Put simply–although nothing about it is simple–public diplomacy is diplomacy carried out in public, as opposed to most of diplomacy, which is done in private. It is a set of activities that inform, engage and influence international public opinion to support policy objectives or create goodwill for the home country. It is important to understand what public diplomacy is not. It is not an advertising campaign to get foreigners to like your country–even if they dislike it, they can still support, or at least accept, a particular policy or action. It is not a propaganda effort to mislead or lie to audiences for tactical or other advantage. It is a sustained endeavor that advances your country’s policies and reflects a solid understanding of the host-country’s language, culture, history and traditions. Both public diplomacy and propaganda are means to project power.

Over 1953–60 counterinsurgency was optimised, buidling upon the solid foundations of geodemographic control achieved over 1950–2, and of systems optimisation achieved under Templer. Framework operations by units bolted onto localities were continuously refined, as was the use of jungle forts to win over the Orang Asli, and of big combined Special Branch–food control–military operations. Together these sustained an ‘elimination’ rate (kills, surrenders, captures) of about 20 per cent of insurgents a year – that is, until after the MCP attempt to negotiate at Baling in 1955 was rebuffed, and then further negotiation was refused from late 1957. As hope faded insurgent ‘surrenders’ (some induced or duped) snowballed in the face of priority big operations. By now those featured months-long intense controls, each targetting the entire area of one or more MCP committees. That way the MCP would struggle to regenerate afterwards. The collapse of local MCP forces often came as freedoms increased elsewhere, while a big operation clamped down more strongly than ever on the targetted area. In 1958 the MCP decided on a strategy of running down the military campaign, and the Emergency was formally ended on 31 July 1958.

This chapter shows how Templer recognised that the MCP’s October 1951 Resolutions had shifted the strategic initiative to government, but also that it had increased the importance of winning ‘hearts and minds’. It shows how he increased both punishment and reward, and resettlement amenities and training to secure kills, until late in his term, but above all optimised the government, military and committee system, and the policy towards Orang Asli and the jungle. He created a better system and learning organisation, which in turn started to experiment with the big combined food control–Special Branch–military operations that would start to clear communist committees out of one area after another. The next chapter shows how that learning took off over 1953–4, providing a solution to the problem Briggs had not cracked: how to ‘clear’ areas. Rejecting both hagiographic and hateful accounts of Templer, it reveals the truth about the man, and about the perfecting of Malaya’s counterinsurgency apparatus and the constant refining of its recipe of ingredients.

This chapter shows how Templer recognised that the MCP’s October 1951 Resolutions had shifted the strategic initiative to government, but also that it had increased the importance of winning hearts and minds. It shows how he increased both punishment an