{"id":29891,"date":"2016-12-12T06:00:14","date_gmt":"2016-12-11T19:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=29891"},"modified":"2016-12-10T17:36:51","modified_gmt":"2016-12-10T06:36:51","slug":"alliance-legends-lacuna-2-anzus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alliance-legends-lacuna-2-anzus\/","title":{"rendered":"Alliance legends and lacuna (2)\u2014ANZUS"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Australian questions about what Donald Trump will do to the alliance recall Robert Menzies\u2019 fear that ANZUS would be ‘a superstructure on a foundation of jelly’. If Trump has the Oz alliance assumptions quivering, that dread of a shaky base has been around since the moment of conception.<\/p>\n

As with Curtin\u2019s turn<\/a> to the US in WW2, Australia\u2019s feat in achieving the ANZUS treaty<\/a> was driven by circumstance and happenstance and a lot of pushing. That perspiration and inspiration didn\u2019t come from Prime Minister Robert Menzies. The intellectual creativity and diplomatic wheeling-dealing came from the External Affairs Minister, Percy Spender, who described his leader as sceptical verging on negative about the Pacific pact quest.<\/p>\n

Spender seized the moment to get ANZUS in 1950\u201351 when the Korean War meant the US desperately needed Oz (and Kiwi) agreement on what Menzies called a \u2018soft\u2019<\/a> peace treaty with Japan.<\/p>\n

Though pessimistic about Spender\u2019s chances, Menzies was present at the creation and exploited the deal with a master politician\u2019s gusto. Retiring in 1966, Menzies told his farewell press conference<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u2018If I were asked which was the best single step that had been taken in the time of my Government I think I would say the ANZUS Treaty because the ANZUS Treaty has made the United States of America not perhaps technically, but in substance our ally. In other words, we have a species of alliance. Don’t hold me to it as a technical expression\u2014we have a species of alliance with the United States. And placed as we are in the world, that is tremendously important.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The duality is striking: from jelly to the best single step. Yet the way Menzies phrased that farewell thought\u2014\u2018species of alliance\u2019\u2014hints that some jelly reservations lingered.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump stirs at old tensions between the desire for firm alliance commitments and enduring doubts.<\/p>\n

Spender laid out the quest for a Pacific pact in his first foreign policy statement to Parliament on 9 March 1950 (Menzies led the Coalition to power in December 1949). Spender\u2019s speech is a foundational document of Oz foreign policy (here<\/a> in Hansard).<\/p>\n

In his memoirs<\/a>, Spender wrote that Menzies was ‘unenthusiastic’ and ‘poured cold water’ on the efforts to create a Pacific pact. The Menzies view was that Australia didn\u2019t need a formal alliance because the US was ‘already overwhelmingly friendly to us and Australia could rely on her’. In both London and Ottawa, Spender said, Menzies used the\u00a0‘superstructure on a foundation of jelly’ description.<\/p>\n

The jelly perspective from the Washington at the time is given by the Secretary of State, Dean Acheson<\/a>, who signed the ANZUS treaty in 1951 and gave President Truman this account of the first ANZUS council with Australia and New Zealand in 1952:<\/p>\n

\u2018It seemed to me that both countries suffered from a paucity of knowledge of what was going on and faulty appreciation of current situations. They felt remote, uninformed and worried by the unknown.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Menzies\u2019 jelly scepticism was based on experience with American diplomatic reluctance and outright resistance from the US military. From 1936 to 1950, all Australian political parties<\/a> \u2018advocated negotiation of some form of Pacific security pact as an essential element in Australian foreign policy\u2019. Menzies\u2019 scepticism also went to the core of his personality and beliefs\u2014his Britishness.<\/p>\n

Menzies was uncomfortable with the shift from a family relationship with Britain to a contract with the US. And the eventual Menzies’ passion for ANZUS was tinged with disappointment at the decline of Britain’s role in Asia.<\/p>\n

Coral Bell<\/a> commented that Australia’s ‘over-long national adolescence as part of the British Raj’ produced the model of a family commitment which was comprehensive and automatic, not needing to be defined in writing. ANZUS marked the move to the world of contract:<\/p>\n

‘It was not comprehensive, never covering economic relationships, nor even all security problems (though at one stage Australian policy-makers tried hard to interpret it as doing so). It wasn\u2019t automatic, but required an act of political will\u2014a choice\u2014at a specific time by both parties.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Menzies used that ANZUS-as-contract language in a Parliamentary debate on the meaning of the alliance<\/a> in April, 1964: \u2018There is a contract between Australia and America. It is a contract based on the utmost goodwill, the utmost good faith and unqualified friendship. Each of us will stand by it.\u2019<\/p>\n

Those were Menzies\u2019 final words in a speech dancing eloquently around Washington\u2019s decree that ANZUS wouldn\u2019t cover Australian troops sent to Malaysia during Confrontation. Malaysia is certainly in \u2018the Pacific area\u2019 covered by ANZUS; but the US wasn\u2019t going to read the contract as creating any obligation to help Australia (and Britain) fight Indonesia.<\/p>\n

Menzies, the great lawyer, had to invoke the spirit of the pact rather than the letter of the treaty. What ultimately mattered, he said, was the \u2018high-level acceptance of responsibility\u2019 by America in embracing ANZUS: \u2018It is not for us to assume that any great ally of ours will avoid that [responsibility] any more than we will avoid it. It is a great mistake to talk dogmatically of what the United States of America will do.\u2019<\/p>\n

Donald Trump is the personification of Menzies\u2019 thought about never being dogmatic about what the US will do. How will Trump read the terms of the contract?<\/p>\n

Menzies proved right about the shifting foundations of the alliance: the treaty wording is unchanged yet the nature of the pact has evolved and grown and shifted extraordinarily (and shed the Kiwis).<\/p>\n

As President Trump nears, Canberra suffers another Dean Acheson moment\u2014feeling \u2018remote, uninformed and worried by the unknown\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australian questions about what Donald Trump will do to the alliance recall Robert Menzies\u2019 fear that ANZUS would be ‘a superstructure on a foundation of jelly’. If Trump has the Oz alliance assumptions quivering, that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":29894,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[40,131,17,31],"class_list":["post-29891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-alliance-2","tag-anzus","tag-australia","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAlliance legends and lacuna (2)\u2014ANZUS | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alliance-legends-lacuna-2-anzus\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Alliance legends and lacuna (2)\u2014ANZUS | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Australian questions about what Donald Trump will do to the alliance recall Robert Menzies\u2019 fear that ANZUS would be ‘a superstructure on a foundation of jelly’. 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