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more far-seeing policy on the part of the United States, one dictated less by domestic pressures and more by the situation on the ground, might have been a better guide to dependents like Australia and New Zealand. Perhaps it would have kept Australia, New Zealand, and the United States out of the Vietnam War.
To ask these questions is to range much farther ahead with the narrative. It is necessary to return to 1956, and to Suez.
5.
The Suez affair arose out of the British preoccupation with the Middle East, initial American bungling, the conviction that President Nasser of Egypt represented a Hitler-like determination to unite the Arab people against Western influence (thus improving the position of the Soviet Union), the desire of the French to be rid of outside interference in Algeria, and the Israeli wish to capitalize upon what might be a temporary British and French distaste for Nasser. It was a long and tedious business, extending throughout a northern summer, and culminating in a military effort which backfired. The outcome was the elevation of the UN into a world jury, the separation for the time being of British and U.S. interests, a continuing rift within the Commonwealth of Nations, and slow and reluctant conviction by the New Zealand and Australian governments that they had become isolated in a cul-de-sac with a Britain which had temporarily lost its touch in terms of the U.S. alliance.
The story involves various twists and turns by the governments of R. G. Menzies in Australia and S. G. Holland in New Zealand; but its essence is that these governments were consumed by their longstanding deference to Britain, and their habitual response to British policy in the Middle East. In this the Australian government was the more decisive. Even though Southeast Asia had become increasingly important to the two countries, and the Chinese threat seemed to be growing, there was almost a sense of relief about again being involved in the Middle East. To the men of a late-World-War-I vintage who were prominent in the cabinets of Australia and New Zealand, the Middle East presumably meant Gallipoli, Tobruk, and El Alamein. It was an area of past glories, still (it seemed) carrying the lifeline of empire. They had acquiesced — some of them with personal reluctance, but with loyal conformity — in Britain's decolonization in South Asia; they had been disturbed by Britain's movement out of the Canal Zone; to a considerable degree, they were pleased and even delighted when Britain and France united again in order to teach a lesson to the Egyptians — a people not universally popular in Australian and New Zealand folklore.
The fly in the ointment was the opposition of the Eisenhower administration. To the Australian and New Zealand governments, hostility between Britain and the United States was a condition not
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to be borne, since it put the two South Pacific countries in an agony of uncertainty about the future. Although there was some indignation about the 'interference' of the UN, and the seeming officiousness of Canada and Lester Pearson, the two governments were happy when the incident was over, and Britain and the United States were able to get back to co-operation.
Yet the significance of Suez was more than that of disturbance about possible rifts between the great and powerful friends on whom Australia and New Zealand relied. It also put an end to the idea that either country might play an effective military role in the Middle East. In future they would be confined there to symbolic peace-keeping forces. Suez also said something devastating about British power, and the extent to which it could be exercised without U.S. approval. Finally, although Egypt was not in formal terms a colony, Britain's inability to discipline Egypt said much about its capacity to hold on to its existing colonies, and to retain a sense of national unity while doing so. The debate over Suez had divided the whole of Britain. Something slighter but similar had happened in Australia and New Zealand. It would be much harder in future to talk confidently about the British Empire.
6.
To move from Suez to the Vietnam War is to pass from a British disaster to an American one, in both of which Australia and New Zealand found themselves divided at home and separated abroad.from some of their customary associates. Vietnam was the first war that either had fought without being at the side of Britain. If only to that extent, it marked a watershed from the past.
In retrospect, it seems likely that the enthusiasm with which the Australian, and, to a lesser extent, the New Zealand government urged the United States to commit ground troops to Vietnam in 1965 was due in part to the decline of British power shown at Suez and further demonstrated after 1956 by a growing British desire to end commitments in Asia. By 1965 the Middle East had dropped out of Australian and New Zealand calculations. Southeast Asia was what mattered. The belief that China was behind Vietnam, and that if Vietnam was not resisted there would be an extension of Chinese power throughout Asia, was now orthodoxy amongst Australian authorities, to some extent amongst their New Zealand counterparts, and to a growing extent in the administration of President Lyndon Johnson.
United States efforts to assist South Vietnamese forces to combat North Vietnam's intrusions into the South and to limit local guerrilla activity were proving fruitless. By early 1965 it seemed that the United States had a choice between an ignominious withdrawal or a massive increase in the forces it was sending to Vietnam. We do not know whether the decision to commit further troops would have been the same if there had been any idea of how many more would be needed,
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for Security in the Pacific Í90Í-Í4, Sydney, 1976. New Zealand naval policy is covered in R. C. Cumming, 'The Genesis of the New Zealand Division of the Royal Navy 1880-1921', unpublished MA thesis, University of Auckland, 1964; T. G. Weir, 'New Zealand's Naval Policy 1909-1914', unpublished MA thesis, University of Canterbury, 1973; I. C. McGibbon, Blue-water Rationale, The Naval Defence of New Zealand 1914-Í942, Wellington, 1981. S. D. Webster, 'The Tasman Connection: New Zealand's Trade and Defence Relations with Australia 1901-1914', unpublished MA thesis, Victoria University of Wellington, 1969, has material on both naval and military relations. The establishment of the Royal Military College at Duntroon is described in ColonelJ. E. Lee, Duntroon, The Royal Military College of Australia Í911-1946, Canberra, 1952. C. E. W. Bean, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18, The Story of ANZAC, 2v., Sydney, 1921, and Christopher Pugsley, Gallipoli, The New Zealand Story, Auckland, 1984, should be consulted on relations during World War I. The following volumes in the Official History of New Zealand in the Second World War 1939-45 have material on relations in the late 1930s and during World War II: Documents Relating to New Zealand's Participation in the Second World War 1939-45, 3v., Wellington, 1949, 1951, 1963; J. V. T. Baker, War Economy, Wellington, 1965; F. L. W. Wood, Political and External Affairs, Wellington, 1958.
