Anzac's Dirty Dozen (13 page)

In particular, to suggest an expedition to the Boer War was irrelevant to Australian security and strategic positioning is to demonstrate ignorance of the importance of the idea of imperial defence noted earlier in the minds of colonial and early Australian politicians and policy-makers. There was, of course, no chance that a newly federated Australia could defend itself from a large, aggressive foreign power. In this regard, it was entirely dependent
on Britain. Imperial defence was an obvious solution. A commitment to assist the Empire wherever and whenever it should was required underwrote the defence of Australia should the day of crisis ever come. In the words of New South Wales political leader Sir John Robertson: ‘if we expect England to stand by us in any trouble we ought to stand by England in her troubles'.
³⁴
Put crudely, military expeditions like those despatched to the Boer War – a conflict which neither threatened Australia directly nor endangered the physical security of the Empire as a whole – were premiums on an insurance policy Australia could ill-afford to do without. Public fervour and sentimentality was an important part of Australia's Boer War, but not at all the essence of the governmental decision-making process. In Geoffrey Blainey's words: ‘Loyalty to England was paralleled by loyalty to Australia and its own interests: the two loyalties ran side by side'.
³⁵
This was our war by rational and calculating choice.

Many of the same arguments, both for and against the conception of Australia's participating in ‘other people's wars' carry over into World War I. Was it, as some social and cultural historians have contended, more naive folly and blind loyalty to Britain that sent some 60 000 Australians to early graves on battlefields far distant from their homes? Frank Bongiorno and Grant Mansfield have noted how ‘the “other people's wars” idea persists in popular thought in a way that suggests it speaks to a powerful contemporary sensibility about both war and Australia's place in the world'.
³⁶
They go on to quote a letter-writer in the
Australian
newspaper, who contended after Anzac Day in 2006 that ‘Gallipoli – like Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq – was an act of outright aggression, yet each year hushed schoolchildren are told the Anzacs fought for peace and the defence of Australia, as if Turkey was attacking us'.
³⁷

Again, however, quite apart from the continuing strategic
influence of the idea of imperial defence, careful distinction must be made between the flag-waving and emotional rhetoric that encouraged so many Australians to join the expeditions to Gallipoli and France willingly, and the motives and factors influencing their political elites to send them there. No doubt the idea of assisting Britain in an hour of real need – as opposed to the situations encountered in the colonial era and in South Africa – was an intellectual and emotional dynamic that cut across all sectors of the Australian community, but it was only one reason to raise and despatch the 1st AIF. There is no question that Australia had strong financial, trading and strategic reasons for allying itself with Britain in this war. In fact, the decision to support Britain should there be a general war in Europe was essentially made by a succession of Australian governments, of all political persuasions, years before 1914. Had the Allies lost this war, the balance of world power would have been radically altered – to the detriment of Britain and Australia. There is no reason at all to suspect that Australian politicians in the early twentieth century were any less shrewd than those a century later. They well knew the consequences should Britain face defeat, and chose accordingly. Moreover, those questioning the wisdom of committing Australian lives to war in 1914 unsurprisingly often neglect to acknowledge that Germany was, at the time, an emerging Pacific power with fortified harbours, modern wireless stations (including one at Rabaul in German New Guinea) and ‘warships within steaming distance of Sydney, Perth and the crucial Torres Strait'.
³⁸
Once again, there was always much more to it than thoughtless loyalty.

At the outset of World War II, in addition the decision to despatch another expeditionary force of Australians overseas to fight what appeared at the time to be another vast and costly European conflict, many Australians were also committed to the air war over Europe as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme,
while the Royal Australian Navy placed as a more or less subordinate component of the Royal Navy. These air and sea commitments were justified under the same imperial defence rubric. Defeating Germany and the Axis powers most certainly did matter for Australia. Few would be so naive to suggest that a triumph of the Nazi worldview and polity would not have impacted Australians, for the worse. With the war so clearly seen, at the time and now, as a battle for the preservation of a liberal democratic values over an alternate an abhorrent alternative, in what way could this conflict be labelled ‘someone else's war'?

All of this, of course, relates to the war in Europe and the Mediterranean. Those ascribing to the idea of habitual Australian involvement in wars better left alone often avoid a discussion of the Pacific War in its entirety. If it is acknowledged, then effort is usually made to artificially separate the Pacific from the wider conflict, as if they were not closely connected and integral aspects of the same war. The most obvious reason is that this aspect of World War II tends to contradict the ‘other people's wars' paradigm. Certainly, for around six months in late 1941 and early 1942, the war was perceived by the Australian government and public as a battle for national survival. It is true, however, that the government, for pragmatic political reasons, declined to disavow the population of this idea for some time after it knew the real threat had passed. It is also true that historians are now well aware that Australia was never under threat of physical invasion: it was never an option that the Japanese government ever seriously considered and certainly not one they were ever going to be put into action.
³⁹
Indeed, such an operation was always well beyond over-stretched Japanese logistic and operational capabilities so long as it remained in conflict with the United States. The point, however, is that for at least a short period the threat was perceived in Canberra as being immanent and dire. The Pacific
theatre, by no stretch of the imagination, can not seriously be considered as anything but Australia's war.

The tradition of rational, cost-benefit calculations continued after 1945. There was no sudden lurch to uncritically and automatically accede to the demand of powerful allies in the face of ‘real' Australian interests. The Korean War, for example, began on 25 June 1950 when North Korean forces launched an invasion of the South. Within 48 hours, the United States had offered air and sea support to South Korea, and the United Nations Security Council asked all its members to assist in repelling the North Korean attack. Twenty-one countries responded by providing troops, ships, aircraft and medical teams. Australia's contribution included an Air Force squadron and, initially, a battalion of infantry, both of which were already stationed in Japan as part of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force. As the Korean War progressed, while some countries were keen to extricate their troops, Australia increased its commitment, and the government sent a second battalion, which joined the Commonwealth Division on 1 June 1952. By the time the war ended in July 1953, total Australian casualties numbered more than 1500, with 339 killed.

