Australia Faces Southeast Asia

The Emergence of a Foreign Policy

Amry Vandenbosch, Mary Belle Vandenbosch

• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780813182230
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Global Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Australia as a Western society in the Orient faces a unique and paradoxical challenge in her relations with her close but unfamiliar neighbors of Southeast Asia. Explicitly dependent upon British foreign policy until the fall of Singapore in 1942, Australia has reluctantly and painfully begun the task of developing a policy of her own.

The Japanese conquest of Southeast Asia and many of the Pacific islands during the Second World War awakened Australia to the need to secure her own defenses and later, when Britain began a gradual withdrawal from Southeast Asia, Australia was thrown upon her own resources in dealing with her politically unstable and volatile neighbors and also with the larger Asian threat posed by Communist China. In Australia Faces Southeast Asia, Amry and MaryBelle Vandenbosch trace Australia's attempts to reconcile her cultural heritage and her geography.

1Postwar Reappraisal of External Policy

Situated as we are in the South-West corner of the Pacific, with the outlying islands of the Asian continent almost touching our own territories of New Guinea and Papua, our first and constant interest must be the security of our own home-land and the maintenance of peace in the area in which our country is geographically placed. We could many years ago reasonably regard ourselves as isolated from the main threats to our national security. and our traditional British Commonwealth and United States of issue because changes since the war have resulted in a shifting of potential aggression from the European to the Asian area, and our traditional British Commonwealth and United States of America friends have not yet completed their adjustments to the new situation. A very great burden of responsibility rests especially on us, but also upon the other British Commonwealth countries of this area.

It is indisputably true, . . . that peace is indivisible and that what takes place in any part of the world concerns us. But it should at all times be stressed that here in this part of the world we are faced with special problems, and it is to a solution of these problems that our attention should primarily be directed.

P. C. SPENDER

Minister for External Affairs

March 9, 1950.

THE SECOND WORLD WAR brought profound changes in Australia’s relations with the world, and Australians have found agonizing their experience in reappraising their position and developing a foreign policy to meet unprecedented challenges. Australia’s changed situation resulted chiefly from two developments. First, the neighboring region of Southeast Asia, which for several centuries had been a calm, inconspicuous region of the world, suddenly was drawn into the vortex of international politics by the Japanese invasion. Although Japan was ultimately defeated, a new threat to Southeast Asia and Australia emerged on the mainland of East Asia. Nor was the expulsion of Japan from the region followed by peace and quiet, but by strife. Minister for External Affairs Richard G. Casey summarized the new perils succinctly: “Instead of living in a tranquil corner of the globe we are now on the verge of the most unsettled region of the world.”¹

This change in conditions in Southeast Asia was worsened by the realization that Britain, on whom Australia had relied for its security, had proved unable to aid her dominion when it was threatened with an invasion by the triumphant Japanese armed forces. Unfortunately, Britain’s military decline was not to be temporary. While recovering its former colonial territories, the United Kingdom soon adopted a policy of liquidating its imperial interests and reducing its military commitments, especially in that part of the world.

Australians were quite unprepared for the task of reorienting their foreign policy. In contrast with the thirteen English colonies in North America each of the Australian states remained a separate British colony until the proclamation of the commonwealth on January 1, 1901. Consequently, there developed no independent spirit, for Australia, as a Labor member of Parliament says, “grew up under the physical and psychological wing of Great Britain.”² A number of factors contributed to this strong and continued British orientation. Australia was a white outpost in an out-of-the-way corner of the world, with a handful of Britishers³ occupying a continent bounded by the vastness of the Indian and Pacific oceans. With such great resources to exploit they developed a high level of living, even by western standards. A strong trade union movement and vigorous Labor party politics insured the diffusion of prosperity. What caused Australians some anxiety was the thought either of foreign conquest, especially by an Asian power, or of large-scale Asian immigration. Since they were so few in numbers and so underdeveloped industrially, they could not possibly defend themselves against attack by a major power. Their living levels might be depressed and English culture submerged by the movement of numerous people from the populous and impoverished Asian countries to Australia.

Australia’s response to this double threat was the promotion of British (and later of western and southern European) immigration, the exclusion of orientals (the “white Australia” policy), and the maintenance of close ties with the British Empire. So long as Britain ruled the sea, Australians felt reasonably safe, but Japan’s rapid modernization and increasing world power concerned Australians and increased rather than diminished their reliance upon Britain. Other factors, such as the importance of the United Kingdom as a market for Australian products and Australia’s dependence upon British capital for development, reinforced this strong pro-British orientation. The United Kingdom, which takes about one-fifth of the Australian exports and supplies some-what less than one-third of its imports, is Australia’s most important trading partner.

The degree of favor for the British has varied among Australia’s political parties, and it has been less strong with the Labor party, which has advocated a more independent and nationalist line. The Labor party was in power when World War I broke out, and it strongly supported Britain in the war. However, the party members split on the issue of conscription for overseas service.⁴

Despite the relative decline in British strength and prestige, Australia’s attachment to the British and the Commonwealth diminished only slowly after World War II. More than a decade after the war an Australian specialist on his country’s foreign policy could write: “The maintenance of strong links with Britain and the Commonwealth is an article of faith which is not today questioned by any of the political parties. . . . This firm adherence is the product both of emotion and rational judgment.”⁵ Also, the reasons for this attachment differ with the parties, and with the Labor party the desire to avoid too great a dependence upon the United States is an important factor.

