Australia in the Vietnam War

A Case Studies in Foreign Policy Analysis

Bringing it all Together: building the case study

Now that you have absorbed the documents and events presented in the two timelines, it's time to bring all the elements together to answer the question: "Why did Australia send troops to the Vietnam War?" Elsewhere you will find information on the more technical aspects of doing and writing a case study; here I want to discuss the more substantive content and methodological issues. Specifically, I want to introduce you to the intellectual elements necessary for a professional case study, as well as stress the complex domestic and international relationships that a foreign policy analysis might need to cover. While this is not a case study in itself, I think you will find it useful for the development of your own case study.

The Vietnam War provides an excellent case because of the large amount of literature available—including thousands of primary sources—and the controversy it provoked (thus ensuring there are many conflicting viewpoints). One thing to remember, as surprising as it might be, is that politicians and bureaucrats often don't always tell the truth: politics is indeed a crazy place! However, one does not simply take foreign policy statements at face value; they need to be analysed in a critical way. This is necessary, in my opinion, because not only US Presidents, but Australian politicians as well, have lied to their constituents.

This course has focussed inter alia on two important and related approaches to the discipline of Foreign Policy Analysis. First, it is suggested that rational approaches do not exhaust the analysis of foreign policy decision-making. It's not that rationality should be rejected totally—there is a role for it—but rather the role other factors might also play in decision-making must be highlighted. There is little doubt that many decision-makers attempt to be rational, but there are also numerous hurdles to that rationalism dominating the process of foreign policy formulation. These hurdles might include: the personality/psychology/political ideologies of the individual decision-makers, the unique political cultures of specific rival bureaucracies, and varied domestic concerns, particularly in democracies where sectorial interests may demand "not so rational responses". I have also been at pains to show that decisions are made in very complex environments with competing national and/or international contexts. Few real-life foreign policy contexts involve a zero-sum game. Second, in response to these concerns, you are asked to conceptualise the decision-making process as vulnerable to three levels of political activity: the systemic, the national and at the level of the individual actor. I believe the timelines that you have just studied provide an excellent opportunity for you to see how these levels interact. I am not going to prescribe for you exactly what that interaction is, rather, your aim is to outline the possible range of factors that might be included. You can then argue your own case.

Most conventional responses to the question; however, suggest that the rather vague concept of "the domino theory" was responsible: countries bordering Vietnam would become infected with communism and fall just like dominoes set up on a direct path to Australia's northern shores. Given this image, rational approaches would argue that Australia's national interest would be served by stopping the threat as far from Australia's shores as possible: a nice simple straight forward answer!

However, there are some worrying problems with this approach. There is no doubt the Cold War shaped the thinking of the Australian decision-makers and communism was a real threat to the Australian way of life, hence collective security was crucial to Australia's foreign policy. To the government of the day, Marxism's approaches to social organisation were an anathema and there is little doubt there was a real fear of the red menace amongst the Australian public. But was the choice to actively participate in the war a "rational response" to the threat of Vietnamese communism or were there more possibly even more important concerns? A couple of questions immediately should be considered:

Brian Ross, in his excellent article (attached below), provides a somewhat different, more nuanced answer to the question of our decision to participate in the war:

The reasons as to why Australia became involved in the Vietnam War have been traditionally painted in the colours of "collective security" and as part of the anti-Communist "crusade" to contain a world-wide communist threat. However, the decision to become involved was not one taken in isolation by the government of the day in Canberra. Rather it was the culmination of a long period of tension and unease, not as one might believe, over the idea of communist expansionism in Asia, but rather because of what was considered the unsatisfactory relationship which had developed between Canberra and Washington. The key to that relationship had been Indonesia and its relations with Australia over first Dutch West New Guinea (now Irian Jaya) and then Malaysia. Indeed as Greg Pemberton points out, "Australia's defence and foreign policy during the post war period cannot be fully understood without reference to Indonesia." 2

