Draining the Swamp: The British Strategy of Population Control

T hirty years after the end of the Vietnam War, the United States and its Army again find themselves confronted with a tenacious insurgency, this time in Iraq. Given our decidedly mixed record in counterinsurgency operations, we tend to look elsewhere for successful models. Many look to the British, especially their exemplary and thorough victory in Malaya, to provide such a model. Commentators cite the British Army’s superior organizational adaptability and flexibility, strategic patience, their predilection for using the minimum force necessary, the relative ease with which they integrated civil and military aspects of national power, and the apparent facility with which they adapted their strategies to local circumstances of geography and culture. We would indeed do well to emulate the aforementioned characteristics of British counterinsurgency practice, but there was more to British suc-