 Thank you very much for coming along tonight. My name is Andrew Carr and I'm with the Strategic and Defence Study Centre and tonight we're going to have hopefully an informal chat. Certainly we're looking forward to hearing your views as this is a topic that is inspired by both recent scholarship, coming books from scholars, but also a sense that we need to return to some of the larger debates about Australian foreign policy that there is often a bit of an absence of discussion on Australian foreign policy topics the moment and yet they do see mechos with previous decades where there was a lot more attention to these issues. They do see mechos with some of the tension, some of the rapid periods of change, some of the questions about capacity of leadership that we saw in the 1970s and for us here at the Strategic and Defence Study Centre we've been starting to wonder are we starting to see to some degree echoes to today and of course with all the implications that that might imply for changes and evolution in the way that Australia thinks about itself in the world and the way that it develops its policy and tries to implement it. Tonight I've brought together two scholars who I'm going to ask a couple of questions about and then open for you to have a chance to engage with. They are Dr James Curran, Associate Professor at the University of Sydney. He's just written a fantastic new book that's been getting excellent reviews, Unholy Fury, Whitlam and Nixon at War. This indeed was a book that was being advertised and promoted well before he had written it. Such was the interest in some of the material and kind of attention to his scholarship. Previous work by Dr Curran includes Power of Speech on Australian Prime Minister's development of a kind of national narrative, search for identity after the end of the British Empire and Curtin's Empire on the way that John Curtin's views about the Commonwealth and emerging roles of the dominions. I've also asked to come along tonight Dr John Blaxland, a senior research fellow at the Strategic and Defence Study Centre. Dr Blaxland hopefully is well known to many of you. He is the co he's the author of the second volume of the Official History of the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation's Official History called The Protest Years and a co-author of the third volume. This year he's also releasing a edited book on the East Timor Intervention and he has a long list of scholarship on projects such as the Australian Army from Whitlam to Howard and strategic cousins on Australia and Canada. So these are our two speakers tonight and we'll talk for about 45 minutes or so to an hour and then give you plenty of time to engage. So James to start off our talk tonight we often think of the 1970s as kind of the years of turmoil and change but a lot of your book is actually about the 1960s and the effect that that had. Why was that such a significant decade for setting up what happened in the 1970s? Okay well I think in the in the 60s I mean to quote Donald Horne in the mid 60s talked about the loss of Australia's assured strategic imagination and what he was referring to there were some of these incredibly what I would call seismic shocks to Australia's sense of security and and its outlook on the world and the first one of those was in the early 1960s was the British government's attempt to join the European economic community and of course the Gaul French president might have said no might have vetoed that in 63 but nevertheless you know Robert Menzies referred to that decision by the British government as the most important in peacetime in my lifetime he said words such as unimaginable were frequently used by Australian ministers in talking about this British ambition because of course it would mean a fundamental new appraisal of Australia's role in the world and Australia would have to find new markets for its products so it was going to have to deal with Asia and Asian cultures in a new way so there was there was a permanency about that decision even though even though as I said it was vetoed by the Gaul the Australians knew there would be no turning back that the the old world where the cultural attachment to the British Isles and the economic interests where they had converged this was a moment of irreversible divergence so the economic foundation of the Anglo-Australian relationship from that moment was changed John Crawford the great economist and public servant said our psychology has changed in the wake of that British application. Robert Murdoch the Australian was launched in 1964 it's very first editorial the headline of it was facing up to the challenge of adulthood and it said if one decision has brought home to us the fact that we're now alone it's Britain's decision to try and join the EEC it's a salutary shock. Now the second one of course was the British government's decision in the mid 60s to start talking about withdrawing the military the British military from east of Sewers in other words you know the global pressures of decolonisation were putting all sorts of pressure on the assumptions of European imperialism Britain could no longer sustain its world role couldn't afford it had a balance of payments problem and so was looking to retract its military presence from east of Sewers and then thirdly in 1969 now that decision on the east of Sewers was speeded up the announcement to speed it up was made in 67 but then in 69 in July of 1969 you had the announcement by the Nixon administration of its Guam subsequently enabled as the Nixon doctrine which talked about a different American posture in Asia and Keith Waller who just had come back from Washington early 1970 I think as Australia's Ambassador Washington wrote a paper for foreign affairs external affairs as it was still then and said this threatens an American withdrawal from the whole area west of Hawaii so in other words just to sum up at the beginning of the decade you had almost a situation of nirvana for Australian politicians and policymakers they had both their great and powerful friends engaged in the region by the end of it you had serious concerns about whether Britain would stay and the Australians were appealing all the time to Britain sense of its world role wasn't getting Holt or Gorton anywhere and also this sense that the American posture in Asia it was changing in other words by the end of the decade which I think sets the scene