The fall of Singapore in February, 1942, and the sinking of the British battleships, the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, was a traumatic experience for the Australian people and marks a sharp turning point in their history. These events produced a near-panic, causing Prime Minister John Curtin to exclaim that Australia now looked to America “free of any pangs as to our traditional links with the United Kingdom.”⁶ It was under these tragic circumstances that the new orientation of external policy emerged. During the first four decades of the federation, Australian foreign policy was passive; Australian foreign policy was British foreign policy. The fall of Singapore and the threat of Japanese invasion at a time when England was threatened with a German invasion brought an abrupt change. No longer able to depend on Britain, Australia suddenly was forced to look to the United States for its security and survival.

The Labor party was in power during this crisis. Prime Minister John Curtin and Minister for External Affairs Herbert Vere Evatt, who continued in office under Prime Minister J. B. Chifley, made a strong effort to develop an independent, forceful role for Australia in world politics. Evatt was concerned with the forming of a strong United Nations and an effective Australian participation in that organization as a middle power. His more pressing and immediate problem, however, was Southeast Asia, and he wanted to create a regional organization to treat security and other problems related to the Southwest Pacific.

With the coming to power of the Liberal-Country coalition at the end of 1949, Australia entered a new phase in the development of its foreign policy. This came about not so much because of the change of government, as by several other factors. Indonesia became independent and Australia acquired a populous Asian state as a close neighbor, the Communists drove the National government from the mainland of China, and the world had become deeply divided by the cold war. Moreover, with Great Britain beginning to liquidate the Empire, the old Commonwealth, composed of European peoples or countries dominated by them, was changing into a new association of many races with widely differing interests and hence with little unity. So only to the United States could Australia look for national security. Australia joined the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, entered into a defense alliance with the United States, and generally moved steadily closer to the United States, supporting United States Asian and Pacific policies to the point of committing combat troops to Vietnam.

During the quarter of a century since the fall of Singapore, Australia departed substantially from its traditional ties. Sir Robert Menzies, who previously had been an ardent supporter of the Commonwealth, declared regretfully in 1962 that “for most of its members, the association is, in a sense, functional and occasional. The old hopes of concerting common policies are gone.”⁷ British leaders were beginning to feel the same way. British Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home was quoted as saying, “The Commonwealth is not a center of power. If, as is certain, power is to lie in Europe, then I think it is there that Britain ought to be.”⁸ There are at present indications that the Wilson government is becoming disillusioned with the Commonwealth and weary of the attacks it has had to endure from the African members because of Rhodesia and South Africa. Britain is asked to “take all the action and make all the sacrifices.” Although most members of the Commonwealth expect Britain to support their policies, few give Britain any help with hers, and the British are beginning to doubt whether the economic advantages are worth the political and military burdens of the Commonwealth.⁹ It is as if the United Kingdom, having freed nearly all of its colonies, at last demands freedom for itself. Should the United Kingdom obtain membership in the European Economic Community, the Commonwealth would be further weakened, though conceivably, if the “new” Commonwealth were dissolved, the “old” one might be renewed.

Factors other than security considerations also tend to weaken Australian-British ties. In Australian trade the United Kingdom is falling behind other countries, and Japan is about to overtake Britain as Australia’s best customer. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 1966, Japan bought goods worth $527,968,000 and Britain $531,552,000; the previous year the figures were $493,584,000 and $578,144,000, respectively.¹⁰ In the same years Japanese exports to Australia increased from $289,632,000 to $314,496,000, making Japan Australia’s third biggest supplier, after Britain, $905,968,000, and the United States, $843,696,000. Britain now takes less than one-fifth of Australia’s exports, whereas before the war it took more than one-half. Southeast Asia, with New Zealand and Japan, now takes about 42 percent of Australia’s exports compared with 17 percent before the war. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 1966, Australian exports totaled $3,053,120,000, and imports were $3,291,232,000. Investments show much the same pattern. Since World War II much non-British capital has been invested in Australia, and with investments of about one billion dollars, the United States now probably has passed Britain as the largest foreign investor in the country.¹¹ Another factor is the rapidly changing economy of Australia. While it is not yet an industrialized country–only 14 percent of its exports are factory made–it is making great strides in this direction.¹² In the decade from 1954 to 1964, Australia’s exports rose in volume by more than 80 percent, and it had become the twelfth ranking nation in world exports. Between 1960 and 1964 its exports of manufactures have almost doubled, and vast new mineral resources have been discovered.¹³ Its population is growing at the rate of more than 2 percent annually. Such rapid economic development tends to reduce the dependence upon Britain and to produce a more independent spirit.

The increased volume and changing composition of immigration since World War II are modifying the national character and are having an influence in reorienting foreign policy. Until 1938 only immigration of persons from Britain was encouraged and few non-British settled in Au...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Preface
• Contents
• 1. Postwar Reappraisal of External Policy
• 2. Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy
• 3. Herbert Vere Evatt and Labor Nationalism
• 4. Indonesian “Confrontation”–West New Guinea
• 5. Indonesian “Confrontation”–Malaysia
• 6. Peril to the North–Vietnam
• 7. An Emerging Policy
• 8. Australia’s Future in Asia
• Bibliography
• Index