Small Wars, Faraway Places: Global Insurrection and the Making of the Modern World, 1945-1965

by Burleigh, Michael

  7. James Chace, Acheson. The Secretary of State Who Created the American World (New York 1998), pp. 272–9.

  8. Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas, The Wise Men. Six Friends and the World They Made (New York 1986), p. 497.

  9. Beisner, Acheson, pp. 329–30.

  10. Robert Dallek, The Lost Peace. Leadership in a Time of Horror and Hope 1945–1953 (New York 2010), p. 311.

  11. Suh, Kim Il Sung, p. 121.

  12. Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC 2001), p. 87.

  13. Eric F. Goldman, The Crucial Decade – and After. America 1945–1960 (New York 1960), pp. 146ff.

  14. Dallek, The Lost Peace, p. 315.

  15. Goldman, The Crucial Decade, p. 173.

  16. David Halberstam, The Coldest Winter. America and the Korean War (London 2008), p. 136.

  17. William Manchester, American Caesar. Douglas MacArthur 1880–1964 (New York 1978), pp. 468ff, for vivid characterizations of the General.

  18. Goldman, The Crucial Decade, p. 177.

  19. Halberstam, The Coldest Winter, p. 143.

  20. Manchester, American Caesar, p. 576.

  21. Dallek, The Lost Peace, pp. 323–4.

  22. Goldman, The Crucial Decade, p. 178.

  23. Cumings, The Korean War, pp. 190–9, for details of southern atrocities.

  24. Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War, p. 88.

  25. Yu Bin, ‘What China Learned from its “Forgotten War” in Korea’, in Mark Ryan, David Finkelstein and Michael McDevitt (eds), Chinese Warfighting. The PLA Experience since 1949 (Armonk, NY 2003), p. 124. I am grateful to Frank Dikötter for this and other guidance about China.

  26. Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao. The Unknown Story (London 2006), p. 442.

  27. Halberstam, The Coldest Winter, p. 402.

  28. Ibid., p. 383.

  29. Max Hastings, The Korean War (London 1987), p. 390.

  30. Shu Guang Zhang, ‘Command, Control and the PLA’s Offensive Campaigns in Korea 1950–1951’, in Ryan, Finkelstein and McDevitt (eds), Chinese Warfighting, p. 108.

  31. For the Chinese army see Russell Spurr, Enter the Dragon. China at War in Korea (London 1989).

  32. George Mitchell, Matthew B. Ridgway. Soldier, Statesman, Scholar, Citizen (Mechanicsburg, Pa 2002), p. 51.

  33. Reginald Thompson, Cry Korea. The Korean War. A Reporter’s Notebook (London 1951, reprinted 2009), p. 309.

  34. Hastings, The Korean War, p. 266.

  35. Ibid., pp. 257–72, gives the clearest account of these changes in policy and the role of the British in shaping them.

  36. Mitchell, Matthew B. Ridgway, p. 56.

  37. Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War, pp. 95–6, for this important theme.

  38. For these observations see Zhang, ‘Command, Control and the PLA’s Offensive Campaigns in Korea’, pp. 108–14.

  39. For detailed descriptions of these battles see Kenneth Hamburger, Leadership in the Crucible (College Station, Tex. 2003).

  40. Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War, pp. 97–9.

  41. Kathryn Weathersby, ‘Stalin, Mao and the End of the Korean War’, in Odd Arne Westad (ed.), Brothers in Arms. The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance 1945–1963 (Stanford, Calif. 1998), pp. 105–6.

  42. Goldman, The Crucial Decade, p. 186.

  43. Cumings, The Korean War, p. 159.

  44. Mark O’Neill, ‘Soviet Involvement in the Korean War: A New View from the Soviet-era Archives’, Magazine of History (2000) 14, pp. 1–10.

  45. Jonathan Fenby, The Penguin History of Modern China. The Fall and Rise of a Great Power 1850–2008 (London 2008), pp. 369–70.

  46. Dallek, The Lost Peace, p. 335.

  47. Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower, vol. 2: The President 1952–1969 (New York/London 1984), pp. 30–5.

  48. Dallek, The Lost Peace, p. 355.

  49. Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War, p. 116.

  50. Hastings, The Korean War, p. 490.

  51. Robert McMahon, The Limits of Empire. The United States and Southeast Asia since World War II (New York 1999), pp. 44ff.

  6: ‘Emergency’: Malaya

  1. A. J. Stockwell, ‘The United States and Britain’s Decolonization of Malaya 1942–57’, in David Ryan and Victor Pungong (eds), The United States and Decolonization. Power and Freedom (New York 2000), p. 193.

  2. Harry Miller, Menace in Malaya (London 1954), p. 41. This account of the early years of the Emergency by a Straits Times reporter is exceptionally useful.

