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Prelude to Vietnam
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 April 2011
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Despite the undoubted significance of possible Australian participation in a five power Commonwealth security arrangement centred on Malaysia and Singapore, considerations of an Australian nuclear force, the presence of numerous American bases in Australia, and Australian policies towards a Soviet naval presence in the Indian Ocean, the public debate on Australian foreign policy continues to centre on the Indo-China war. This is understandable, for not only has Australia been supplying material assistance to the counter-revolutionary forces in that area since 1953, military advisers since 1962 and a task force since 1965, but the commitment has focussed critical attention on those strategic assumptions which have dominated Australian foreign policy for the last two decades.
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- Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 2 , Special Issue 1: Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia , March 1971 , pp. 38 - 48
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- Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1971
References
1 See Bellany, Ian, An Australian Nuclear Force, Some Economic Considerations, A.N.U. Press, 1969Google Scholar; and ‘On the Nuclear Threshold’, Current Affairs Bulletin, Sydney, 15 December 1969.
2 See Dissent (Melbourne), Winter 1963; R. Cooksey, ‘Pine Gap’, Australian Quarterly, December 1968, and ‘Beyond Pine Gap’ Dissent, Winter 1970; Hanno Weisbrod, ‘North West Cape’, Australian Quarterly, June 1970; and government statement of 9 September 1969, reprinted Current Notes on International Affairs (Canberra), September 1969.
3 See Millar, T. B., Soviet Policies in the Indian Ocean Area, Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence, A.N.U., 1970Google Scholar. Australia is to build a naval base near Perth, partly in response. In the opinion of British strategists the Australian reaction has been somewhat alarmist. The Australian, 19 October 1970.
4 See the Letourneau-Casey joint communique of 11 March 1953, Current Notes on International Affairs, March 1953, pp. 165–166.
5 See statement by Athol Townley, Minister for Defence, 24 May 1962, Current Notes on International Affairs, May 1962.
6 Statement by Sir Robert Menzies, Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives [C.P.D., H.R.], 29 April 1965, pp. 1060–1062.
7 The only national daily, The Australian, since late 1969.
8 See my ‘A Resilient Perspective’, in Playford, J. and Kirsner, D., eds., Australian Capitalism: A Socialist Critique, Penguin, 1971.Google Scholar
9 At the time of writing one opinion poll indicates that a majority favour withdrawal.
10 In September 1970 an association of Concerned Asian Scholars of Australia and New Zealand was formed. At the same time a Sydney conference of Philosophers passed a resolution opposing the war which occasioned some controversy among them. See the Sydney University student paper, Honi Soit, October and November 1970.
11 C.P.D., H.R., 11 August 1964, p. 20. Hasluck said ‘the incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin are part of a long sequence of aggression in South East Asia’, and ‘there is no alternative to using force to check the southward thrust of militant Asian communism’. A U.S. Senate report in 1968 suggested that U.S. vessels had provoked the engagement while assisting South Vietnamese saboteurs to land in the D.R.V. Gulf of Tonkin Incidents, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Hearing, 20 February 1968. In 1970 the Senate revoked the Gulf of Tonkin resolution of 1964 which had given the administration a blank cheque for military action in Indo-China.
12 T. Draper, Abuse of Power, Penguin, 1969, chapters 4–6, provides a useful résumé.
13 C.P.D., H.R., 26 March 1968, p. 451. Compare the opinion of Adam Yarmolinsky, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, 1965–6, regarding ‘the strategic bombing of North Vietnamese territory’: ‘this was probably a step that should never have been taken, since it produced no military advantages … But it was taken, at least in part, because it was one of the things that the United States military forces were best prepared to do.’ Pfeffer, Richard M., ed., No More Vietnams?, Harper and Row, 1968, p. 107Google Scholar. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara agreed that bombing was having little effect. New York Times, 21 February 1967.
14 See the report of Australian observers, Current Notes on International Affairs, September 1967.
15 Address to Women's National Democratic Club, Washington, 13 October 1970.
16 Mr. MacMahon, Minister for External Affairs, argued on 27 April 1970 that ‘the Vietnamese communists have intensified their aggression to the point where Cambodia's independent survival is at stake’. Current Notes, April 1970, p. 172.
