Unholy Fury (49 page)

 

Chapter 1: ‘On the Right Side': Nixon in Australia

1
    Richard Nixon (hereafter RN),
The Memoirs of Richard Nixon
(London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1978), p. 119; Stephen Ambrose,
Nixon:The Education of a Politician
(London: Simon & Schuster, 1987), pp. 318–19.

2
    
Argus
, 20 October 1953.

3
    Pre-Presidential Papers, Foreign Affairs, National Security 1953, Box PPS 325 (1953), Richard Nixon Presidential Library, Yorba Linda (hereafter RNL).

4
    
Sydney Morning Herald
(hereafter
SMH)
, 21 October 1953.

5
    RN, Radio talk to be recorded at Hotel Menzies, Melbourne, 17 October 1953, Pre-Presidential Papers, Foreign Affairs, National Security 1953, Box PPS 325 (1953), RNL.

6
    RN, Radio Talk; Despatch 308/5, British High Commissioner in Australia, Sir Stephen Holmes to Foreign Office, 20 November 1953, FO371/105182, The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA).

7
    RN's handwritten notes, in Pre-Presidential Papers, Foreign Affairs, National Security 1953, Box PPS 325 (1953), RNL.

8
    Ibid.

9
    Ibid; RN,
Memoirs
, pp. 120–1.

10
   RN,
Leaders—Profiles and Reminiscences of Men who have shaped the Modern World
(New York: Warner Books, 1982), pp. 309–19.

11
   
Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates
, House of Representatives, 13 August 1959, at
www.pmtranscripts.gov.au
, accessed 1 December 2013.

12
   Correspondence, RN to Robert Menzies, 18 April 1960, Menzies Papers, NLA MS4936, Box 23.

13
   Correspondence, 21 February 1969, in Heather Henderson (ed.),
Letters to My Daughter: Robert Menzies Letters
, 1955–1975 (Sydney: Murdoch Books, 2011), p. 204; Correspondence, Robert Menzies to RN, 25 February 1969, Menzies Papers, NLA MS4936, Box 23.

14
   RN's handwritten notes, in Pre-Presidential Papers, Foreign Affairs, National Security 1953, Box PPS 325 (1953), RNL.

15
   Despatch 308/5, British High Commissioner in Australia, Sir Stephen Holmes to Foreign Office, 20 November 1953, F0371/105182, TNA.

16
   Briefing notes for Australian Visit, in Pre-Presidential Papers, Foreign Affairs, National Security 1953, Box PPS 325 (1953), RNL. The notes added that Labor was still smarting from the exclusion of Britain from the ANZUS pact, and had even promised to invite Britain into the treaty if it were elected. But as American observers noted, during the Pacific war, the ‘position was reversed, and it was the then Labor Government which, after the fall of Singapore, was criticised by its conservative opponents as being too “pro-American” and not sufficiently devoted to the UK'.

17
   
Courier-Mail
, 16 October 1953.

18
   
Advertiser
(Adelaide), 20 October 1953.

19
   
SMH
, 15 October 1953.

20
   
Courier-Mail
, 16 October 1953.

21
   Edward Gough Whitlam (hereafter EGW)
Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates (CPD)
, House of Representatives (H of R), 15 September 1953, pp. 211–12.

22
   On Whitlam's world-view, see James Curran,
The Power of Speech: Australian Prime Ministers Defining the National Image
(Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2004).

23
   EGW,
The Whitlam Government
(Melbourne: Viking, 1985), p. 26.

24
   CPD, H of R, 15 September 1953, p. 212.

25
   Memorandum of Conversation, The President and Prime Minister Whitlam, Washington, 30 July 1973, Document 38, in
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976
, vol. E-12, Documents on East and South East Asia, 1973–1976.
www.history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969–76ve12/ch2
, accessed 15 August 2011.

26
   William Colby with Peter Forbath,
Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA
(London: Simon & Schuster, 1978), p. 368.

27
   James Curran & Stuart Ward,
The Unknown Nation: Australia After Empire
(Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2010); Neville Meaney, ‘The United States', in WJ Hudson (ed.),
Australia in World Affairs
, 1971–75 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1980), p. 204.

28
   
Canberra Times
, 19 February 1973, Meaney, ‘The United States', p. 204.

