Unholy Fury (27 page)

The American senator was not there, however, to present any kind of bouquet to the new prime minister or his country. His contribution to the discussion was almost wholly devoted to a long
defence of Nixon's and Kissinger's efforts to arrive at a negotiated settlement to end the war in Vietnam. Although he had been a critic of some aspects of Nixon's conduct of the war, Percy proceeded to give Whitlam and Barnard a mini-lecture on the administration's efforts to secure a lasting peace—indeed his monologue was based heavily on Kissinger's recent statement about the problems of negotiation with Hanoi. Nixon had inherited the war, Percy pointed out, but he had gone ‘99 per cent of the way to achieve a settlement'. Speaking of the bombings, he said that ‘it was entirely possible that the President's considered judgement … was that Hanoi was very close to reaching an acceptable settlement but that they would not do so without being brought to realise what continued war means'. And nor would South Vietnamese President Thieu be allowed to block progress at this most crucial stage of the negotiations. It all meant that allies should be standing behind the United States, not taking pot shots from the sidelines. Percy was at pains to give a special ticking off to the suggestion from Jim Cairns that Nixon's motives were political. This he dismissed as ‘unworthy and destructive'.

Whitlam and Barnard showed some willingness to assuage Percy's concerns, distancing themselves from Cairns and adding that their sympathies were entirely with the United States and its purposes. They reminded him of their support for the mining of harbours in North Vietnam, but were adamant that the bombings could never bring Hanoi back to productive negotiations. Moreover, the raids were ‘losing the US the support of world opinion'. As Whitlam put it, America was ‘out on a limb'. Even more firmly he retorted that while the United States had had good intentions in Vietnam, ‘they had simply been wrong'. Bringing the conversation then to the crunch, Whitlam confessed that he had found it ‘distressing' to hear that Kissinger had called Roy Fernandez in ‘sharp reaction' to his message to the president. He ‘hoped that the ultimate reply would be in [the] constructive spirit in which he had offered his views'. As the conversation broke up, Whitlam could not resist sending a further riposte to Percy—knowing of course that it would be duly relayed to Washington—adding that Secretary of State Rogers' comment that the ‘dissolution of SEATO would carry over to undermine ANZUS
was overdrawn'. ANZUS, Whitlam concluded, remained ‘the crucial treaty for Australia'.
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THE VIEW FROM KIRRIBILLI—AND CAMP DAVID

If the Australian prime minister was so forthright with a visiting American congressman, he let his guard down even further with his own advisers a week later. Indeed on 28 and 29 December, in Sydney and in the US state of Maryland, two conversations took place that showed the depth of frustration and anger pervading the highest levels of the alliance. At Kirribilli House and at Camp David, the respective retreats of this prime minister and president, the two leaders vented their spleens about each other and the war.

At Kirribilli House overlooking Sydney Harbour, Gough Whitlam hunkered down for a long discussion with two of the most experienced diplomats in the history of Australian foreign relations. Combined, Sir James Plimsoll and Sir Keith Waller had close to fifty years of experience behind them in posts abroad and in the making of policy at home. They were among the most respected public servants of their generation. And here they were in Sydney trying to soothe the temper of a new prime minister, who, clearly feeling the heat of his first foray into alliance politics, seemed hell bent on making his opposition to the Nixon policy even more absolute, and even more entrenched. Whitlam's own foreign affairs adviser, Dr Peter Wilenski, was also present.

Although the conversation covered a range of foreign policy matters before the new government, it essentially became a long reflection on the history of Australian involvement in Vietnam, the American alliance, the myths that had dominated postwar international relations and Whitlam's views on Nixon's presidency. It was Whitlam at his most lucid and most devastating. On this occasion, he brought to the fore much of the thinking he had been doing since the early 1960s on Australia's relationship with the United States and the state of the world. This was Whitlam unbound. As the former minister for external affairs Paul Hasluck later observed of him, Whitlam ‘could not fully control himself when stung by an opponent and sometimes revealed a rather … nasty turn of temper'.
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He began by restating his opposition to the bombings. The activity was ‘futile from a military standpoint and insupportable and intolerable'. With one eye on a looming press conference, the prime minister said that if he received questions about the American actions, he would ‘not mince words … the United States would not have its way and … Hanoi would outlast President Nixon'. It was essentially a repeat of his line to Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in July 1971: the war was going to take yet another American presidential casualty. Throughout the discussion, Whitlam time and again vented his strong disagreement with Nixon's policy: it was ‘Washington's war on Hanoi' which he could never ‘condone'. Nixon might have been more worried about ‘losing face', but he had ‘already lost this war'. Whitlam could agree that Jim Cairns's intervention had been unhelpful, but he ‘had in fact proved himself more correct than the United States in many of his political predictions'.