17 Statements by MacMahon, 2 and 7 August 1970, Current Notes, August 1970, p. 440. MacMahon's earlier promise to the U.S., ‘Where you go, we go’, was not translated into Australian participation in the U.S. invasion of Cambodia.
18 T. D. Allman, ‘Anatomy of a Coup’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 9 April 1970, regarded the urban elite as the backbone of the coup, since Sihanouk ‘had deprived the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the army of their traditional slice of the financial action and of their accustomed place in the sun’. In late 1966 peasant revolts broke out against the government under Prime Minister Lon Nol, at first in Batambang province bordering Thailand. By late 1968 11 of 19 provinces were thought to be affected by revolutionary activity. At the time of the coup the guerrillas were believed to number 1,500 to 3,000; by August 1970 they had grown to exceed 10,000. H. M. Kaas, ‘The Red Awakening’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 6 August 1970. Time, 17 August 1970, concurred.
19 Current Notes, December 1969, p. 695.
20 See Current Notes, October 1967, p. 438. Mr. Freeth, then Minister for External Affairs, said at a press conference, September 1969, that ‘if it were not for the expansionist policies of China in the Asian region … there would be no continuing threats, quite apart from Vietnam, say to Thailand, Laos and Burma …’ Current Notes, September 1969
21 See U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Government Operations, 1959, and U.S. Senate, Report on Aid to Laos, 1959.
22 Which the A.I.D. Director, John Hannah, admitted was being used as an organ of the C.I.A. The Australian, 8 June 1970.
23 William Sullivan, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and former Ambassador to Laos, to the Symington Sub-committee, 1970.
24 As President Nixon admitted in his statement of 6 March 1970.
25 See T. D. Allman, Far Eastern Economic Review, 1 January 1970; Peter Dale Scott, ‘Air America: Flying the U.S. into Laos’, Ramparts, February 1970, and ‘Laos: the Story Nixon Wonʼt Tell’, New York Review of Books, 9 April 1970; Noam Chomsky, ‘A Visit to Laos’, New York Review of Books, 23 July 1970; and J. Decorney in Bulletin of the Concerned Asian Scholars, April-July 1970. Gabriel Kolko, ‘The Nature of the Vietnam War’, Australian Left Review, June-July 1970, provides a wide-ranging analysis of the military aspects of the war based on official American military sources. Kolko, p. 8, quotes Roger Hilsman's testimony to the U.S. Senate in 1967: ‘I think it would be a mistake to think that the refugees come toward the Government side out of sympathy … [They] come toward the Government simply because the Vietcong do not bomb, and that they will not at least be bombed and shelled’.
26 See Whitlam's assertion, The Australian, 29 October 1970, that the Liberals ‘have not been good allies of the United States. On the contrary, America will not be grateful to those elements in Australia which have prolonged her involvement and impeded her peace initiatives’. In return the Deputy Prime Minister Mr. McEwen asserted that Labor was so willing to Vietnamise that it would wreck the U.S. alliance, The Australian. 11 November 1970.
27 See Jean-Paul Sartre, ‘Genocide’, New Left Review, March-April 1968, and Noam Chomsky, At War with Asia, Pantheon, 1970.
28 See for instance Kahin, G. M. and Lewis, J. W., The United States in Vietnam, Dial Press, 1967, pp. 181ffGoogle Scholar; and Schurmann, F., Scott, P. D. and Zelnik, R., The Politics of Escalation in Vietnam, Beacon Press, 1966.Google Scholar
29 Paul Hasluck, address to U.N. General Assembly, 27 September 1966, Current Notes, September 1966, pp. 533–535; Mr. MacMahon to the S.E.A.T.O. Council, 2 July 1970, Current Notes, July 1970, p. 397.
30 C.P.D., H.R., 15 March 1966, p. 247. Mr. Fairhall, Minister for Defence: ‘there is not the slightest doubt that the North Vietnamese are puppets of the Chinese’. Hasluck, 21 June 1964, referred to ‘the determination of China to establish Chinese hegemony throughout South-East Asia, working in the first place through her North Vietnamese puppets’. Current Notes, June 1964, p. 45.
31 In his Parliamentary statement of 19 March 1970, Mr. MacMahon spoke of South Vietnam's ‘democratic institutions’. C.P.D., H.R., 19 March 1970, p. 680.
