War From the Ground Up (29 page)

British strategy also drew on ideas associated with Cold War doctrine, and intertwined them pragmatically with the counter-insurgency theory and jungle warfare that Walker was fusing on the ground. The British Ministry of Defence was created in 1964 from an amalgamation of the Admiralty, the War Office, the Air Ministry, the Ministry of Aviation and the old Ministry of Defence itself. The concept of joint command sought to fight a more effective Cold War battle by using each service to its greatest advantages, working in conjunction with the other services rather than encouraging doctrines that favoured only one service. Cold War doctrine was employed more obviously with regard to the role of air and naval power. Bombers and warships were based in Singapore under the command of Admiral Begg to remind Sukarno not to escalate the Confrontation himself, as Indonesia would suffer massive retaliation if it came to open war.

When Confrontation escalated in 1964 after Indonesian parachute landings on mainland Malaysia, the British Chiefs of Staff Committee agreed upon the requirement ‘to convince Sukarno that should he turn aggressor we have the determination and capability to retaliate immediately and effectively'.
³⁹
Britain sent a squadron of Vulcan jet bombers and Javelin jet fighters to Singapore, and more warships were sent to Malaysian waters. These were assets which could project a huge amount of firepower and were normally associated with Cold War deterrence. They were effectively used in that role: as a deterrent to remind Sukarno that escalation on his part would be lethal.

The language used in discussions concerning the deployment of bombers to Singapore is indicative of the facility with which the concepts of Cold War deterrence were interwoven into the operation: ‘The best deterrent to the possibility of Indonesian air attack on Malaysia is the maintenance of a clear ability to destroy their air force by counter-air operations. Should the Indonesian air force nonetheless attack, our strike forces must be capable of immediate retaliation… Such a force might also deter Sukarno from resorting to other forms of overt aggression'.
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In terms of what this book has described as the language of war, British strategy was successful in the sense that President Sukarno understood the threat in the terms desired by that strategy; nor was this a coincidence: the whole plan was carefully orchestrated around the theme of audiences and persuasion, as Butler's policy paper illustrates.

By the end of 1964, the British Far East Fleet comprised more than eighty warships, the largest naval presence in East Asia since the Korean War. The combined air and naval forces conducted numerous well-publicised exercises around Singapore as a demonstration of strength. For instance, a note from the Secretary of State for Defence to the Foreign Office of October 1964 affirmed that a squadron of 8 Canberra bombers would be sent over from Germany to Singapore for two weeks; a naval exercise in the South China Sea involving eight warships, including one Australian and one New Zealand vessel, would take place; and information was to be planted in Indonesian intelligence of a commando landing exercise on the north Malaysian coast. These measures were deemed to be ‘adequate for the political purpose desired'.
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This desired show of force reached its height when the British carrier HMS
Victorious
sailed through the international waters of the Lombok Straits east of Bali, which was to be taken as a strong signal of Commonwealth self-confidence.

Although Commonwealth air and naval power were never used in retaliation, the contingency plans illustrate how the operational approach was intimately associated with the political context in which it was to be applied. In 1963 plan ‘Addington' was developed to be implemented as an immediate response to an overt Indonesian assault. It envisaged large-scale air attacks on Indonesian military targets. In 1964 plan ‘Mason' was devised as a possible measured response to continued Indonesian attacks on the Malaysian peninsula.
⁴²
Although similar to Addington, Mason was never carried out: it would have involved raids on Indonesian bases in the Rhio Archipelago (south of Singapore) and Sumatra from where the Indonesians launched their attacks on west Malaysia.

Addington and Mason were contingency plans geared primarily to deliver a political effect, since militarily they would not in themselves stop the Indonesians. For both plans procedures were worked out for the Malaysian government to get to the UN Security Council before the Indonesians did, in order to complain under Article 51 of the UN Charter that they were victims of aggression and were acting with the support of allies in self-defence.
⁴³
By framing the deterrence within a framework which only authorised action in response to Indonesian aggression, the British hoped to make best use of their advantage in firepower without compromising in the wider international community the image that Indonesia was at fault. Commenting upon this procedure, a Foreign Office document outlining plan Mason notes that ‘we have been much influenced by the importance of avoiding anything which would damage the international image of Malaysia as the injured party'.
⁴⁴
While the actual plans were highly classified, Sukarno clearly knew about such a possibility. In November 1964, Tunku Abdul Rahman advertised the threat of the Royal Air Force (RAF) ‘hitting back' in a direct threat to Sukarno at a widely reported press conference.
⁴⁵

British strategy, as noted in the discussion of Rab Butler's January 1964 policy paper above, played on the fact that it suited both sides to keep the conflict unofficial and bilateral as far as possible (although Matthew Jones indicates accurately how it was never literally bilateral, since even actors on the same side acted independently of each other, not least the sovereign Malaysian government).
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The presentation of the conflict
to the outside world was therefore crucial. The terrain was the single most important factor in determining how Confrontation could be presented. British strategy had to be attuned mainly to four target audiences: the Indonesian government; the Malaysian civilian population (especially the indigenous tribes in Borneo); domestic opinion; and international opinion. The hearts and minds campaign was effectively how the Confrontation was presented to the indigenous tribes deep in the jungle. The tribes did not have much contact with the outside world, so the British forces could retain a monopoly on flows of information from inside the jungle to the outside world. As most of the fighting occurred in remote jungle, its only witnesses were usually soldiers themselves.

