Other People’s Wars

Dr Craig Stockings is a senior lecturer in History and Strategic Studies at the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy. Focusing on Australian military history and operational analysis, Stockings has written a number of books including The Torch & The Sword: A History of the Australian Army Cadet Movement 1866-2006 (2007), Zombie Myths of Australian Military History (2010) and edited Anzac’s Dirty Dozen: 12 Myths of Australian Military History (2012). On Wednesday 7 November, Craig Stockings addressed The Sydney Institute.

 OTHER PEOPLE’S WARS

CRAIG STOCKINGS

 First of all, please allow me to thank Gerard, Anne and the Institute for the invitation to speak with you tonight. I consider it a real privilege and a personal pleasure.

I am, by trade, a military historian and tonight I am going to talk with you about what I would call an important theme, or premise, that permeates not only the public imagination of Australia’s military past, but also the popular media, and wider social and scholarly circles as well.[1] The idea of which I speak is the notion that somehow Australians, throughout this nation’s history, have fought and died in “other people’s wars”. Let me nail my colours to the mast and say, at the outset, that this is a mistaken idea.

In one of his recent documentaries, the Australian-born filmmaker John Pilger described how we apparently have “a special relationship with war”. “We fight,” Pilger contends, “mostly against people with whom we have no quarrel and who offer us no threat of invasion.” Australians have thus “paid a unique blood sacrifice in order to appease a great protector”.[2] This nation has, in other words, largely fought in other people’s conflicts – as unnecessary as they have been costly.

Australia has done this either out of unthinking fidelity to great power protectors (either Britain or more recently the USA) or as a consequence of being duped or otherwise manipulated by these “big brother” allies. As I mentioned, Pilger is certainly not alone in this view. In an academic anthology, published in 2010, Professors Henry Reynolds and Marilyn Lake made similar arguments. They noted that: “Engagement in foreign wars has been one of the most distinctive features of Australia’s twentieth century history. Many of them have been what are now commonly called wars of choice rather than wars of necessity.”[3] The implication is that Australia ought to have kept its nose well out of conflicts that did not concern it.

It is not my purpose to make moral judgments on the wars fought by Australians from the colonial era to the present. Nor am I tonight concerned with the outcomes of those wars, and questions of whether or not the manifold “aims” of various Australian military expeditions were met. Rather, I seek to specifically and singly address the idea that these wars have belonged to “other people”: that Australian policy-makers have consistently been victims of their own sentimentality toward “great and powerful friends”, or else been bullied or duped into appeasing their allies through military commitments better avoided, and with of little or no intrinsic consequence to Australia.

This idea, while it may well have had (and no doubt still has) significant appeal to various political and intellectual agendas, simply fails to stack up to historical scrutiny or evidenced argument. Australia’s wars have been her own. For better or worse, successive Australian governments have chosen to fight. They have done so in the main for cold, calculating, realpolitik reasons. This is not to suggest that powerful cultural and emotional connections, or appeals to the patriotism of Empire, or more recently to apparent need to impose “freedom” or “democracy”, have not existed nor played their part – especially as recruiting tools. Neither is it to suggest that soldiers past and present have not ardently believed in the righteousness of their cause, or that our allies have not sought to shape Australian decision-making to serve their own ends. In all cases, however, there is need to pierce the shroud that inevitably surrounds decisions to participate in war. Private soldiers and private citizens do not choose when and where to commit themselves to armed conflict. They deploy, and die, on the orders of their government. Australian politicians have made such choices according to rational and realist principles – not through sentiment or coercion.

