Australia in the Cold War: A Historiographical Review

Abstract

country's foreign relations. Commonly accepted perspectives on Australia's experience during the cold war, which maintained that the period had been characterized by Australia's servility to the United States, influenced the public response to issues such as Australia's military commitments in the Persian Gulf in 1991 and 1998, and demonstrated the appeal of an Australian version of the 'Vietnam syndrome'. While for Americans the most powerful lesson of the Vietnam War has been reluctance to send military forces abroad, the events in the Gulf suggest that the consequence for Australian governments of collaboration with the United States is likely to be widespread criticism of it as marking a return to the allegedly obsequious Australian stance during the Vietnam War.1 Similarly, the paucity of US military assistance to Australia during the East Timor crisis of 1999 evoked a widespread sense of betrayal, shared, to judge by their public statements, by both the prime minister, John Howard, and the leader of the federal opposition, Kim Beazley, bringing into sharp relief two dominant perspectives on the history of the Australian-US alliance. One, an optimistic view of the benefits to Australia, was sustained by the assumption that the United States would, in some circumstances, be willing to act out of a sense of loyalty to Australia rather than wholly on the basis of considerations of the US national interest. The other emphasized the costs of the alliance for Australia: that since 1950, Australia had gone out of its way to be loyal to the United States to the point of servility jeopardizing its own interests, especially its relations with its Asian neighbours, in the hope that such sacrifices would be redeemed by US protection.2