While Sukarno made speeches about the national quest to crush Malaysia, the Indonesians never admitted sending regular troops across the border. They claimed that the incursions were conducted by guerrillas, whose cause they nonetheless supported. Nor did the Indonesians make propaganda out of British cross-border incursions. The Indonesians were unlikely to publicise incursions for prestige reasons, as they had consistently shown themselves unwilling to admit the extent of casualties they suffered in the jungle. The British could not risk locking Sukarno into a situation from which he could not withdraw without loss of face, and so did not themselves publicise the conflict.

The role of the press was limited because reporters could only go to military bases to which the army took them. The official secrecy surrounding military operations prevented information coming out of unofficial channels, especially since troops were not allowed to go to towns and bars while on operational tour. The importance of managing the press can be brought into relief by comparison with the situation of the British counter-insurgency operation in Aden and South Arabia, which was going on concurrently. Here, journalists were far more exposed to the front-line troops. Mismanagement of this aspect of the campaign contributed to the British government announcing its intention to withdraw from the region while troops were still engaged in operations. Intelligence from local sources dried up immediately once locals realised that it was not worth endangering themselves for the British, who would shortly leave them to fend for themselves.

To summarise, a pragmatic mentality in the construction of British strategy in the Indonesian Confrontation was a key factor in its success: the conflict was understood on its own terms; there was proper dialogue
between desire and possibility; the operational approach drew on existing concepts and tailored them to a particular situation, rather than applying them as an abstract template; the outcome of the campaign was understood in political terms, specifically in terms of responses from various strategic audiences. It was implicitly understood that strategy had two interrelated functions: to shape the political context in order to give meaning to actions (effectively the construction of an interpretive structure through the strategic narrative); and the selection of an operational approach. Strategy was not thought of as the application of actions based on inflexible ideological agendas. The decisive moment in the construction of strategic narrative occurred when the United States administration (albeit reluctantly) was persuaded to see the conflict in terms of an overall Western interest in Southeast Asia, where Britain's commitment to Malaysia equated to the US commitment to South Vietnam.

The British operational approach worked because, instead of trying to work round the terrain (both the physical and cultural terrain), it worked with it, in both political and military terms. The political and military elements of the campaign were not artificially separated. The texture of the Confrontation on the ground was understood in political terms. This encouraged a strategy that recognised the need to work both at the international level and in terms of combat below the jungle canopy.

Hence, political constraints having been satisfied, British strategy was largely able to contain the Confrontation to a pattern of conflict which took place on the jungle floor, and then decisively beat the Indonesians militarily in this arena by applying light infantry concepts that suited the British army's superior experience in jungle warfare at the time (following Burma and Malaya). ‘Claret' operations succeeded in extending the principle of domination of the jungle from a defensive concept inside Malaysian Borneo to an offensive concept by delimiting a no-man's-land just inside the Indonesian border where most of the fighting took place. When the Indonesians tried to break out of this pattern, such as landing in west Malaysia, Cold War-type escalatory threats were brought to bear to bring them back into line. British forces did not attempt to fight a Cold War battle or a counter-insurgency campaign, but understood the conflict for what it was on the ground, and formulated a novel strategy that had elements of both doctrines which suited the particular nature of the conflict.

In 1969 General Walker, by then Commander of NATO's northern flank in Denmark, wrote an article at Denis Healey's request on ‘How Borneo Was Won'.
⁴⁷
It described the Indonesian Confrontation as a ‘Limited War'. In one sense, this was merely a descriptive term which referred to conflicts which were not total war. In another sense, in 1969 ‘Limited War' was a conceptual term, which was at the time more obviously associated with the Vietnam War and the Cold War. The most influential Cold War political scientist to deal with this concept was Robert Osgood, who published the book
Limited War
in 1957.
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Osgood's argument was that conventional ‘proxy' wars between the superpowers, in which political aims and military means were deliberately limited, was the way to confront the spread of communism without escalation to a nuclear exchange. This was the type of war that America was attempting to wage in Vietnam.

In his article, Walker uses Vietnam as a counterpoint to Borneo. Although ‘Limited War' as defined in the Indonesian Confrontation had developed organically in response to the Indonesian threat, Walker was now setting up Borneo as a paradigm of Limited War. This, however, was misguided. Britain succeeded in Borneo because an abstract template had not been imposed on the conflict.

Walker was really getting above himself in retrospectively describing the conceptual approach to the conflict in a way that had not actually been used at the time. He was trying to present his plan as the true articulation of Limited War, which the Americans were getting wrong in Vietnam. In reality, Vietnam was a far more complex conflict than Borneo, and of a completely different scale; the comparison was illegitimate. Later on Walker was effectively sacked from his NATO command. He had made a fetish of aggressive defence, a concept that had worked in Borneo but would have been catastrophic in a nuclear war context. The irony is that Walker the pragmatist had perhaps been intoxicated by his success and had become the ideologue.