In order to focus my argument I will first examine the decision to deploy the 2^nd Australian Imperial Force (2^nd AIF) to the Middle East, a decision made in late 1939. This was not at all a random choice. If ever there was a military expedition that should support the “case for the prosecution” it is this decision. Here was a choice to commit the nation’s only fully armed and equipped regular (full-time) formation, half-way around the world at Britain’s call, to protect British interests in North Africa from potential Italian aggression. Of what import was the fate of Egypt to Australia? Why should Australians fight and die against an Italian enemy? The Germans were nowhere near Africa at this stage in the war. Even the Suez Canal was not of any serious economic consequence to Australia.[4] Mussolini’s reach could never seriously threaten the Pacific. Moreover, this decision was made in the context of an emerging and acknowledged threat from Japan. Why did arguments for keeping Australian soldiers at home to help balance this menace fail?[5] Surely this was a case of committing to one of Pilger’s “other people’s wars”.

In truth, despite claims over time by many prominent authors, Australia did not move to war in 1939 or decide upon the deployment of its troops to far-flung battlefields as an automatic consequence of British decision-making, duplicity or pressure.[6] The choice was quite deliberate and had been forming for a number of weeks as the inevitability of hostilities in Europe grew. Neither naivety nor blind Imperial loyalty tipped the government’s hand. The decision was, in fact, congruent with what appeared to be the national interest, particularly the value placed on the idea of resistance to international aggression and the concept of “Imperial defence”. This was the traditional idea that British strength as the best guarantor of Australian security was a keystone principle. For the Empire to be strong anywhere it needed to be strong everywhere. Australia, therefore, ought to fight any and all of the Empire’s wars so that if the day of crisis ever came then Britain, and in particular the Royal Navy, would be there in Australia’s hour of need.

With the declaration of war, the question of what action Australia ought to take beyond passive measures at home became a topic of heated parliamentary and public debate.[7] The first obstacle to the idea of an Australian expeditionary force to assist Britain was political. If ready to support Menzies’ decision for war, the Australian Labor Party was initially far less enthusiastic about the idea of forming a full-time force for potential overseas service, even though there were standing military plans for such a contingency. While outwardly maintaining the line that he would wait and see what Britain requested before making a decision, Menzies too was hesitant for strategic reasons. On 5 September he cabled Stanley Bruce, the Australian High Commissioner in London, to inform him that until Japanese intentions were clear it was pointless even to discuss the idea.[8]

Menzies was, from the earliest stages, neither a British stooge nor inspired to make a decision by emotional Imperial sentiment. There was, however, a long-term British expectation of such a force from Australia should it be required.[9] Pressure from Whitehall began to mount – but with remarkably little impact. Despite British assurances to the contrary, and on the advice of the Australian Military Board, a calculating Menzies remained concerned about Japan.

The political pressure on Menzies ratcheted up another notch, however, when on 9 September the New Zealand government announced its intention to raise its own ‘special force’ in support of Britain. This was invaluable ammunition for the press, almost uniformly in support of an increased Australian commitment to the war. Eventually, under siege from all sides, an unsettled and reluctant Prime Minister made his choice. Again using radio rather than parliamentary procedure, on 15 September, during his regular Friday broadcast, Menzies announced the raising of the full-time force to be used in Australia or overseas “as circumstances permit”.[10]

Yet the issue of whether this force should be sent overseas and, if so, to where, remained a serious conundrum for the government.  September and November 1939 saw considerable political and military debate as to whether this force ought to be sent anywhere.[11] Again, the choice was far from automatic. Ironically, Lieutenant General E.K. Squires, a British officer acting as Chief of the Australian General Staff, believed that the possibility for despatching such a force existed, but only when danger of attack on Australia was removed. Squires was supported by Menzies who was, as noted, similarly cautious about committing Australian soldiers to a faraway theatre of war.[12]

The slow transition from an attitude of careful regard for Australian security to one that placed Australians on ships bound for foreign soil, however, began to gather speed. Increasing public pressure to despatch ground forces was mirrored by some prominent personalities in London, including Winston Churchill.[13] There followed a string of nebulous and unspecific British pledges to underwrite Australian security in exchange for troops. The iron-clad guarantee Menzies sought, however, could not be given. The truth was that depending on the fortunes of war Australia could be sure of neither Britain’s ability nor intention to fulfil any implied promises. The Australian government knew this. If the British were trying to dupe the Prime Minister, they had failed.

