN did all of the ground fighting in the NVA Easter Offensive in 1972, and did very well. Only the U.S. withdrawal of military aid in 1974-75 ensured the ARVN's defeat.

[NickBana]

Actually, the most notorious communist unit in Malayan Emergency was all- Malay regiment called 10th regiment... :)

[gigalocus]

The insurgents were Chinese not Malay.

Your most important point is the fact that the insurgents were drawn from the Chinese minority, not the Malay majority and so didn't really have that much of a base of support.

Erm, did you even read my post? What was my first point:
Mainly, the majority of communist insurgents in Malaysia were the ethnic Chinese minority, whilst in Vietnam, the communists had the support of the majority of the population

...

I think he was referring to Malays as in "the rebels in Malaya" as opposed to "people of Malayan descent".

Yes, I meant insurgents in Malaysia, if Flocculencio had read my reply, it would have made sense ...

Yes I understood at but its important to get the terminology right. ...

Again, I noted that it was not the ethnic Malaysians that were insurgents, "Malay Insurgents" is the same level of correct English as "Insurgents in Malaysia", just shorter, and more correct then 'Malaysian Insurgents", which would be wrong and looks like what you think I was writing.

[Flocculencio]

Erm, did you even read my post? What was my first point:


...


Yes, I meant insurgents in Malaysia, if Flocculencio had read my reply, it would have made sense ...



Again, I noted that it was not the ethnic Malaysians that were insurgents, "Malay Insurgents" is the same level of correct English as "Insurgents in Malaysia", just shorter, and more correct then 'Malaysian Insurgents", which would be wrong and looks like what you think I was writing.

Ethnic Malays. There's no such thing as an ethnic Malaysian. It's incorrect because Malay is specifically an ethnic designator. You could be Chinese and Malayan (or currently Malaysian) but not Chinese and Malay (unless you were of mixed blood of course)

I read your reply. I was correcting your terminology not your point. They were not Malay insurgents (for the most part), they were Malayan insurgents, if you want a more accurate term- they called themselves the MPLA (Malayan Peoples Liberation Army).

[LegionoftheUnitedStates]

Far from being incompetent, the South Vietnamese army was very effective and, after the fundamental change in doctrine and strategy following General Westmoreland’s replacement by General Abrams, able to supress the insurgency and also defeat the initial North Vietnamese conventional invasion in 1972, when the ARVN constituted the sole ground forces involved and American involvement was restricted to air power and logistics support.

The insurgents in the Malaya conflict were just that: insurgents. There were no Main Field Force elements from a neighbouring country involved, no neighbouring country was providing massive logistic support and no long land border easy to cross. Vietnam did not fall to insurgents; it fell to an invasion by North Vietnam’s conventional army consisting of 20 divisions, several of them mechanised. This invasion was only successful following the failure to continue providing support by the US Congress, contrary to US undertakings at the Paris Peace Conference.

Exactly. Center mass is the North Vietnamese Army. as long as it is a viable fighting force, the South is under threat. Force it, or a large portion thereof into open battle, on US terms, and you can destroy it.

i have always thought (admittedly without detailed knowledge of the NVA forces involved) that a good US strategy would be to park two US divisions on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This WILL disrupt supplies going South and get the NVA's attention. Then a multi-division attack on the NVA force in Cambodia with the goal of surrounding and destroying it. (To quote Colin Powell "first we're going to cut it off, and then we're going to kill it".)

Do that and the North Vetnamese government is going to have to seriously rethink the goal of reuniting the country under themselves.

[Faeelin]

I read your reply. I was correcting your terminology not your point. They were not Malay insurgents (for the most part), they were Malayan insurgents, if you want a more accurate term- they called themselves the MPLA (Malayan Peoples Liberation Army).

Wasn't the MPLA predominantly Chinese? This suggests another reason the Malayan strategy may not work in Vietnam.

Edit: As you said. Apologies.

One of the thigns I find weird about these debates is that it ignores that the US spent enormous amounts of money and lost sixty thousand men. North Vietnam lost far more men. This suggests changing the outcome isn't as simple as flicking some on off switch on the Ho Chi Minh trail.

[gigalocus]

Ethnic Malays. There's no such thing as an ethnic Malaysian. It's incorrect because Malay is specifically an ethnic designator. You could be Chinese and Malayan (or currently Malaysian) but not Chinese and Malay (unless you were of mixed blood of course)

Jeez, are you being serious? Ok, I made a mistake in semantics there, but only in a reply to which I made none. Sure, I made that mistake there, but only after I was forced to reply on a moot point.

I read your reply. I was correcting your terminology not your point. They were not Malay insurgents (for the most part), they were Malayan insurgents, if you want a more accurate term- they called themselves the MPLA (Malayan Peoples Liberation Army).

