Guest
Post by Iraq War Inquiry Group Vice-President Garry Woodard
The decision to send troops into battle on
alien terrain is usually said to be the most serious a government can make. Politicians
do not deny it. The only exception I know is Sir Robert Menzies, who said of the
Vietnam War in an oral history for the (President) Lyndon Baines Johnson
library in 1969 that ‘it did not take five minutes to decide that when it came
to the point of action we would be in it’[i].
The whole meeting would have taken about ten minutes.
The Vietnam War was our costliest defeat. The
decision in principle to commit troops was made in the last week before Christmas
48 years ago (the ratification and announcement taking place four months later
in April 1965). The full record of the meeting of the Foreign Affairs and Defence
Committee of Cabinet (FADC) on 17 December has recently been declassified and
released.
In none of Australia’s other wars was there a
Cabinet meeting duly recorded at the outset of the decision-making process. It
was done on this occasion because, first, of the unusual circumstances of a
formal request by an American President which required a Prime Minister’s
response and, second, an Australian government’s wish in its perception of
national interest to offer a different form of aid from that requested. Although
President Johnson had specifically said he was not asking for it at this stage,
the Australian government wanted to commit a ground force, which, though
initially small, would ensure American boots on the ground on mainland Southeast Asia. American military doctrine after the
unsatisfactory outcome of the Korean War had been to avoid this –‘no more Koreas’.
Michael Sexton[ii]
and others have noted this Cabinet meeting, but passed over it because of lack
of hard information. The team which wrote the official history[iii]
would have had access to the notebook of the Cabinet Secretary (in this case
the acting Secretary, Peter Lawler, secretary John Bunting being on Christmas
leave) but underestimated its importance and preferred to concentrate on the Cabinet
meetings in April which led up to the announcement. After it, Bunting recommended
to Menzies that if asked when the decision to send a battalion to South Vietnam
had been made he should blur the answer, referring to a period from
November/December 1964 to April 1965.
I was put on to the track of this meeting
by former External Affairs and Defence Secretary Sir Arthur Tange during wide-ranging
discussions in the 1990s. Tange’s recollections were incomplete and his papers
in the National Archives show that, in contrast to his normal practice, he went
to some pains to avoid answering enquirers and to establish that at this time,
with an overseas posting approaching, he had been ‘sidelined’. However, he
remembered enough to express regret that the government’s strategic advisers,
the Defence Committee (DC), had not been consulted. Ministers had sought advice
only from the Chiefs of Staff, who had recommended sending a battalion in ‘a
not very good paper’. This was a charitable understatement, not characteristic
of Australia’s
foremost and most awesome mandarin.
Tange also recalled (as one of many slights
he suffered at the hands of his Minister Paul Hasluck) that there had been no
opportunity to provide ‘the customary External Affairs estimate of the
likelihood of effective government with popular support’. Hasluck, he went on,
writing in his Defence memoir, ‘would not have felt the need to have the
Department advise him on such a matter’[iv].
I found this to be not quite accurate: Tange had sought to offer advice to his
Minister and when dismissed had followed up by sending him a long paper
prepared by a first assistant secretary, Gordon Jockel. The paper advised
caution because of the fragility of the domestic political base in South Vietnam
and because American aims in implementing a two phase plan of one month’s
bombing of the North followed by commitment of a ground force were by no means
clear.
Although Vietnam had not been on the agenda
for the DC meeting on 15 December there had been some informal discussion
between the heads of departments and the Chiefs of Staff. Tange did not call that,
but the only record is the brief notes scribbled by Tange at the time.
Discovery of these Department of External Affairs (DEA) papers led me to delve
more deeply. I found on a Prime Minister’s Department file a summary of the FADC
meeting which showed its importance.
The full record of those five (perhaps ten)
minutes confirms the eight-point summary which I published in 2004 in Asian Alternatives: Australia’s Vietnam decision and lessons on
going to war[v].
Personalities
The dominant figure in the brief
discussion, as in all discussions on going to war, was the Prime Minister. Menzies
is not at the top of his form. He is suffering from exhaustion at the end of a victorious
half-Senate election, which had been celebrated the night before at a 70th
birthday dinner tendered by his Party. The Deputy Prime Minister is John McEwen,
whose nationalist approach on trade had raised his political stocks. The deputy
leader of the Liberal Party, Harold Holt, is a keen supporter of the US, and is now
justly identified with his proclamation on the White House lawn, ‘all the way
with LBJ’. The other two ministers have been members of the FADC for less than
a year and have subordinate status. The Minister for Defence, Shane Paltridge,
a former publican, well-regarded by Menzies, speaks but once. The Foreign
Minister, Paul Hasluck, a maximal realist, is the intellectual architect of
intervention in Vietnam.
He believes that the superpower, the United
States, should accept its responsibilities to contain the
rising superpower, China,
and its ‘puppets’, the North Vietnamese.
Virtual
Decision-making
We can now enter into the Cabinet room. The
time is 11.30 on Wednesday 17 December. This is an unusually late start. For
the purpose of ‘virtual Vietnam’, we assume that the meeting starts on time.
11.30
The first third of the proceedings is taken
up with an introductory presentation by Hasluck. Hasluck begins his peroration
with the rather insensitive suggestion that it is not necessary to decide on
all matters, but only to settle the terms of a reply to President Johnson. Hasluck
provides his view of American policy, which is based on visiting Washington while
planning was going on in November, in anticipation of Johnson defeating Barry Goldwater
in the presidential election. It is a picture of tentativeness, far short of a
determined progressive squeeze, with the US initiating 30 days of bombing of
the North. In the light of the assessed results for South Vietnamese morale and
North Vietnamese resolution, the US may move on to a second phase involving
ground forces, including from Australia
and New Zealand. Initially the idea is
for a static border force checking infiltration and having the same dual targets
as the bombing, but before April deterioration has changed its role to active
operations.