Yet so deep-rooted was the idea of Imperial defence, and so reliant was Australia on British intelligence estimates of Japanese intentions, that throughout November pressure mounted – at home and from London.[14] Menzies, however, was still hesitant while Japanese intentions remained unknown. The British response to this position grew gradually more pointed, stressing the need for more troops in France and the remoteness of the Japanese spectre. Finally, such lobbying bore fruit. On 14 November the Australian service chiefs recommended to Cabinet that the force be sent abroad. Still, however, Menzies demurred and deferred a decision on the issue to the full Cabinet meeting at the end of the month. In the interim, he sought further assurances and British guarantees of security and received no shortage of promises in return.[15] Yet, for the time being, political opposition and doubts about British honesty in its estimations of the Japanese threat, combined with the lack of land fighting in Europe, persuaded Menzies to continue to hold off from committing Australian troops.[16]

Once again, policy decisions taken across the Tasman helped force the Prime Minister’s hand. Seemingly far less concerned about Japanese intentions, on 20 November 1939 New Zealand announced a decision to send its own expeditionary force overseas. For a second time Menzies was subject to unfavourable press comparisons, and began to fall into step.[17] A conversation between Menzies and the British High Commissioner on 23 November, however, revealed that even at this late hour the Prime Minister still harboured considerable misgivings. There was little room left, however, in which he could manoeuvre. Five days later Cabinet at last decided that the force would sail as soon as it had reached a suitable stage in training.[18] Menzies may have had lingering doubts, but under pressure from many fronts, the decision was finally made.

Thus, a long string of decisions in Canberra, London (and Rome) had conspired to place Australian soldiers in the Middle East in 1940. For the Australians, this decision-making process was lengthy, fought out in parliament and in the press, and at no point was the eventual outcome a ‘sure thing.’ The machinations surrounding the commitment were never as straight forward as proponents of the “other people’s war” idea might suggest. Blind loyalty to Britain certainly did not tip Menzies’ hand. Rather, he was consistently suspicious of British assurances and unswayed by British efforts to shape his decision.

The Australian government, on the advice of the Australian military, was also quite conscious of the potential risk posed by Japan. In the end the decision was made according to the established principles of Imperial defence – itself a construct not of sentiment but a logical consequence of Australia’s standing security dilemma. Australia policy-makers sent troops abroad in World War II with their eyes wide open. To commit to war in the Middle East on such a basis is simply incompatible with the notion of unwillingly, unwittingly or unnecessarily fighting “other people’s” conflicts.

The example set by the decision to commit troops in the early stages of World War II is representative of a consistent historical pattern. Australia’s earliest (colonial) military expeditions to the Sudan (1885) and to South Arica (1899-1902), for example, are cases in point. Proponents of the “other people’s war” myth describe such commitments as instances of Australia foolishly participating in, rather than avoiding, unnecessary foreign wars. In the case of the Boer War, instead of remaining neutral, the six Australian colonies and then the new Commonwealth government sent thousands of troops to fight alongside British forces against two Boer republics for no better reason than loyalty to the Queen and sentiment for the Empire – or so the story goes.[19]

Such an interpretation, of course, deliberately ignores the complicated reality of Australian, rather than Imperial identity in this period. In many ways, to suggest a commitment to Britain above and beyond a commitment to purely Australian interests is an entirely false construct. Most Australians at the turn of the century identified themselves not as Australians or subjects of Empire, but both – in Alfred Deakin’s words as ‘independent Australian Britons’. Any distinction between the two is the imposition of a contemporary worldview on an era which would have rejected it as foreign and inappropriate. Such an interpretation also conveniently ignores evidence of much more complex Australian motives.[20]

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. 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. In the words of the contemporary NSW 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.”[21]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.” [22] 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? Here, in addition to the continuing strategic influence of the idea of Imperial defence, careful distinction must be made between the flag-waving rhetoric that encouraged so many Australians to join the expeditions to Gallipoli and France willingly, with the motives and factors influencing their political elites to send them there. Of course, no doubt the idea of assisting Britain in an hour of real need, as opposed to the situations encountered in the colonial era, 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 1^st 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.[23] 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.’[24] Once again, there was always much more to it than blind loyalty.