10
Australasia and the World Outside
Foreign Policies Since World War II
J. D. B. MILLER
THIS IS an attempt to discuss how Australia and New Zealand have agreed and (very rarely) disagreed over foreign policy since World War II; what sorts of joint action they have undertaken; and how their official visions of the world have changed. The method is first to narrate the main sequence of events, and then to ask questions about the changes which have taken place.
1.
First, however, it is necessary to sketch out the wartime situation from which emerged the approaches of Australia and New Zealand to the postwar world. They began the war with a common stand, once the British government had reversed its previous policy of appeasement of Hitler, and had given a military guarantee to Poland. Before this, the two had been at odds over support for a policy of sanctions against aggression. From 1936 to 1939 the Savage government in New Zealand had striven at Geneva to put 'teeth' into the League's efforts for peace and for action against Italy and Japan; its attitude had been rejected by the Lyons government in Australia, which preferred to follow British policy and sometimes to exceed it in accommodation of what became the Axis powers. By late 1939, however, these differences had become unimportant: New Zealanders might subsequently congratulate themselves on having had a prescient government, and Australians wonder whether a different policy would
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have been better,  but  the  immediate  task  of helping  Britain was paramount with both.
Wartime experiences took them in different directions. At the start and during the Middle East, Greece and Crete campaigns, both countries were involved in the same operations. Once the Pacific war began however, their paths diverged. New Zealand acquiesced in Churchill's request that its troops remain in the Middle East and later be part of the allied offensive in Italy; this meant that the New Zealand services played relatively little part in the Pacific war, though the country itself became an important base for the U.S. Navy. The Curtin government in Australia refused Churchill's pleas that Australian troops remain in the Middle East and that later some of them should be diverted to Burma on their way home; instead, the divisions in the Middle East were brought back and transferred to New Guinea. A further division was locked up in Singapore following the surrender, having been sent there in 1941 as part of an attempt to deter the Japanese from attacking Malaya. The combination of this defeat and the furious and costly campaigns in New Guinea gave Australia much to think about: there were more doubts about Britain as an ally, and a greater dependence on the United States, than were evident in New Zealand.
This difference in military activity was matched by a difference in diplomatic style. The constant efforts of the Australian Minister for External Affairs, Dr H. V. Evatt, to persuade the British and American governments to devote more resources to the Pacific and thus to the defence of Australia were a marked contrast to the more reserved diplomacy of New Zealand. A more violent war was accompanied by more violent assertion and a more strident tone. Whether this had any effect on the policies of Churchill and Roosevelt is another matter.
2.
Not too much should be made of these differences, although their reflections were to be glimpsed at various times after the war. What was important about the Australian and New Zealand governments between 1941 and 1945 — and, as we shall see, for the remainder of the 1940s — was that both were Labour Party governments, and both had something of the same vision of the postwar world. This vision was partly created by geographical location and wartime experiences, partly by inspiration from the wartime propaganda o Britain and the United States, and partly from the innate attitudes and beliefs of social-democratic political movements. The first of these ensured that both governments would be very much concerned wi how affairs would be managed in Asia and the Pacific once the war was over; the second gave them ideas about postwar collective securi y, and, combined with the third, provided very similar thoughts abou
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full employment, better social services and education, more secure trade, and an expanded programme of colonial development.
One can see the similarities in their approaches in four fields of postwar reconstruction — the ANZAC Pact of 1944; the establishment in 1947 of the South Pacific Commission, foreshadowed in 1944; the lines which they took at the San Francisco Conference of 1945; and the hesitations which they displayed over the Bretton Woods Agreements.
The 'ANZAC Pact' is known by that name in Australia, and as the 'Canberra Pact' in New Zealand; its proper title is the Australian-New Zealand Agreement, 1944. The main initiative was taken by Australia. The New Zealand representatives did not at first want a formal agreement, but were persuaded that one would be in the interests of both countries. The Agreement now looks more like an example of how the two, especially Australia, were trying to impress their views on their allies than like a lasting instrument of change. It proposed what were, for the time, elaborate arrangements for consultation about policy between the two. Its suggestion of a conference or the colonial powers in the South Pacific bore fruit with the eventual establishment of the South Pacific Commission, and its statements about welfare in the colonies showed an awareness of what would be needed after the war; but its proposals about a security system in the South Pacific were vague and inconclusive, and its demands for international ownership of air trunk routes were ignored by practically everyone else. The two governments declared that they should be represented at the highest level' on all bodies planning and executing armistice arrangements. This was an indication of their concern that the great powers should not decide the terms of peace with Germany and Japan, and present the smaller allies with a fait accompli. Evatt and his men were well aware of how glad Churchill had been to assure Roosevelt that he spoke on behalf of the whole British Empire; the two governments were agreed that notice should be taken of them before it was too late.
As already suggested, the South Pacific Commission was a significant outcome of the 1944 discussions in Canberra, although the major colonial powers were not at first enthusiastic about a conference or a permanent body. Its establishment was something of an achievement for Australia and New Zealand: it showed that their governments were concerned about welfare and development for native peoples, although its non-Pohtical and functional character meant that it did not herald any significant change in the status of the colonial territories. But the ernphasis on trusteeship which had characterized the 1944 Agreement, and the further emphasis which Australia and New Zealand gave to
at San Francisco in 1945, meant that, by the time the Commission Was set up, the principle had become widely accepted.
t San Francisco, the great powers came forward with an agreed 1 rait for the Charter of the United Nations, and invited their allies
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to acclaim it. The most significant opposition came from Australia and New Zealand, with Evatt and Peter Fräser as the principal critics They attacked on several fronts. They were both opposed to the veto given to the great powers in the Security Council. They also wished to see the trusteeship provisions strengthened, more emphasis given to full employment, and a variety of other smaller revisions. Here and on other occasions, they demanded that attention be paid to states such as theirs which had contributed directly to the war effort (as many of those at San Francisco had not). They argued that the world would not be safe if all the major decisions were left to the great powers.
