ABSTRACT
The Malayan Emergency and the Indonesian-Malaysian Confrontation (or Konfrontasi to use its common, Bahasa-Indonesia title) were low-intensity Cold War conflicts strongly influenced by the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles of the 1950s and 1960s. The Emergency, in particular, was a classic insurgent/ counter-insurgent war in which the overwhelming burden of the fight against the Malayan Races Liberation Army (MRLA), the armed wing of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), was borne by the land security forces, principally the police services with regular army and paramilitary units acting in support of civil authority and the rule of law. Konfrontasi, by contrast, was an undeclared war between Indonesia and the forces of the British Commonwealth-acting in concert with Malaysia-against the Indonesians’ unprovoked aggression. Both of these peripheral conflicts had important maritime dimensions. While the Communist insurgents of the 1950s had no maritime capacity whatsoever, Commonwealth naval forces did play a role, albeit fairly small, in the establishment and maintenance of counter-insurgent security. By contrast, the Indonesians possessed sizeable naval forces, which were undergoing rapid modernization with advanced Soviet ships and technology, and thus posed a real naval threat. The use of expeditionary naval forces in both campaigns reflected the British and Commonwealth naval presence in Southeast Asia and in East Asia, as this evolved in the context of Cold War naval strategy and policy. This chapter will provide a brief survey of the strategic context in which Commonwealth naval forces operated in East Asia during the two decades after 1945, before examining the specific role of those navies during the Malayan Emergency and Konfrontasi.