29
   EGW, 1972 Election Campaign Policy Speech, 13 November 1972,
www.pmtranscripts.gov.au
, accessed 20 July 2013.

30
   EGW, Address to the National Press Club, Washington DC, 30 July 1973, Whitlam Institute E-Collection,
www.whitlam.org
(hereafter WI), accessed 10 August 2012.

31
   EGW, Speech to the Australian Institute of Political Science, 27 January 1973,
Australian Foreign Affairs Record
, vol. 44, no.1 (January 1973), pp. 32–4.

32
   EGW, Chifley Memorial Lecture, Melbourne, 14 August 1975, WI, accessed 20 June 2012.

33
   EGW, Speech at the Australian American Association Ball, Sydney, 4 July 1975, WI, accessed 3 December 2013.

34
   
Whitlam and Frost
, Sundial, London, 1974, p. 174; Meaney, ‘The United States' in WJ Hudson,
Australia in World Affairs 1971–75
(Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1980), p. 181.

35
   EGW,
The Whitlam Government 1972–1975
, p. 567.

36
   Oral History Interview, Sir Keith Waller with JDB Miller, ORAL TRC 314, NLA.

37
   ‘The Alliance',
Bulletin
, 12 July 1969.

38
   Robert Dallek,
Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power
(New York: Harper Collins, 2007), p. 8.

39
   RN,
Memoirs
(Melbourne: Macmillan, 1978), p. 3.

40
   In 1946, 1948, 1950, 1952, 1956, 1960, 1962, 1968 and 1972.

41
   Dallek,
Nixon and Kissinger
, pp. 13–20.

42
   Ibid., pp. 27, 20.

43
   RN, Bohemian Grove Address, San Francisco, 29 July 1967, in
Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), Foundations of Foreign Policy
(Washington: US Government Printing Office, 2003), pp. 2–10. On Nixon's China policy, see Tom Switzer, ‘An Ideological Odyssey: Nixon, China and the Decline of American Nationalism', in Joan Beaumont and Matthew Jordan (eds),
Australia and the World:A Festschrift for Neville Meaney
(Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2013), pp. 315–35.

44
   RN, ‘Asia After Vietnam',
Foreign Affairs
, May 1967, in
FRUS, Foundations of Foreign Policy
, pp. 10–21.

45
   RN's Comments to Chiefs of Mission, Bangkok, 30 July 1969, in Marshall Green Papers (hereafter MGP), Box 8, Folder 10, Hoover Institution, Stanford.

46
   RN, Remarks to Midwestern News Media Executives Attending a Briefing on Domestic Policy in Kansas City, Missouri, 6 July 1971, in
Public Papers of the Presidents
,
http://heinonline.org
, accessed 11 August 2014. On the broader significance of this speech see Tom Switzer, ‘The World Today: Foretold by Nixon',
International Herald Tribune
, 5 July 2011.

47
   RN,
Time
, 3 January 1971, cited in Tom Switzer, ‘An Ideological Odyssey: Nixon, China and the Decline of American Nationalism'.

48
   Niall Ferguson, ‘Crisis, What Crisis?: The 1970s and the Shock of the Global', in Niall Ferguson et al. (eds),
The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective
(Cambridge: Belnapp Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), pp. 1–25.

49
   Kissinger, quoted in Jeremy Suri,
Henry Kissinger and the American Century
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), p. 252; Alistair Horne,
Kissinger's Year: 1973
(London: Phoenix, 2010), p. 27.

50
   Suri,
Henry Kissinger
, pp. 138–96; see also R Gerald Hughes and Thomas Robb, ‘Kissinger and the Diplomacy of Coercive linkage in the “Special Relationship” between the United States and Great Britain', 1969–1977,
Diplomatic History
, vol. 37, no. 4 (September 2013), p. 864.

51
   RN, NSC meeting with Kissinger et al., 6 November 1970, cited in Suri,
Henry Kissinger
, p. 239.

52
   Memorandum of Conversation, Kissinger and the Shah of Iran, Blair House, 27 July 1973, Nixon Presidential Materials,
www.nixon.gov
, accessed 15 July 2011.

53
   
Bulletin
, 12 July 1969.

54
   
Australian
, 5 April 1968.