I have read my comment over and over, and I simply cannot find the semantic error in 'Malay insurgents' ... It has two meanings, yes, the incorrect one and the correct one. I obviously (Because of my first point) meant the correct one. I cannot believe the detail into 'terminology you are getting into when we fundamentally agree on the exact point. But fine, I agree my sentence was ambiguous and did hint at me suggesting the wrong thing and would have greatly benefited from adding an 'n' on the end, but after the actual content of the message, does it really matter that much? Considering that the correction you gave me, was the man and not exactly hidden focal point of my comment ...

[Dupplin Muir]

LegionoftheUnitedStates wrote:

Exactly. Center mass is the North Vietnamese Army. as long as it is a viable fighting force, the South is under threat. Force it, or a large portion thereof into open battle, on US terms, and you can destroy it.

i have always thought (admittedly without detailed knowledge of the NVA forces involved) that a good US strategy would be to park two US divisions on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This WILL disrupt supplies going South and get the NVA's attention. Then a multi-division attack on the NVA force in Cambodia with the goal of surrounding and destroying it. (To quote Colin Powell "first we're going to cut it off, and then we're going to kill it".)

This was actually tried, and was one of the major reasons for the US defeat. For most of the time there were relatively few North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam - the great majority of combatants were locally recruited.

The US Army leadership - notably William Westmoreland - came in hoping to refight WWII, so there was an institutional bias in favour of massive sweeps through the jungle, with lots of air and artillery support. This led to a complete neglect of pacification, to the point that, whenever anyone started to make progress in winning hearts and minds, someone was bound to come along and ruin it. The VC leadership appreciated this, and would carry out audacious attacks on US bases in order to provoke such sweeps. While the American troops were slogging through the backwoods, the war was being lost in the villages.

[GarethC]

I have read my comment over and over, and I simply cannot find the semantic error in 'Malay insurgents' ...

Malay is an adjective describing ethnicity, though 'ethnicity' in turn is a somewhat nebulous term at best, but let's not get tied up in that for the moment.

Malayan is the adjective for nationality that would have applied pre-independence, which has been replaced by Malaysian now that the country is a country and not British.

Malay <> Malayan. The two terms are not normally understood to be interchangeable, applying to two orthogonal axes of demographics.

The semantic error is that 'Malay insurgents' indicated people who are ethnically Malay (but could be from anywhere - if you got a bunch of Australian nationals who happened to be of Balinese descent fighting in Perth to overthrow the Oz government, that would be an entirely correct descriptor), whereas you meant 'insurgents from Malay(si)a', for which it conveys an inaccurate meaning.

[SeanPdineen]

My doctoral stuides comparing Vietnam and Malaysia, have shown the british australians and New Zealanders had a very effective modality.
Sir Robert Thompson, the chief apostle of that victory advised the best among us stragists, John Paul Vann, Willam Colby, in the effectiveness of clear and hold as opposed to search and destroy. By 1972, the method was working, but the American people had had enough

[gigalocus]

Malay is an adjective describing ethnicity, though 'ethnicity' in turn is a somewhat nebulous term at best, but let's not get tied up in that for the moment.

Malayan is the adjective for nationality that would have applied pre-independence, which has been replaced by Malaysian now that the country is a country and not British.

Malay <> Malayan. The two terms are not normally understood to be interchangeable, applying to two orthogonal axes of demographics.

The semantic error is that 'Malay insurgents' indicated people who are ethnically Malay (but could be from anywhere - if you got a bunch of Australian nationals who happened to be of Balinese descent fighting in Perth to overthrow the Oz government, that would be an entirely correct descriptor), whereas you meant 'insurgents from Malay(si)a', for which it conveys an inaccurate meaning.

That is true, but, has already been risen, 100% of the insurgents were not ethnically Chinese, so had I written 'Chinese' I still too, would have been wrong.

'Malay Insurgents' is wrong, yes, but not totally, as some insurgents were in fact Malay. I should have written Malayan insurgents yes, but does it really require so much attention?

The point I'm making, is my post was not so wrong that it warranted such a reply pointing out how wrong my sentence was, when his 'correction' was the whole purpose of my post?

[Kishan]

The Malayan strategy was a failure in Vietnam because the situations in the two countries were fundamentally different. For any rebellion to succeed the support of the people is essential. In Malaysia the Communist insurgents were mostly from the Chinese minority and hence had no support of the Malay majority. On the other hand, the Viet Cong fighters were supported by the common people. Ho Chi Min was more a nationalist than a communist. The Vietnamese Communists also had several advantages like the aid of foreign powers like Soviet Union and China and safe havens in the neutral countries like Laos and Cambodia, not to mention North Vietnam itself.The Malayan Communists did not have similar facilities. Mao has once said that the revolutionaries must act among people like fish in water. The communists in Vietnam were fish in water while their counterparts in Malaya were fish out of water!

[Rich Rostrom]

In addition to this, the British authorities addressed the concerns of the Malayan people, fighting a propaganda war to claim their hearts and minds.

If the US authorities had followed a pattern something like this might they have been able to win in Vietnam or were the two situations too different?


The two conflicts were different in many fundamental ways.

1) Malaya was a British colony, with Britain exercising complete sovereign authority over its administration. South Vietnam was an independent sovereign state, with the US limited to giving advice to Vietnamese officials.