32 ‘The takeover of South Vietnam would be a direct military threat to Australia and all the countries of Southeast Asia’, Menzies, C.P.D., H.R., 29 April 1965, pp. 1060–1062. Mr. MacMahon, to the S.E.A.T.O. Council, 2 July 1970: ‘A crisis involving Cambodia was and is directly threatening the peace and stability of South-East Asia and indirectly of the whole world’. Current Notes, July 1970, p. 398.
33 ‘Suppose the United States withdrew. Would anybody with his five wits doubt that before very long Chinese Communism, acting through North Vietnamese communism would swoop down from South Vietnam; would put itself in an early position to control Thailand; to render the position of Malaysia almost intolerable, putting Malaya between two fires, and would therefore, in the long run, not so very long run at that, we would find ourselves with aggressive communism almost on our shores’. Menzies, press conference, Canberra, 13 July 1965. Fairhall, op. cit.: ‘what is happening in South Vietnam today is perhaps only the first round of an attack by the Chinese Communists in an effort to dominate the world.’ Mr. MacMahon, Press conference in Manila, 30 June 1970, Current Notes, June 1970, p. 348: ‘I am sure that it [“the North Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia”] is a direct threat to the security of the whole area … you know what the domino theory means.’
34 C.P.D., H.R., 13 August 1964, pp. 184–185. Menzies said, ‘we will remember vividly how anxious we were only a few years ago about the possibility that … Southeast Asia might be overlooked’ by the U.S. But he ‘felt there was a growing realisation in Washington of the importance of Southeast Asia. This was a matter of some satisfaction to us.’
35 C.P.D., H.R., 18 August 1966, p. 215.
36 Albinski, Henry S., Politics and Foreign Policy in Australia, Duke University Press, 1970, p. 46.Google Scholar
37 See The Australian, 16 and 17 September 1970.
38 See G. Clark, Nation, 10 December 1966, and his In Fear of China, Landsdowne Press, Melbourne, 1970, chapter 10; G. Whitlam, Beyond Vietnam, Fabian Society Pamphlet, Melbourne; George Westbrook, ‘Foreign Policy Review, January-June 1968’, Australian Quarterly, September 1968.
39 New York Times, 27 November 1967; The Australian, 12 August 1970.
40 Sydney Morning Herald, 19 February 1965.
41 C.P.D., H.R., 4 May 1965, pp. 1102–1107, speech by A. A. Calwell, the leader of the A.L.P.
42 See Altman, D., ‘Foreign Policy and the Elections’, Politics, May 1967.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
43 See my ‘A Resilient Perspective’: and Albinski, Politics and Foreign Policy in Australia, pp. 80ff. Hedley Bull, ‘Problems of Australian Foreign Policy, January-June 1968’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, December 1968, points out that the A.L.P. ‘was able to present itself as the champion of United States policy, chiding the government … with dissent from the policy of its major ally’.
44 Current Notes, August 1970, p. 445.
45 See Albinski, Politics and Foreign Policy in Australia, p. 47.
46 Sydney Morning Herald, 10 November 1966.
47 See Lockwood, Rupert, ‘Racism and Militarism’, Australian Left Review, December 1968Google Scholar; and McQueen, H., A New Britannia, Penguin, 1970, pp. 21–67.Google Scholar
48 See Albinski, Henry S., ‘Australia's Search For Regional Security in South East Asia’, unpublished Ph. D. thesis. University of Minnesota, 1959, chapter 1.Google Scholar
49 Cooksey, Robert, ‘Australian Public Opinion and Vietnam Policy’, Dissent, Autumn 1968, p. 6.Google Scholar
50 Price, A. G., Australia Comes of Age, Georgian House, Melbourne, 1945, p. 112Google Scholar: ‘for the first time they faced invasion … — a racial war which certainly threatened slavery and possible annihilation.’
51 Albinski, ‘Australia's Search for Regional Security’, pp. 164ff.
52 Tate, M., ‘The Australasian Monroe Doctrine: Genesis of the Doctrine’, Political Science Quarterly, June 1961.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
53 In 1950 Evatt expressed his fear that China would prove ‘imperialist’ and seek to subvert Southeast Asia, C.P.D., H.R., 16 March 1950, p. 918. Calwell thought ‘Communism has engulfed China and is moving south and south-west’. C.P.D., H.R., 22 March 1950, p. 1085.