  3. As plausibly maintained by Anthony Short, In Pursuit of Mountain Rats. The Communist Insurrection in Malaya (London 1975, reprinted Singapore 2000), p. 34.

  4. Miller, Menace in Malaya, p. 60.

  5. Margaret Shennan, Out in the Midday Sun. The British in Malaya 1880–1960 (London 2000) is a fair-minded account of the European contribution to Malaya’s development.

  6. Ibid., pp. 167–8, for examples, and David Cannadine, Ornamentalism. How the British Saw their Empire (London 2002).

  7. Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon, Imperial Endgame. Britain’s Dirty Wars and the End of Empire (London 2011), p. 151, for these statistics.

  8. A. J. Stockwell, ‘Imperialism and Nationalism in South-East Asia’, in Judith Brown and Wm Roger Louis (eds), The Twentieth Century (Oxford 1999), vol. 4 of The Oxford History of the British Empire, p. 470.

  9. For this important point see Karl Hack, ‘“Iron Claws on Malaya”: The Historiography of the Malayan Emergency’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (1999) 30, pp. 118–19.

  10. T. N. Harper, The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya (Cambridge 1999), pp. 94ff.

  11. Notably David French, The British Way in Counter-Insurgency 1945–1967 (Oxford 2011) is exemplary.

  12. See the important discussion by Karl Hack, ‘The Malayan Emergency as Counter-Insurgency Paradigm’, Journal of Strategic Studies (2009) 32, pp. 383–414.

  13. Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Wars. The End of Britain’s Asian Empire (London 2007) p. 173, quoting Howe.

  14. Short, In Pursuit of Mountain Rats, pp. 80–1.

  15. Shennan, Out in the Midday Sun, p. 315.

  16. Noel Barber, The War of the Running Dogs. How Malaya Defeated the Communist Guerrillas 1948–1960 (London 1971), pp. 20ff.

  17. Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781–1997 (London 2007), p. 454, and Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, pp. 449–56, for the most detailed and fair-minded account.

  18. Miller, Menace in Malaya, p. 86.

  19. French, The British Way in Counter-Insurgency, pp. 75–82, has a good discussion of the legal framework.

  20. A. J. Stockwell, ‘Sir (Gerard) Edward James Gent’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online edition, pp. 1–3.

  21. Meaning nursemaids, house servants, drivers and water carriers in English.

  22. Robert Thompson, Make for the Hills. Memoirs of Far Eastern Wars (London 1989), p. 88.

  23. Joshua Rovner, ‘The Heroes of COIN’, Orbis. A Journal of World Affairs (2012) 56, pp. 215–32, is an important corrective to the inspired-hero view of counter-insurgency warfare.

  24. David Cesarani, Major Farran’s Hat. Murder, Scandal and Britain’s War against Jewish Terrorism 1945–1948 (London 2009), pp. 28ff.

  25. Miller, Menace in Malaya, p. 89.

  26. French, The British Way in Counter-Insurgency, p. 97.

  27. Leon Comber, Malaya’s Secret Police 1945–60. The Role of the Special Branch in the Malayan Emergency (Monash, Australia 2008), p. 84.

  28. Han Suyin, My House Has Two Doors (London 1982), p. 81.

  29. Richard Miers, Shoot to Kill (London 1959), pp. 79ff.

  30. Ibid., pp. 152–3.

  31. Barber, The War of the Running Dogs, p. 143.

  32. A. F.
Derry, Emergency in Malaya. The Psychological Dimension (Latimer 1982), p. 6.

  33. Miller, Menace in Malaya, pp. 181–6.

  34. Hack, ‘Malayan Emergency’, p. 390.

  35. John Cloake, Templer. Tiger of Malaya. The Life of Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer (London 1985), p. 201.

  36. Ibid., p. 204.

  37. Phillip Deery, ‘The Terminology of Terrorism: Malaya 1948–52’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies (2003) 34, p. 246.

  38. Cloake, Templer, pp. 226–7.

  39. Ibid., p. 262.

  40. Jeremy Lewis, Shades of Greene. One Generation of an English Family (London 2010), pp. 364–71.

  41. Stockwell, ‘The US and Britain’s Decolonization of Malaya’, pp. 198–9.

  42. Cloake, Templer, p. 223.

  43. Shennan, Out in the Midday Sun, pp. 329–30.

  44. Cloake, Templer, p. 263.

  45. John Oldfield, The Green Howards in Malaya (1949–1952). The Story of a Post-war Tour of Duty by a Battalion of the Line (Aldershot 1953), pp. 50–1.

  46. Short, In Pursuit of Mountain Rats, pp. 349–50. For a vivid account by an officer in the South Wales Borderers who served in Malaya from 1955 onwards see Miers, Shoot to Kill.