Seemingly so far from Australia and Australian interests, Korea still fails to give substance to the ‘other people's wars' contention. First, it is difficult to argue that blind sentiment and loyalty underwrote the deployment when the Australian public reaction to news of the war, and throughout its course, was distinctly subdued. Moreover, a military commitment had been requested by the United Nations, an organisation that Australia had had a substantial hand in establishing, and had a significant interest in strengthening. At its heart was the idea of ‘collective security' – the concept in a military sense that an attack on one member was to be viewed as an attack on all members. This was seen as the time as a key answer to Australia's (post-imperial)
strategic dilemma. Should the concept work in practice it would guarantee the security of this nation and other small-to-medium countries across the globe. It would certainly not succeed if, at its first test, nations like Australia failed to heed the call. A deployment to Korea was thus in every sense in line with Australian national interests. Not surprisingly, it received consistent bipartisan political support.

Throughout the same period, Australia also committed troops to the Malayan Emergency, declared in June 1948 after three British estate managers were murdered in Perak, northern Malaya, by guerrillas of the Malayan Communist Party. Following the murder of the British High Commissioner in October 1951, Whitehall's resolve was galvanised and the Malayan government stepped up counter-insurgency measures. Australia's involvement began in 1950 with the arrival of transport and bomber aircraft. By October 1955, an infantry battalion was sent to Penang, to participate in a lengthy ‘mopping up' of guerrillas. By late 1959, operations against the communists were in their final phase and many had crossed Malaya's northern border into Thailand. As the threat continued to dissipate, the Malayan government officially declared the emergency over on 31 July 1960, although Australian soldiers remained until August 1963. Thirty-nine Australian servicemen were killed in Malaya – although only 15 of these occurred as a result of combat – and another 27 were wounded.

Australian forces in Malaya formed part of this nation's contribution to the Far East Strategic Reserve, which was set up in April 1955 primarily to deter external communist aggression (particularly from China) against countries in South-East Asia, including Malaya and Singapore.
⁴⁰
Within a Cold War context, the emergency was in all aspects perceived at the time in Canberra and London as a struggle against the danger of Communist expansion in the region. Sensitive to a perceived Communist threat to
its north, the Australian government was a willing participant. No wave of emotional delusion swept Australian policy-makers along. No British lies or coercion forced Australian hands. This was seen as a regional problem that demanded regional action.

The same may well be said of the Confrontation with Indonesia from 1962 to 1966. This small, undeclared war, which came to involve troops from Australia and Britain, was sparked by President Sukarno's conclusion that Malaysia – a nation born of a federation of Malaya, Sabah, Sarawak and Singapore in September 1963 – represented an attempt by Britain to maintain colonial rule in the region. The actual war began when Indonesia launched a series of cross-border raids into Malaysian territory in early 1963. Requests from both the British and Malaysian governments in 1963 and 1964 for the deployment of Australian troops in Borneo met with initial refusal, although the Australian government did agree that its troops could be used for the defence of the Malay Peninsula against external attack. Such attacks occurred twice in 1964 and Australian troops were used in mopping-up operations against the invading troops. Although these attacks were easily repelled, they did pose a serious risk of escalating the fighting. The Australian government thus relented in January 1965 and agreed to deploy a battalion in Borneo. Continuing negotiations between Indonesia and Malaysia ended the conflict, and the two sides signed a peace treaty in Bangkok in August 1966. Twentythree Australians were killed during the Confrontation, seven of them on operations, and another eight wounded.

Australia's commitment to operations against Indonesia during the Confrontation in Borneo and West Malaysia again fell within the context of its membership in the Far East Strategic Reserve. Like the Malayan Emergency, it represented a regional crisis with clearly perceived security ramifications for Australia. It was certainly not sentimentality or blind loyalty which sent
Australian troops into harm's way. Nor was it public opinion: because of the sensitivity of the cross-border operations (which remained secret at the time), the Confrontation received very little coverage in the Australian press. Nor was it British pressure, for the Australian government turned down desperate pleas for help from both London and Kuala Lumpur for a considerable time. Shrewd calculation of Australian interests then, as always, steered the nation to war.

On a larger scale and much more controversial was the Australian military commitment to Vietnam from 1962 to 1973, in which almost 60 000 Australians served, including Air Force and Navy personnel. Some 521 died as a result of the war and over 3000 were wounded. It is well known that the Vietnam War was the cause of some of the most significant social and political dissent in Australia since the conscription referendums of the World War I. Much, subsequently, has been written about the decision to send troops, including conscripts, to fight in this war. Many in the anti-war movement at the time, along with a range of other commentators, have long signalled their moral and practical disquiet at Australia's participation in what has come to be seen in some quarters as an ‘aggressive' war. As Garry Woodard, former Australian Ambassador to China and High Commissioner to Malaysia, pointed out in 2004 in
Asian Alternatives: Australia's Vietnam Decision and Lessons on Going to War
, the Australian government could have quite reasonably chosen a different path.
⁴¹
Moreover, even prominent Australian military figures like General Peter Cosgrove, former chief of the Australian Defence Force, have questioned the decision to go ‘all the way with LBJ'. Cosgrove, who won the Military Cross in Vietnam, said in 2002 that the ‘weight of history and analysis' was against the decision to commit troops. ‘On reflection', he continued, ‘I'd probably join the majority of Australians who thought in retrospect
our involvement was not going to be successful … we probably shouldn't have gone'.
⁴²