for the 1970s the Australians were facing nothing less than the collapse of their Cold War policy that is keeping the Americans and the British engaged in Southeast Asia John you've written quite a bit about this period with these is it is it fair to depict Australia as being kind of completely buffeted by international winds or do you see some of the the changes also kind of coming from home as well they are coming from home but they are buffered that's it's a bit of both really it's interesting you know James made the point there about feeling I get it I guess a sense of abandonment from America and Britain but it's also a time when Australia's emerging into a remarkably prosperous and benign strategic and economic set of circumstances that we're seeing the relationship with Japan flourishing Korea really start to take off we've established diplomatic relations with China you know a few years before and we're trading with China and so there's a whole range of factors there we're also looking at we just last year we celebrated 40 years of ties with us young the Association of Southeast Asian Nations so there was a significant engagement in a new way in the region that was facilitated by the fact that while the Americans you know had talked about the Guam doctrine and withdrawing out of continental Asia they the work that had happened that the events that are transpired meant that the circumstances had changed dramatically and it allowed us in itself to form and it allowed Japan to prosper allowed us to engage in a way that we hadn't previously so the dynamics you know domestically there was you know significant change of foot as well of course because of the migration and it's very interesting and this is something I'll come out in my book later on next next month migration has a significant effect it's not just from the British Isles anymore we're getting significant migration from southern Europe and of course that that's particularly the case in the 50s through to the 70s and of course afterwards we get a different change from with the Vietnamese wave of migration later which changes the face of migration yet again but those dynamics are contributing to a change of Australia's own identity you know James talks about this this concern about not not having the British ties and I remember as a child my first passport was on my mother's passport was a British subject on it and of course there was a strong sense of identity for most people that we were British a sense of still being British and yet a growing proportion of the population didn't identify with Britain very much at all except for the fact that English was the language and Britain's laws had you know effectively been transplanted here so there's a there's there's two sides to it you're off and James we all remember Whitlam as kind of well at least some of us remember Whitlam as embodying this kind of sense of the need for change how much was that about Whitlam's own kind of personality and how much of it was about any leader in those kind of circumstances would have let it through and you know the change was inevitable in some ways yeah I think Whitlam would even have admitted and I think he did admit in some public speeches that he was riding riding the tide of great events not swimming against them and I think what he's talking about there is there was a sense that the it was the end of the virtual end of the Cold War in East Asia and and there was a sense that the rigid bipolarity of the Cold War had at least been substantially qualified now of course the Americans in the Soviet Union still retained a nuclear arsenal and could it could annihilate each other but there was more of a sense that an emerging multi polarity gave Australia more freedom of action so I mean in this period you know you have the European community establishing themselves obviously as a more substantial economic presence the rise of Germany and Japan is continuing a pace the third world are asserting themselves in the UN as a powerful voting bloc you have the OPEC countries I mean even Richard Nixon is talking a new language for an American president at this time he's saying it's a good thing if America is not the predominant power in the world rather if there is a kind of a balance of power so it's classic real politic from Nixon at this time he's also warning of American decline so Whitlam does Whitlam is the beneficiary I think of these significantly changing circumstances but he also gives I think I think Whitlam was needed to give a dramatic manifestation of how Australia was to reorient itself in those new circumstances so I mean obviously the words that are most often quoted to embody this change was the first statement that Whitlam gave as Prime Minister on the 5th of December 1972 about foreign policy and he said it would be more independent less racist less military oriented and so but Whitlam as I said he also he also admitted that he was as I said giving dramatic effect to a lot of changes that had already taken place before and I think he was in his own way giving some credit for all the for all the muddle headedness if you like and the anxiousness and the kind of restless search for some kind of answer to these new circumstances that was pursued by Holt, Gordon and McMahon and you can virtually see them in their public rhetoric they're actually thinking it through a loud Gordon is saying God we can't look to the British Navy anymore so we've got to look to American protection but that's not sure but Gordon is the one who actually says Britain is a foreign country for Australia and he tells this to Alexander Downer senior when he arrives in London in 1969 for the Commonwealth Prime Minister's Conference will Downer senior he said gosh he nearly has a heart attack in the embassy car on the way to the Savoy and rests back and says Hyde Park Kensington Palace this is not a foreign country to me but nevertheless you know Gordon to a lesser extent McMahon had started some of these changes Whitlam comes in I think and he's unburdened by the failed policies of the past he has a fresh mind he has a powerful personality and he gives shape to it and he's the one who gives a policy face to some of these changes I mean the British High Commissioner in Australia at that time Morris James said that Whitlam suffered what he felt was the presentational itch now that's not that's not underplaying some of the changes that Whitlam