Vietnam

29 Apr

On this day, 29 April 1965, Robert Menzies makes the fateful announcement that Australian combat troops were going to be sent to South Vietnam to help its government fight off a communist insurgency. This followed the commitment of Australian ‘military instructors’ who had been helping to train South Vietnamese troops since July 1962. In the ensuing conflict, 521 Australian combat personnel would lose their lives, many of them conscripts.

The decision was justified on the grounds of the ‘domino theory’ which held that if one country fell to communism, neighbouring countries would also fall. This theory had been borne out in the descent of the iron curtain across Eastern Europe, and with many countries in the Asia-Pacific destabilised by first the conflict with Japan and then the complex and contested roll back of Western colonialism, the region looked primed to follow suit. It is important to note that South Vietnam was far from the only country facing communist insurrection around this time, as turmoil in Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines seemed to confirm that the ‘dominoes’ were ripe to fall.

When making the announcement, Menzies told the House of Representatives:

‘It is our judgement that the decision to commit a battalion in South Vietnam represents the most useful additional contribution we can make to the defence of the region at this time. The takeover of South Vietnam would be a direct military threat to Australia and all the countries of South and South East Asia. It must be seen as part of a thrust by Communist China between the Indian and Pacific Oceans.’

The Vietnam commitment reflected an overall strategy of ‘forward defence’, which the Australian Government pursued in the post-war period. The aim was to snuff out conflict before it could reach Australia, but importantly ‘forward defence’ was to be concentrated in our region. As Peter Edwards has highlighted, the Menzies Government repeatedly rebuffed urgings by the British Government which wanted Australia to commit to sending troops to the Middle East in the event of a new global conflict. This was the tradition that Australia had followed in both World Wars, but learning a lesson from the latter, it was not to be repeated.

‘Forward defence’ was selective in other ways. For Australia to commit to a conflict it had to be backed by a sizeable section of the international community, be that the United Nations in the case of Korea, or otherwise SEATO or the Commonwealth. Australia also needed to be invited by the local government to assist (though there was some controversy surrounding this occurrence when it came to South Vietnam); there was no appetite for ‘regime change’ once a communist government was in place.

Perhaps the most important prerequisite for a troop commitment was that there needed to be an existing commitment by one of Australia’s ‘great and powerful friends’, be that Britain or America, to the same conflict. With a vast continent and a small population, Australian strategic planners believed that it was impossible for Australia to defend itself without assistance. They therefore put great emphasis on keeping Britain and America engaged in the region. Australia’s troop commitments tended to be somewhat tokenistic in terms of numbers and cost, what they provided most was diplomatic and moral assistance to the great power, similar to Australia’s inclusion in the ‘coalition of the willing’ during the second Iraq War (which notably was a commitment well outside of the range of Menzian forward defence).

This strategy had worked well in the Malayan Emergency of 1948-1960 in which Australia’s commitment of ground troops had been opposed by the Labor Party in the same fashion as Vietnam, and also in the Indonesian Confrontation of 1963-1966. Notably both these conflicts were closer to home and involved working with familiar allies in the British Commonwealth, rather than the United States which remained comparatively foreign even after the cooperation of World War Two.

The Confrontation also involved extremely careful diplomacy. Australian troops were in combat against their Indonesian counterparts and even crossed the border into Indonesia, but this was kept largely secret. Meanwhile diplomatic representation was maintained, Australia continued to provide aid to Indonesia, and military staff from the two nations even attended each other’s colleges. In contrast, during the Vietnam conflict Australia had no diplomatic representation in North Vietnam or in China, and decisionmakers were not even informed of the leadership structure of the enemy.

At the time, the American commitment to Vietnam appeared to be a dream come true for Australia, which it therefore wanted to reinforce. It was the sort of large-scale engagement in the region that the strategic planners had always wanted, and Menzies jumped at the opportunity with uncharacteristic haste. In 1969 he would admit:

‘It took us not five minutes to decide that when this thing came to the point of action, we would be in it…We had no hesitation, no doubts.’

Once again, this was a strong contrast to the caution and patience that had surrounded the commitment of ground troops to the Malayan Emergency. However, in that conflict the ‘great power’ involved had been the waning light of Great Britain, no-one expected the might of America had any chance of being defeated in the global ‘backwater’ of Vietnam. When this did eventuate, it was a fundamental shock.

Some have argued that while the Vietnam War was lost, it was ultimately a success in buying time to ensure that the other ‘dominoes’ of the region did not fall. As time wore on, the postcolonial nations of the Asia-Pacific were stabilising, and the lesser insurgencies were being mopped up.

It is certainly true that the context in which the original Australian commitment was made changed rapidly. In April 1965 it looked very much like the Indonesian Confrontation might escalate into a full-blown war, and Australia was keen to demonstrate that it ‘had America’s back’ so that America would repay the favour. But soon there was a military coup leading to a new hard line anti-communist government in Indonesia, and even the widespread massacre of Communist Party members and supporters in that country. The existential threat to Australia’s North had dissipated.

Nevertheless, the nature of Australia’s commitment in Vietnam meant that it was politically irreversible for the immediate future, lest there be catastrophic repercussions for the Australian-American relationship. It is a genuine tragedy that Australian casualties began to mount at precisely the same time that the strategic need that had underpinned the original decision to become involved lessoned. The repercussions for individuals, families, and the nation would be devastating.

Vietnam

The National Library of Australia

Menzies Sworn in as Prime Minister