UNCLE SAM'S PACIFIC LACKEY

...He pledged a new era of respect for America's closest allies...

...In the wake of America's debacle in Vietnam and the abrogation of the U.S...

...The Utah Mining Corporation is one of Australia's biggest income earners and General Motors-Holden is that nation's leading producer of automobiles...

...But to the United States, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand (ANZUS) Tripartite Security Treaty has always been a minor aspect of foreign policy...

...The U.S...

...The realities of international power politics and timid, conservative leadership Down Under have forced Australia into its present position as a groveling junior partner to the U.S...

...ambassador to Indonesia from 1965 to 1969...

...Whitlam had the misfortune to come to power just as the Western world was on the brink of a major energy crisis and a partial international economic collapse...

...However, there is no doubt that the American Government and U.S...

...The Australians saw this as yet another ominous indication of America's "weakening commitment to the Pacific...

...In 1975 Marshall Green, the troubleshooter, returned to Washington and President Ford replaced him with James W. Hargrove, a pleasant but inexperienced Texan...

...When the Labor Government ineptly sought a four billion dollar loan from a Pakistani money-dealer, many influential conservatives convinced themselves that Whitlam was actually a threat to the future security of the nation...

...By contrast, Australia accounts for only two per cent of the total value of U.S...

...Finally, on November 10, 1975, the CIA, through the Australian Security and Intelligence Organization (ASIO), confirmed that the U.S...

...Economically, culturally, diplomatically, and militarily Australia is a textbook example of what historian William Appleman Williams has termed American Open Door imperialism...

...As it became clear that Australian subservience could no longer be taken for granted, American economic, political, and military interests became restive...

...Henry Kissinger never expressed much interest in Australia or New Zealand and Cyrus Vance does not stay up nights worrying about the wording of a treaty which John Foster Dulles engineered in 1952...

...The new Australian Prime Minister recognized the importance of the ANZUS pact (he had no other choice), but insisted that the junior partners should play a more significant role in the relationship...

...Unlike most of his predecessors, Green was a clever, experienced career diplomat...

...Given the coordinated nature of the attacks upon it, the Labor Party would have had to rule almost perfectly to rule successfully...

...But on one point he was, as they say, perfectly clear...

...Influential delegates to the Australian Institute of International Affairs meeting in Canberra a year ago even expressed concern over Carter's decision to withdraw five hundred Marines from South Korea...

...Whitlam initiated a wide range of overdue reforms and began to bring coherence and a spirit of independence to his nation's foreign policy...

...While a few Australian intellectuals decry the "marshmallow mentality" of mass culture in the U.S., the American influence continues undiminished from cosmopolitan Sydney to the farthest outback station...

...Rather than attempt to call for forceful resistance, he merely stated prophetically, "Well may you say 'God save the Queen,' for nothing will save the Governor-General...

...Unfortunately, nothing could save Whitlam either...

...He not only attacked Henry Kissinger's policy of non-consultation but also promised to rid our foreign embassies of the "fat, bloated, ignorant, rich major contributors" who had been awarded ambassadorial appointments by previous Presidents...

...had presumably learned something from its involvement in Chile only a few years earlier...

...With no small hint of ambivalence, the crucial clause in the Treaty reads: "Each party recognizes that an armed attack in the Pacific area on any of the Parties would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes...

...The uncritical acceptance of an inexperienced ambassador is a telling reflection of the state of Australian-American relations...

...Thus, for all but three of the past thirty years, Australia has been ruled by the same conservative party ("Liberal"), or that party in coalition with even more conservative elements (such as the Country Party...

...This is particularly true among traditional allies...

...It is probable that Whitlam would have fallen without tacit American support of the forces which opposed him...

...Politicians, diplomats, and court historians on both sides of the Pacific would have us believe that a "special relationship" exists between the United States and Australia...

...Fear and subservience have marked Australia's relationship to the U.S...

...To his credit, Whitlam accepted the fact that he had been outmaneuvered...

...The press consensus was that Australia was fortunate to receive a man who, as a personal friend of the President, "can pick up the phone and dial the White House any time he wishes...

...Labor's essential but expensive program of reform — with emphasis on health, education, public transport, the arts, and the aborigines — helped to lead the Government into a sea of financial troubles...

...In short, he enjoyed a wide familiarity with Asian troublespots...

...America's ambassador to Australia, for example, is Philip Henry Alston Jr., whom Morris describes as "an Atlanta lawyer and Carter backer whose credentials for the post apparently lay somewhere among his lucrative legal practice, directorships in various local businesses, or the presidency of the University of Georgia Alumni Association...

...He therefore seized the initiative and normalized relations with North Vietnam, North Korea, East Germany, and China...

...American television, music, magazines, fashions, fads, and fast-food habits are extremely influential in Australia...

...For a brief period in the 1970s Australia quit waltzing Matilda in step with the United States...

...American financial interests in Australia exceed five billion dollars...

...Indeed, the Australians pin their hopes on the word "special" because the American alliance is the dominant feature of Australian external affairs and the cornerstone of the nation's defense planning...

...we will go waltzing Matilda with you...