55
   W McMahon Ball, ‘How to Live with East and West',
Meanjin Quarterly
(June 1968) in J Hammond Moore (ed.),
The American Alliance: Australia, New Zealand and the United States 1940–1970
(Melbourne: Cassell, 1970), p. 190.

56
   ‘The Qualms Hit Australia',
The Economist
, 1 November 1969.

57
   On the many and varied dilemmas facing Australia in this period, see James Curran and Stuart Ward,
The Unknown Nation: Australia After Empire
(Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2010).

58
   
Australian
, 18 November 1969, cited in Stuart Ward, ‘Security: Defending Australia's Empire', in Stuart Ward and Deryck Schreuder (eds),
Australia's Empire
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 254.

59
   Neville Meaney, ‘The United States', p. 165.

60
   Cablegram, Foreign Affairs Themes: Relations with the United States, 18 December 1972, A1838/2, 350/9/1, pt 14, National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA).

61
   Telegram 3228, Canberra to Secretary of State, 12 June, 1973, SNF, 1970–73, Box 2108, RG 59, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington DC (hereafter NARA).

62
   
Whitlam and Frost
, p. 134.

63
   Christopher Clark,
The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
(London: Penguin, 2012), p. xxvii.

Chapter 2: ‘Put on Notice': Lessons from America

1
    EGW,
The Whitlam Government 1972–75
, pp. 28, 36.

2
    Donald Horne,
Time of Hope: Australia
1966–1972 (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1980), p. 124.

3
    Joan Beaumont, ‘Australian Memory and the US Wartime Alliance: The Australian-American Memorial and the Battle of the Coral Sea',
War and Society
, vol. 22, no. 1 (May 2004), pp. 69–87.

4
    Memorandum, William Sullivan to Governor Harriman, ‘Public Relations Suggestions for ANZUS', 24 May 1963, in W Averell Harriman papers, MSS 61911, Box 538, Library of Congress.

5
    Message from Holt for Commemoration of Coral Sea Week, Los Angeles, May 1967, cited in Beaumont, ‘Australian Memory and the Wartime Alliance', p. 83.

6
    Although it is a long time since any serious historian has attempted to give this kind of nationalist significance to Curtin's words on that occasion, it continues to feature heavily in the speeches of Labor leaders and prime ministers. Curtin's Britishness, and its manifestation in a proposal for closer imperial cooperation, is closely analysed in James Curran,
Curtin's Empire
(Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

7
    Cable, US Minister to Canberra, Nelson Trussler Johnson, to Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, 14 November 1944,
FRUS
, 1944, vol. 3, pp. 198–9 in Neville Meaney,
Australia and the World—A Documentary History from the 1870s to the 1970s
(Melbourne: Heinemann, 1985), pp. 500–1.

8
    Cable, HV Evatt to JB Chifley, 21 November 1946, in Meaney,
Australia and the World
, p. 523.

9
    Cable, Dean Acheson, US Assistant Secretary of State to US Embassy Canberra, 9 December 1946, in Meaney,
Australia and the World
, p. 526.

10
   Evatt and Chifley's efforts to enjoin the Americans in some kind of regional defence arrangement are detailed more fully in Neville Meaney, ‘Australia, the Great Powers and the Coming of the Cold War',
Australian Journal of Politics and History
, vol. 38, no. 4 (November 1992), pp. 315–33.

11
   Neville Meaney, ‘Look Back in Fear: Percy Spender, the Japanese Peace Treaty and the ANZUS Pact', in
San Francisco: 50Years On (PartTwo)
Sticerd Suntory Centre (LSE) September 2001, p. 31.

12
   David McLean, ‘Australia in the Cold War: A Historiographical Review',
International History Review
, vol. 23, no. 2 (June 2001), p. 307.

13
   Evatt, cited in Correspondence, EJ Williams, British High Commission Canberra, to Sir Eric Machtig, Commonwealth Relations Office, 6 April 1948, PREM 8/787, TNA.

14
   
CPD
, H of R, 31 May 1949, p. 293.

15
   Report on Australian Security Situation, US Joint Intelligence Committee, August 1949, cited in David Lowe,
Menzies and the Great World Struggle: Australia's Cold War, 1948–1954
(Sydney: UNSW Press, 1999), p. 39. See also Des Ball and David Horner,
Breaking the Codes: Australia's KGB Network 1944–1950
(Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1998).