Both countries were prominent in the international conferences which set up the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), just as they were in regard to the UN. It was otherwise, however, with the Bretton Woods conference of 1944, which was responsible for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), now part of the World Bank complex. Here were revealed the reservations in the two governments' commitment to international organization. Both Labour Parties were still sensitive about 'international finance' because of their experiences in the Depression and in subsequent years. Both had elements which inclined towards 'unorthodox' financial theories and feared that the scope for exercising these in the postwar world would be curtailed, through the IMF in particular, by the activities of international bankers. The result was that both governments suffered internal disputes over whether they should join the two financial bodies. Australia did so in 1947, but it was not until 1961 that New Zealand took the plunge. Both continued to be in full control of their currencies and their internal financial arrangements.
The two countries' Labour governments continued in office until 1949. This was a relatively stable period in their international dealings, and their policies were very much in line. Both remained very close to Britain. The fact that Britain itself had a Labour government from 1945 onwards meant greater empathy than would be the case now-it is difficult in the 1980s to imagine a British Foreign Secretary saying with a grin at the close of a session with Australian and New Zealand representatives, 'Well, when does the executive of [the] Empire Labour Party wish to resume?' as Ernest Bevin did in 1946.} Australia and New Zealand fitted in without complaint to Britain's managemen of the sterling area, promised to take some military responsibility i the event of conflict in the Middle East, and agreed to changes u1 the structure of the British Commonwealth of Nations in order accommodate India, Pakistan, and Ceylon, and later India's continued membership in spite of its becoming a republic. They were both anxio
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to retain Commonwealth preferences, and were relieved at the Attlee (and later the Churchill) government's decision not to participate in the planning of a European Community aimed at a relatively self-sufficient trading area. Military links with Britain were close; it was still possible to see Britain as a world power, especially in Southeast Asia. The formation of NATO was welcomed by both Australia and New Zealand as an effective means of engaging the United States in European affairs, and stemming the Soviet advance across Europe. Both governments were firmly anti-Communist in their approach to international relations. Both saw the United States as the ultimate protector of the Western world, although the time had not yet come for a reproduction of NATO in the Pacific.
4.
After 1949 the situation in Asia and the Pacific became, from the standpoint of the two countries' governments, more dangerous and less stable. The decisive event was the victory of the Chinese Communists in 1949. Both Australia and New Zealand were contemplating recognition of the new government, in spite of misgivings, when the outbreak of the Korean War rendered this less feasible because of their increased sense of dependence on the United States. Korea was important, partly because both countries had been involved in its affairs through their small but seemingly important role in the occupation of Japan, and partly because the war between North and South was seen as a case of Communist aggression encouraged, if not instigated, by the Soviet Union. The fact that U.S. action against the North had been approved by the United Nations Security Council (in the absence of the Soviet member) gave it the appearance of an act of collective security on the part of the international community. Throughout the Western world — not least in Australia and New Zealand — contrasts were drawn between the weak-kneed attitude of the West towards Hitler's aggression, and the resolute resistance being shown towards North Korea. Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada were among the few countries to send troops to assist General MacArthur's Americans. In 1951 they were formed into a British Commonwealth Division. Military cooperation with the United States, which had lapsed to some extent since 1945, again became intense. Once the Chinese had become combatants, Australian and New Zealand agreement with the U.S. s lmate of Chinese intentions became greater than before the war. e signing of the armistice in 1953 saw the two countries firmly allgned with the United States.
tormal assurance of U.S. military support for Australia and New
paland was provided by the ANZUS Treaty of 1951.  The prime
on was the desire of the U.S. administration to conclude a peace
th     ^ Wlth Japan as quickly as possible. The U.S. point of view was
" Japan were not treated generously it might in due course respond
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to Soviet overtures. The burden of supporting Japan economically was becoming unacceptable to Americans. Japan would soon have to return to the international economy as an equal party to trade negotiations. It would also need to establish some form of self defence. In all these circumstances the United States, spurred on by the outbreak of the Korean War, so close to Japan, wanted a 'soft' peace treaty. The fact that Australia and New Zealand, more or less alone amongst the wartime opponents of Japan, wanted a 'hard' treaty which would continue to keep Japan under control, was irritating to the U.S. negotiator, John Foster Dulles, and became a weapon in the hands of the Australian and New Zealand foreign ministers, Percy Spender and F. W. Doidge, in their quest for American guarantees.
The treaty which emerged has been the subject of continued argument and interpretation by commentators, but its intention was clear enough. Dulles had begun with the notion of an 'island chain', starting with Japan and extending to Australia and New Zealand. Backed by U.S. arms, this would prevent either China or the Soviet Union from extending its power beyond the Asian mainland. However, he discovered that stitching together the various portions of this chain was diplomatically difficult and perhaps impossible. Being in a hurry to get a peace with Japan, he fell back on separate treaties — one with Japan, one with the Philippines, and one with Australia and New Zealand. The British responsibilities in Southeast Asia were left out of the operation, partly because they would have been difficult to accommodate, and partly because the British did not want to be responsible for situations such as that in the Philippines, although they did wish to retain military connections with Australia and New Zealand. The absence of Britain from the treaty made for some awkward explaining on the part of ministers in New Zealand and Australia, since they could not go into all the details of negotiation, yet were anxious to preserve their reputations (both governments being now from non-Labour parties) for sterling British loyalty. The matter was also a source of embarrassment to the Attlee government in its last fading months; but when it was succeeded by Churchill's Conservative administration there was no change in the ANZUS arrangements.