...He had served at various posts in Europe and Asia, was a deputy assistant secretary for Far Eastern affairs in the early 1960s, and was U.S...

...Australia was safely back on track again...

...He moved to bring "a clear notion of an independent scope of action while preserving the importance of the (ANZUS) Alliance...

...politics of diplomacy, arrived at his post in 1977, he confessed a basic ignorance of Australia and the issues that bedevil Australian-American relations.' Despite this, press reaction reflected Australia's traditional subservience to the United States...

...When Carter took the oath of office in 1977, Hargrove returned to Texas and the new President sent his old friend from Georgia to represent us Down Under...

...The Yanks let it be known that the Labor Government's initiatives required a "reassessment" of the relationship between the two countries...

...On the following day, the Governor-General, heretofore little more than a figurehead with symbolic powers, dismissed the Whitlam Government and replaced it with a caretaker regime under the direction of the leader of the Liberal opposition (and now Prime Minister of the country), Malcolm Fraser...

...Even so, things are not as bad as they once were...

...Australian and American leaders share a propensity to wallow in the rhetoric of self-congratulatory nonsense, celebrating a "special relationship" and parallel historical development which does not exist...

...exports and one per cent of imports...

...The intelligence and defense relationship between the two countries has always been very close...

...The Liberal Party, and other conservative elements within the country, magnified every error and assaulted 'While a lew . . . decry the marshmallow mentality . . . American influence continues . . . .' the public with the charge that Whitlam was trying to lead the country "too far too fast...

...In 1973 the White House and State Department responded to the new Australian independence by sending Marshall Green as the American ambassador to Canberra...

...Not only is Australia's defense and intelligence network heavily dependent on the United States, but America is also Australia's third most important trading partner...

...business and military interests were delighted to see Australia revert to its traditional role as happy follower...

...was concerned, it was time to return to the practice of making the American ambassadorial post in Australia a choice reward for campaign support...

...But Australia continues to accept an unequal relationship which is based on that assumption...

...A conservative consensus emerged that something drastic might need to be done to save Australia from its own "radical" leadership...

...since World War II...

...As far as the U.S...

...is resisting aggression...

...American firms expressed increasing concern over "the future stability of the business and investment climate in Australia" and the Pentagon warned of the consequences that could result from Australia's criticism of America's war effort...

...The American Embassy in Canberra reflected that fact...

...Without overt involvement, American political, economic, and military interests let it be known that they agreed...

...bombing of North Vietnam, opposed atmospheric nuclear tests by the French in the Pacific, stopped Australian wheat shipments to Rhodesia, and shifted his country away from wholehearted support of Israel in the Middle East crises...

...Australia, with a population base of only fourteen million and armed forces numbering less than 70,000, is totally dependent on that ambivalent statement for its ultimate security...

...When Alston, a Georgia "old boy" with no previous experience in the Dennis Phillips, an American currently on leave, has taught history at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, since 1972...

...Shortly after Green arrived, the Labor Government ran into serious difficulties, most of which had little to do with either Green or the United States...

...The two nations may be "friends" but the unequal juxtaposition of power and interests carries inescapable overtones of superiority and inferiority...

...During the Vietnam War Australian military advisers had led irregular forces under CIA control...

...was concerned about Whitlam's attitude toward the top-secret operation of the vital American electronics and intelligence communications base at Pine Gap in central Australia...

...Writing in the November 1978 issue of Harper's, Roger Morris observed, "Like most of his predecessors, Jimmy Carter has chosen to represent us to the world with a largely banal collection of friends, careerists, and adaptable holdovers who owe much of their eminence to the dubious men and methods Carter was elected to replace...

...In 1969 Prime Minister Gorton reassured Nixon that "wherever the U.S...

...Carter's performance has fallen short of his rhetoric...

...intelligence stations in Australia and saw to it that the information was passed along to the Governor-General, Sir John Kerr...

...Whitlam's conception of Australia's foreign policy remained faithful to the Nixon-Kissinger doctrines...

...During the 1960s Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt pledged that his country would go "all the way with LBJ...

...The waters were further agitated by personal scandals and Labor's administrative inexperience after so many years out of power...

...It is an error to assume that Australia is a "little America Down Under...

...Carter sends a friend and gets a diplomat" headlined one newspaper...

...treaty with Taiwan, Australian conservatives are worried...

...The Australian Defense Department apparently shared ASIO/CIA concerns over the security of the U.S...

...In December 1972 Gough Whitlam carried the opposition Labor Party to power for the first time since 1949 and immediately inaugurated the most exciting period in post-war Australian history...

...Acting on the advice of the Chief Justice of the Australian High Court, a former Liberal politician who subsequently denied that his advice had any "political implications," the Governor-General thus confounded the nation and ignited the gravest constitutional crisis in Australian history...

...Sir John retired from office and from the country in July 1977, some eighteen months before his five-year term expired...

...Whitlam believed that a rough multilateral balance of power in Asia and a workable policy of detente elsewhere offered Australia more flexibility in foreign affairs than the nation had previously exercised...

...He withdrew the remaining Australian troops from Vietnam, criticized the renewed U.S...

...The conservative Australian electorate returned the Liberals to power in a general election held one month after Labor was dismissed...