brought in at all because they were substantial and they were very much required but but he felt that Whitlam's idea of bringing a new maturity to the relationship with the United States to getting rid of what he called colonial relics and the constitutional anachronisms with the British government so royal style and titles rights of appeal to the Privy Council the new national anthem these were all meant to update Australia's relationship with Britain and bring it more into line with the circumstances so that would be my answer to that staying with Whitlam for the moment Coral Bell places him in the school or the kind of part of the Labor Party that it was always been very attracted to America that has seen America as perhaps a more natural model for Australia compared to the United Kingdom you know less class-based more open more vibrant society would you agree with that notion that Whitlam was actually very sympathetic to the Americans and and can we separate his personal views of America and Americans from the clash and kind of struggles that he had during his time as prime minister I think so I think I would broadly agree with that that is to say that Whitlam often did profess his admiration for Franklin Delano Roosevelt's new deal for I think the America of civil rights in the in the 60s I mean I think this was a this was a different America that Whitlam was ennobling and holding up to the one that conservatives in Australia were but it was America nonetheless he didn't ever indulge in kind of anti-american homilies I think there was a famous quip that Arthur Corwell said to Tommy Wren you know for god's sake Tom I'm not going to let you bastards destroy the US alliance I think Whitlam would agree with that he spent a lot of time especially as opposition leader but from as early as 1964 I think when he and Malcolm Fraser intriguingly enough were both in the United States on one of these leaders grants where they went over for a couple of months to meet with top American officials and academics and learn more about what was going on in America in the American political system and from from that moment I mean he builds up a very substantial relationship with key officials in the Department of State for example he meets Marshall Green in 1964 and says I don't think there's great coherence to American foreign policy in Asia how are you going to put all the pieces together the Americans still look at Whitlam right through this period as someone who's a moderate who can keep the left wing of the party and check who's not going to give in to what they see as some of the rat bags in their view on the left of the party who are threatening the bases Whitlam's uncomfortable with the bases there's no doubt about that sorry with the intelligence installations but no I think broadly speaking you know he continued continually talks about America as the most generous and idealistic nation he talks about the influence of the Declaration of Independence and what connects the French and American revolutions I mean Whitlam as you as you all know had that great historical knowledge I mean he could connect all those all those dots and as his rise political rise continued throughout the 60s and as he was headed to office it became more and more important for him to protect his alliance flank and so that's when you do see a kind of a a kind of a surge in this language about American idealism and the fact that that the conservatives policy and supporting the United States in Vietnam is actually holding the Americans back from being the rightful and true leader of the free world that's the language he uses um now then on the other hand of course after the Tet offence if he can then start to talk about Vietnam as the war of the great lie and start to damn American policy in much more forceful terms but whilst ever he's keeping that other language and that other imagery of America there I think it reassures reassures the Americans so yeah broadly speaking I think you can separate the clash with Nixon from his affection for America and American ideals and John Whitlam in some ways was kind of tapping into that public anger which I mean you've titled the next volume of the asio official history the protest years how significant was that a public engagement on on these issues in terms of driving these debates and shaping the country's approach well it's a good question I mean the year the years were ones of protests there's so much to protest at the time you know we had the baby boomer generation that was coming of age in the in the 1960s and through the 70s that was viewing the world in a different way there was a phenomenon happening overseas that the the the international the the the the uprisings in the the protests in the United States the uprisings in Paris these are phenomena that are not constrained just to countries that are involved in the war in Vietnam these are actually phenomena that are spread across the west broadly defined and they affect Canada they affect Britain they affect France they affect all all of these countries that we we see as we know that weren't involved directly in the Vietnam War so it wasn't just about the Vietnam War but in Australia the manifestation of it was very much linked to the Vietnam War because of the of the of the the issue of conscription the issue of the the involvement in a war that seemed to be a war of choice it wasn't about national survival the contrast was very stark between the generation of the Second World War who'd fought against the foe that it clearly presented an existential threat and a foe that was really a long way away in a country that people had the barest inkling of understanding about and so you know the the conflict there was it seemed to be something that was while initially you know the pop the the opinion polls were supportive of the government the committee troops there there was a real distance to it there was a sense that this is this is a conflict a long way away of little relevance to Australia and yet one that when when the casualties started to mount really a bit in terms of policy the corrosiveness for the Australian the the liberal country party government at the time but you know when we think about what's happening in terms of the protest movement this is this is something that vexed asio for a long time they're wondering you know how do we understand what what's actually happening here how does the government