The treaty was essentially about coordination and consultation. It was deliberately vague about any obligations which the parties might assume, saying only (Article IV) that each recognized 'that an armed attack in the Pacific Area on any of the Parties would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes^ An armed attack was deemed (Article V) 'to include an armed a"ac^ on the metropolitan territory of any of the Parties, or on the íslan territories under its jurisdiction in the Pacific or on its armed forces, public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific'. The limits of 'the Pacitic were not defined. The three signatories took one concrete step: they agreed that there should be (Article VII) 'a Council consisting of their
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Foreign Ministers or their deputies to consider matters concerning the implementation of the Treaty. The Council should be so organised as to be able to meet at any time.' There was nothing about joint commands, force contributions, shared facilities, or availability of weapons; these were all to develop out of the frequent consultations which would occur among the defence authorities of the three countries, and the decisions of the ANZUS Council, which came to meet every year. ANZUS gave the Australian and New Zealand governments regular and privileged access to the U.S. administration at the level of the Secretary of State. This was guaranteed by the treaty; access to the Defence Department was not, but it soon became more or less automatic. There were already understandings between the navies of the three countries, including the Radford-Collins Agreement of 1951 between the USN and RAN, whereby responsibility for surveillance operations in the Pacific and Indian Oceans was apportioned between the navies concerned.2 Intelligence co-operation had already been set up in company with Britain and Canada. In effect, ANZUS was a formal confirmation of circumstances already accepted, and made more significant by the Korean War.
Agreement that the United States, New Zealand, and Australia had common interests in an attack on any of them in the Pacific did not mean that they saw these interests as expressed in the same situations. For the remainder of the 1950s the governments of the two South Pacific countries had to combine their increasingly close association with U.S. defence policy with the awareness that some aspects of U.S. policy were actually or potentially unacceptable. For example, the U.S. approach to the offshore islands and to the Taiwan government's attitude towards Communist China was potentially dangerous; the U.S. hesitations and demurs about the increasingly untenable role of the French in Indo-China were the same. Issues like these were difficult for the Australian and New Zealand governments to deal with. On the one hand, they were firmly anti-Communist, they were prepared to believe anything of Communist powers such as China and the Soviet Union, some of their electoral appeal arose from their anti-Communism, and their intelligence about' the possible intentions of the Communist powers was largely derived from the United States. On the other hand, they did not want war against major powers, however much they might be prepared for token military activity in company with major allies; their Asian interests were located rather closer than along the China coast; and British advice continued to be to moderate one's statements about the Chinese regime in the hope that it might become less bellicose and more amenable.
In such circumstances, it is not surprising that in the 1950s and
oOs the two governments tended to concentrate on Southeast Asia
be very  cautious  about  China,  while  continuing  to  refuse  to
ecognize the Communist government. They welcomed the formation
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of SEATO (the South East Asia Treaty Organisation), the product of SEACDT (the South East Asia Collective Defence Treaty) which was signed in 1954, following the French debacle in Indo-China; but they were at first in something of a quandary. Their governments were glad to see a further commitment of the United States to defence against Communism in Asia, but were apprehensive about the lengths to which the United States might go against the Vietnamese Communist forces. When it became clear that the United States would not take any firm action for the time being, SEATO was welcomed without reservation, since it seemed to commit the United States even more specifically than ANZUS did, and gave Australia and New Zealand deeper access to U.S. military planning.
Meanwhile, British efforts continued in Malaya. An 'emergency' had been in progress for some years, caused by the Malayan Communist Party's attempt to take over the country and create a new Communist state. It became important for Australia and New Zealand to support the British effort, which was regarded as helping to deter a possible Chinese attack on Southeast Asia. Since 1948 there had been provision for strategic planning among the three countries. In 1949 New Zealand had stationed a transport flight in Malaya; in the following year Australia took similar action. What has normally been called ANZAM had come into being. It is still there, in the sense that Australia and New Zealand, more than thirty years later, remain involved in the defence of Malaya and Singapore through the Five Power Defence Agreement, little though this may mean in terms of strategic calculation. At the least, help with the British effort in Malaya was a means of gaining practical experience for Australian and New Zealand troops, and of providing overseas postings for servicemen and women.
Something similar occurred, though with potentially graver consequences, in 1963. In that year the Indonesian government of President Sukarno undertook a 'confrontation' with Britain over the incorporation of other territories to form Malaysia, which Indonesia argued was still under British colonial rule, in spite of the Federation of Malaya's having been declared independent and a member of the Commonwealth in 1957. The interests of Australia and New Zealand in this situation were somewhat different, as were their responses.
From a New Zealand standpoint, the main issue was support for Britain against a tarnished Indonesian government which had unpleasant associations with China and Communism, and had undertaken a deplorable attack on British and Malaysian freedom of choice. The New Zealand response was necessarily slight, because of lack of resources, but was not complicated by direct relations of much significance with Indonesia.