At the outset of World War II, in addition the decision to despatch another expeditionary force of Australians to the Middle East, was the commitment of so many Australians to the air war over Europe as part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, and the placement of Royal Australian Navy as more or less a subordinate component of the Royal Navy. These air and sea commitments were justified under the Imperial defence rubric. Defeating Germany and the Axis powers most certainly did matter for Australia. Few would be so naïve to suggest that a triumph of the Nazi worldview and polity would not have impacted Australians, for the worse.

With the war so clearly, at the time and now, seen as a battle for the preservation of liberal democratic values over an alternate and abhorrent alternative, in what way might this conflict honestly be labelled “someone else’s war”? All of this, of course, relates to the war in Europe and the Mediterranean. Those ascribing to the notion of habitual Australian involvement in wars better left alone, in places so far from Australian shores so as not to warrant a drop of Australian blood, 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 away from the wider conflict, as if they were not closely connected and integral aspects of the same war. Even without a detailed discussion it is self-evident that the Pacific theatre, by no stretch of the imagination, can seriously be considered as anything but Australia’s concern.

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. With respect to the Korean War, 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 called by the United Nations, an organisation that Australia had had a substantial hand in establishing, and a significant interest in strengthening. At its heart was the idea of “collective security”.

This concept was seen as the time as a key answer to Australia’s strategic dilemma. Should the concept work in practice it would guarantee the safety 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 – and received consistent bi-partisan political support.

Throughout the same period Australia also committed troops to the Malayan Emergency. 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.[25] 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 to action. 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, which ran from 1962 to 1966. Australia’s commitment to operations against Indonesians 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. Neither was it public opinion in that because of the sensitivity of cross-border operations, which remained secret at the time, Confrontation received very little coverage in the Australian press. Nor was it British pressure as the Australian government stood aside from the conflict for considerable time, despite desperate pleas from London and Kuala Lumpur, for help. Shrewd calculation of Australian interests then, as always, steered the ship of state.

On a larger scale, and much more controversial, was the Australian commitment to Vietnam, in which almost 60,000 Australians served. There are two typical elements to the “other people’s war” argument made by those set against the decision to commit troops to Vietnam. The first concerns how “necessary” such a commitment really was, and the second the degree of US pressure placed on Australia. In the first instance, while the tradition of public acceptance of governmental decisions to commit to war was perhaps broken by Vietnam, the traditional pattern of rational, realist decision-making was not.

Robert Menzies (once again Prime Minister), his government (and most of the Western World for that matter) subscribed to the “Domino Theory” in South-East Asia. In a Cold War context, this theory seemed obvious. The clear Australian government consensus was that if the Vietnam War ended with an outcome that denied South Vietnam a real and protected independence, then Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia would find themselves “vulnerable” to further Communist expansion. They would fall like dominoes up to Australia’s very doorstep. This concept was a formidable reality to Australian policymakers who thought they were witnessing the boundaries of “aggressive” communism coming closer and closer.  Paul Hasluck, Minister for Defence 1963-64, provided ample insight into governmental thinking:

I need not emphasise the importance to Australia of the outcome of events in South Vietnam. Our plain national interest is to have a government there who will continue to fight the Viet Cong, to oppose North Vietnam, and to give some prospect to eventually unifying the country behind a stable anti-communist government which will still provide the local circumstances to enable the United States to keep a foothold in Southeast Asia.[26]

There is no case to be made that in this context, at the time, the Australian government, and Australians at large for that matter, saw the war as none of Australia’s concern. That many sectors of the community changed their opinion as the war progressed, or that many Australians came to doubt the legitimacy of the war as a whole, are important aspects of Australia’s Vietnam experience, but they are largely beside the point insofar as this argument is concerned.

