In Malaya Britain fought a twelve year conflict against communist guerrillas in modern day Malaysia which succeeded in defeating Chin Peng who led Malayan national liberation army (MNLA). One of the principle methods which was used to combat the insurgency was something known as the strategic hamlet program which was meant to stop aid being given by the countryside and to negate the coercion power of the MNLA towards the aforementioned villagers. This seen as instrumental in the defeat of the MNLA as well as the food control policy which was also implemented. This idea was shared as the USA became more involved in Vietnam which failed miserably. Also to note was a similar derivation of the British policies which was used French Algeria. In both the Algerian and Vietnamese wars, both of the strategies were poorly implemented and often made the lives of the relocated people worse. My questions are .If South Vietnam implemented the strategic hamlet program properly would the Viet Cong have been suppressed to the point of being a non-threat? .Would Ngo Diem avoided the coup that cost him his life? .Would the FLN in Algeria have been defeated had the relocations worked? . Would France have avoided the fall of the Fourth republic in May of 1958 had the FLN been curbed by such strategy? .If the strategic hamlet program was used successfully in both conflicts augmented by food control; would it have won those wars?
I think ultimately it would have failed. The problem was forces could not be everywhere all the time. I think the Viet Cong would have just raided instead. All the same there was a lot of prewar support for the North, so there is no real evidence the system would have been manageable to begin with
True. But what if the hamlet program was restricted to areas where the ARVN could respond quickly? Well the VC weren't really able to continue without food supplies which was often obtained from the locals, the hamlet program could deny them the necessary supplies needed to continue. From what I've read most of the countryside people were largely disinterested in the ideals surrounding the war. It was successful in Malaya but of course every country and war is different. I'm just exploring whether it could have been used effectively and the difference that it would have made in Vietnam/Algeria
The strategy worked in Malaya and failed in Vietnam and Algeria because Malaya could be isolated from outside support, where Vietnam and Algeria could not. Viz: Support from the USSR/China through North Vietnam and down the Ho Chi Minh Trail into South Vietnam. Malaya is on a peninsula with only a narrow land neck and its neighbors were truly neutral. The British simply patrolled the coasts and outside support was cut off and the Malayan communists were strangled.
I agree 100%. The British failed in Ireland because they could get outside support. Iraq when the British were their was rather easy because the British controlled everything and Iran wasn't stupid enough like China was to anoy the British. US falls because it is unwilling to go into total war setting and won at any cost. The British of the time didn't give a (*)(*)(*)(*). Nor the Americans in the Philippines. Victory is impossible because the government isn't willing to do what is needed to win, so they make the problem worse and worse until it politically makes sense to leave. I mean why try if you aren't doing to give it all you have. The French failed because they didn't have the equipment needed to do a job as big as Alergia. It was the same in Viet Nam, Libya, Mali, CAR and so on. The French don't have the numbers of the equipment needed to do these operations, yet they do them anyway. People think the French are "tough" because they set out on these colonial escapades and then ask everybody else to help them, of course we do because we don't want the French plan to fail and make everything worse. I really don't like the French, mainly because I am a Norman and get really annoyed when they call Norman French just French and bang on about how bad William Duke of Normandy was, speaking of which would you care to comment on how he took and held England? Or how Roger the great took and held Napales and Sicily from the Catholic Church and Muslims?