For the Australian government, on the other hand, more complexity made itself apparent. A judgement of the deplorable motives of Sukarno and his supporters could be the same, but decision about what to do was coloured by a closer and more ambivalent relationship with
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Indonesia. Australia had been prominent in Indonesia's movement towards independence, and had gained much kudos there. To some extent this had been reduced by the Australian government's disinclination to agree to Indonesia's right to take over West Irian (West New Guinea) from the Dutch. The Australian attitude was based on the fear that Indonesian power in West Irian might in due course mean its extension into the eastern part of the island. In any case, Indonesia was the closest Asian country to Australia, large in population, substantial in resources, and distant only a few miles. Eventually the Australian government roused itself and committed troops to Borneo; but the campaign was cautious, diplomatic relations were not cut off, and aid was even continued in some degree. When Sukarno was overturned following an attempted local coup, there was much thankfulness in Canberra. Confrontation was soon over.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the Australian and New Zealand governments' foreign policies were governed by the belief that China, first in company with the Soviet Union, and then, after the break between the two Communist powers, on its own, was the principal threat to peace in Asia. As with any other Asian matter, this was felt more Strongly in Australia, because of greater proximity to Asia and closer involvement with a number of Asian countries. For the New Zealanders, the doubts about China's prime responsibility for Asian troubles were probably greater because of a stronger sense of detachment. Since Australia was more directly involved, its influence was probably stronger. An article of faith with the Australian government was that either the Chinese were directly responsible for instability in Asia, or would take advantage of it when it occurred. The Malayan rebels were overwhelmingly Chinese and were encouraged by Chinese propaganda; in Indonesia the Communist Party was hand in glove with Peking, as was Sukarno for much of the time; the North Vietnamese, following their victory over the French, aimed at total control of Indochina, perhaps of Thailand too, with the enthusiastic support of the Chinese; Taiwan was in constant danger of invasion from the mainland; and in due course India, seemingly the most unlikely victim, was menaced on its northern borders after the Chinese had taken over Tibet. A litany of this kind was almost unanswerable. Efforts were made to answer it in terms of Chinese nationalism, the need for Chinese security, the contrast between Chinese words and deeds, the caution with which China moved, and the desire of China after 1960 to distance itself from the Soviet Union and not allow Asian Communist movements to be left under Soviet control. These were given a poor reception. Little help was afforded them by the Chinese, who seemed to become more bloody-minded in their abstract statements, and to be determined to fulfil, in verbal terms, the prophecies being made about them.
Yet it is still an open question whether the intelligence assessments of China were broadly correct, and whether they remained so.  A
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more far-seeing policy on the part of the United States, one dictated less by domestic pressures and more by the situation on the ground, might have been a better guide to dependents like Australia and New Zealand. Perhaps it would have kept Australia, New Zealand, and the United States out of the Vietnam War.
To ask these questions is to range much farther ahead with the narrative. It is necessary to return to 1956, and to Suez.
5.
The Suez affair arose out of the British preoccupation with the Middle East, initial American bungling, the conviction that President Nasser of Egypt represented a Hitler-like determination to unite the Arab people against Western influence (thus improving the position of the Soviet Union), the desire of the French to be rid of outside interference in Algeria, and the Israeli wish to capitalize upon what might be a temporary British and French distaste for Nasser. It was a long and tedious business, extending throughout a northern summer, and culminating in a military effort which backfired. The outcome was the elevation of the UN into a world jury, the separation for the time being of British and U.S. interests, a continuing rift within the Commonwealth of Nations, and slow and reluctant conviction by the New Zealand and Australian governments that they had become isolated in a cul-de-sac with a Britain which had temporarily lost its touch in terms of the U.S. alliance.
The story involves various twists and turns by the governments of R. G. Menzies in Australia and S. G. Holland in New Zealand; but its essence is that these governments were consumed by their longstanding deference to Britain, and their habitual response to British policy in the Middle East. In this the Australian government was the more decisive. Even though Southeast Asia had become increasingly important to the two countries, and the Chinese threat seemed to be growing, there was almost a sense of relief about again being involved in the Middle East. To the men of a late-World-War-I vintage who were prominent in the cabinets of Australia and New Zealand, the Middle East presumably meant Gallipoli, Tobruk, and El Alamein. It was an area of past glories, still (it seemed) carrying the lifeline of empire. They had acquiesced — some of them with personal reluctance, but with loyal conformity — in Britain's decolonization in South Asia; they had been disturbed by Britain's movement out of the Canal Zone; to a considerable degree, they were pleased and even delighted when Britain and France united again in order to teach a lesson to the Egyptians — a people not universally popular in Australian and New Zealand folklore.
The fly in the ointment was the opposition of the Eisenhower administration. To the Australian and New Zealand governments, hostility between Britain and the United States was a condition not
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to be borne, since it put the two South Pacific countries in an agony of uncertainty about the future. Although there was some indignation about the 'interference' of the UN, and the seeming officiousness of Canada and Lester Pearson, the two governments were happy when the incident was over, and Britain and the United States were able to get back to co-operation.
Yet the significance of Suez was more than that of disturbance about possible rifts between the great and powerful friends on whom Australia and New Zealand relied. It also put an end to the idea that either country might play an effective military role in the Middle East. In future they would be confined there to symbolic peace-keeping forces. Suez also said something devastating about British power, and the extent to which it could be exercised without U.S. approval. Finally, although Egypt was not in formal terms a colony, Britain's inability to discipline Egypt said much about its capacity to hold on to its existing colonies, and to retain a sense of national unity while doing so. The debate over Suez had divided the whole of Britain. Something slighter but similar had happened in Australia and New Zealand. It would be much harder in future to talk confidently about the British Empire.
6.
To move from Suez to the Vietnam War is to pass from a British disaster to an American one, in both of which Australia and New Zealand found themselves divided at home and separated abroad, from some of their customary associates. Vietnam was the first war that either had fought without being at the side of Britain. If only to that extent, it marked a watershed from the past.
In retrospect, it seems likely that the enthusiasm with which the Australian, and, to a lesser extent, the New Zealand government urged the United States to commit ground troops to Vietnam in 1965 was due in part to the decline of British power shown at Suez and further demonstrated after 1956 by a growing British desire to end commitments in Asia. By 1965 the Middle East had dropped out of Australian and New Zealand calculations. Southeast Asia was what mattered. The belief that China was behind Vietnam, and that if Vietnam was not resisted there would be an extension of Chinese power throughout Asia, was now orthodoxy amongst Australian authorities, to some extent amongst their New Zealand counterparts, and to a growing extent in the administration of President Lyndon Johnson.
