Australia and US relations

The Vietnam War, essentially a conflict between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, had wider implications because of North Vietnam's communist associations. In the wake of the Second World War, with the USSR dominating Eastern Europe and China dominant in North Asia, Western fears of communist expansion throughout Asia ran high. The United States (US) was concerned that, should North Vietnam prevail and turn Vietnam into a communist state, neighbouring countries such as Laos, Cambodia and Thailand were also likely to succumb in what was called the 'domino effect'. As an ally of the US and with its own interest in seeing the South-East Asian region free of communism, Australia was an enthusiastic supporter of American policy in Vietnam.

America's fear of a North Vietnamese victory and its implications for regional politics led to its involvement in the war in Vietnam as an ally and supporter of the anti-communist South Vietnamese regime. Australia quickly followed suit, offering military trainers to assist South Vietnamese forces in a move aimed at supporting US policy and addressing Australia's own regional concerns.

Over the following years, both the US and Australia increased their commitment to South Vietnam, including the use of conscripts in combat. Military might, however, was not sufficient to prevail over either southern communist insurgents or the North Vietnamese Army. Even when US and South Vietnamese forces did inflict a major battlefield defeat on their enemies during the 1968 Tet Offensive, popular opinion in the US and Australia turned against the war. The propaganda victory won by the communist forces ultimately proved to be of greater moment than their military defeat. After 1968 the US began withdrawing its forces from Vietnam until, by late 1972, the carriage of the war had been placed in the hands of South Vietnam, which in 1975 was defeated by the North.

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Western fear of communism

In the wake of the Viet Minh victory over France in 1954, concern at communism’s growing influence in Asia was widespread as people sought both explanation and remedy.

An experienced diplomat and influential figure, Carlos P. Romulo wrote an article for the RSL’s monthly magazine, Reveille, 27(12), published in August 1954. He had spent time in Australia during World War II as General MacArthur’s aide-de-camp, but his career encompassed much more. Romulo had, among other things, been a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, editor and academic. During World War II, he attained the rank of general in the US Army. After the war, he became Head of the Philippines Delegation to the United Nations (UN) before becoming President of the UN General Assembly.

Despite being a great admirer of the US, the colonial master of the Philippines for many decades, Romulo was nevertheless a staunch advocate for the freedom of subject peoples. In his article, he suggested that only when their own freedom from colonialism was assured would the people of South-East Asia help the West in its fight against communism. With hindsight, Romulo’s suggestion that the US was unlikely to commit to an all-out intervention in Vietnam was erroneous. However, his article indicates how an experienced, senior diplomat viewed the threat of communism in Asia after the French defeat in Vietnam.

Written exclusively for "Reveille" by General Carlos P. Rumulo (Personal representative in Washington, U.S.A., of His Excellency Ramon Magsaysay, President of the Philippines Republic).

The only valid issue in South-East Asia today is the issue of confidence. Let me put it this way: If that strategic area of the globe, which used to be, and partly still is, the exclusive preserve of the Colonial Powers, were a Parliament and the West to go to its floor on a confidence vote, would the West get that vote?

The evidence of current trends and happenings strongly indicates that the West will probably not get it.

I should think that Indo-China is a good case on which to expect a non-confidence vote for Western policies. Let us take a brief but hard look at the facts as they have shaped up in that turbulent area of the world.

For nearly half a century before the present debacle, revolts had been the natural rhythm of native life under French rule in Indo-China. Naturally, it was the French who tried to suppress the revolts, since they were against them, and the fighting had always been between them and the natives. This is of course an obvious fact that needs no elaboration.

Then came Dienbienphu, and again, as in the past, the French had to contend with natives, whose human sea assaults on the proud bastion dealt the major reverse to the calculations of a hopeful general.

