British Counter-Insurgency from Malaya to Iraq
Dec 2007, Vol. 152, No. 6
By Hew Strachan
Thirty years ago at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, a favourite spoof exam question dreamt up (but never set) by the lecturers in war studies was ‘Why did Britain succeed in Malaya and the US fail in Vietnam?’ The absurdity of the question (and its contemporary equivalents) highlights the fact that such debates, and the assumptions that underpin them, run through much of the discussion in Britain about counter-insurgency. They have an ironic and interesting cause: increasingly, it is the Americans who encourage us to ask these questions. They, more than the British, have held up Malaya as a model.
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By Hew Strachan
Thirty years ago at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, a favourite spoof exam question dreamt up (but never set) by the lecturers in war studies was ‘Why did Britain succeed in Malaya and the US fail in Vietnam?’ The absurdity of the question (and its contemporary equivalents) highlights the fact that such debates, and the assumptions that underpin them, run through much of the discussion in Britain about counter-insurgency. They have an ironic and interesting cause: increasingly, it is the Americans who encourage us to ask these questions. They, more than the British, have held up Malaya as a model.
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