790.5 MAP/1–251
The Consul General at Singapore (Langdon) to the Secretary of State
No. 398
Subject: Comment on Report to Foreign Military Assistance Coordinating Committee of Joint MDAP Survey Mission to Southeast Asia.
I have read with considerable interest the final report to the Foreign Military Assistance Coordinating Committee of Mr. John P. Melby, Chairman of the Joint State-Defense Assistance Program Survey Mission to Southeast Asia, dated December 6, 1950, and venture to comment on certain assumptions and conclusions therein:
1. On Page 3 it is said:
“There would appear to be three major alternatives of policy. These alternatives are presented on the assumption that loss of any one of the countries to the enemy would almost certainly result in the loss of all the other countries, with the possible exception of the Philippines which presents a specialized problem and where the unique American position and responsibility would, we assume, indicate a kind of intervention different from what we might undertake in other countries.”
2. In the foregoing assumption (underscoring mine), (a) the political influence and military potentialities of the British Commonwealth in Southeast Asia are ignored, whereas I believe that they should be reckoned with, no matter how much they might be discounted; (b) it is not clear who the “enemy” is: whether it is the internal Communist organization in each country or the Chinese Red Army, which it is thought makes a vast amount of difference in the context.
With respect to (a), assuming that the enemy is the Chinese Red Army, either with its own formations or by means of “volunteers” as in Korea, I am not at all persuaded that Malaya will fall. When United Kingdom Commissioner-General Malcolm MacDonald as is his wont [Page 187] tells his American callers that if Indo-China falls to the Communists, Siam will go first and then Burma, he stops there and says, “Malaya will be next”. I have never heard him complete the sentence with the words “to go” or “to fall”, and at the closed regular periodic meetings of the British Defense Coordinating Committee Far East which I have attended in the past two years, I have not at any time detected any fear on the part of Mr. MacDonald, its Chairman, or the UK Armed Forces Commanders-in-Chief in the Far East, of losing Malaya to anybody. In this connection, as an illustration of the fear of an undetermined enemy and the poor opinion of British military power on the part of the local public, and of the confidence in their ability to defend Malaya on the part of the British military, I repeat an incident which was reported to the Department at the time by Ambassador Jessup.1
At a dinner party in February 1950 given by Mr. MacDonald for all the local Asian and British personages to meet Dr. Jessup, which developed into a question-and-answer forum, a Mr. Jumabhoy, prominent Muslim Indian Councillor of the Singapore Legislative Council, at one point blurted out, “Dr. Jessup, when is the United States going to protect us?” Before Dr. Jessup could reply, General Sir John Harding, Commander-in-Chief of the United Kingdom Far Eastern Land Forces, flushed red and called aloud across the table to his air colleague, “Did you hear that, Hugh (Marshal Sir Hugh Lloyd)? You and I might as well pack up and go home with our chaps tomorrow.”
The Air Vice-Marshal commanding the RAF in Malaya, charged with the air defenses of the country, has told me that his command has absolute control of the air approaches to Malaya by any likely enemy. The Commander-in-Chief of the Far East Station (Royal Navy) makes the same claim in respect to the sea approaches, and while both Commanders may be bragging, it is a fact that Communist China has no long range air force, no surface navy and no seagoing transports. While the Soviet Far East Navy is probably no match for the Royal Navy’s forces in the Far East, I am not in position to compare the air strength of the two powers in the region. Even were Russian Far East strength superior, it would seem to take more than air power to invade Malaya and support such an invasion.
Assuming that the worst happens, that the Red Chinese Army by open aggression or through “volunteers” establishes Communist national Governments successively in Indo-China, Burma and Siam and stands after a long trek overland at the borders of Malaya, at the thin neck of the Malay Peninsula since it has no wings or ships to land troops along the coast or behind the border as the Japanese Army in 1941: even if by then formal war will not have been declared, it is scarcely likely that strong British defenses will not have been prepared to meet the aggressive mass.
I have no ground for any speculation as to what India or Pakistan might do in such an event, but as we have reported from time to time, task forces of the Royal Pakistan Navy and the Indian Navy call at Singapore at intervals to take part with the Royal Navy in Combined Naval Exercises in surrounding seas. The reasonable assumption is that such exercises are predicated on training in resisting a common [Page 188] enemy. Australia presently contributes one bomber and one transport squadron to RAF operations in Malaya, and New Zealand one transport squadron. If Malaya were threatened and their link with the United Kingdom in danger, these two countries might well once more make an important war effort in Malaya as they did in 1941–1942. It must be remembered that it was the British 14th Army which put most men in the field in Southeast Asia in the last war, and that this Army was made up largely of dominion and colonial troops. There seems to be no ground for supposing the same scale of Commonwealth effort would not be made to save Malaya. Because of her dependence on Burma for rice and her territorial contiguity, it is even conceivable that India might intervene in Burma long before Malaya was attacked.
It will now be postulated that the enemy is internal Communism supported only morally and with smuggled arms by Communist China. Indigenous Communists have been getting moral support for many months now, but they have steadily been losing ground in Burma according to my British sources. In Siam they do not appear from Bangkok Embassy reports to be making any headway either. In Malaya the Chinese Communist guerrillas are a nuisance and a police rather than a military problem, and have not prevented the country from producing the greatest quantities of goods and having the biggest prosperity boom in its history, even though they may have slowed down state programs for improved social services. While it is possible that the Government of the Federation of Malaya may be oversanguine in expecting to suppress Communist militant activities by the end of 1951, it is also unlikely these activities will grow in troublesomeness.
Thus it would appear to me that the assumption that “all the other countries in Southeast Asia will fall if one of them falls” is unwarranted if only internal Communism is predicated. Even though occupation of a country or massive support of its internal Communist organization by the Chinese Red Army is hypothecated, it is my opinion, resting on two years’ association with the British Defense Coordinating Committee, that Malaya will not fall or at worst will be retaken if it falls in the beginning.