The historical fact then must be crystal-clear to the countries of South-East Asia, that the natives or Indo-China have, until now, fought the French because they didn't like French rule. In their long memory for colonial misdeeds, those countries know but one thing: that the French have tried to suppress a people's legitimate aspiration for independence. It would not be easy now to persuade them to think that even the Communist inspired Viet-minh is not simply carrying on the good fight. That there have been and are native troops on the side of the French – and one plan seems to be to train a full army of them presumably to continue fighting for the French-is perfectly understandable in a colonial set-up. Perhaps what is important to bear in mind in this context is that, so far, it has not been shown that the Vietnamese ever did anything resembling a Charge of the Light Brigade.

Let me then come to my point, that if Communism is to be successfully fought in South-East Asia, the will to fight it must first be there. That will cannot be created unless it can be shown that, in combating Moscow's godless ideology, the Asians would win their freedom, plain and absolute.

Paper declarations of independence, and other self-serving evidence by the colonial powers may diminish the sham of puppetry, but will not change the old suspicions of people who have ceased to be gullible.

On nothing less than freedom, completely removed from the odious association of colonialism, could the West go to the Parliament of South-East Asia and win a vote of confidence.

On May 30 last, speaking at the University of Portland, I proposed that the President of the United States call a meeting of Asian Chiefs of State for the purpose of drawing up an Atlantic Charter for South-East Asia. I am gratified to learn that since I made that proposal Representative McCormack, of Massachusetts, has started a move to get President Eisenhower to call such a meeting, and that Representative Judd, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, has endorsed the plan as “particularly timely.”

I suggested that the United States should seize the initiative in this matter, because by general acceptance the United States is a leader of the free world. From what I know as a Filipino, America's leadership in bringing about a “Charter of Freedom” conference in South-East Asia would be a trustworthy undertaking compatible with her honourable record in the Philippines.

I wish to underline the confidence which such a conference is bound to generate, and to say that without it no call for collective action against Communism in South-East Asia will evoke any response. It would be sheer waste of time and effort to try to enlist native support so long as the suspicion remains that it is Colonialism that is fighting Communism.

Unfortunately, the racial lines have not been easy to blot out in the areas transgressed by the colonial powers. There, in any showdown, the looks of an indigenous Ho Chi Minh will convince more Asians than the features and decorations of, say, a Western General or a Foreign Legionnaire.

It is true that the Viet-minh is Communist-led, and from what we know of life behind the Iron Curtain, the freedom it offers is certainly no better than that under colonial rule. We of the free world know this to be the self-evident truth, but those in chains would rather be free now than believe in a prophecy of future captivity.

The West is in bad need of the friendship of South-East Asia. How is that friendship to be won? It cannot be by material assistance alone, much as such assistance is needed. There should be, in addition, an implementation of genuine equality in the political and cultural fields. These things are not possible in a colonial set-up, and that is why, in the recent Ceylon conference of South-East Asian Prime Ministers, the condemnation of Colonialism was unanimous, as was also the demand for an irrevocable pledge of independence for the Indo-Chinese people.

To the people of Australia and New Zealand, to the men in particular who composed ANZAC of glorious memory, I address myself especially in emphasising the real and present danger of Communism in Asia. They, more than others, will understand the menace to their region of the Communist advance in South-East Asia. For one thing, the present course of conquest seems so reminiscent of twelve years ago.

But the course is not so important as the method. It was only at Dienbienphu and, more recently, in the increasing pressure on Hanoi, that the Communists have come out with massive blows. The West undoubtedly can match these blows. However, what is really dangerous is the style of psychological and political infiltration that precedes mortar and artillery as, also, the human-sea assault.

The method is cunningly tailored to the needs and grievances of the common man, and if this happens to be a colonial subject, the more effective the approach becomes and the more enduring the result. Many years before the Indo-China crisis the Communists had been refining their psychological tactics, making their Japanese predecessors look like novices. One has to admit that they are marching steadily on.

Short of an all-out intervention, which the United States does not appear disposed to undertake, it does not seem reasonable to expect the Vietminh advance to be cut short. And yet, it is of the utmost importance that South-East Asia be saved. How shall the free world do it? Not merely by denouncing Communism, but by winning the confidence of the Asian peoples on the basis of an indubitable guarantee of their freedom. Once this is accomplished, it would be time to launch a military coalition, not for the purpose of negotiating with Communist intransigents, but of stopping Communism right in its tracks.

