Newsinger - British counterinsurgency: from Palestine to Northern Ireland

British Counterinsurgency

British Counterinsurgency

2nd Edition

John Newsinger

John Newsinger 2015

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First published 2015 by
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ISBN: 9780230298231 ISBN: 9780230298248

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To Jack Newsinger (192182) and Mary Newsinger (19252015)

Contents

Introduction to the 2nd Edition

When this book was first published in 2002, the Introduction commented on how the major counterinsurgency campaigns that the British state had waged in Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, South Yemen, Dhofar and Northern Ireland since 1945 had produced a largely celebratory literature. The general argument of this literature was that Britains campaigns had been conducted with considerable success. This contrasted with the French experience in Indo-China and Algeria, with the Dutch in Indonesia, with the Portuguese in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau, with the Americans in Vietnam and with the Russians in Afghanistan. The British, it was argued, knew how to conduct counterinsurgency campaigns and, moreover, conducted them without bringing dishonour on their cause through the use of massacre and torture. This was a distortion of the historical record. First of all, the post-war record included important defeats in Palestine and South Yemen, and included the British failure, despite overwhelming numerical and material superiority, to successfully destroy their opponents in Cyprus and Northern Ireland.

Another important point was that starting with the Labour government of 194551, the British took the decision to withdraw rather than confront full-scale rebellion and insurgency in any large, heavily populated Imperial territory. The decision to withdraw from India and Burma, for example, saved the British Empire from its Algeria, from its Vietnam, from its Afghanistan. If the Conservative Party had been returned to power in 1945, there is every likelihood that it would have provoked revolutionary war in India and Burma on a scale that would have completely dwarfed any of the colonial wars that actually did take place post-1945. These wars would certainly have ended in costly defeats. Moreover, the scale of the fighting would have inevitably ensured that they were accompanied by a level of atrocity such as that associated with the French war in Algeria and the American war in Vietnam. The British reputation for comparative restraint would have never taken off. The emphasis here is very much on the word comparative. The claim that the British waged counterinsurgency operations humanely, always practising the minimum use of force and seeking to win hearts and minds, was always a myth. But it was a myth that was given legs by the small scale of the wars that the British chose to fight, the weakness of their opponents and the corresponding low level of British casualties. Nevertheless, where necessary, considerable force was used, sometimes successfully, sometimes not; moreover, the war in Kenya, it is by now generally acknowledged, was conducted with a terrible severity by any standard, certainly comparable with the worst excesses of the French in Algeria or of the Americans in Vietnam. Indeed, a good case can be made that minimum force was generally interpreted by the British as allowing as much force as was considered necessary.

Success, partial success or failure in British counterinsurgency campaigning was not dependent on any supposed military superiority in waging these campaigns, but rather on the ability to establish a large enough political base among sections of the local population so as to enlist their support and assistance in the defeat of the insurgents. Put crudely, but nevertheless accurately, divide and rule remained the key to success in the wars that accompanied the end of the British Empire. The point is also worth making that Britains post-war counterinsurgency campaigns took place in a context of Imperial retreat, of admittedly often reluctant decolonisation but nevertheless still decolonisation.

It seems fair to say that when BritishCounterinsurgency was first published, the critical stance it took towards the post-1945 campaigns was very much a minority stance. This is no longer the case. Indeed, there is a new consensus today, one that is openly dismissive of the notion that the British were humane counterinsurgents practising minimum force, winning hearts and minds, or particularly successful. Instead, coercion has moved centre stage. As David French put it: The cornerstones of most British counter-insurgency campaigns were coercion and counter-terror, not kindness and economic development ... waging counter-insurgency operations by employing coercion and intimidation continued to be a mainstay of British practice after 1945.

What is also important, however, is to acknowledge the context within which this new consensus has emerged, a context that facilitated it and gave it more than academic credibility. Whereas the British counterinsurgency campaigns in Palestine, Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus and South Yemen could all be seen as fighting retreats, Tony Blairs New Labour government took the decision to effectively hand the British Army over to the United States for deployment in the American wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq. These were conflicts that no post-war British government would have participated in of its own volition. However, in order to further the so-called special relationship, the British government committed British troops to fight alongside the Americans in the War on Terror, an ideological construct intended to justify military action against governments the US regarded as threatening its interests. The British government and the British military wilfully surrendered their strategic judgement to the most incompetent post-war US administration led by the worst post-war President; indeed, many would say this involved one of the most incompetent US administrations ever and arguably the worst President ever.