Sending Australian troops to Vietnam in
support of the US defined our politics for a generation.
This
month marks not one but two pivotal anniversaries in Australian history. One of
them is being celebrated with frenetic enthusiasm. The other seems likely to
pass without any attention at all. It is the 50th anniversary of Sir Robert
Menzies' momentous announcement, on April 29, 1965, that an Australian
battalion was being sent to fight in Vietnam.
No
doubt the Anzac centenary deserves a lot of attention, but it is a little
shocking that this other anniversary is being so completely ignored.
The commitment to Vietnam
remains, without question, Australia's single most important strategic decision
since 1945, and it largely defined our politics for an entire generation. As
opposition leader Arthur Calwell said when he replied to Menzies' announcement
the following week, this was "one of the most significant events in the
history of this Commonwealth".
The issues
that were at stake for us in Vietnam remain remarkably relevant to us
today.
The contrast between the ways
we are approaching these two anniversaries is all the more striking because
Vietnam has so much more to teach us about our future than Gallipoli. The
strategic issues at stake in 1915 are entirely remote from us today. They concerned
the future of a global order based on European imperialism, Britain's place in
that order, and Australia's place in the British Empire.
By contrast, the issues that
were at stake for us in Vietnam remain remarkably relevant to us today.
Menzies' decision 50 years ago was all about responding to the power and
ambition of China. It was about the need to support, and to be seen to support,
the United States against China. It was about how far we should trust
Washington's judgment about when and where to fight in Asia.
It was also about our need to
balance a strong alliance with the US with our place in the rising Asia. It was
about our fears of Indonesia. And it was about the wisdom of intervening in other
countries' civil wars. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
All these issues were
explored in depth and in detail in the searing debate that lasted until our
troops withdrew in 1972. Vietnam produced not just the most bitter, but also
the most sustained and sophisticated discussion of Australia's strategic
situation and policies in our history. As the Vietnam War was transforming Asia
fundamentally, the debate about it here changed Australia fundamentally, too.
By the time it was over, we
had ceased to see Britain as any kind of guarantor of our security, we had
reconceived our alliance with the US, and we had redefined our own identity and
our relationship with Asia. Over recent months, we have paused to commemorate
the achievements of the two leaders – Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser– who did
most to clarify and consolidate these transformations.
But we have paid too little
attention to the issues and debates about Vietnam, and that is a serious loss,
because they are becoming more and more relevant to us as Asia undergoes
another momentous transformation.
After our troops withdrew in
1972, and especially after Saigon fell to the Communists in 1975, it seemed
there was not much to learn from the traumas of the decade since 1965, except
"never again". That is because it appeared so obvious in retrospect
that the war, and Australia's part in it, was a simply a mistake. It became
easy to see our commitment in Vietnam as reflecting nothing more than the naive
enthusiasm of a junior ally, eager to follow the whims of a great and powerful
friend.
But there was much more to it
than this. Peter Edwards' official history of the decision, published back in
1992, makes clear that the commitment to Vietnam reflected a serious response
to Australia's difficult and dangerous strategic circumstances in the early
1960s.
Australian ministers then
were rightly worried about the adventurist, not to say aggressive, posture of
Indonesia under Sukarno, and about the risk of Chinese-backed communist
subversion of the fragile new governments of post-colonial south-east Asia.
They did fear that if Vietnam fell to the communists then the rest of
south-east Asia would follow, and that if the US was left unsupported in
south-east Asia, we would be left facing Indonesia alone.
With the benefit of
hindsight, these fears of Indonesia, China and the "Domino Theory"
are easy to mock, but, at the time, the issues were real enough. Australia did
face a very unstable and uncertain neighbourhood, and supporting the US to help
make it safer was not self-evidently a stupid idea.
On the other hand, the counter-arguments
were also strong, and they deserve much closer attention than they commonly
receive today. Calwell's reply to Menzies' announcement on May 4, 1965 remains
one of the greatest parliamentary speeches in our history, and there is perhaps
no better way to mark this anniversary than to Google it, and read it for
yourself. It sets out all the issues that were to dominate the debate
over the coming years, and the resonances with many of the issues we face today
are extraordinary.
In a remarkable reminder of
the days when our political leaders used Parliament to present arguments and
debate issues, Calwell set out the case against Menzies' decision with great
clarity and precision. He did not contest the seriousness of Australia's
strategic situation, but with extraordinary prescience he foresaw precisely why
the commitment of western forces to combat operations on the ground would not
save South Vietnam, and why it would humiliate the US.
But despite the power of
Calwell's argument, it is not clear as we look back today that he had all the
right on his side. Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, another Vietnam-era statesman who
has recently passed from the scene, used to argue that the United States' and
Australia's fight in Vietnam won time for the newly independent countries of
south-east Asia to find their feet, and thus contributed vitally to the
emergence of the stable, prosperous south-east Asia in the 1970s and 1980s.
And while the US certainly
was humiliated in Vietnam, just as Calwell predicted, that was not the end of
the story. In one of history's strangest switchbacks, military failure in
Vietnam led Richard Nixon to Beijing in 1972, when the deal he did with Mao
laid the foundation for Asia's post-Vietnam order. Far from withdrawing,
the US emerged after 1972 as the uncontested leader of that order, ensuring
Asia's and Australia's security ever since. No one on either side of the
Vietnam debate could have predicted that.
But now that post-Vietnam
order is passing, as China again challenges US power in Asia. Many of the
questions they debated 50 years ago confront us again today in different forms.
As we wrestle with them, there is much we can learn, both in style and in
substance, from their arguments back then. Marking the anniversary of Menzies' statement,
and Calwell's reply, would be a good way to start.
Hugh
White is an Age columnist and professor of strategic studies at the
Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU.
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