United States efforts to assist South Vietnamese forces to combat North Vietnam's intrusions into the South and to limit local guerrilla activity were proving fruitless. By early 1965 it seemed that the United States had a choice between an ignominious withdrawal or a massive increase in the forces it was sending to Vietnam. We do not know whether the decision to commit further troops would have been the same if there had been any idea of how many more would be needed,
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or of the degree of opposition the war would create in the United States itself. It is sufficient to note that Australia and New Zealand, determined that the United States should be fully committed to Asia, applauded the decision. It had been preceded by their own pledges to increase substantially the forces which they had previously kept in Vietnam at a token level. By 1968 Australia had 8000 and New Zealand 550 men in Vietnam. Here, it was thought, would be the means of retaining the United States as a factor in Asian affairs, and of building a credit balance for Australia and New Zealand in terms of American goodwill.
This may have been how it turned out; one can never say with assurance that Australia and New Zealand, which sent their troops to Vietnam, got more out of the United States than Britain and Canada, which did not. Certainly, the upshot of the war was distasteful to all three which participated. The whole of Vietnam became Communist; much the same happened to Laos and Cambodia; Vietnam was estranged from China and turned increasingly to the Soviet Union for economic aid; and in return the Soviet Navy obtained bases which had been set up by the Americans. The experience was sufficient to keep the United States out of Asia, except for its existing offshore commitments to Japan, the Philippines, and its own possessions. In the 1970s, China's change of policy enabled the United States to achieve some degree of understanding with it at the expense of the Soviet Union. In effect, the assumptions on which the Vietnam War was based had been turned upside down. China was no longer the menace; even if it were, it would not be dealt with by land forces. The oceans became the putative battle-ground with the Soviet Union. What happened in Indo-China became a matter of local concern for ASEAN (the Association of South East Asian Nations), rather than for the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.
7.
Again it is necessary to interrupt the narrative of events in Asia and the Pacific, in order to say something about the effect upon Australia and New Zealand of Britain's quest for entry into the European Economic Community (EEC). To do so is to recognize that there is little smooth sequence about foreign policy, but that events are taken as they come. They are made to respond to rather different stimuli, depending upon how they have arisen and which interests in the community they involve. The whole sequence in Asia was very much a matter for particular elites in Australia and New Zealand — those directly concerned in government, those with lines to push such as the security of Taiwan, those ideologically committed or opposed to U.S. policy, and those with professional military concerns. The EEC issue, on the other hand, was a bread-and-butter one which primarily involved rural interests but was also of significance for both countries in terms of balance of payments and trade patterns.  The
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same politicians had to deal with both sorts of issue, against rather different backgrounds and electorates. The EEC issue was of vital importance to New Zealand, rather less to Australia; but the politics of both were affected for some years.
Britain made three tries at entry into the EEC, in 1962, 1967, and 1971. By the time the third was successful, the international economic landscape had changed somewhat for the two southern countries. Britain began by a series of promises to the effect that its imports of food, drink, and tobacco would be unaffected by EEC membership, since it would not enter on any other terms. For Australia and New Zealand, this was literally meat and drink, since Britain's imports of manufactures from them were relatively slight. However, it soon became clear that the Community would not accept Britain except on a basis very close to that on which the Community was already operating, notably that of agricultural protectionism and self-sufficiency. To the British government of 1971, no other way seemed possible. It concentrated upon gaining concessions for those parts of the Commonwealth which seemed likely to lose most if the Common Agricultural Policy were adopted in its entirety. This meant, in practice, that New Zealand and the sugar islands got the best treatment, and Australia some of the worst. This was to some extent because of the superiority of John Marshall's admirable diplomacy in Brussels over the prizefighter stance adopted by John McEwen and his successors. It was mainly, however, because New Zealand could plead a case of economic survival, and Australia could not.
In this area of foreign policy, Australia and New Zealand might share broad objectives (such as the desire initially to persuade the British government to give up the idea of entry), but of necessity could not have the same immediate interests, once there was competition about the limited range of concessions which Brussels was prepared to grant. With dairy products and meat in competition between the two countries, they became rivals, each supplicating both Britain and the Community. It did not much affect their co-ordination of foreign policy in other directions, because different elites and interest groups were involved; what it did was show how pressing economic issues could be when they were laid bare. At the same time, the competition for EEC favours did not prevent the later development of a Free Trade Area and Closer Economic Relations between the two.
8.
Two more matters need to be mentioned before some analysis of the whole story is attempted. One is the growth of Pacific Island independent states, with a focus in the South Pacific Forum; the other is the recent attempt by the Lange government in New Zealand to ban nuclear-powered and nuclear-equipped warships from its ports, along with the Australian reaction to this. They both show a closer concentration  on  nearby  issues   and  on  one   another's   policy   than
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characterized the two countries when they were pursuing a policy of forward defence in Asia.
The islands of the South Pacific were later than the colonial areas of Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean in gaining their independence, but were well launched upon it by the middle of the 1970s. In this process New Zealand and Australia were prominent, while Britain's role (in such colonies as Fiji and the Solomons) was more that of a follower, given that its own efforts elsewhere in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s had set off much of the worldwide process. Australia in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, New Zealand in Western Samoa and the Cook Islands, laboured to find means of making small backward states viable in the last few decades of the twentieth century. The outcome on the whole was successful. The formation of the South Pacific Forum at a meeting in Wellington in 1971, with Australia and New Zealand as the only metropolitan members, was something of a tribute to the good sense which they had shown. It was also recognition of the fact that they were the richest states in the area.