Hasluck suggests that the reply can make a
point that it is fully appreciated that the second phase will mean more direct
involvement in South Vietnam.
The President’s specific requests pose difficulties, but ‘we will do what is in
our power’, and would like military staff talks. Hasluck says we’ve arrived at
a point where we can ask to be more closely consulted, though ‘the more we get
involved the more we stick our necks out’.
Hasluck then lists seven points, mainly
related to American war aims, which he says Australia is now in a position to
raise at the political level. This shows that he has read the departmental
paper pressed on him by Tange, although it is not his practice to refer to
departmental thinking in Cabinet. He concludes by asking whether the military
recommendation for a battalion should also be mentioned, and says ‘let us
direct our minds to the immediate reply to the President’. The exhortation
falls on deaf ears.
11.35
Holt asks Hasluck if the bombing has
commenced. Hasluck replies that it is about to (which proves wrong), and reverts
to what he was told in Washington: ‘I formed
the impression when in the US
that the Americans are terribly worried. The problem is political stability, we
won’t get it without Phase I. But this involves a risk of Phase 2’. Hasluck
will hold to the line that he Americans must commence bombing if they are to
achieve political stability in South Vietnam. The feeling is that this is an
American responsibility, which goes back to the Australian view that things
started to go badly wrong when the US engineered the downfall of Ngo
Dinh Diem.
Holt asks about other countries becoming involved,
including Taiwan,
but notes that it will not be regarded as an operation under the SEATO Treaty. Menzies
asks why it should not be a SEATO operation. Hasluck replies that he does not
know. Menzies grumbles, like Eugene Pallette at the breakfast table when
Marjorie Main deprives him of the comic strip, the Katzenjammer Kids,[vi]
that it should be a SEATO operation.
11.35
McEwen quashes them all by saying that SEATO
is a paper outfit and it is better to leave it that way rather than bring about
its disintegration. No one else could have put Menzies down in this way. His down-to-earth
common sense approach will not prevent Hasluck later putting his name to an
article in the Fairfax press written for him by
public information officer Richard Woolcott claiming that Australian
involvement in Vietnam
came under SEATO.
McEwen then makes several points which come
to be accepted. An American request for support will be the acid test. Either
we go in or we crawl out. I would go in asking almost no questions of the US. It is up to
the US to decide whether to
make Vietnam a battleground
and to hell with Vietnam,
especially if the Buddhists join the Vietcong. Australia would have to have a
request from the Government of South Vietnam.
11.37
Menzies then sums up what should go in the
reply to President Johnson. We want to broaden our participation with the US. We begin by
showing willing – every bit of assistance put beside the US is good in
the common interest. Australia
will examine what can be done to encourage others. The President’s requests
will be examined. We will do whatever we can. McEwen asks about the battalion. Menzies
says ‘if we can provide a battalion we’ve got to think hard before we refuse’
(though it is not a matter of refusing but offering). McEwen says ‘I’d go with
it. But we’d be in’.
Addressing Hasluck, Menzies says he does
not favor Hasluck’s idea of asking questions. McEwen says we must not appear to
be playing for time by asking questions.
Menzies had taken
a similar negative position in the Indochina crisis of 1954, no doubt drawing
on the experience of World War II and Korea. In 1954 that had the added
dimension that the Americans might decide to use nuclear weapons and thenceforth
Australia
had realised that if the Americans decided to do so it would not be consulted.
Australia had been rebuffed first in 1955, after SEATO had been created, when,
I was told by Tange, the Americans had said ‘they were never going to tie their
hands again in hostilities against the goddamned Chinese’. Foreign Minister
Garfield Barwick had raised the matter again in 1962. However, his successor,
Hasluck, had said in July 1964 that a nuclear showdown with China might be the
only way out, and, though his Cabinet colleagues might not have agreed, that
was a popular view in the ranks of the Coalition.
11.38
Holt makes a seemingly gratuitous
observation about the inevitability of an escalating force build-up. His
political reputation would crash in 1967 as more forces were demanded from
Australia. In May 1965 Bunting and new DEA secretary James Plimsoll would seek unsuccessfully
in the DC to put a cap of one battalion on the Australian contribution.
11.39
The second last comment is made by McEwen,
perhaps wishing to resile from his earlier ‘make it a desert and call it peace’
sentiment. He says the real problem will be if we end up by fighting against
the will of the people of South Vietnam, and the Washington embassy should make
soundings. There is already a volume of intelligence on Australian files abut
all the issues, poor morale and war-weariness, and whether more foreign
intervention will be matched by less South Vietnamese war-fighting, but they
have been swept under the rug.
11.40
Menzies concludes by telling Paltridge, and
Hasluck to draft a forthcoming reply, with no foot dragging, from himself to
Johnson. Hasluck will do all the work, and be the only minister to remain in Canberra for another
week, until Christmas Eve (although he will spend a lot of that time exchanging
notes with Tange about the position of policy planning officer that I happen to
occupy).
The decision will kept secret for four
months, aided by a long parliamentary recess, by Menzies’ absence overseas on a
recuperative sea voyage, extended by going to London to Winston Churchill’s
funeral, and by the reluctance of the Opposition to give the appearance that it
is not an equally faithful ally of the US.
The processes by which Australian
governments have taken the decision to go to war, from Korea in 1950 to Vietnam
to Iraq
in 2003, do not stand up to scrutiny. Therefore concerned citizens are calling
for an inquiry into how Australia decided to join the Iraq war[vii],
in the hope that what we will learn from it will lead to changed procedures for
decision-making under which the government will have to level with the
Parliament and the people.
Garry Woodard
University of Melbourne
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