54 See L.F. Crisp, Ben Chifley, Longmans, 1963, chapters 18 and 21.
55 See Sir Percy Spender's first major address as Minister for External Affairs, C.P.D., H.R., 9 March 1950, p. 627ff, where he outlines the domino theory of ‘communist imperialism’.
56 See Richard Casey, Minister for External Affairs, C.P.D., H.R., 21 June 1951, p. 274.
57 Casey, C.P.D., H.R., 27 April 1955, p. 207.
58 C.P.D., H.R., 28 September 1954, p. 1630.
59 See Casey, ibid., 27 November 1953, p. 665.
60 Casey, R., Friends and Neighbours, East Lansing, Michigan, 1958, p. 111.Google Scholar
61 T. B. Millar, Australia's Defence Policies 1945–65, A.N.U., Dept. of International Relations, Working Paper, 1967, p. 28.
62 C.P.D., H.R., 4 April 1957, pp. 571–579.
63 B. B. Schaffer, ‘Policy and System in Defence: The Australian Case’, World Politics, January 1963.
64 Menzies, C.P.D., H.R., 20 April 1955, p. 49.
65 Casey, Friends and Neighbours, p. 16.
66 Age, 31 July 1958.
67 See Menzies, C.P.D., H.R., 20 April 1955, pp. 44–54.
68 See Casey, Friends and Neighbours, pp. 15–16, and statements by Casey, Current Notes, December 1957, p. 140, and C.P.D., H.R., 27 November 1953, pp. 663–665.
69 Menzies, C.P.D., H.R., 19 May 1950, p. 2741.
70 Menzies, ibid., 30 May 1950, p. 3350.
71 Dennis Altman, ‘Australia and Vietnam: Some Preliminary Speculations’, Australian Quarterly, June 1970, p. 61. See also R. Catley, ‘Australia's Warm War’, Eastern World, November-December 1967.
72 T. B. Millar, Australia's Defence Policies, 1945–65. During the late 1950s, despite government statements, the armed forces were allowed to decline in strength and the defence vote was kept constant, hence absorbing a declining percentage of the G.N.P.
73 Ibid., p. 44.
74 Current Notes, May 1962, p. 37.
75 See Mackie, J. A. C., ‘Australia and Indonesia, 1945–60’, in Greenwood, G. and Harper, N., eds., Australia in World Affairs, 1956–60, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1963.Google Scholar
76 See statements by Barwick, 4 January and 25 January 1962, Current Notes, January 1962, and C.P.D., H.R., 21 August 1962, p. 517, where he conceded that the matter was ‘beyond our control’. See also Hanno Weisbrod, ‘Sir Garfield Barwick and Dutch New Guinea’, Australian Quarterly, June 1967.
77 Sydney Morning Herald, 17 August 1962: ‘the U.S. praised surrender to aggression as a means for keeping the peace, and congratulated itself as having contributed to the surrender. On that day, Australia was formally presented … as a nation without the will or the means to assert its national interests.’
78 Statement by Athol Townley, Minister for Defence, C.P.D., H.R., 24 October 1962, pp. 1877–1884.
79 For a detailed account see R. Catley, ‘Australia, Malaysia and the Problem of Confrontation’, unpublished Ph. D. thesis, A.N.U., 1967.
80 The Bulletin, 10 June 1959, feared that the P.A.P. election victory ‘represents another advance of the Iron Curtain towards us. Singapore has retired to the fringes of the Communist jungle’.
81 Statements by Menzies, 17 November 1961, Current Notes, November 1961, p. 14, and 25 November 1961, ibid.; and by Barwick, 21 August 1962, Current Notes, August 1962, p. 61, and C.P.D., H.R., 18 October 1962, p. 1769.
82 See Boyce, P. J., ‘Canberra's Malaysia Policy’, Australian Outlook, August 1963.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
83 See Sydney. Morning Herald, 29 January and 2 February 1963, and A. A. Calwell, Labor's Role in Modern Society, Lansdowne Press, Melbourne, 1963, pp. 187–188.
