Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Foreign and defence policy
Historical background
Contemporary foreign policy making takes place against a historical backdrop
which informs current mindsets and policy. Australia relied upon the UK for
defence, trade and even foreign affairs until the Second World War, despite the
‘tyranny of distance’ from the motherland. This dependence was cruelly exposed by
the Japanese defeat of Imperial forces in Singapore in 1942, marking a watershed in
Australian thinking. Prime Minister John Curtin famously declared that ‘Without
anyinhibitionsofanykind,ImakeitquiteclearthatAustralialookstoAmerica,
free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom’ 1
and soon after, he belatedly ratified the 1931 Statute of Westminster that devolved
full sovereignty over international policy to the Dominion of Australia. During
the postwar period, leading diplomats such as H.V. Evatt sought to carve out a
greater role for Australia and other medium-sized powers in the shaping of global
governance, for example, through the foundation of the United Nations (UN) and
the San Francisco Peace Treaty settlements in 1951. At the same time the pivotal
ANZUS (Australia–New Zealand–US) alliance treaty was inaugurated, indicating a
shift from the UK to the USA in terms of defence reliance.
During the Cold War, Australian foreign and defence policy focused on the
putative communist threat emanating from Soviet and Chinese expansion. Canberra
acceded to the ANZUS alliance at the same time as the Second World War San
Francisco Peace Treaties in 1951. This was tied to the ongoing process of decolonisation
as European powers sought to preserve their influence in South-East Asia
against nationalist, and often Marxist, independence movements and conflicts.
Canberra provided diplomatic and military support for the UN-led coalition in
the Korean War (1950–53), the British in Malaya against ‘communist terrorists’
(1948–60) and against the Indonesian ‘confrontation’ policy in Borneo (1963–66),
and deployed substantial military force to support the USA in Vietnam into the
1970s (including through membership of the South-East Asia Treaty Organisation
Pact).AtthistimeAustraliaalsowithdrewfromitsowncolonyinPapuaNew
Guinea (1975) and sought to manage relations with the diverse array of newly
independent countries in the South Pacific making up the British Commonwealth.
Serious challenges arose around this time. President Nixon’s Guam Doctrine
(1969) signalled that America’s allies would henceforth have to provide more
resources for their own defence, prompting a more self-reliant defence policy in
the 1970s and 1980s. Japan’s postwar economic recovery had also encouraged
increasing Australian economic engagement with Asia. But continuing Australian
economic prosperity was undermined by protectionist policies, the economic
rupture with the UK when the latter joined the European Economic Community in
1973, and a series of Middle Eastern ‘oil shocks’. At this time, Prime Minister Gough
Whitlam also ended the isolation of communist China by his visits to Beijing,
1 Curtin 1941, 10.
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