Australia was reliant upon the British Foreign Office for its foreign policy until the Department of External Affairs grew in cabinet importance in the 1940s. Previously the department had not been focused on foreign policy at all. Central to the department's new importance in foreign affairs was the changing circumstance of the Cold War, the decolonisation of former European Empires and the loss of power and prestige of Britain. Another reason, was the vibrant energy of Herbert Vere "Doc" Evatt.
The path to an independent foreign affairs department was not simple, other cabinet heavyweights such as defence, trade, immigration and even the Prime Minister were keen to protect their bureaucratic turf and existing power. There was also the question of competing philosophies on foreign policy - the advent of the United Nations and Soviet aggression was to bring those philosophies into sharp focus.
Doc Evatt Evatt was born in Maitland, NSW in 1894. Law was to become a focus of his early career, as he graduate first with Bachelors, and then with a Doctorate in law from Sydney University. Soon after he was elected to the NSW Legislative Assembly before being appointed, at age thirty-six, as the youngest justice to serve in the High Court of Australia. He retired from that position to run for the Federal seat of Barton in 1940 and soon found himself as Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs in the Curtin Government.
Previous to Evatt taking over External Affairs, there was no real department for foreign policy, nor foreign affairs. Australia was the last dominion to let go of Britain as its guiding light in foreign policy, and as a consequence the Prime Minister had a great deal of influence in this area. The Prime Minister appointed the Australian High Commissioner to London, who was responsible to the Prime Minister, and not the Department of External Affairs.
This power structure between the Prime Minister and the "Great and Powerful Friend" was to be disastrous when Curtin acted toward American General Douglas MacArthur in the same way, giving MacArthur constant access to Curtin, and Curtin not involving the Australian military in any of the decisions.
The Cold War For a new foreign affairs department, the challenges in the aftermath of World War II were large. The traditional Western European powers had been either defeated, or bankrupted. Their power and influence was at an end. The European empires had colonies around the world and many near Australia. The Dutch with Indonesia, the Portuguese with East Timor, the British with Malaya, the French with Vietnam and New Caledonia; the stability of all these colonies was in doubt.
The Department of External Affairs did not doubt that the European powers would retreat from their colonies, but there were several unknowns. Were the colonies capable of self-governance now, would the European powers let them self-govern if they were, and would it take generations until European power was finally spent. There was the additional irony that Australia was firmly wedded to a British Empire, that had retracted heavily during World War II.
Another new power relationship had emerged, and that was the United States and Soviet Russia. The United States was predicated on free markets and the open movement of capital, whereas the Soviet Union was defined by a centrally controlled economy and regulated to the minutest input and output. The Cold War was to become an economic war, but in 1946, there remained the apprehension that it would become another war of aggression which would reach every corner of the globe.
Another dynamic which came to the fore after World War II was the theme of global governance, which after the San Francisco conference, was to become the United Nations. The body was set up to create new ways for nation-states to interact and communicate outside of "power politics" which many saw as being the cause for two World Wars in the space of thirty years.
Optimists and Realists Frederick Eggleston lectured future diplomats for the Department of External Affairs and categorized his students into two camps; Optimists and Realists. Eggleston called the Optimists those that were liberal internationalists. They saw peace as the normal state of international affairs and war as the anomaly. Consequently they sought meta-national structures which promoted the communication between potential conflicting nations, and the dismantling of irrational power bases; such as empires, colonialism, dictatorships, despots, and arms races. In addition they sought universal human rights.
The Realists by comparison were still wedded to the "power politics" that had dominated Western Europe for centuries. In Australia's case this meant following the "Great and Powerful Friends" doctrine of foreign policy, seeking an iron-tight alliance with the great power of the time, the United States. The Realists also saw the Cold War in binary and absolutist terms, there would be no empathising with the Soviet Union. Power was respected for its own means, and if a dictatorship or despot was part of the alliance, then their crimes against liberty were to be over-looked. The Realists also believed that the European powers should return to their colonies and grant them self-government over several generations, rather than immediately.
Both camps looked to an external body of higher coercion to implement their international goals however. The Optimists in the United Nations, and the Realists in the United States. Neither philosophy truly had an independent Australian foreign policy at heart. It is interesting to note that at the end of World War II, Australia had the fourth largest Air Force on the planet after the United States, Russia and Britain. Yet the Realists were prepared to see that instrument of power go, and a reliance on American military power replace it. There is no doubt, despite their efforts, that neither the Optimists, nor the Realists, saw Australia in terms of an independent country.
Defence and Immigration The Defence Department in the 1940s was extremely conservative. Those that sought an independent Australian military with the short funds that it could muster in the 1930s were ultimately ousted. The great pro-Australian Air-Marshal Richard Williams was removed by Robert Menzies in a political move. Yet it was Williams' foresight to establish an Australian aerospace industry, with the intent of making the RAAF an indigenously sustainable force, that enabled Australia to license build aircraft until the 1980s.
Evatt and his secretary, John Burton, thought the military leaders too wedded to British ways, and "inadequately Australian". Not only were the defence department concerned about the growing influence of the Department of External Affairs, but there now arose the challenge of Australian military doctrine having to fit a foreign policy that wasn't dictated by Britain. Previously the military only had to worry about transparently slotting in to the British military and ensuring suitable numbers of Australian troops were available for a Middle Eastern theatre.
It is with complete irony that ANZUS is used as such a crutch by modern Australian Governments. The ANZUS Treaty was established by John Foster-Dulles with the urging of Britain so that Australia would send troops to the Middle East in any future war. The treaty was written so that the United States would ensure Australian sovereignty in the Pacific in the case of a second front arising, so that Australia would not do what it did in 1941 and attempt to bring them home, or even worse, defy London and Washington and demand they be employed in the defence of Australia. The ANZUS Treaty was so Australia would not do a "Curtin" with the 7th Division again.
In the 1940s Australia suffered from the White Australia Policy with Arthur Calwell enforced as the Minister for Immigration. The Department of External Affairs wanted to establish strong ties with the newly emerging and developing Asian nations in Australia's region, but many actions of Calwell angered the Asian nations, making diplomacy a difficult exercise.
A Loud Voice And A Small Stick Australia has often been accused of braying loudly but carrying a small stick. Evatt saw the possibility of the United Nations as enabling a middle power such as Australia to have undue influence on the major powers. This is the core of the "Great and Powerful Friends" doctrine. It is predicated on subservience to the current super-power but seeking to advance Australia's national interests, security and economic, within the interests of the super-power. Evatt saw subservience to the UN as offering the possibility to influence multiple powers at once, including the US, UK, France and the Soviet Union. It was as mis-guided as the current bilateral relationship with the US, and doomed to fail. Power politics dominated in the UN as well.
Evatt and Burton both saw secrecy as hampering foreign relations. They were open in their communications with anyone who wanted to communicate, including communist nations. They were also often exceedingly blunt with other nations, and did not use the garrulous forms of diplomatic language to explain themselves. However their approach did mean that the world knew Australia now had a Department of Foreign Affairs that dealt in foreign policy.
Conclusion At the end of Evatt's term as Minister for External Affairs, the department remained in the maturation stage even though it had achieved prominence in the Executive Cabinet. Despite the categorization of diplomats by Egglestone, the Department's outlook was grey and often pragmatic, dealing as Optimists when they could and Realists when they could not. Evatt is well known for his role in establishing the United Nations, but Australian foreign policy remained trapped by alliance diplomacy, that would lead to the uncritical support of the United States over the next half-century and continue through today.
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