  47. Grob-Fitzgibbon, Imperial Endgame, pp. 198–201.

  48. Miller, Menace in Malaya, p. 225.

  49. For examples see LHMAKCL Stockwell Papers 7/6, leaflet No. 1579 dated 17 February 1953, ‘Communist Reward’. Also online examples at National Malaya and Borneo Veterans’ Association UK (http//www.nmbva.co.uk/).

  50. Barber, The War of the Running Dogs, pp. 190ff.

  51. Miers, Shoot to Kill, pp. 79–90, for the regime in Communist camps.

  52. Short, In Pursuit of Mountain Rats, pp. 459ff.

  53. French, The British Way in Counter-Insurgency, pp. 215–18, refutes the idea that the British army had a better learning curve than the Americans. Contemporary American military experts like Thomas Nagl are unduly respectful of British exemplars.

  54. These matters are expertly discussed by Karl Hack in Octavian Manea, ‘Setting the Record Straight on Malayan Counterinsurgency Strategy: Interview with Karl Hack’, Small Wars Journal, 11 February 2011.

  7: By Huk or by Crook: The Philippines

  1. Benedict Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion. A Study of Peasant Revolt in the Philippines (Berkeley, Calif. 1977, reprinted Lanham, Md 2002), p. 53.

  2. Ibid., p. 42.

  3. Vina A. Lanzona, Amazons of the Huk Rebellion. Gender, Sex and Revolution in the Philippines (Madison, Wis. 2009), p. 7.

  4. On the origins of the Huks see Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion, pp. 26ff.

  5. LHMAKCL M/F 515 OSS/State Department Intelligence and Research reports, Part II ‘Postwar Japan, Korea and Southeast Asia’, for the plight of the Philippines in 1945.

  6. Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion, p. 113.

  7. H. W. Brands, Bound to Empire. The United States and the Philippines (New York 1992), p. 239.

  8. Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion, p. 147.

  9. Douglas Macdonald, Adventures in Chaos. American Intervention for Reform in the Third World (Cambridge, Mass. 1992), pp. 142–3.

  10. For these details see Cecil B. Currey, Edward Lansdale. The Unquiet American (Boston 1988, reprinted Washington, DC 1998), pp. 21–4.

  11. Jane C. Loeffler, The Architecture of Diplomacy. Building America’s Embassies (New York 1998, revised edn Princeton 2011), p. 42, with information from someone familiar with the facts.

  12. Ibid., pp. 70–2.

  13. Lanzona, Amazons of the Huk Rebellion, pp. 144–56.

  14. Lawrence Greenberg, The Hukbalahap Insurrection. A Case Study of a Successful Anti-Insurgency Operation in the Philippines 1946–1955 (Washington, DC 1987), p. 53.

  15. Macdonald, Adventures in Chaos, p. 152.

  16. Currey, Edward Lansdale, p. 91.

  17. Edward Geary Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars. An American’s Mission to Southeast Asia (New York 1972, reprinted 1991), pp. 36ff, gives the flavour of their relationship.

  18. Jonathan Nashel, Edward Lansdale’s Cold War (Amherst, Mass. 2005), pp. 27ff, is good on Lansdale’s public relations background.

  19. Greenberg, The Hukbalahap Insurrection, p. 86.

  20. Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars, p. 75.

  21. Currey, Edward Lansdale, p. 101.

  22. Ibid., pp. 102–3.

  23. Ibid., pp. 98–100.

  24. Lanzona, Amazons of the Huk Rebellion, pp. 138–42.

  25. Macdonald, Adventures in Chaos, p. 134.

  26. Nashel, Edward Lansdale’s Cold War, p. 34.

  27. Macdonald, Adventures in Chaos, p. 177.

  28. Brands, Bound to Empire, pp. 251–2.

  29. Lanzona, Amazons of the Huk Rebellion, p. 262.

  30. Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion, p. 245.

  8: Parachute the Escargot: Indochina

  1. Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill, NC 2001), p. 124.

  2. William J. Duiker, Ho Chi Minh. A Life (New York 2000), pp. 421–3.

  3. Howard R. Simpson, Tiger in the Barbed Wire. An American in Vietnam 1952–1991 (Washington, DC 1992), pp. 60–1. This memoir by a former US Foreign Service officer is easily the most subtle account of the war in Indochina.

  4. See the vivid accounts in Norman Lewis, A Dragon Apparent. Travels in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam (London 1951, new edn 2003), p. 35.

  5. Bernard Fall, Street without Joy. The French Debacle in Indochina (Harrisburg, Pa 1961, reprinted Mechanicsburg, Pa 2005), pp. 254–5.

