I've no doubt that Lansdale was very charismatic, and Magsaysay was of course eminently malleable. The defeat of the Hukbalahap, though, was I think less a consequence of Lansdale's ability to manipulate Magsaysay than of the inherent weakness of the Hukbalahap: unsophisticated, unskilled, internally divided, poorly led, geographically restricted, devoid of foreign support. The legacy left to the Philippine military was far from positive, and similar tactics applied in more challenging environments proved less than successful.