Both Waller and Plimsoll were clearly taken aback by the tirade and tried to point out that although public opinion was against the bombing, Nixon was trying to end the war. Indeed Plimsoll even added that Nixon and Kissinger ‘had earlier had in mind that it was essential the United States get out of the Vietnam war without sowing the seeds domestically of resurgent fascism'. It was an extraordinary comment for Plimsoll to make. The ambassador believed this possibility had been more real two years ago than in late 1972, but that was only because Nixon's troop withdrawals had taken away much of the ‘emotional fervour' in the political debate. Plimsoll was undoubtedly reflecting the view that the tumultuous period of public protest, unrest and violence occurring on the US home front in the late 1960s was bordering on civil insurrection, a point noted by other American observers at the time. But it was perhaps not the time to be lecturing the new Australian leader on American domestic politics. And in any case, Keith Waller disagreed with Plimsoll's reading—contending that isolationism rather than fascism was more of a possibility as a result of the United States' Vietnam experience. Waller was trying to make Whitlam aware, as gently as possible, of the high stakes involved in the current alliance impasse.
Above all, he warned, Australia ‘should avoid being manoeuvred into a position similar to that of Sweden'.

Whitlam was immovable. He had little time for the cool logic of diplomatic reason. He would not countenance a sweet word for this US president. Turning his attention to the broader intellectual crisis he discerned in world politics, he took aim at the legacy of World War II and the prevalence of the domino theory. The whole episode in Vietnam was a result of ‘misconceived' American policy over the last decade. He doubted whether ‘the United States was as good as many in the Kennedy administration had thought. An entire generation of policymakers had been affected by the Munich myth and had transferred those supposed lessons onto China'. But for Whitlam fears over Chinese expansionism were a misreading of Chinese intentions. They might be a ‘smug, self-contained, inward looking people', but he thought it likely ‘that if China had sought to overrun the area it would have run into as much trouble from Hanoi as had the United States'.

On the alliance, Whitlam was in despair. All the frustrations of being in opposition, coupled with his disappointment in the trajectory of American foreign policy since the Kennedy years, came out in a somewhat mournful, yet spiteful reflection on his treatment at the hands of American officialdom. Looking back over time, Whitlam recalled that former Secretary of State Dean Rusk had ‘launched into him about North West Cape and had sought to make up his mind for him'. But ‘he would not take it from anyone now even though he had been attentive then'. Admitting he had ‘started favourably disposed towards the Democrats and Rusk' he had ‘become seriously disillusioned' with the state of American politics. In fact, he seemed to be undergoing a crisis of confidence in the alliance itself, Whitlam confessing that he was now ‘inclined to take a simple view of the ANZUS pact which was that there was more in the alliance for the United States than for Australia. It was imperative that the United States took an interest in our region. The longer they were involved in Vietnam the worse the humiliation would be'. The war was the ‘toughest issue in our relations with the United States', adding: ‘the
government must express its views and must not equivocate'.
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He was a prime minister in no mood for compromise or concession.

Across the Pacific, the tone was more or less the same, though with a much sharper edge. Reviewing the week's events, Nixon and Kissinger tore strips off the Australians. The White House tapes show that in a private phone conversation with the president at Camp David on 29 December, the national security adviser dismissed Whitlam's letter as ‘an absolute outrage' and a ‘cheap little manoeuvre'. The proposed joint appeal to the United States and North Vietnam was derided as nothing less than a sop to leftist gadflies—a classic ‘grandstand play' for domestic public opinion. It was, Kissinger added, ‘very dangerous, and very stupid too'. And in classic realist style, he moved seamlessly from denunciation of Whitlam to the ultimate power equation: from ‘the minute the Vietnam war ends', he quipped, the Australians ‘will need us one hell of a lot more than we need them'. Nixon could only agree: for Whitlam to ‘imperil' his country's relations with the United States was ‘one hell of a thing' to do. This was not only putting the Australians in their place, it assumed that once the crisis had passed, the status quo would return.