Well, the VC were defeated domestically; the TET offensive was their last gasp as a major military force in Viet Nam, hence why the NVA as the primary combatant took over after1968. Also, the results of the war was hardly a major failure for the U.S. Our escalation bankrupted the SU, widened an already deep split between the Soviets and the Red Chinese, and the results of the Nixon/Kissinger diplomacy left Viet Nam and most of SE Asia relatively independent of both the SU and Red China, with some security for the SEATO pact nations. There was really no 'Total Victory' to be had, so it's disingenuous to claim the 'U.S failed' just on that narrative. Kennedy screwed up the thing and made an escalation inevitable when he looked the other way on the Diem assassination, a decision he made entirely for personal domestic political reasons; he didn't want the look 'soft on Communism' in his second term elections and couldn't allow the unilateral talks between Diem and Ho to succeed. We pulled out of Viet Nam because there were simply no military or international political reasons to stay after the successful diplomatic guarantees established by Nixon's China policy. The Soviets had no chance of building their major warm water naval base directly astride the Asian trade routes and were no longer a threat to international trade routes after 1972. The VC were never completely dominated by the NVA; the southern VC units continued to resist the North in the Mekong Delta regions long after the 'fall' of Saigon, by the way. Yes, I know the conventional sniveling is supposed to be all about pretending it was all a major disaster of some sort, but the only disasters were to some political careers and of course the public treasury through corruption; none were political or military. Corruption has been endemic in U.S. history, so that's a domestic problem, not a foreign policy failure.
What equipment was absent from the Algerian war? Actually I find the French seem to be rather enamoured with the UK although the younger French aren't quite as well mannered as they were when I was growing up in the 90's.
The south lost and Vietnam is still a communist country. Also it was Afghanistan that finally broke the financial back of the USSR and the Sino-Soviet split occured before the US committed itself to Vietnam and it was the ideological differences between Mao and Khrushchev that did it. And Kennedy knew about the plan for the coup but not the assassination of Diem which he is known to have been shocked by it. But anyway this topic is supposed to be about the use of the strategic hamlet program and it's derivatives in Vietnam and Algeria.
Irrelevant; it never became a Soviet nor Red Chinese puppet state, and no major Soviet naval base astride the trade routes, which was the primary concern for the SEATO alliance at the time. The SU went bankrupt in 1973, which is why Brezhnev had to abandon the Krushchev doctrine; it was no longer affordable. The Chinese rift with the SU began under Stalin, and heated up considerably in the late 1950's and early 1960's. The Chinese weren't happy about the idea of VN being turned into a Soviet puppet, either, hence why they were happy to deal with Nixon. He approved it; the generals leading the coup went further than he was told, but he approved it and it was his responsibility. Yes, and as I said the US did a pretty fair job at containing the VC with their program; two or three years after Johnson escalated the war the VC were dead as the primary combatant in VN. So to recap, some 3 to 4 years for the US to succeed, versus some 12 years for the Brits in Malaysia? Obviously the 'US failure' is just a PR myth designed for the PC types.
Source? That's not true. The USSR was bankrupt in 1998 and yes debts are inherited by the successor state. The oil industry of the USSR declined because of US-Saudi cooperation but it did not bankrupt the USSR. And if the Chinese really thought that, then why did they continue to allow passage of hardware to Vietnam? Not for Diem's death, that was done of their own accord. The SHP was enacted by the ARVN not the US and it was a catastrophic failure. Malaya not Malaysia. The latter is a federation of other Asian states while the former is just the Malayan peninsular.
A shame about this thread because I thought it was n interesting topic which could have been a magnet for academic debate. But sadly not. Another good thread reduced to slipping through the proverbial gap.
I thought the issue is cut-and-dried. The British were able to isolate the Communists in Malaya. The Americans were not able to isolate the NVA in Vietnam. Isolated armies are usually dead armies, regardless of tactics.
Well. No. The MNLA were fighting for 12 years and they were supported by a small number of the local population, hence they were able to continue the war with food and men. Weaponry and ammunition was simply raided or taken from the Japanese during it's occupation. If a guerilla army can operate in countryside with donations from the locals then it does need external support and wasn't really given anyway. And it's not the only example where guerilla armies have been isolated and been successful. This topic was supposed to look at the strategy known as the strategic hamlet program in order to investigate it's effectiveness and how it was applied to other conflicts such as Vietnam and Algeria and also to know why the last two failed.