Both countries have remained aware of the sensitivities of the island states, and have refrained from attempts to dominate. The Forum is the first international organization in which Australia and New Zealand have played the leading parts. It has discussed not only the economic difficulties of the islands, but also such questions as French nuclear testing, French policy in New Caledonia, and a nuclear-free zone in the South Pacific. Given the differences in political culture and standards of living within the Forum, one can say that all governments in Australia and New Zealand since 1971 have been prepared to listen and to help, though not to deal uncritically with what may be proposed.
9.
In July 1984 the New Zealand Labour Party was elected to office after nine years in opposition. In the intervening time it had changed somewhat in personnel, and been further affected by the international peace movement and by a deep abhorrence of nuclear weapons. Although declaring its support of the ANZUS Treaty, the government under David Lange maintained that this made no mention of nuclear weapons and could not be held to justify the visits of nuclear warships to New Zealand ports without the consent of the New Zealand government. It served notice to this effect on the United States, which took umbrage, pointing out through various spokesmen that it could not be expected to maintain two navies, one nuclear and one conventional, simply because New Zealand wanted to separate the two. It also maintained that New Zealand was not acting according to the spirit of the Western alliance. It shut off intelligence contact and refused to exercise its ships and otherwise engage in meaningful military relations with New Zealand.
The reaction of the Hawke Labor government in Australia was to  reassert its loyalty to  the ANZUS alliance and its  readiness to
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receive U.S. ships without questioning whether they were nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed. The Australian Labor Party also included a persistent anti-nuclear section; but this did not have the same strength as in the New Zealand party, and was out-generalled by the leadership. So far as New Zealand was concerned, the Hawke government indulged in little recrimination, preferring to maintain good relations — and occasional military manoeuvres — with it as well as with the United States.
If all this had happened in earlier decades it would have seemed much more important than in the 1980s. Now that Australia and New Zealand no longer engage in expeditionary forces abroad — except for a few New Zealanders garrisoned in Singapore and some Australian aircraft at Butterworth — there is less need for joint activity, more concentration upon home defence, and a greater readiness to see the United States as not so much a saviour from invasion as a figure in a worldwide contest with the Soviet Union. This contest is seen in both countries as affecting the South Pacific, but not with the immediacy which seemed at the time to be a feature of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and of Indonesian confrontation. It is thus possible for New Zealanders to gain some nationalistic enjoyment from their government's argument with the United States; for Australia to be fairly relaxed about the whole affair; and for the U.S. administration to huff and puff, less at the dire consequences which New Zealand has caused in the South Pacific, than at the example it might provide for others as distant as the Dutch and the Japanese.
10.
So much for narrative. How can it be analysed?
First, it is remarkable how similar have been the foreign policies of the two countries, whether consciously co-ordinated or not. Between the divergence in World War II over whether to bring home the New Zealand troops, and the rift over ANZUS in 1985, there is a long interval in which the two countries had much the same reactions to much the same events. No doubt this was assisted by the coincidence of Labour and non-Labour governments in the two countries (it was only for three or four years of the forty that they had governments of different political persuasions), and in turn by the fact that the parties in both countries have similar backgrounds and often similar ideologies. Given that considerable similarity, one might still question whether countries with such different geographical environments would come to the same conclusions about international events. If one thinks of New Zealand as the centre of the water hemisphere, a small country with its closest connections amongst the Pacific islands — apart from its long-standing connection with Britain — there is a contrast with Australia, much bigger in area and population, and located very much closer to the Malay archipelago and to the Asian mainland. One might expect them to have different preoccupations;  and the expectation
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might be heightened by the radical difference between their migration policies since World War II, and the composition of their trade in terms of goods and markets.
However the two countries may diverge in the ways suggested, they are both European settlements on the outskirts of Asia; they are petty-bourgeois communities with an intense regard for their standards of living; they have very close affinities with European civilization and its development in the United States; and they cannot be readily assimilated to any Asian life-style. For better or worse, they have distinctively Western societies to sustain, and are likely to seek help from those whose societies approximate to their own.
Their long period of dependence on Britain helps to explain why they so readily embarked upon military dependence on the United States. Neither country has lacked people who argued in favour of total independence, of a Swiss or Swedish approach to international conflict; but these voices have been overwhelmed by those of a majority seeking assurance from great and powerful friends. It may prove something of a sign of maturity that New Zealand now has a government which asserts a separate and distinctive policy; yet a critic of long perspective might argue that the same could have been said of the Savage government in the 1930s, with as little substance. Both the Savage and Lange governments, he would suggest, were enabled to indulge in idealistic rhetoric because they were safe from attack and could call on friends in the last resort. Fifty years separate 1936 from 1986, yet the similarities are striking.
It might be said, again, that New Zealand can afford to indulge in rhetoric because it is a long way from anywhere, whereas Australia can less afford to do so because it is uncomfortably close to large and formidable states. This comment is sometimes brought forward by Australians when criticizing what they consider to be the 'airy-fairy' notions of New Zealand policy-makers, and their remoteness from the 'real world'. Perhaps it is true in respect of some issues; but there are compensating virtues about the New Zealand way in foreign policy. Because of its location, New Zealand has consistently shown a greater interest in Pacific island affairs than Australia. The Australian vision was for a long time restricted to Papua New Guinea and Nauru, and then very much in the context of colonial administration. Working in the South Pacific Forum has been a learning experience for the Australians involved. For New Zealand, the growing political importance of the South Pacific has been something of a confirmation of their previous concerns.
