Essay Title: British Strategy During The Indonesian Confrontation
The Americans had made it clear during the September 1965 Quadripartite Talks that British departure from Singapore would have the most serious repercussions on their position in Southeast Asia, the Philippines and Okinawa. The American representative to the September 1965 Talks, Ambassador Berger, had told the British privately that ways and means could be found of helping the British financially if that was the real difficulty. Yet the British did not approach the Americans to share their financial burden.
The British Government did take some half-hearted measures to get their allies to contribute more. In end 1964, the British Government prodded Kuala Lumpur to request additional forces from Australia and New Zealand. The British hoped that this would pave the way for discussions in which they could propose more contributions from the Antipodean countries. The eventual addition of two battalions and some SAS troops provided only marginal relief to the British in Borneo. The separation of Singapore provided a good opportunity for the British to press for more substantial aid from her allies. The allies were worried that Britain would withdraw her forces as she was not consulted about the separation. Strangely enough, Britain did not raise the issue of more allied aid during the September 1964 Quadripartite Talks but instead suggested ways of ending confrontation by diplomatic means. Given this great reluctance to insist on burden sharing, the British should then prepare the Malaysians to take on more defense tasks.
If confrontation was going to be a protracted conflict, the British could try to accelerate the build-up of the Malaysian armed forces out of self-interest. The British could take steps to provide Malaysia with a proper defensive capability through intensive military training and an enhanced supply of defensive weapons. In other words, the British could try to 'Malaysianise' the war effort (the political aspects were already Malaysianised). Undoubtedly such a programme of acquiring weapons, equipment and trained personnel would take a long time but the sooner it was started the earlier the British could scale down their commitments.