In that conversation, Nixon and Kissinger agreed to ‘freeze' Whitlam ‘for a few months' so that he would ‘get the message'. It prompted a policy that amounted to unofficial—but pointed—diplomatic isolation. Nixon stressed that all contact with the Australian ambassador be avoided; that no New Year's messages be sent to the Australian prime minister; and, concerned that the State Department might be more conciliatory towards the Australians, insisted that all cables to Canberra be cleared through Kissinger's office. Whitlam, Nixon thundered, was ‘one of the peaceniks … he is certainly putting the Australians on a very, very dangerous path'.
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It was a visceral response from a man not normally well disposed to criticism—especially from once close and trusted allies.
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Whitlam was being lumped in with the anti-war demonstrators and pacifists. Elsewhere in the United States, however, there was some support for Whitlam. Indeed in early January the
New York Times
was editorialising that Whitlam and Swedish leader Olaf Palme were ‘the most verbally unrestrained official critics of the American action'. But
the
Times
was, not surprisingly, supportive of their interventions. The ‘diplomatic rebuffs they received from Washington could not stifle the widespread belief that their comments reflected the unexpressed feelings of many of this country's closest friends and allies abroad'.
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‘CHURLISH'

Nixon's refusal to formally acknowledge, let alone reply to Whitlam's letter of protest over the bombings was to prove only the beginning of a determined American effort to punish Australia. The administration had used other channels, most notably Kissinger's phone call to Fernandez, to get its point across. And those words were perhaps more lethal than anything Nixon could have put in a formal letter of reply. But the lack of official response to this mild letter of protest continued to rankle. When Keith Waller spoke to the British high commissioner about the state of the alliance in early 1973, he too let his guard down. The American response had been ‘exaggerated'. Whitlam's letter, he said, had been drafted in moderate terms. It was ‘unprofessional' of the White House ‘not to send a reasoned, and equally moderate, reply. To send no answer at all was churlish'. Australia now faced the task of trying to ‘calm the Americans down'.
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That task was to prove immensely difficult in the weeks and months following the delivery of Whitlam's correspondence.

Waller, though, seemed to forget the offence that had been taken at Whitlam's attempt to put the United States on the same level as its communist enemy. Driven largely by the new prime minister's determination to treat once hallowed allies like the United States as ‘foreign countries', it had clearly been a step too far for a fragile White House. Whitlam's idea for a proposed joint appeal to the United States and North Vietnam—in concert with key Asian capitals—never saw the light of day. Whitlam had wanted to issue the appeal on Christmas eve, but any attempt to do so was overtaken by both events—Nixon called a bombing reprieve for Christmas Day—and the failure to achieve sufficient regional support.

The Japanese government had delivered to Nixon its own message of protest along similar lines to that of Whitlam, calling on the White House to resume negotiations as quickly as possible
and, like the Australian prime minister's letter, addressing the appeal equally to Washington and Hanoi. Like Roy Fernandez, the Japanese ambassador, Nobuhiko Ushiba, was summoned to the White House for his own taste of Kissinger-style diplomatic savagery. Nixon had asked his national security adviser to express the president's ‘irritation and indignation' at the Japanese communication. As Kissinger put it to Ushiba, ‘if Japan continues to treat an enemy of the US on an equal basis with us, and to inform three other governments before telling us what it was doing, it could then no longer expect special relations with the White House'. It was the ‘most serious blot' on the relationship since Nixon had come to office. Japan, like Australia, had done the unforgiveable: it ‘approached an enemy and a friend simultaneously' and the ‘Japanese communication had discriminated against us over the bombing'. Ushiba appeared to be caught by surprise at this dressing down, the American report noting him to be ‘embarrassed and ill at ease', a state ‘manifested in typical Japanese fashion by a great deal of giggling'.
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