had you know the the prime minister the ministers are all trying to figure out what to do how to read this and how to respond because they they needed to try and get to the essence of what the issue was and of course the fact that there was conscription was really a problem it was a fundamental problem and it's what one of those great surprises for me is that that the government at the time didn't reflect more soberly on the experience of the conscription crisis of 1916 and 1917 and the enduring legacy of of the very toxic politics in Australia that that had generational ramifications in terms of dividing society you know people talk about the intense animosity between those who are supporting conscription and those are against conscription from the First World War certainly stories that I heard from my parents and grandparents of that and and that I think had a legacy in terms of the divide between Catholic and Protestant in Australian society that's only only waned in in our lifetimes in the last few decades and yet and yet here we go in 1964 in amenities doesn't seem to think it's all that consequential to introduce conscription I guess the sense was that look at you know we're not we're not we're not taking out we're not enlisting the whole nation it's probably we can get away with it and there was pressure clearly from the United States which had conscription and was doing similar things in other countries had national service as well so there was a sense well maybe Australia does need to do this and yet the terrible corrosive effect on Australian society of that call and the ammunition it gave to people who were already agitated about the war and about what was happening about the Cold War itself more broadly defined and the ammunition this gave to those people who were looking for some way of of lashing out and be it from the Communist Party or from Trotskyist groups or others groups that were involved you know the people you know initially it was thought oh this is just a Communist plot well of course as time passed it became very evident that it was far more than just about a bunch of people who might have been associated with the Communist Party this was about a fundamental issue in Australian society where people felt the grievance real grievance as to what was happening and what needed to be done and so you know it was hard when you look at the politics the domestic politics of the issue to separate that out from the kinds of issues you're seeing in Washington and you know in the protests in the United States and Kent State University the protests in Paris in 1968 why the why the Parisians doing this what what are they thinking you know this is this is they're not involved in the conflict they're not they're not at TET they're not they're not fighting in the streets are so gone what on earth is going on and it's really hard when you see the confluence all these factors in Australian society let alone elsewhere to actually tease them out and in terms of a policy response for the government work out what to do there's this huge conundrum we in hindsight can see clearly you know it seems so obvious to us but at the time when you were dealing with the crisis as it unfolded and you're trying to read what what the protests meant and what the what the political ramifications of the protests were it was really hard and a lot of people were under intense pressure to try and make sense of it and and and explain it to the government because they were struggling to come to grips with it too and and and the other thing is of course initially it didn't seem to hurt politically in 1965 it didn't hurt politically you know and and then in the next elections they're still you know 1969 we still manage to see the Liberal Country Party coalition survive despite all of the protests despite the the the internal political mess that's becoming the you know the the government of the time and so how much how much emphasis was to be placed on this it's hard to you know it's we can see in hindsight oh they should have picked that earlier at the time it wasn't so obvious particularly prior to tech in 68 February 68 that that kind of that that that real significant turning point where as peter edwards is here tonight can attest you know it's the corrosion is great volume on on on the nation at war Australia experiencing you know the the turmoil at domestically that the the tipping point in terms of the the the the moral authority if you like of the government doing what it was doing in Vietnam when when as Ellen was pointing out earlier before the government really in terms of foreign policy in terms of national policy isn't really concerned that much with what's going on in Vietnam they're just leaving it to the the defense force to worry about it's it's their problem you know they can it's it's you know it's really not something that Australians need to really understand do they echoes there of some other conflict perhaps but you know it is a conundrum a real conundrum for the government trying to understand that and trying to then figure out what to do and James you described um Nixon earlier is kind of that following the real politic type approach and often he and Kissinger are seen as as the doyens of that type of remote 3d chest type approach to world politics but there were equally very large protests in America during the time and how did that affect the way Nixon approached kind of policy in Asia do you see an impact the significance well I mean he he was elected on a promise of trying to end the war in at the end of 68 I mean I think you know and that took him a lot longer which I think was very frustrating for the White House I don't think he you know was a was a politician who was inclined you know to let the protest protest movements influence his policy in any substantial way I mean he was determined to push on and to try and get the peace accords signed as I said it took him a lot longer um but uh no I mean the big protest that I think that really shocked him the most and which I guess worried him because it involved a lot of Europe once staunch European allies um criticizing the American government which I think proved for Nixon and which fed this sort of siege mentality that he had about a sort of an array of leftists broadly defined whether it be they governments or protesters who were out to undermine his foreign policy but the the biggest shock that he got