Vietnam raised a second issue regularly used by the proponents of the “other people’s wars” interpretation of Australian military history. That is, Australia was somehow forced into the war reluctantly by pressure applied from Washington. The US thus replaced Britain in the role of a bullying great power ally, dragging the Australian government into a conflict better left alone, against its wishes and better judgement. A cable sent, however, by Alan Renouf, Australian Ambassador in Washington, on 11 May 1964 puts paid to this type of reasoning. Renouf explained:

Our objective should be…to achieve such an habitual closeness of relations with the United States and sense of mutual alliance that in our time and need…the United States would have little option but to respond as we would want…The problem of Vietnam is one, it seems, where we could … pick up a lot of credit with the United States, for this problem is one to which the United States is deeply committed and in which it genuinely feels it is carrying too much of the load, not so much the physical load the bulk of which the United States is prepared to bear, as the moral load.[27]

The Australian government was forced into nothing as far as the Vietnam War was concerned. The commitment was willing and entered into with calculating clarity of purpose. In fact, as Gregory Pemberton has systematically demonstrated, it was the Australians who urged a hawkish policy on the Americans when they seemed to vacillate.[28] Far from being dragged into Vietnam, Australian diplomats and Ministers actively encouraged the Americans to commit troops. This was done not out of any misguided loyalty or US coercion, but as a consequence of cold self-interest.

The model established for Vietnam serves equally well when applied to the most recent Australian military commitments abroad. Serious and voluminous public debate surrounded (and continues to surround) decisions to commit Australian troops to the occupation of Iraq and subjugation of insurgents in Afghanistan. Again, the issue of the legitimacy or even morality of both conflicts has from time to time assumed centre stage. Equally, as important as these questions are, they are irrelevant to the question of “other people’s wars”. In years to come Australian policy-makers may well have difficult questions to answer with respect to what extent their decisions reflected public will.

The more blood and treasure spent in such places might also, in time, encourage future generations to judge the practical utility of such deployments. However, at the time such decisions were made, Renouf’s position – applied four decades on – still captures the essence of the matter. There was no blind loyalty to Uncle Sam.[29] There is little evidence to suggest successful wholesale deception of the Australian government by Washington (although false US claims as to the presence of WMDs in Iraq were, perhaps, a partial exception). Nor is there sufficient proof of external pressure as a decisive factor. The commitments made were perceived as sufficient to achieve government policy objectives.

There are many reasons for the genesis and perpetuation of the “other people’s wars” misconception as it pertains to the military history of this country. At one level, it helps make the monumental loss of life involved in the World Wars somehow more acceptable. It is comforting to shake our heads at the tragic sentimentality of Empire and the horror it wrought upon our forbears.

Alternatively, when the righteousness of the cause Australians have fought and died for appears open to dispute, from the Veldt to Vietnam, it eases our collective conscience to suggest that we were somehow tricked or pressured into doing someone else’s dirty-work. There remains a powerful temptation to believe in our enduring historic “innocence” in this regard. In all and every case, however, the historical trail leads elsewhere.

A myth is a myth. A half-truth is no truth at all. Australia’s wars have been Australia’s choices, or at least the consequence of the willing decisions of Australian politicians and policy-makers in pursuit of the perceived national interest. No enemy, apart from Arthur Phillip, has yet to land on Australian shores. We have chosen when and where we fought. Nor, to students of politics and history, should this be any great surprise.

Long ago Clausewitz defined war as an innately political act with distinctly political objectives. That generations of Australian governments have followed Clausewitz’s dictum is axiomatic. As noted at the beginning of my talk, none of this is at all a commentary on the “correctness” of these wars or our participation in them – in moral or practical terms. Rather, the simple and singular point is that Australians have never, not once, and by any stretch, fought “other people’s wars”.