War From the Ground Up (45 page)

3
. J. A. C. Mackie,
Konfrontasi: The Indonesi-Malaysia Dispute 1963–1966
(London: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 125.

4
. Leifer notes how Dr Subandrio, in the same speech of 20 January 1963, ‘reasserted the primacy in political life of Nasakom (the acronym which endorsed a harmonious integration of nationalist, religious and communist forces), without which Indonesia's unity was said to be impossible'. Michael Leifer,
Indonesia's Foreign Policy
(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983), pp. 62, 79–82.

5
. This period is well covered in Matthew Jones,
Conflict and Confrontation in South East Asia, 1961–65
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Chapters 2 and 3 deal with the formation of Malaysia prior to Malaysia Day on 16 September 1963.

6
. Matthew Jones offers an amusing vignette here. Major Roderick Walker, the assistant British military attaché in Jakarta and SAS officer, marched around the embassy in uniform playing the bagpipes while the crowd threw a barrage
of stones in ‘a bizarre example of late imperial gusto'. Jones,
Conflict and Confrontation
, p. 196.

7
. Ibid., pp. 34–7.

8
. Jones,
Conflict and Confrontation
, p. 60.

9
. ‘Policy towards Indonesia', 6 January 1964, PRO: CP(64)5 CAB/129/116.

10
. The Anglo-Malaysian Defence Agreement of 1957 allowed Britain to station troops on Malaysian soil.

11
. ‘Policy towards Indonesia', 6 January 1964, PRO: CP(64)5 CAB/129/116, p. 3727.

12
. Although Labour won the October 1964 General Election, they continued with the same policy with regard to the Indonesian Confrontation, at least until the withdrawal east of Suez.

13
. John Subritzky,
Confronting Sukarno
(London: Macmillan, 2000), ch.5, pp. 95–114.

14
. Cabinet meeting, 18 February 1964, PRO: CM(64)12, CAB128/38.

15
. Subritzky,
Confronting Sukarno
, p. 104.

16
. Jones,
Conflict and Confrontation
, p. 293.

17
. Walker, ‘How Borneo Was Won', p. 1.

18
. Note from Edward Peck, Assistant Under-secretary of State at Foreign Office 1961–6, note to Secretary of State, 19 October 1964, PRO: FO371/176484, IM 1192/15. See also ‘British Policy towards Indonesia', April 1965, PRO: FO371/176484, IM 1051/7.

19
. Paper from British High Commissioner in Malaysia to the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations entitled ‘Malaysia: Confrontation', 11 December 1963, PRO: FO371/175065, p. 99.

20
. Walter Walker,
Fighting On
(London: New Millennium,1997), p. 112.

21
. Telephone interview with Lord Denis Healey (2005); he was the Minister of Defence during the Wilson government. Note that Walker was appointed during the previous administration, but continued to serve under the Labour government.

22
. Walker, ‘How Borneo Was Won', p. 3.

23
. Tom Pockock,
Fighting General
(London: Collins, 1973), p. 173.

24
. Walker,
Fighting On
, p. 150.

25
. Walker,
Fighting On
, p. 164.

26
. Interview with Brigadier (retired) Christopher Bullock, then curator of the Gurkha Museum, 1 July 2004.

27
. Walker, ‘How Borneo Was Won', p. 387.

28
. Interview with General (retired) Gareth Johnson, Gurkha company commander during Confrontation, 2 July 2004.

29
. Interview with the late Lt. Col. (retired) John Woodhouse, commander of 22 SAS during the Indonesian Confrontation, 7 January 2005.

30
. Walker,
Fighting On
, p. 148.

31
. Pockock,
Fighting General
, p. 196–7.

32
. Note from Secretary of Defence to the Prime Minister, 2 November 1964, PRO: FO371/176484, IM1192/25–7.

33
. Major General George Lea quoted in Peter Dickens,
SAS: The Jungle Frontier: 22 Special Air Service in the Borneo Campaign 1963–66
(London: Arms and Armour Press, 1983), p. 194.

34
. Interview with Brigadier (retired) Christopher Bullock.

35
. Records of the 10
^th
Gurkha Rifles, Gurkha Museum, Winchester.

36
. Records of the 2
^nd
Gurkha Rifles, Gurkha Museum, Winchester.

