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

It has also been argued that notwithstanding General Petraeus’ influence, the ‘intellectual
touchstone’ of FM3-24 was the work of David Galula, a French military officer and scholar who
was influential in developing the theory and practice of modern counterinsurgency warfare,
including through his experience in Algeria. 23 As noted by one of FM3-24’s authors, Lieutenant
Colonel John Nagl, ‘of the many books that were influential in the writing of Field Manual 3-24,
perhaps none was as important as David Galula’s Counterinsurgency Warfare’. 24
A 2009 assessment of FM3-24 by Colonel Gian Gentile, a prominent critic of the perceived
dominance of counterinsurgency thinking within the US Army, also attributes more influence
to Galula than Malaya, while other informed commentators have similarly argued that the
roots of FM3-24 are ‘selective reading of the seminal counterinsurgency works by Mao, David
Galula, Robert Thompson and Frank Kitson’, of which Galula was the most influential. 25
United Kingdom
The current British Army counterinsurgency doctrine is Countering Insurgency (Army Field
Manual 10), published in 2009, which is drawn largely from an amalgam of British campaigns
over the last 60 years, particularly Malaya, Oman, Northern Ireland, Iraq and Afghanistan. 26 This
iteration appears to have answered criticisms that the previous (2001) version was too ‘Malaya
and Northern Ireland focused in the distillation of lessons learned’ 27 and that contemporary
doctrine ‘needs to be more firmly tethered to broader historical context if it is to form valuable
guidance for future operations’. 28
The 2001 version articulated six principles of counterinsurgency operations which almost
mirrored the Malaya-related principles expounded by Sir Robert Thompson who, as a serving
officer, was on the staff of the British Director of Operations during the Emergency. However,
the current edition has ten principles that seem to be drawn from a combination of the old
principles, complemented by the more recent experiences of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as
a review of contemporary US doctrine. 29
The bulk of Army Field Manual 10’s reference to the Malayan Emergency is contained in ‘Case
Study 5: A Classic Campaign: Malaya 1948-1960’, which is one of seven in the publication. 30
On this basis, it would seem that the influence of the Malayan Emergency in UK doctrine has
decreased and that, while it may have been disproportionate in the 2001 edition, that is not
so for the current version.
The suggestion of disproportionate Malayan Emergency influence
If the current US doctrine is largely based on the experience in Iraq and Galula’s theories, more
than any other influences, and current British doctrine has been broadened to encompass a
wide variety of operations, including ‘important lessons from Iraq from both the US and UK
perspectives’, 31 where does the suggestion come from that the Malayan Emergency has had a
disproportionate influence on the development of counterinsurgency doctrine
A plausible explanation is that it derives from the notion that the concept of ‘winning the
hearts and minds’—originally attributed to the assertion by Sir Gerald Templer, UK High
Commissioner and Director of Operations in Malaya, that ‘the answer lies not in pouring more
soldiers into the jungle but in the hearts and minds of the Malayan people’—has unbalanced
counterinsurgency doctrine. 32
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