I think was the protests at the at the Christmas bombings in 72 and I mean they were a shock in many ways to all who'd been closely observing those peace negotiations because in in October of 72 Kissinger had even said that peace was at hand and all the trajectory of those negotiations seemed to be heading in the right direction in terms of bringing an end to the conflict but as we know because of the North Vietnamese and because of South Vietnamese intransigence as well and American frustrations with their South Vietnamese ally um Nixon wanted to as he put it crack them pretty hard and send out a message about American credibility I mean that's one of the other great themes running through this period is protecting American credibility and the protesters and these soft leftist governments in his view particularly in Europe especially the Swedish but also of course Australia flirting with neutrality they're they're deserting the western alliance they're undermining society at home and and and and this is something that has to be met met with with with brutal force right so I mean Nixon had written some very interesting articles in in Reader's Digest sort of in 67 68 I mean he you know he came to power on a law and order platform there's no doubt about that and talked a lot about rebuilding trying to strengthen the American society and get over this period of great weakness so I think that's I think that's significant but yes it's the criticism of the Christmas bombings from coming from people like the Pope from Gough Whitlam from the Swedish Prime Minister from Pompadou from from the Germans as well I mean he's absolutely livid that at the very moment that you know they're trying to end it that that these want these allies had turned on him and and and that's when you get the retribution yeah so and how much of the clash that you described between Whitlam and Nixon was based on those kind of personality factors you know would was it inevitable because of the strategic nature of these countries that they had to clash around this period diverging interests or do you see personalities as kind of having driven a lot of this concern I don't think it was inevitable I mean I think I think the differences arose primarily out of two different views very different views of the meaning of the end of the Cold War in East Asia I mean but before I get to that firstly the clash came almost really was quite unfortunate for Whitlam that is that almost on the very day that his cabinet was sworn in was the day that Nixon ordered the Christmas bombings and Whitlam's response initially was simply at a press conference to register his disappointment that the peace process had fallen down again now had he left it at that it would have been a very different story but I think he was under significant pressure internally from the Labor Party from members within his own office that he had to deliver a more forceful response to the American administration so you had Cairns and and Uren and Cameron out there calling the White House maniacs and thugs and murderers right Whitlam actually writes in protest at the Christmas bombings he writes a very moderate letter but the sting is in the tail at the end of the letter he says I'm going to address a joint appeal to the United States and North Vietnam to return to negotiations and moreover I'm going to lobby other Asian nations to join me in this appeal so immediately the two countries I mean that was placing basically the United States on the same level as its communist enemy and and as I show in the book and I Whitlam Nixon and Kissinger were just furious, ropeable that that one of their greatest allies in the war could turn to a chief critic almost overnight but once that died down it then became clear that the Americans were more concerned about Whitlam going off in a different direction in Asia for example his support for the idea of zones of peace and neutrality especially neutrality in the Indian Ocean right this was seen this was seen to be basically a bit of frippery by the Americans then he had an idea for a new kind of regional architecture that didn't involve the United States so at the very moment that the Americans are vulnerable because look they've just lost this ghastly war in Vietnam at a great cost to their blood and treasure they're trying to recalibrate their engagement in the region and all of a sudden and and they see Daytont as something that needs careful nurturing it's fragile it's inherently fragile it requires careful balancing the Americans still see a world Nixon still sees a world of enemies right and they believe that Whitlam in promoting all these ideas which are which don't have much substance to them and Whitlam himself freely admits this this idea of regional architecture he says well i just want an idea that's a bit like the British Commonwealth but in our own region which means that we don't necessarily always pluck for a military solution to a security problem you know that we try and talk about it well the Americans are like well what does this mean and why doesn't it involve us so here and the Americans deliver this message time and again throughout 73 74 and 75 and they are basically saying to the Australians look your great enemies in the past or the people you are most worried about Indonesia and Japan that's no longer the case confrontation has passed Indonesians have Sahado everything's more or less okay there and you're building up this fantastic as John mentioned this this closer relationship with Japan the extent where Whitlam is talking about Japan is the new Britain for Australia but they're also saying this right look that's great your your fears are basically gone but there's still a cold war and there's still a climate of threat and we need to carefully maintain Daytona you know Whitlam's talking about taking an ideological holiday that's the last thing the Americans want to hear and certainly this kind of language must have scared the intelligence agencies as well John well it's an interesting point I guess the the thing was that you know the intelligence community which emerged from the Second World War was very much shaped by its experience of working intimately with the United States the architecture of what became the Australian intelligence community very much has its origins in the Second World War in fact the very robust nature of the very substantial bodies organizations that set up