37
. Christopher Bullock,
Journeys Hazardous: Gurkha Clandestine Operations in Borneo 1965
(Eastbourne: Antony Rowe, 1994).

38
. 2/2 Gurkha Rifles Battalion Records 1964–6, Gurkha Museum, Winchester. Sketch by Sebastian Ballard.

39
. Note from Colonel N. H. N. Wild to the Foreign Office on requirements for the Indonesian Confrontation identified by the Chiefs of Staff Committee on 29 September 1964, PRO: FO371/176484, IM1192/7.

40
. Note from the Chiefs of Staff Committee to the Secretary of Defence, ‘Dispatch of V-Bombers to Far East', 27 November 1963, PRO: DEFE7/2374.

41
. Circular paper from Peck, 23 October 1964, PRO FO 371/176484 IM 1192/20.

42
. Plan ‘Mason' was formerly known as plan ‘Shalstone'.

43
. Defence and Oversees Policy Committee minutes, 16 November 1964, PRO: FO371/176484, IM1192/37. See also letter from A. A. Golds on plans Addington and Mason dated 3 December 1964, where he details how to synchronise the political action associated with Mason: PRO: FO371/176485, IM1192/62.

44
. Paper by Peck, October 1964, PRO: FO371/176484, IM1192/15, p. 8.

45
.
Daily Mirror
, 9 November 1964;
The Times
, 8 November 1964.

46
. Jones,
Conflict and Confrontation
, p. 246.

47
. Walter Walker, ‘How Borneo Was Won'.

48
. Robert Osgood,
Limited War
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957).

49
. Christopher Tuck, ‘Borneo, Counter-Insurgency and War Termination',
Defence Studies
, vol. 10, Issue 1–2 (March-June 2010), pp. 106–25.

1
. Captain Wayne Porter, USN, and Colonel Mark Mykleby, USMC, with a Preface by Anne-Marie Slaughter,
A National Strategic Narrative
(Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars paper, 2011), p. 10.

2
. David Kilcullen, ‘Twenty-Eight Articles, Fundamentals of Company-level Counterinsurgency',
Small Wars Journal
(Edn 1, 2006), p. 7, paragraph 21.

3
. Charles Farr, ‘Counter Terrorism Strategy in the UK: Are We Winning?', Lecture given at the Global Strategy Forum, London, 6 July 2011.

4
. I am grateful to Lt. Col. Gerald Strickland for this illustration, a version of which he presented at the Royal United Services Institute conference on Counter-Insurgency Tactics, London, 8–9 December 2010.

5
.
Thirteen Days
(2000), based on the Book by Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow (eds),
The Kennedy Tapes—Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).

6
. Clausewitz argued that the eighteenth-century emphasis on ‘strategic manoeuvre' was overly dependent on the psychological component at the expense of its underlying physical reality: ‘A general such as Bonaparte could ruthlessly cut through all his enemies' strategic plans in search of battle'. Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 6, ch. 8, Howard and Paret, p. 386.

7
. Ibid., Book 6, ch. 3, p. 363.

8
. Ibid., Book 2, ch. 2, p. 143.

9
. Ibid., Book 6, ch. 29, p. 499.

10
. Ibid., Book 6, ch. 30, pp. 509–10. This idea is similar that of the highly influential naval theorist, Alfred Thayer Mahan, who wrote at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He argued in his work on sea power that in naval warfare when opposing forces are in contact, that is ‘tactical'; everything else is ‘strategic'.

11
. Ibid., Book 4, ch. 4, p. 232.

12
. Namely Heinz Guderian and Erwin Rommel, who were following an idea that Frieser suggests was originally Erich von Manstein's.

13
. Karl-Heinz Frieser,
The Blitzkrieg Legend: The 1940 Campaign in the West
, translated by John T. Greenwood (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2005), p. 344.

14
. Karl-Heinz Frieser,
The Blitzkrieg Legend
, p. 326.

15
. David Kilcullen,
The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One
(London: Hurst, 2009), pp. 299–300.

16
. John Keegan,
The Face of Battle
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1976).

17
. Ahmed Rashid, ‘The Way Out of Afghanistan',
New York Times Review of Books
, vol. LVIII, no. 1 (January-February 2011), p. 19.

18
. Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 3, ch. 17, p. 220.

19
. Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 1, ch. 3, p. 104.

20
. Ibid., Book 1, ch. 3, p. 119.

