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Strategic Cooperation Against the Communist Threat in the Asia- Pacific During the Early Cold War

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Strategic Cooperation Against the Communist Threat in the Asia- Pacific During the Early Cold War H-Diplo H-Diplo/ISSF Review Essay 53 on Divided Allies: Strategic Cooperation against the Communist Threat in the Asia- Pacific during the Early Cold War Discussion published by George Fujii on Wednesday, September 23, 2020 H-Diplo | ISSF Review Essay 53 Thomas K. Robb and David James Gill. Divided Allies: Strategic Cooperation against the Communist Threat in the Asia-Pacific during the Early Cold War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019. Reviewed by Michael D. Cohen, Australian National University Published 23 September 2020 | http://issforum.org/to/RE53 Edited by Robert Jervis and Diane Labrosse Production Editor: George Fujii Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and perhaps in some ways because of it, conflicts of interest between the United States and China seem only likely to increase in the coming years. As conflicts of interest between these two states increase, one central question for scholars and policy-makers is the probability of different causal mechanisms whereby a conflict of interest generates a crisis and the crisis becomes a limited, conventional or even nuclear war. Another important and closely related question is which allies Washington and Beijing can count on to do what as these conflicts of interest grow. Unlike China, the United States has alliances that span the world, with formal defence commitments throughout Europe and Asia. If alliances do more than aggregate but substantially multiply U.S. power, exactly what do they bring to the table? Many would agree that of Washington’s many formal allies, those with which it shares the same language, democratic and political culture, and war-fighting experience might be those that can be counted on the most to share threat perceptions with the United States and join it in an armed conflict. Thus Britain, Australia and New Zealand are what political scientists would call most likely cases of allies that might share threat perceptions and policy preferences with the United States.[1] But this is ultimately an empirical question, and while much International Relations scholarship addressed NATO in the Cold War and U.S. alliances with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, the U.S. alliance with Australia and New Zealand (which left that alliance in 1985) has received much less scholarly attention.[2] Australia, for example, relies primarily on the United States for security and foreign direct investment but depends on China for trade. After recent Australian pushback against alleged Chinese foreign interference in, among others, democratic processes, critical infrastructure, and tertiary education, Canberra is between a rock and hard place. Perhaps urged on by Washington, Canberra called for a COVID-19 investigation but ran up against Chinese stonewalling and more recently high Chinese tariffs on barley exports. Thomas K. Robb and David James Gill’s Divided Allies: Strategic Cooperation against the Communist Citation: George Fujii. H-Diplo/ISSF Review Essay 53 on Divided Allies: Strategic Cooperation against the Communist Threat in the Asia-Pacific during the Early Cold War. H-Diplo. 09-23-2020. https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/6453058/h-diploissf-review-essay-53-divided-allies-strategic-cooperation Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Diplo Threat in the Asia-Pacific during the Early Cold War thus appears at an opportune time. Regarding Australia’s status as a U.S. ally, many International Relations scholars note that because Australia joined the United States in its wars in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iraq again, Canberra is a very good ally.[3] But other than the rare book that, for example, looks at Australia’s dalliance with a nuclear reactor at Jervis Bay during the Nixon Presidency, little more scholarship has addressed this case.[4] Often when I step in a taxi at a U.S. airport after arriving from Australia and inform the driver that I have travelled over twenty hours from across the Pacific, s/he almost seems to look at me as if I had arrived from outer space. The taxi driver’s interest in but deep uncertainty about Australia seems to resemble that of many North American International Relations scholars regarding Australia’s status as a U.S. ally. At a time when many argue that the United States may not be able to count on many of its traditional allies in an armed conflict with China, the question of under what conditions allies like Australia would do what must be of high scholarly and policy-making importance. Divided Allies should now be considered the best text for the history of how Australia and New Zealand fit and tried to position themselves in Washington’s grand strategy in Asia during the first decade of the Cold War. Although it does not cover every nook and cranny of this history, the majority of the important developments of interest to contemporary political scientists, International Relations scholars, and diplomatic historians are covered or at least referenced.