on Russell Hill have clear and direct antecedents going back to the organizations that were part of the organization that worked to MacArthur in from 1942 onwards and so that that that's very much part of the DNA of the intelligence community if you like and that continued in with a with a bit of an aberration in the immediate post-second world war period when everyone's kind of trying to figure out what on earth to do after the Japanese have been defeated and when before people really had come gotten their heads around that the Cold War having been locked in we then see a whole range of organizations in a way that are very much linked you know the people who are founders it's a Charles Spry in Asia for instance you know he's a he's a very prominent figure former director of military intelligence in the immediate post-war period prominent in the Second World War the people who are employed in these organizations are all experienced from the you know experienced from the Second World War intimately working alongside the United States and and with others as well including the Dutch the British and the Canadians and others so that that that's the period that's the the nature of things in the 1950s and of course in the Menzies period that that's consolidated we then see that the base are the you know the intelligence facilities that what's now the joint facilities established Pine Gap and Arunga this this you know as Des Ball puts it this makes us the the suitable piece of real estate that that is arguably the strategic essence becomes the strategic essence of the significance of Australia to the United States in terms of intelligence the intelligence relationship this has all happened in the 50s and 60s and it's all you know manifested itself with the opening of Pine Gap in 1969 as the most visible and tangible manifestation of that and of course when you get a new government in with with the Whitlam government that has spent years protesting railing against against the engagement with the United States in Vietnam and members who are seen to be sympathetic to if not actual members of the Communist Party and the grave fears that James has talked about the Nixonian view this kind of Manichean view of the world that is very dark and so you know the people who are populating the Australia's intelligence community in this era are people who've spent time in the United States are very good friends in the United States are very well plugged in in the United States who are you know patriots but they they have a real appreciation of just what the relationship means in terms of intelligence because that's then challenged in the Whitlam era and that that is certainly for some people a scary proposition that the basis of this relationship which for which the engagement in the Vietnam war is in effect partly an investment in seems to be squandered very readily with with little apparent appreciation of how much stocks we've already got in this in this if you like and there is real consternation that that what the Whitlam government is doing is actually basically throwing away our investment in in in certainly in appearance now as James has pointed out Goff actually has been is quite moderate in his in substantively he's moderate in what he says and what he does but he's got to deal with the rhetoric that the Jim Cairns school if you like the the Tom Uren approach to using the United States as a whipping boy and that presents a a real challenge particularly in terms of the optics but also in terms of the substance at the working level people are starting to get quite worried and of course that's a subject that I explore a little bit further in a book coming out in the month or so watch this space that we say James can I just read a kind of quote from your book you say towards the end of it that for all the abuse and insults Whitlam ushered in a maturation process that the Australian American Alliance simply had to have and the Alliance ultimately proved strong enough to withstand it could you take us through what you mean by that kind of maturation process and and I guess to be a bit provocative do you see echoes of that today um well yes okay just let me make a couple of points there firstly I'll just go back to your earlier question about Nixon and the protests I mean one point that should be made a very important point you know about Nixon after that after that election win in 68 is that from that moment throughout 69 70 71 he withdraws troops from from vietnam at the rate of about 100 000 a year now Australia's not always consulted about that but in many ways that takes a lot of the sting I would say out of the protest movement in the United States so I'll just finish off the answer that question before um now the maturation process okay um I think Whitlam and the Labor Party I mean the the encapsulation of this is where he says that Ansys is not does not in itself constitute a foreign policy for Australia it's not the be all and end all of Australia's foreign policy and Keith Waller was the one who first started to use that in uh department of external affairs briefs in the late 60s by the way um and I mean in a nutshell what I'm trying to get out there is that you know throughout the 1960s in uh crises over West New Guinea whether or not the Indonesians were going to be allowed to annex West New Guinea and in Indonesia's confrontation of Malaysia the Australian government had found that the United States had a very different interpretation of the Ansys treaty to that held in Canberra and the most glaring manifestation of that was when John F Kennedy sent Garfield Barwick uh out of the Oval Office with his tail very much between his legs I think the time of the confrontation crisis where he'd said to him the American people have forgotten Ansys and I can't go to Congress and ask Congress to authorize American military involvement on the ground in case of a war between yourself and Indonesia in Borneo and Kennedy put so many conditions on American assistance that it virtually renders the agreement this the famous Kennedy Barwick memorandum of October 63 virtually meaningless now that is not to critique in any way or criticize American policy it after all is doing what any great power would do and preserve its own interests and it sees the interest being more keeping Indonesia out of the communist camp rather than uh committing to help Australia in event in the event of a skirmish