2) Malaya was physically isolated from any source of support for the guerrillas; the only fighters they had were local recruits and the only weapons they had were captured or smuggled in. South Vietnam had long borders with countries which allowed hundreds of thousands of troops and thousands of tons of weapons to flow to the guerrillas. (There was a perid in the early 1960s when Indonesia supported guerrilla operations in Sarawak, but this ended with the overthrow of Sukarno in 1966.)

3) The Malayan guerrillas were drawn from an ethnic minority; most of the population never even considered supporting them. The Vietnamese guerrillas were drawn from the main (90%) ethnic group.

4) The Vietnamese guerrillas had the explicit support of a neighboring country, which for geostrategic reasons had been declared off-limits to US and Allied ground forces; that country was supplied with enormous amounts of arms by a superpower.

It should be noted that even with all these disadvantages, the Malayan guerrillas remained in the field into the 1970s. The last of them were not suppressed till about 1975.

[Dan]

I think this is trying to compare Apples to Oranges.
The Malaya or Borneo approaches would not have worked in Vietnam. Elements of it could have if done properly - strategic Hamlets for example, and by an large the use of Special Forces by the US and Australians was done well.

I think the biggest problem wasn't in the field but back home.
If Vietnam were to happen today, (in some cases you could draw a parralel with Iraq or Afghanistan), with press management being more advanced, I don't think you'd have the same issues in the US you dd then and support wouldn't have waned like it did.

[Francisco Cojuanco]

Wasn't the MPLA predominantly Chinese? This suggests another reason the Malayan strategy may not work in Vietnam.

Edit: As you said. Apologies.

One of the thigns I find weird about these debates is that it ignores that the US spent enormous amounts of money and lost sixty thousand men. North Vietnam lost far more men. This suggests changing the outcome isn't as simple as flicking some on off switch on the Ho Chi Minh trail.

Well, it is evident that part of the problem was decreasing support for any American involvement. Perhaps it is an actual case of a stab in the back by antiwar elements at home?

[Totara Flat Rifles]

In 1989 the last of the CT elements were dealt with. Malayasians are very proud of the fact that they did not have to ask for outside help at that time. Commomwealth forces played a very important part in surrounding corrdons and isolating the CT forces while Commonwealth SAS and Malayasian Ranger elements dealt the the CT. The local populace had the rule of law and Dr M as well as each states Royal families that Malays liked. Templars fortified Kampongs were only part of the process, the Feild Force ethnic Malay police defended those villages. It is to there credit that with reserves 25 battalions of RMR could be called upon today and Malayasia still values the 5 power defence agreement. Vietnam comparisions would only work if the administration was less corrupt and there was a rule of law!

[Riain]

I've just finished read about the Battle of Coral, the largest battle fought by Australians in Vietnam. On the first night of the month long campaign the NVA actually overran a mortar position and captured a howitzer for several hours, this howitzer is on display at the Australian War Memorial. The situation was so intense that Australian tanks were deployed in battle for the first time since WW2 and the US Corps artillery was firing on the orders of 161 New Zealand battery. One US 8" battery rang 1ATF HQ at about 4am the first night and reported that they alone had already fired 300 rounds in support of the 2 battalions, and that there was plenty more where that came from.

I defy anyone to find an incident in the Malayan Emergency or Indonesian Confrontation which required tanks to assault bunker complexes or Corps meduim and heavy artillery batteries firing hundreds of rounds in a single night. If anyone can then we can learn a lesson by comparing the two wars, but if we can't then they are chalk and cheese.

[Totara Flat Rifles]

161 battery was issuing divisional fire missions and also accounted for every round from its battery cost accounted for and paid for by the NZ taxpayer (they did not have to pay for the divisional fire mission a least!) Also the NVA didn't attck the ATF after that with regimental units as they were aware of what the units arty could do (Danger Fire Close)

[Riain]

At Long Tan the arty observer with D coy was a Kiwi, 1ATF arty was firing regimental missions and fired over 3000 rounds that afternoon, as well as directing divisional fire.

Its an interesting point you raise about NZ paying for their own war. As I understand it Australia and New Zealand were unique among the Allies in Vietnam in that we paid for our own contribution to the war.

[Totara Flat Rifles]

Anytime anywhere anyhow don't tangle with mates

[elkarlo]

The real British success in the Malayan emergency was preventing the situation from escalating to an all out war, keeping it to an annoying insurgency. It took the Brits years but they graduly squeezed the life out of the enemy. The British tactics helped ensure that the communist guerilla's were never more than small groups of activists and this stopped them growing in strength.

By the time the US entered the Vietnam war, the Viet Cong were already launching battalion sized attacks against targets, the conflict had already escalated beyond a Malayan type situation, and Malayan type tactics were no use in this "war zone"


This, as well as the fact hat Malaysia can be easily isolated from resupply, while Vietnam can not be. The French never could, and in fact they basically didnt control the border with China at all after 1949.