1) Re: Crossborder sanctuaries for Malaya CTs: I am nitpicking--mea culpa: In fact, the then heavily forested Thai border did pose real problems for the British-led COIN effort in Malaya....Overthrow of Pibulsongram's pro-communist Thai government made a difference in Malaya. That said, no argument with the assertion that Malaya was not VN.....

2) Kilcullen's view, at least as he presents it, of the local citizen perusing the competing menus presented him by insurgents and COIN forces and judiciously selecting the best deal (one dish from the "hearts" column, a couple from the "minds" column), causes certain reservations to arise. This is not to say that there is no important role for the "carrot" in a carrot and stick approach...And of course, every place and every conflict are unique...Nevertheless, on the level of the general principle, far away and long ago, Thompson and Co. consistently drummed into our minds the concept that the Vietnamese peasant is not a free agent...(Indeed, as Fall pointed out, what freedom to choose was there between our offer to provide better hog breeding stock vs. the VC propensity to behead and disembowel with abandon?)...The Brits were so insistent on the not-a-free-agent point because of its obvious implications on application of a hearts and minds approach....They posited a corollary, viz.,: because he is not free to choose (and has, since antiquity, never been free to choose), we (i.e., COIN forces) must put him in a position where it will be physically impossible for him to provide any support to the insurgents--where he will not be subject to the pressures that would compel him to provide such support....In other words, make sure that he cannot choose the insurgent option, whether he wants to or not....Hence, the "drain the swamp/ confine the 'at risk' population in order to protect them" classical British approach....In the event, on the ground in VN, to be sure, the cogency of this argument led to a high level of adviser frustration, since the US did not hold sovereignty and loose-as-a-goose thirdworldism did not augur well for the application of air-tight controls on the movement of people and commodities. But that's another story.....

Cheers,
Mike.