um but this message okay about the different interpretations of Ansys slowly starts to make its way through the Canberra bureaucracy and the political class um Paul Hasluck in 65 says we've been put on notice by a former American president that we can't expect American protection under Ansys and he said the more and more we try to spell it out in black and white exactly what the Americans are obliged to do the more and more they will whittle it down and but Hasluck's message didn't get through so so Holt and Gorton and McMahon all went to Washington in that period continually asking the United States for more assurances so much so that when Keith Waller returns from his ambassadorship he writes to JDB Miller here at the ANU and says I was constantly embarrassed by a stream of ministers and prime ministers coming through and asking us will Ansys still apply do you really still mean it will you come to our assistance and there was a quite a famous instance of this where Gorton was interviewed outside Blair House in Washington and he was unable to say whether or not Ansys applied to the area of Malaysia and Singapore when the Americans were putting great pressure on Australia to commit to the defense of Malaysia and Singapore to recommit once the British were thinking of withdrawing and Gorton simply couldn't answer the question now Whitlam as I've said in the book was almost Olympian in parliament as he strolled through what he called the debris of the conservative policy and its national security policy he was saying if the conservatives cannot say with any conviction what this treaty means then we need a fresh start we need to clear away the rubble and have a fresh start so I also think the Labor Party was very frustrated at the way in which the conservatives had had sort of put great faith in the personal relationships between president and prime minister so obviously the height of this was Hulton Johnson Gorton searched for that relationship with Johnson didn't quite get it and and McMahon certainly didn't have it with Nixon especially once the the disappointment about not being told about the China opening filtered through and McMahon was apoplectic about that so Whitlam wanted to basically say look we need to treat America in the same way as we would treat relations with the French the Germans the Japanese in other words there's not a special relationship there that's essentially what he was saying and he sends a cable out he authorizes a cable to remember his minister for foreign affairs as well throughout the first year as well as being prime minister he sends a cable out on about the 17th or 18th of December I don't know why I remember these dates but saying I want you to concentrate on a more mature less adultery relationship with the United States that is to be your prime message as diplomats and that it's not simply agreement for agreement's sake that we look at each issue on its merits so hence some voting patterns changed in the United Nations so I I do think you know that is probably the greatest achievement there was a lot of turbulence and turmoil and a lot of hurt and the Americans took great umbridge at this but in the end they had to recognize that they couldn't take the interests of its junior ally for granted and Marsha Green first time the Americans in over 20 years sent a serious diplomat to Australia a real Asian troubleshooter and a heavy hitter Marsha Green says this in a public speech in New York in March 75 and says publicly frankly the policy of all the way with LBJ was a downright embarrassment to Australia now your more important question I think as well as you asked does it apply to today and what I would say there is that I think in the period from 96 onwards 1996 onwards and you got to remember that John Howard as opposition leader criticized Hawken Keating for their minimalist approach to the alliance this was a core there was a consensus in the Australian political community I think during the 70s about comprehensive engagement with Asia and whilst Whitlam Fraser Hawken Keating maintained the alliance with the United States as the primary security arrangement for the nation nevertheless I don't think any of them did anything to give it a more substantial content and that's because engagement with Asia was the top policy priority now as you know Howard comes in says Asia first not Asia only history we don't have to choose between our history and geography but I I do think and especially after 9 11 and right through to today there is an increasing sentimentality about the alliance and I think John Howard wove the ANZUS treaty and the ANZUS alliance and the American Australian relationship into the ANZAC legend as well and and once you do that it's much harder to criticize the alliance I think and sentimentality hardly needs to be said is not a basis for policy now the alliance is very much in Australia's national interest there's no need for knee jerk anti-Americanism but I think there is a sense in which at times we have to realize there will be different national interest we may have a different view of what is going on in Asia to the Americans and I think what the Whitlam period shows is that memory and sentimentality can only get you so far and one of the more interesting points out of the Whitlam period was when American diplomats said we can't go to Canberra anymore and keep talking about the Coral Sea it won't cut any ice in Australian domestic politics it doesn't mean as much so I just make that point that that I think it's almost a shock now to sort of talk about divergent approaches between Australia and the United States in Asia there are a lot there's a lot on which we agree there's a new sense of convergence in the alliance over the rise of China and what that means that's the the central question for our times obviously and we will agree as I say on a lot but there needs to be scope it's okay to disagree right seems a long time since Simon Crane as Labor Leader could get up in the national parliament in 2003 welcoming President Bush here and say that allies sometimes disagree and the alliance is strong enough to withstand it thank you and John can I ask you I guess the same question in terms of do you see echoes of the way that thought and changed over the alliance relationship with today or perhaps a need for greater echoes of that yeah it's interesting you know when you think about how the alliance was viewed in