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Reassessing the ANZUS Alliance: Strategy and Diplomacy Between Australia, New Zealand and the United States, 1945-1956

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Reassessing the ANZUS Alliance: Strategy and Diplomacy Between Australia, New Zealand and the United States, 1945-1956 Reassessing the ANZUS Alliance: Strategy and Diplomacy between Australia, New Zealand and the United States, 1945-1956 Andrew Mathew Kelly Submitted in 2016 A thesis submitted to Western Sydney University as fulfilment of the degree Doctor of Philosophy Declaration The work presented in this thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original except as acknowledged in the text. I hereby declare that I have not submitted this material, either in full or in part, for a degree at this or any other institution. Andrew Kelly Acknowledgements I could not have possibly completed a project of this magnitude alone. Firstly, I must thank my primary supervisor, Dr. Peter Mauch. His assistance in the development and completion of this thesis has been truly invaluable and it is greatly appreciated. I am also thankful to my secondary supervisor, Dr. David Walton, for similar assistance. Secondly, I have several other people to thank at various research and tertiary institutions. David Jolliffe at the Australian Prime Ministers Centre was a great help in acquainting me with the primary material available at the Australian National Archives and the National Library of Australia. Mary Rickley, Dean Nogle and Michael Johnson at the Eisenhower Foundation were fantastic in their efforts to help me travel around Abilene, especially in very adverse weather conditions. At the Eisenhower Library, Chelsea Millner and Kevin Bailey were very helpful in finding useful material. During my visit to the Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Studies Centre at Georgetown University, Alan Tidwell and Lindsey Parsons were also very helpful and made me feel welcome. I am also in debt to the many archivists I did not know by name at the Australian, New Zealand and United States National Archives who helped guide me through the important archival material. Finally, I am thankful to a few people in my personal life. A particular mention must go to Caitlin Holmes, who has been extremely supportive and patient as I completed this thesis. My mother and father, Sharon and Mark, have also been very supportive and deserve recognition for all of the help they have given me over the years. Abstract This thesis critically analyses the development of Australian-New Zealand-American relations from the end of World War II in late 1945 to the end of the 1956 Suez Crisis. Surprisingly the current literature does not demonstrate the magnitude of problems and disagreements that occurred in the trilateral relationship, even after these countries concluded the 1951 ANZUS Treaty. This is at least partly attributable to the tendency in the existing literature to draw on documentary source materials of only one (or at best, two) of the ANZUS signatories. This thesis, in contrast, makes extensive use of Australian, New Zealand, and US archival materials. This approach has resulted in two broad conclusions, neither of which is given due consideration by the existing literature. Firstly, Australia and (particularly) New Zealand fretted about US leadership in the Pacific and what this meant for Britain’s future in the region. Secondly, the United States did not consult closely with its new partners (albeit junior partners) in the Pacific until at least the mid-1950s. This analysis reveals that US policymakers were not only disinclined to share leadership with Australia and New Zealand in the Asia-Pacific, but were in fact unwilling to consult on matters both great and small until at least the mid-1950s. It also reveals that the trans-Tasman countries struggled to cooperate closely, which was mainly due to the difficulties associated with balancing close ties with both the United States and Britain. CONTENTS Introduction ............................................................................... 6 Australian, New Zealand and American Post-War Defence Planning and Diplomacy in the Pacific, 1945-1948 .............. 32 The ANZUS Treaty, 1949-1951 ............................................... 75 ANZUS In-Force: Post Treaty Issues and Crisis in Southeast Asia, 1952-1954 ..................................................................... 119 China and the Quemoy-Matsu Crisis, 1954-1955 ................ 161 Defending the Middle East and the 1956 Suez Crisis ........... 202 Conclusion ............................................................................. 241 Bibliography .......................................................................... 250 INTRODUCTION Soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, Australian Prime Minister John Curtin signalled the future of Australian diplomacy and strategy. “Without any inhibitions of any kind,” he declared, “I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.”1 While not going as far as suggesting a closer US relationship would come at the expense of relations with Britain, New Zealand Prime Minister Peter Fraser made similar comments about the importance of the United States to the future conduct of his country’s diplomacy. “New Zealand realises,” he said, “that the security and future development of the Pacific can only be satisfactorily achieved in co-operation with the United States.”2 Britain’s self-ruling Dominions in the South Pacific had come to the understanding that the United States had replaced Britain as the predominant power in the Pacific. US officials agreed. The Pearl Harbour attack had utterly discredited the 1 David Day, “27th December 1941: Prime Minister Curtin’s New Year Message, Australia Looks to America,” in Turning Points in Australian History, Joseph M. Siracusa and David G. Coleman eds. (University of New South Wales Press, 2009), 129-142. 2 Fraser Statement, 17 April 1944, in New Zealand Foreign Policy: Statements and Documents, 1943-1957 (hereafter NZFP: SD) (New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1972), 65-67. 6 pre-war isolationist movement, and had set the United States on a path toward becoming a global superpower.3 Nowhere was this more evident than in the Pacific, where the United States maintained an almost complete monopoly of power. As US Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal put it in April 1945, “all discussions of world peace” rested on the assumption that “the United States [would] have the major responsibility for the Pacific.”4 Once Japan had formally surrendered and World War II drew to a close, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States each confronted questions concerning the transfer of leadership from Britain to the United States. Superficial appearances notwithstanding, their responses were neither straightforward nor smooth. In the immediate post-war period, American policymakers rarely consulted with Australia and New Zealand in addressing mutual strategic issues. This trend slowly began to change by the early to mid-1950s, yet policymakers in Washington were still unwilling to award their Australian and New Zealand counterparts a significant voice in shaping regional strategies. This caused significant discord in the relationship, especially on issues such as the occupation of Japan, conclusion of a mutual defence treaty, and responses to crises in Indochina, the Taiwan Straits and the Suez Canal. US disinclination to consult closely with Australia and New Zealand might have impelled a closer trans-Tasman relationship, yet policymakers in Canberra and Wellington struggled to cooperate. This was due in some measure to mutual distrust, but it also stemmed from trans- Tasman differences over Britain’s proper role in the post-war Pacific and Middle East. 3 See, for example, David Reynolds, From Munich to Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt’s America and the Origins of the Second World War (Ivan R. Dee, 2001). 4 Forrestal Diary Entry, 17 April 1945, in The Forrestal Diaries, Walter Mills ed. (The Viking Press, 1951), 45. See also the discussion of forward defence in Melvvn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford University Press, 1994). 7 Canberra continued to cooperate and consult closely with London, yet the Anglo-American power shift caused Australian diplomats to pursue actively a much closer relationship with the United States in order to meet their own security requirements. Wellington similarly continued to consult closely with London, yet New Zealand diplomats were ambivalent about the transfer of power from Britain to the United States. Policymakers in Wellington recognised the need for a closer security relationship with the United States, yet concerns remained over Washington’s capacity to avoid an economic collapse as well as maintain its hegemony in the Pacific. These policymakers were also concerned about the US possession of the atomic bomb and the catastrophic consequences involved in using these weapons. New Zealand remained sceptical of US leadership and tried, wherever possible, to align its policies with Britain. In short, while both countries maintained close British ties, active Australian efforts to pursue closer US-Australian strategic cooperation—often at the expense of cooperation within the British Commonwealth—caused significant discord in the trans-Tasman relationship. The Anglo-American rift that developed during the early to mid-1950s—arising initially out of different views over the question of recognition of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and then deepening in the wake of crises in Indochina, the Taiwan Straits and Suez Canal—further exposed trans-Tasman differences over whether
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