There is a further and deeper virtue which New Zealand diplomacy has tended to display, though usually in marginal matters and in degrees of emphasis, rather than in the assertion of large policies and principles. To some extent because of their distance from Asia, New Zealand representatives have often been more detached, and their ministers less enthusiastic, than their counterparts in Australia. One is readily
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persuaded that there was something very Australian in the assertiveness of Evatt, Spender, and McEwen, and something more distinctive of New Zealand in the reservations produced by Fräser, Doidge, and Marshall. Menzies was the more forthright about Suez; during the Vietnam War, Holyoake was a more hesitant Prime Minister than his Australian counterparts. In many of the policy issues noted above, New Zealand followed with some reluctance behind a more confident and aggressive Australia.
Was this necessary? For the long period from 1945 to 1985, did New Zealand need to go along with Australia? Was there a natural or implicit alliance which required New Zealand, in its own interests, to subordinate its doubts and proceed with Australia along the same road as Britain or the United States?
The answer, I think, is that it was not necessary but it seemed so at the time. We find it difficult now to retrace the steps of national leaders in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, and to share their fears about Communism, the Soviet Union, and China. The nuclear balance has created a situation of relative stability, even of assurance, in spite of the awesome potential on which it depends. In those earlier decades the emphasis was much more on conventional warfare in jungles and other unpleasant places, with the Soviet Union and China characterized as states which possessed great power in their own right, but which were able, in addition, to subvert whole populations and thus achieve their ends indirectly. They (or Communism) were given credit for almost superhuman capacity. The series of failures by the Soviet Union to gain itself reliable allies in the Third World was either incomplete or disregarded as untypical. Well before President Eisenhower enunciated the 'domino theory', it was customary to speak of whole groups of countries as falling ninepins or dominos; this, after all, was what had happened in Eastern Europe under both Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. British and American intelligence services provided the New Zealand and Australian governments with troublesome scenarios about the whole Third World, but especially about Asia. Such stories fed the imagination of susceptible ministers and officials; they were often sufficiently circumstantial to convince journalists and academics to whom they might be leaked.
The result was to nourish in the minds of politicians and officials in Australia and New Zealand the conviction that the world was a dangerous place, and Asia an especially dangerous part of it. It was necessary to have a protector. If the protector was sometimes unreasonable or stupid or offensive, that was part of the price that had to be paid. Such an attitude was quite compatible with arguments in private, doubts and fears which might even be expressed at the highest levels, reservations about forces to be committed, and occasional forgetfulness which led to an unpleasant task not being performed. These are all part of the business of diplomacy. What Australia and New Zealand, as small powers allied with great ones, could not afford
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was disruptive activity, 'rocking the boat' in public. That was what their leaders thought; and that is how they behaved.
It follows that there was not much room for divergence between the two of them. Apart from the fact that their ministers and officials started from much the same set of assumptions as those of the great powers with which they were allied, the limits of action and influence by small powers were soon reached. It was easy for the representatives of the two southern countries to see no alternative to the system of ultimate dependence on the United States into which they had eagerly built themselves. Their long-standing traditions of forward defence — meeting the enemy in someone else's country — could be adapted to operations in Malaya or Korea or Borneo or Vietnam. Working with countries which had been their allies in World Wars I and II was a sort of second nature. Working with each other was also second nature when there was agreement on fundamentals; Australia was merely the more assertive of the two.
The decade since Vietnam has seen a considerable revision of these attitudes, along with a greater concentration on home defence and on the South Pacific area. With China's apparent conversion to economic co-operation with the Western powers, Asia has ceased to be the chamber of horrors which it seemed in the 1950s and 1960s. The increased naval strength of the Soviet Union has extended its reach into the South Pacific, but so far with very little disturbance to the area. Nuclear weapons, a factor which small powers cannot control, however much they may protest at their existence, obscure the lesser aspects of international relations. The international economy, always a source of anxiety to governments in Australia and New Zealand, continues to display its unpredictability, not as yet to the destruction of either. A degree of assertiveness still marks Australia, though New Zealand has for the time being ventured into the same field; whether this will last, or will be seen by historians as merely a discordant echo of Sir Robert Muldoon's stridency over sporting tours, is another story.
Notes
1.  L. F. Crisp, Ben Chifley, London, 1960, p.280.
2.  Desmond Ball, 'The Security Relationship between Australia and New Zealand', in I. McGibbon and D. Ball, eds., The Anzac Connection, Sydney, 1985, p.51.
Note on Sources
The Australian documents on foreign affairs have not yet reached the period covered here, but there are two useful volumes in the Documents on New Zealand External Relations, both edited by Robin Kay: The Australian-New Zealand Agreement 1944, Wellington, 1972, and The ANZUS Pact and the Treaty of Peace with Japan, Wellington, 1985. Much of value can be gained also from the Australian official history: Robert O'Neill, Australia in the Korean War 1950-53: v.l, Strategy and Diplomacy; v.2, Combat Operations, Canberra, 1981 and 1985.
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An unusual work which considers the two countries in association with their main ally is Trevor R. Reese, Australia, New Zealand and the United States: A Survey of International Relations 1941-1968, London, 1969. The League experience is covered in W. J. Hudson, Australia and the League of Nations, Sydney, 1980; ANZUS in its early stages in J. G. Starke, The ANZUS Treaty Alliance, Melbourne, 1965; Suez in James Eayrs, The Commonwealth and Suez, London, 1964; and Commonwealth connections in J. D. B. Miller, Survey of Commonwealth Affairs: Problems of Expansion and Attrition 1953-1969, London, 1974. Books on the two foreign policies include Bernard K. Gordon, New Zealand Becomes a Pacific Power, Chicago, 1960, and T. B. Millar, Australia in Peace and War: External Relations 1788-1977, Canberra, 1978.
Defence arrangements between the two countries can be seen at different stages in T. B. Millar, ed., Australian-New Zealand Defence Cooperation, Canberra, 1968; F. L. W. Wood et al., Defence Perspectives, Wellington, 1972; Ian McGibbon and Desmond Ball, eds., The Anzac Connection, Sydney, 1985.