21
. Ibid., Book 2, ch. 2, p. 137; Book 8, ch. 1, p. 578.

22
. Ibid., Book 4, ch. 10, p. 254.

23
.
Napoleon's Maxims of War, With Notes by General Burnod
, first published 1827, translated by Lieutenant General Sir G. C. D'Aguilar (Philadelphia: David McKay, 1902), Maxim 73.

24
. Ibid., Maxim 62.

25
. Ibid., Maxim 61.

26
. Ibid., Maxim 60.

27
. Ibid., Maxim 58.

28
. Ibid., Maxim 56.

29
. Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 6, ch. 30, Howard and Paret, p. 514.

30
. On
geist
in Clausewitz, see Hew Strachan,
On War, A Biography
, p. 127. Peter Paret writes that in one of the manuscripts Clausewitz wrote in 1812, next to a comment on the need to understand the character of supreme command, Clausewitz had himself noted: ‘Wallenstein. Schiller'. (Peter Paret,
The Cognitive Challenge of War
, p. 54. Paret cites Clausewitz,
Schriften-Aufsätze-Studien-Briefe
, ed. Werner Hahlweg (Göttingen, 1966), 1:1700.) This makes an overt connection to what Paret sees as linkages inherent in Clausewitz's works between factors that are present in war, but have justification beyond it. This is one of the themes of Friedrich von Schiller's
Wallenstein
trilogy of plays (which Schiller had started writing in 1794); one of the protagonist's quotations from this play is, for example: ‘even in war, what ultimately matters is not war'; another line from the same character is: ‘for if war does not already cease in war, from where should peace return?' (Peter Paret,
The Cognitive Challenge of War
, p. 53. Paret cites Schiller,
Die Piccolomini
, act 1, scene 4.) Paret emphasises the connections between Clausewitz's writings and more broadly the ‘new emphasis in the arts on character, temperament and feeling', reflected in Clausewitz's works in the need ‘to bring emotional factors far beyond such matters as the soldiers' discipline and morale into the structural analysis of war'. (Ibid., pp. 56–63. Paret cites, for example, linkages with Franz von Kleist's play
Prinz Friedrich von Homburg
, written between 1809 and 1811.) Clausewitz experienced war first hand and was attuned to its reception in not just political but also in cultural terms. Hence his use of contemporary cultural reference points to inform his analysis of war is paralleled by the stress in his work in locating war not just in its political context, but in its cultural context.

31
. Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 8, ch. 2, p. 580.

32
. Ardant Du Picq,
Etudes sur le combat: Combat antique et moderne
. Translated into English as
Battle Studies
from the 8th edn in French by John Greely and Robert C. Cotton (New York: Macmillan, 1920). Cited by Hew Strachan, keynote paper at the Oxford University Changing Character of War Programme conference on
Post-Heroic Warfare
, March 2011.

33
. Anthony King, paper on ‘Cohesion in the Armed Forces' at the Oxford University Changing Character of War Programme conference on
Post-Heroic Warfare
, March 2011.

34
. Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 1, ch. 3, p. 112.

35
. Ibid., Book 1, ch. 3, p. 105. See also Book 3, ch. 16, p. 217.

36
. Ibid., Book 1, ch. 1, p. 81.

37
. Bernard Bailyn, quoted in Gordon S. Wood, ‘No Thanks for the Memories', a review of
The Whites of Their Eyes
by Jill Lepore,
New York Times Review of Books
, vol. LVIII, no. 1 (January-February 2011), p. 42.

38
. General Anthis served in Vietnam 1961–4. It is somewhat ironic in retrospect that he was the first recipient of the US Air Force Association's Citation of Honor Award for outstanding work in counter-insurgency in South East Asia.

39
. Neil Sheehan,
Bright Shining Lie
, p. 541.

40
. The exact number is not clear; this is
Time Magazine's
figure.

41
. Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr. Hamburger Hill proved to be the telling battle of the Vietnam War, as Pork Chop Hill was for the Korean War.
Vietnam Magazine
, June 1999. See also Neil Sheehan,
Bright Shining Lie
, p. 742; and ‘The Battle for Hamburger Hill',
Time Magazine
, 30 May 1969.

42
. Neil Sheehan,
Bright Shining Lie
, p. 742.

43
. Clausewitz,
On War
, Book 1, ch. 5, p. 116.