the 1960s it was really strong echoes of the 1930s in the rhetoric used the concern about appeasement the concern about a threat that was if it wasn't Japan anymore it was communism the alliance of the United States is critical to that that fades you know once the Vietnam war comes to an end and there's there's a hiatus there and I think the the the the consensus that you mentioned James are about in the 70s between the you know the Whitlam Fraser Hawk Keating period I think it reflects the fact that there's a level of benign the the strategic environment's relatively remarkably benign for Australia and this gets to the point you're making earlier about the United States getting frustrated with Australia not seeing it as a continuation of the Cold War because for us it had dramatically changed it had dramatically changed although arguably not domestically and I can talk about that next time we meet but there is there's a there's a strong kind of if you like inclination to do the same again for today and and and use the 1930s metaphor and and and use the Japan the yoga the specter of of militarist Japan as as the as the counterpoint to the the specter of you know and encroaching China in the South China Sea and and beyond I think we need to be very careful about not using history or not misusing history if you like because while there are some easy to draw parallels there are some very important distinctions that need to be drawn as well and the Japan of the 1930s was a brutal expansionist militarist state that was an existential threat there's no question China today is not that by a long shot and so we do need to think very differently about what the parallels are for today and what the lessons might be for today and there's just one point about the maturation I wanted to touch on as well I really liked your comments John I thought they were great one of the interesting things about the relationship with Britain and and the point you were making about how Britain's withdrawal from withdrawal from east of Suez I mean it stems back to I think to the 1956 Suez crisis that kind of when Britain really has this existential sense of angst about what what an earth can do if the United States is going to block them which they did and Australia under Menzies goes and tries to negotiate an agreement and of course it fails people poo poo that but of course Menzies I think is pretty astute on one level because he recognised that the Suez canal was still the lifeline for Australia's trade to Europe which at that stage was still the the principal trade route for Australia so it's not inconsequential but Britain it becomes irrelevant but interestingly we see a phenomenon that Rick Smith would probably be able to talk to this far better than I this this sense of Australia's foreign policy emerging in we've got us we have a space for Australian foreign policy to emerge and so you have the teething problems of you know the prime minister's going to the United States almost cup in hand you know asking for some kind of security guarantee and yet at the same time there is that engagement with with Southeast Asia with Japan and Korea and China and and elsewhere that is on an unprecedented scale and while you know Australia had been involved in the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization from the mid-1950s it's really a military organization and it's really a neocolonial one with France and Britain and you know the United States being the dominant players in that the relationship with ASEAN is a completely different one ASEAN is homegrown it's initially the the non-communist five countries it expands eventually to include the whole of Southeast Asia our engagement with them with Japan with Indonesia when Sahara gets into office these are these are of enduring consequence and Australia's experience at finding its way in that time in that space is merits considerable re-examination to learn some more lessons as we think about the future and the rise of Asia yeah just a final point you think about in the mid 60s when I can't remember who it is in external affairs but it's after the east of Suez decision and I think they're still sort of trying to work out what it all means but one of the briefs says well we're out of Europe we're out of the Atlantic and we're out of Asia and so there's that sort of sense of a void and and how we're going to answer this great strategic question and I think when you put that when you put that as as your marker then to see where the country is at the end of the 70s I think there is this there is this remarkable transformation because in the mid 1960s you are still in essence this country is defining itself as white and British and from 65-66 through to 72-73 you have the progressive dismantling of the white Australia policy and then both governments build as you say John on those earlier links with with Southeast Asia and especially with Japan I mean the commerce treaty is remarkable when you think it's only 12 years after the end of the Second World War and and I mean I would also say don't forget Malcolm Fraser as well I mean it's not all about Gough Whitlam in this period I mean the the statement which I think is remarkable that Malcolm Fraser makes when he is asked in 76 oh why are you going to Tokyo and Beijing first as Prime Minister not to London and Washington and he simply says the world changes right and he is the one who I think in many ways puts more flesh under the bones of the multicultural ideal. He continues Whitlam's work on Japan that's when the the Nara treaty is signed he continues to develop Australia's China policy albeit with a very different edge to it it's more real politic it's what you know what China can do in terms of keeping Soviet ambitions at bay it's not the way Whitlam was using China which was the sort of epitome of Australia's new embrace of Asia in the region so and Fraser too was saying our policies with the United States will not always necessarily be identical so in many ways Whitlam continues a lot of the changes that Fraser continues a lot of the changes that that Whitlam brings in so I think it's an extraordinary period of creative diplomacy transformation and that sets the stage for I guess that period I think arguably one of Australian foreign policies most successful periods and that is the 1980s in terms of of trying to find its place in the region the 1980s I think is very very significant.