The MNLA broke because they were the target of some clever and very successful counter insurgency tactics. Actually, forget it. Please nobody else comment unless they've actually read about the subject and in detail as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malayan_Emergency http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It4OHz4Gz8c For those that actually want to know about the Malayan conflict here are some links to get you started. Unfortunately there isn't that much material on the individual aspects on the hamlet/relocation program that was used in Vietnam, Algeria and Malaya. Educated responses welcomed.
This is exactly the point. Such a plan can only work when access can be controlled into a country or region. When access can not be controlled, it is impossible to control it. And back to the OP, the VC was never all that effective anyways. While long the target of myth, the VC was never a very effective fighting force, never won any real engagements, and was almost completely destroyed in the 1968 Tet Offensive. The real problem was not the VC (who mostly survived by threatening the leaders of small villages), but the NVA - the North Vietnamese Army.
Draining the Swamp:The British Strategy of Population Control “What the peasant wants to know is: does the government mean to win the war? Because if not, he will have to support the insurgent.” — Sir Robert Thompson http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/06spring/markel.pdf The source is the U.S. Army War College Quarterly publication "Parameters" Also... Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam This is available on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Eat-Soup-Knife-Counterinsurgency/dp/0226567702 A brief synopsis: Algeria and Malaya: A Tale of Two Distinct and Dramatically Different Counterinsurgency Campaigns by Daniel T. Canfield Source: http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/ar...dramatically-different-counterinsurgency-camp and... Counterinsurgency in Malaya and Viet-Nam: A comparative analysis Author: Hugh W. Barber Air Command and Staff College. "A research study submitted to the faculty, May 1974, Air University, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama." Source: Voyager Catalog Couldn't find this anywhere on-line however, maybe someone else will have better luck.
This message board...or "forum" is by and large not suited for academic debate. This is not a reflection on the patronage of course, it appeals to a very wide demographic and it's intention is inclusionary and not exclusionary.. In other words, don't deem a thread's worth based upon it's quantity of responses. I like the topic, in fact viewing the film "The Battle of Algiers" (1966) was required by most military officers deployed overseas in support of the counter-insurgency operations in Iraq. Here we are in 2014...the general public is war weary. A topic like this may have been more conducive for responses in say 2007 when counter-insurgency doctrine was being reformalized to address the issues in Iraq. Regarding the "police action" in Vietnam, it's a touchy subject for most Americans who lived through the era.
Don't worry I was just letting off a little steam and I promise not to do that again. I've always thought that this was an interesting historical gem that deserves a little illumination. Those links you posted look pretty interesting. I don't think I've seen anybody do an analysis of Malaya and Algeria. Thanks for that.
Given that if his name was allowed on the ballot Ho Chi Minh would have been elected president of South Vietnam, I doubt forced relocation would have shifted opinion enough to have made a difference. The guy who made the right call about Vietnam was George F. Kennan, when Johnson assembled all the past secretaries of state and defense and past presidential advisors, only Kennan said "Get out as fast as you can", Kennan also came up with the idea, in 1946, that if the US contained Soviet expansion, the Soviet Union would fall, from it's own internal contradictions, without a single shot being fired.
The strategic hamlet program wasn't really about garnering public support but to actually deny the guerillas access to supplies from the locals and remove the threat of coercion from such a guerilla army. It wouldn't surprise me if Ho Chi Minh could have obtained a majority vote if there was a successful referendum on a united Vietnam. But really what I'm trying to get at is the methods of counter insurgency that was so successful in Malaya and not in Algeria and Vietnam. I believe that Kennan was referring to the USSR's expansion in eastern Europe which in my view is where the USSR had focused it's attention in the 40's and 50's. And yes there was the obvious support in North Korea but I believe they also stuck with the policy of supporting countries that were on their borders or within easy reach. So for example in Malaya there was very little support to the point where it was negligible because it was outside of their geopolitical reach and it was the same in Algeria. I'm still undecided as to whether the US should have involved themselves in Vietnam as there reasons for both cases.