  6. George C. Herring, America’s Longest War. The United States and Vietnam 1950–1975 (Boston 2002), p. 24.

  7. Andrew Rotter, ‘Chronicle of a War Foretold: The United States and Vietnam 1945–54’, in Mark Atwood Lawrence and Frederik Logevall (eds), The First Vietnam War. Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, Mass. 2008), p. 300.

  8. ‘The French MacArthur’, Time Magazine, 24 September 1951.

  9. Fall, Street without Joy, pp. 39–40.

  10. Peter Macdonald, Giap. The Victor in Vietnam (London 1993), pp. 100–1.

  11. Anthony Clayton, The Wars of French Decolonization (London 1994), p. 61.

  12. Marilyn B. Young, ‘“The Same Struggle for Liberty”: Korea and Vietnam’, in Lawrence and Logevall (eds), The First Vietnam War, pp. 207–11.

  13. Martin Windrow, The Last Valley. Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam (London 2005), p. 117.

  14. Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War, pp. 132ff.

  15. Lewis, A Dragon Apparent, p. 317. Lewis spent some time with an active Viet Minh unit which operated in marshes near Saigon.

  16. Simpson, Tiger in the Barbed Wire, pp. 25–6.

  17. Ibid., pp. 109–10.

  18. Ibid., p. 18.

  19. Ibid., p. 32.

  20. ‘We Must Attack’, Time, 28 September 1953, for a profile of Navarre.

  21. Simpson, Tiger in the Barbed Wire, p. 83.

  22. Ibid., pp. 90–1.

  23. Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War, p. 134.

  24. Fall, Street without Joy, pp. 62–3.

  25. Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War, p. 134.

  26. Windrow, The Last Valley, p. 429.

  27. Peter Grose, Allen Dulles. Spymaster. The Life and Times of the First Civilian Director of the CIA (London 2006; first published as Gentleman Spy. The Life of Allen Dulles, London 1995), p. 410

  28. Andrew Rotter, ‘Chronicle of a War Foretold’, p. 303.

  29. A. J. Langguth, Our Vietnam. The War 1954–1975 (New York 2000), pp. 77–8.

  30. Herring, America’s Longest War, p. 47.

  31. Simpson, Tiger in the Barbed Wire, p. 127.

  32. Robert McMahon, The Limits of Empire. The United States and Southeast Asia
since World War II (New York 1999), p. 67.

  33. Frances Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake. The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam (New York 1972), pp. 83–4.

  34. Kathryn Statler, ‘After Geneva: The French Presence in Vietnam, 1954–1963’, in Lawrence and Logevall (eds), The First Vietnam War, pp. 270–2.

  35. McMahon, The Limits of Empire, pp. 76–7.

  36. Kathryn Statler, ‘Building a Colony: South Vietnam and the Eisenhower Administration 1953–61’, in Kathryn Statler and Andrew Johns (eds), The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War (Oxford 2006), especially pp. 107–13.

  37. Simpson, Tiger in the Barbed Wire, p. 79.

  38. Ibid., p. 152.

  39. Edward Geary Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars. An American’s Mission to Southeast Asia (New York 1972, reprinted 1991), pp. 232–3.

  40. Fitzgerald, Fire in the Lake, pp. 97–8.

  41. Cecil B. Currey, Edward Lansdale. The Unquiet American (Boston 1988, reprinted Washington, DC 1998), p. 182.

  42. Langguth, Our Vietnam, p. 99.

  43. Stanley Karnow, Vietnam. A History (London 1983, revised edn 1994), pp. 242–56, is excellent on this phase of the Diem regime.

  44. Statler, ‘Building a Colony: South Vietnam and the Eisenhower Administration’, pp. 103–7.

  45. Jonathan Nashel, Edward Lansdale’s Cold War (Amherst, Mass. 2005), pp. 149ff.

  9: Sometimes Special Relationship

  1. Carlo D’Este, Eisenhower. Allied Supreme Commander (London 2004).

  2. Stephen Ambrose, Eisenhower, vol. 1: Soldier, General of the Army, President Elect 1890–1952 (New York/London 1983), p. 430.

  3. Ibid., pp. 514–15 and 525.

  4. Ibid., p. 529.

  5. George W. Ball, The Past Has Another Pattern. Memoirs (New York 1982), p. 114. Ball was a Stevenson campaign aide in 1952 and 1956.

  6. Ibid., p. 129.

  7. J. Ronald Oakley, God’s Country. America in the Fifties (New York 1990), p. 131.

  8. Emmet John Hughes, The Ordeal of Power. A Political Memoir of the Eisenhower Years (New York 1963), pp. 74–7.

  9. Richard Challener, ‘The Moralist as Pragmatist: John Foster Dulles as Cold War Strategist’, in Gordon Craig and Francis Loewenheim (eds), The Diplomats 1939–1979 (Princeton 1994), p. 143.