[5] The book also says a lot about the role of Britain and its policy in Asia amidst these dynamics. With 7 chapters in 180 pages of text and 90 odd pages of notes and references, there is a lot packed into a fairly short text. The discussion in chapter 5 of the ultimately unsuccessful efforts of the almost eighty-year-old British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1953 to ram his way through the Eisenhower administration into the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) alliance is the best available treatment of this episode. Chapters 1 and 2 provide a very succinct yet comprehensive 65-page coverage of U.S., British, Australian and New Zealand’s interests from 1945 through 1950. Here one quickly learns that even amongst states that we would expect to have many grounds for cooperation, strong disagreements existed and perhaps were likely to undermine more sustained cooperation from the moment German and Japanese forces were defeated. Key to this was not only that Washington was rising and London was declining.[6] While presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower were opposed to colonialism and the British overseas empire, Prime Minister Clement Attlee and especially Churchill were ever committed to sustaining it. Indeed, many of the U.S.-UK disagreements related to the ANZUS alliance, membership within it, defence planning in the Middle East and East Asia, the demise of the French position in Indochina and the subsequent SEATO alliance and attempts to establish four power defence planning therein boiled down to perhaps irreconcilable disagreements over the former British colonies. Divided Allies also nicely brings out how Australia and New Zealand fundamentally sought a U.S. security guarantee after 1945 but until North Korean forces invaded the South had no basis on which to get one. Robb and Gill might have said more about Australia’s and New Zealand’s positions towards the other British colonies. The book captures their strong ties towards the British Commonwealth. But as it became clear that Washington would be in and London would be out of a Pacific alliance, New Zealand’s desire to placate Britain and, say, send troops to the Middle East, usually seemed to be stronger. Robb and Gill note this and the economic rationale behind this impulse but might have made more of the security motivations. Perhaps more controversial is the claim that the Chifley government’s policies “drew Australia into the Cold War” when it was the Menzies Liberal government that many in Citation: George Fujii. H-Diplo/ISSF Review Essay 53 on Divided Allies: Strategic Cooperation against the Communist Threat in the Asia-Pacific during the Early Cold War. H-Diplo. 09-23-2020. https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/6453058/h-diploissf-review-essay-53-divided-allies-strategic-cooperation Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 2 H-Diplo Washington viewed as a breath of fresh air and a group they could more effectively cooperate with (33). Also addressed is how the ultimate desire for Canberra and New Zealand of a defensive alliance with Washington and London given the conflict and cooperation between these rising and declining great powers led to strategic dynamics that are not what one would expect of four states that were apparently prone to cooperate. As Robb and Gill summarise, “convergent perceptions of threat and overlapping national interests did lead to eventual cooperation but it was often limited and contingent” (45). Chapters 3 and 4 address the creation and design of the ANZUS alliance. The influential claim that common threat perceptions are a strong cause of alliance formation finds an interesting case in the ANZUS alliance.[7] Robb and Gill showed that as Washington became preoccupied with the Soviet threat and especially Chinese aggression in Asia, perhaps as a prelude to a Soviet territory grab in Western Europe, Britain would have preferred that Washington keep its gunpowder dry and its gaze fixated on Europe and the Middle East. When Washington saw greater security threats in Asia, London saw U.S. overextension, nuclear escalation dangers and commercial vulnerability. Meanwhile, while Canberra and New Zealand certainly perceived threats emanating from the Soviet Union and China, they exhibited far greater fears of a resurgent Japan and the economic but especially military threat it would pose. By late 1950, as Washington came to desire a strong Tokyo as a bulwark against Soviet aggression, Canberra and New Zealand insisted on a weak one. Divided Allies correctly noted this as genuine fear and not a cover for other concerns but might have done more to document it and address its sources (74). By 1945, after all, Japanese military power had been eliminated.
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