There are two aspects of this quote I like. First, he does not simply reject "collective security" or rational approaches in toto, but acknowledges them—albeit implicitly. Second, and this is very important, he highlights Australia's perception of a possible default by the US in its collective security arrangement (ANZUS) as "the key" to our decision to participate. It seems that from the American viewpoint, ANZUS was little more than an enticement to get Australia and New Zealand to sign a peace treaty with Japan, because the US needed Japan as a Cold War ally against China and the Soviet Union. Australia, on the other hand, perceived the treaty as providing genuine "collective security" for Australia in what was now a dangerous part of the world. The US had already shown some reluctance to support Australian policies in regard to "Dutch West New Guinea (now Irian Jaya) and then Malaysia". Australia, therefore, needed to tie the USA more strongly to ANZUS and what better way than to help them out in Vietnam. It is true the global fight against communism was important, but possibly tying the US into a treaty that would guarantee collective security against Indonesia was more important. A rational approach, Ross would argue, would have us send troops to Malaysia and Indonesia. Good analysis of foreign policy should consider a wide range of concerns and not fall into the trap of oversimplifying the causes.

Gary Woodard, probably the best-known author writing about the war, responds to the question in a different, but no less instructive, way. He, of course, would agree with Ross, but also stresses the role of the specific actors in the decision-making process. He actually speculates about the possibility of Australia playing a very different role in Vietnam. He argues that if Sir Garfield Barwick 3 had not retired to take up a High Court position to be replaced by Sir Paul Hasluck 4 things might have been quite different. He writes:

The historian of the AATTV, Ian McNeill, notes that a distinguishing feature of Australian advisers was that they "saw themselves as helping the South Vietnamese to win their war'. This is exactly the role Barwick envisaged. He would have emphasised it, then, and surely later. It did not preclude AATTV members getting into combat situations with the Vietnamese they were training. It did not preclude fighting alongside Americans, but with the proviso that Australia's distinctive national identity and Australian soldiers' right to make decisions should be as far as possible preserved.

Barwick would not have agreed to the assignment of 20 advisers to a combat role in I Corps. That was for the United States, and further it raised United States expectations in regard to future combat commitments.

Between June and November, Barwick would not have done what Hasluck did. He would not have given priority to Vietnam over Indonesia and Indonesia's confrontation of Malaysia. He would not have talked of Vietnam as our war and identified himself with the militant wing of American advisers who believed Hanoi must be attacked and forced to give up its support for the Viet Cong. He would not have alienated and pressured and stultified his advisers. He would not have talked with equanimity, as Hasluck did in London in June, about nuclear war with China. He would not have shared Hasluck's world view in which containing China was the centrepiece. 5

For Woodard, the change of External Ministers in 1964—an extremely crucial year for Australia's involvement—was a crucial reason for Australia's participation in the war. While this has to remain mere speculation, it certainly is a feasible scenario. However, for us it highlights the role actors may play in the decision-making process. In this case both Hasluck and Barwick were conservative liberal politicians under the same Prime Minister (Menzies), although the former was an historian and the latter a lawyer, but they were given to contrasting views about the issue in question. Barwick, it seems, was a very convincing and influential politician.

So to sum up, one of the key criteria for your case study would be an awareness of the three levels of analysis and how they impact on the case itself. A key component of this approach would be the recognition that very often foreign policy is formulated in a context where the three levels interact. In the case of Vietnam, I would argue that the systemic (Cold War/threat of communism), national interest (alliances/troubles in Indonesia) and the actors (Prime/Foreign Ministers) all played considerable roles in determining Australian foreign policy during the Vietnam War. The task, then, is for you to determine the relative importance of each, while recognising that all played a part.

Thanks and good luck with the case study.

The Woodard Article
http://www.naa.gov.au/Images/Woodard_tcm16-35766.pdf
The Ross article
http://www.vvaa.org.au/bross-2.pdf

Footnotes