84 See A.L.P., Report of Special Commonwealth Conference, Canberra, 18 March 1963, pp. 12–13; A.L.P., Report of the Proceedings of the 25th Commonwealth Conference, 29 July 1963, pp. 23–24; and interview with Calwell, Brisbane Courier-Mail, 9 August 1963, which reflect a progressively greater commitment to Malaysia.
85 See Catley, ‘Australia, Malaysia, and Confrontation’, chapters 6 and 7; also Miller, J. D. B., ‘Problems of Australian Foreign Policy, July-December 1963’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, April 1964.Google Scholar
86 In 1964 Hasluck was ‘disturbed by the rise of a strong communist party [the P.K.I.] looking towards Peking’. ‘Australia and South-East Asia’, Foreign Affairs, October 1964.
87 Starke, J. G., The ANZUS Treaty Alliance, Melbourne University Press, 1965, p. 3.Google Scholar
88 C.P.D., H.R., 4 April 1957, p. 573.
89 See Starke, op. cit., pp. 190ff.
90 Confirmed privately by government officials.
91 See Defence Department statement, Age, 9 June 1964, and defence review, C.P.D., H.R., 10 November, 1964, pp. 2715–2724. See also T. B. Millar, Australia's Defence, Melbourne University Press, 1969, Appendices.
92 C.P.D., H.R., 17 May 1962, p. 2449.
93 C.P.D., H.R., 9 May 1963, pp. 1223ff.
94 Barwick, ibid.
95 A.L.P.: Report of Special Commonwealth Conference, 18 March 1963.
96 Weisbrod, ‘North West Cape’, p. 82.
97 Ibid., p. 76.
98 See Barwick's press conference, 13 April 1964.
99 Including the hasty purchase of the F-111 for which extravagant claims were made with respect to its performance, delivery date and cheapness. See R. Catley, ‘The Politics of Defence: The TFX Decision’, unpublished seminar paper, Department of International Relations, A.N.U., 1965.
100 A development concurrent with the ‘upgrading’ of the U.S. alliance was the growth of strategic studies in Australia and the accompanying increase of American Foundation grants for research in that and related areas. The Australian Institute of International Affairs, the A.N.U. Centre for Strategic and Defence Studies, and Chinese Studies at the A.N.U. have all received large grants. In an A.I.I.A. book on Vietnam, Fred Alexander points out that ‘scholarly detachment was highly desirable in the author selected’. As a result the ‘dispassionate analysis’ was presented by the former Secretary to the Department of External Affairs. See Sir Alan Watt, Vietnam: An Australian Analysis, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1968. Sir Alan's successor as Director of the A.I.I.A. fears that Australia may become ‘a granary tributary state of an Asian Empire’. T. B. Millar, Australia's Foreign Policy, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1968, p. 13. A high proportion of the new academic staff in strategic and foreign policy matters have been recruited from the British and Australian foreign offices and armed forces. See J. Playford, ‘Civilian Militarists’, Australian Left Review, December 1968; and M. Duigan and G. O'Leary, Australia's Defence Policy, Radical Education Project, Adelaide, 1970.
101 See Albinski, Henry S., Australia's Policies and Attitudes Towards China, Princeton University Press, 1965Google Scholar; Bell, Coral, ‘Australia and China: Power Balance and Policy’, in Halpern, A. A., ed., Policies Toward China; Views From Six Continents, New York, 1965Google Scholar; Kennedy, D. E., ‘Australian Policy Towards China, 1961–65’, in Greenwold, G.G. and Harper, N., eds., Australia in World Affairs 1961–1965, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1968Google Scholar; Clark, G., In Fear of China, Lansdowne, Melbourne, 1967Google Scholar. The reader seeking confirmation for the following text is invited to consult these sources.
102 Clark, op. cit., p. 167.
103 Millar, T. B., ‘Australia and the Future in Asia’, in Miller, J. D. B., ed., India, Japan, Australia: Partners in Asia, A.N.U. Press, 1968, p. 27.Google Scholar
104 Menzies, announcing the Australian commitment of an infantry battalion: ‘It must be seen as part of a thrust by communist China between the Indian and Pacific Oceans’. C.P.D., H.R., 29 April 1965, pp. 1060–1061.