{"id":16477,"date":"2014-10-21T14:45:20","date_gmt":"2014-10-21T03:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=16477"},"modified":"2014-10-22T09:26:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-21T22:26:00","slug":"goughs-remaking-of-defence-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/goughs-remaking-of-defence-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Gough\u2019s remaking of Defence policy"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>Gough Whitlam was a physical giant with an intellect to match. His flaws were pretty sizeable, too, and the pygmies who beset him were often from his own party. His self-mocking humour<\/a> was immensely appealing, and could only be carried off by someone with giant status: \u2018I’ve never said I’m immortal. I do believe in correct language. I’m eternal; I’m not immortal\u2019.<\/p>\n The Strategist is the right place to appreciate the bigness of the man\u2019s ambitions\u2014and significant achievements in foreign and defence policy. This post\u00a0will consider Defence.<\/p>\n During his three years in government, from 1972 to 1975, in the agony of the final days of the Vietnam War, Whitlam delivered Australia two immensely valuable strategic benefits that are still central today. He held on to the US alliance and he helped give birth to an understanding that Australia could defend itself. The two thoughts aren\u2019t truly opposed and Whitlam\u2019s achievement was to embrace them both in ways that made it possible for them to become the heart of Australian defence policy, strongly supported by both sides of politics.<\/p>\n Whitlam\u2019s coming to power was the moment when Australia could\u2019ve turned away from the US alliance. In the dark days of Opposition, Jim Cairns went close to beating Whitlam in a close-run caucus leadership ballot. The vote was all about an acid question aimed at their giant leader\u2014\u2018Whose party is it, his or ours?\u2019 Luckily, Labor decided it was Whitlam\u2019s party.<\/p>\n A Cairns leadership\u2014or merely a post-Whitlam leadership\u2014could\u2019ve seen Labor go down the road David Lange took New Zealand. The bitterness and disillusion of Vietnam would\u2019ve been the context and the cause would\u2019ve been ALP opposition to US bases in Australia. Nixon\u2019s intense displeasure at the critical comments about Vietnam coming from the new Australian government would\u2019ve meant there was no mood of compromise in Washington.<\/p>\n Whitlam preserved the core structure of ANZUS and fought off the efforts of the ALP Left to close the US intelligence and communications bases. Hanging on to the alliance was an important call, and Whitlam made it. Part of the trick was the rhetoric about a new and more confident Australia that shifted beyond a subservient dependence on the US. After Nixon\u2019s \u2018Guam doctrine\u2019 moment in 1969\u2014allies would have \u2018primary responsibility\u2019 for their own defence\u2014Australia had started to grapple with the implications of the demise of \u2018forward defence\u2019 in Southeast Asia and what a Defence-of-Australia policy might look like.<\/p>\n Under Whitlam, the Arthur Tange revolution was launched upon the Defence Department, amalgamating five departments and giving birth to the term \u2018Australian Defence Force\u2019. The conceptual changes that swept through Canberra meant that it was the Fraser government in 1976 that brought down an accurate rendering of the new defence policy Tange had created for Whitlam.<\/p>\n After the bitter political division over Vietnam, conscription and the alliance, the Whitlam Labor and Fraser Liberal governments enshrined a bipartisan defence consensus that has lasted more than 40 years. Australia could create an independent capability for its own defence and action in its own region that reinforced rather than weakened the US alliance.<\/p>\n