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'Globalized' low-intensity conflicts renew debates about how leading world powers contend with evolving complexities in unconventional warfare. The 'foreign entanglements' of America's imperial present have been compared with the 'savage wars of peace' from Britain's colonial past. Beyond the template of Anglo-American civilization, however, military, economic, and cultural manifestations of power must be set in their systemic and structural context for more meaningful comparison. Britain's variegated experience of unconventional warfare stemmed from its vast colonial milieu of 'small wars' and 'imperial policing.' America's experience reflects transformational civil-military responses to both existential and ideological threats, reinforcing the evolution of a massive 'way of war' over persistent frontier warfare. Integral to reading these small war traditions is the historical method, emphasizing particularity of causation while underscoring the value of flexible, hybrid approaches against overinstitutionalized 'ways in warfare.' Operational success, delivered by blending military skills with political savvy and cultural sensitivity, not only secured populations but support and legitimacy, without which even global powers risked defeat. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society/Sage Publications Inc.]

"Globalized" low-intensity conflicts renew debates about how leading world powers contend with evolving complexities in unconventional warfare. The "foreign entanglements" of America's imperial present have been compared with the "savage wars of peace" from Britain's colonial past.1 Beyond the template of Anglo-American civilization, however, military, economic, and cultural manifestations of power must be set in their systemic and structural context for more meaningful comparison. Britain's variegated experience of unconventional warfare stemmed from its vast colonial milieu of "small wars" and "imperial policing." America's experience reflects transformational civil–military responses to both existential and ideological threats, reinforcing the evolution of a massive "way of war" over persistent frontier warfare. Integral to reading these small war traditions is the historical method, emphasizing particularity of causation while underscoring the value of flexible, hybrid approaches against overinstitutionalized "ways in warfare."2 Operational success, delivered by blending military skills with political savvy and cultural sensitivity, not only secured populations but support and legitimacy, without which even global powers risked defeat.

The Naning War, long dismissed by historians as a 'little war', was part of a more expansive drama in the history of the Malay world. The war expressed traditional modes of power-broking and opposition, as well as anticipated later political developments in Malaya. From the wider perspective of imperial history, this important but neglected episode of British expansion in the East merits a modern treatment. This article seeks to rectify deficiencies of existing histories of the Naning War by exploring the nature of indirect rule and formal control from the metropolis, and authority and conflict at the 'periphery'. It sets the war both within the cultural context of Malay warfare, and within the regional context of indigenous resistance and Islamic protest against British incursions.

Ong Weichong and Alan Chong: Waging "Small Wars" in the New Millennium: Chameleonic Missions and Virtual Aggression-An Introduction/ 3. - Emrys Chew: How Big Powers Fight Small Wars: Contending Traditions of Asymmetry in the British and American Ways of War/ 17. - Cornelis J. Lammers: The American Occupation Regime in Comparative Perspective: The Case of Iraq/ 49. - Shawn T. Cochran: The Civil-Military Divide in Protracted Small War: An Alternative View of Military Leadership Preferences and War Termination/ 71. - René Moelker: The Genesis of the "Dutch Approach" to Asymmetric Conflicts: Operations in Uruzgan and the "Softly, Softly" Manner of Approaching the Taleban/ 96