ISSUE 191 : Jul/Aug - 2013 - Australian Defence Force Journal

historical enquiry—in width, depth and context—the Malayan Emergency does indeed ‘have
important lessons’ that are directly relevant to the contemporary student of war. 69
Major Giles Cornelia has served with 3rd Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment (Parachute)
in two postings and instructed at the Royal Military College-Duntroon. He has also served
as a Staff Officer in Headquarters Royal Military College of Australia, Aide-de-Camp to the
Commander 1st Division, and Chief of Plans in Headquarters Combined Team Uruzgan. He
is a graduate of the 2012 Australian Command and Staff College course at the Australian
Defence College. His current appointment is Career Advisor Infantry-A at the Directorate of
Officer Career Management-Army. Major Cornelia has deployed on operations in East Timor
and Afghanistan.
NOTES
1. This is an edited version of a paper, titled ‘It has been suggested that the Malayan Emergency
has had a disproportionate influence on the development of COIN doctrine. Do you agree Is the
experience of Malaya still relevant after sixty years’, submitted by the author while attending the
Australian Command and Staff College in 2012.
2. ‘Doctrine is the formal expression of current military thought. It is typically derived from a mixture
of operational experience, observation and applied thought, and describes the fundamentals,
principles and preconditions of military operations at the different operational levels’: see, for
example, Australian Army, Land Warfare Doctrine 1 (LWD1) – The Fundamentals of Land Warfare,
Department of Defence: Canberra, 2002, p. 103.
3. J.S. Corum, Training Indigenous Forces in Counterinsurgency: a tale of two insurgencies, Strategic
Studies Institute, US Army War College: Carlisle, 2006, p. 3.
4. In particular these two books: R. Thompson, Defeating Communist Insurgency, Chatto and Windus:
London, 1966 and F. Kitson, Low Intensity Operations, Stackpole Books: Harrisburg, 1971.
5. As argued by Lieutenant Colonel Jan Gleiman: ‘The temptation to cherry pick the history of
counterinsurgency campaigns is great and must be avoided by the serious scholar, student and
would be practitioner…. “Cookie-cutter” templates … cannot apply to either insurgencies or
counterinsurgency doctrine’: see J. Gleiman, The Organizational Imperative: theory and history on
unity of effort in counterinsurgency campaigns, CGSC Foundation Press: Fort Leavenworth, 2011,
p. 9.
6. ‘No man ever reached to excellence in any one art or profession without having passed through
the slow and painful process of study and preparation’. Attributed to the Roman poet Horace and
quoted in M.E. Dempsey, ‘Joint Education White Paper’, US Joint Chiefs of Staff: see accessed 12 September 2012.
7. M. Howard, ‘The Use and Abuse of Military History’, Journal of the Royal United Services [RUSI]
Institution, Vol. 107, February 1962, pp. 4-10: accessed 8 September 2012.
8. Given the classification of current Australian counterinsurgency doctrine, the relevant manual is not
discussed in this article.
9. British Army, The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya, Second Edition, HQ Malaya
Command: Kuala Lumpur, 1954.
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