Communism cannot be stopped in South-East Asia unless the Asians themselves give their consent and co-operation. This consent and co-operation will never come unless the military coalition is beyond a doubt dedicated to the defence of the rights and freedoms of the Asian peoples against all forms of domination.

['Australia-Communism and South-East Asia', Reveille, August 1954, pages 4 and 5.]

Romulo's article was quoted in Australian newspapers, such as 'RED DANGER STRESSED' in the Daily Mirror on 2 August 1954.

The American War

The war that is known around the world as the 'Vietnam War' is referred to in Vietnam as the 'American War'. In this way, the conflict between communist forces in South Vietnam and the North Vietnamese Army on one hand, and the US and its allies on the other, is distinguished from the eight-year-long war against France that ended in 1954 and the 5-year-long Japanese occupation during the Second World War. US military intervention in Vietnam began in 1961, when advisers were sent to South Vietnam to bolster that country's defences against a communist-backed insurgency sponsored by North Vietnam.

Some 3 million US personnel served in Vietnam over the 10 years of American involvement. American military planners and political leaders – from the wealthiest, most technologically and militarily advanced nation on earth – expected to defeat the communists in Vietnam – a land peopled mainly by rural peasants – with relative ease. But as the war dragged on, and as ever-increasing numbers of American soldiers were deployed to Vietnam, it became apparent that the Vietnamese communists were a tougher, more resourceful enemy than had been imagined. Using equipment supplied by the Soviet Union and China, the North Vietnamese Army and the South Vietnamese communists, known as the Vietcong, were able to frustrate the Americans, who were rarely able to draw their opponents into open battle.

Mounting losses and a growing sense that the war was not being won, despite assertions to the contrary by leading political and military figures in the US, gave strength to anti-war activists in America. When communist forces launched the Tet Offensive in February 1968, attacking major centres and infiltrating the American embassy in Saigon, American public opinion turned decisively against the war. The Tet Offensive was a military defeat for the Vietcong, who never recovered from the losses they suffered. However, it was also a propaganda victory from which the US could not recover.

After 1968, the number of Americans in Vietnam decreased year by year. Fighting continued. Mostly, by now, it was against the North Vietnamese Army. US aircraft and naval vessels continued to operate against targets in North and South Vietnam, but American ground forces became fewer and fewer, replaced by a growing, but relatively ineffective, South Vietnamese army.

Communist forces continued to reach South Vietnam from the North despite US and South Vietnamese attempts to cut off supply routes. In 1970, the American president, Richard Nixon, expanded military operations into neighbouring Laos and Cambodia. Both countries were used as transit routes for North Vietnamese troops and supplies, but for their civilian populations the widening conflict brought disaster. Ultimately this attempt to disrupt North Vietnam's efforts in the South failed. Laos fell to communist forces in 1975, as did Cambodia, whose population, already torn apart by the war, went on to experience suffering on a scale that horrified the world.

The conflict in Vietnam divided American society and the military alike. In the final period of the war, during the early 1970s, insubordination and drug use were increasingly common among US soldiers in Vietnam. Troops were reportedly refusing to go on patrol or place themselves in dangerous situations. Many were conscripts, and none wished to die in a war that, to many, seemed pointless and which was clearly coming to an end.

By the end of 1972, few US ground troops remained in Vietnam. In January 1973, peace talks that had been taking place in Paris resulted in a ceasefire being agreed to by the US, North Vietnam and, reluctantly, by South Vietnam. For the Americans, this meant 'peace with honour'. For the North and South Vietnamese, it meant less.

The war continued until April 1975 when Saigon fell to a North Vietnamese offensive. Over many years of US involvement in the war, some 60,000 Americans were killed. However, the heaviest combat losses were borne by the people of Vietnam. North Vietnamese estimates put the Vietnamese civilian death toll at 4 million.