Unholy Fury (37 page)

The ultimate test, of course, remained his performance in Washington in July. A succession of state visits to Washington in June and July of 1973—Soviet leader Brezhnev, the Shah of Iran, Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka, the president of Gabon and Whitlam—were designed, in part, to show Nixon with his hands firmly on the presidential wheel. The president's supporters claimed the stream of visitors proved his ongoing stature in world affairs; his critics labelled them elaborately stage-managed distractions.
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But there was to be no fine choreography around the Whitlam visit. One newspaper in Australia even mocked the tendency among journalists to feverishly analyse the minutiae of White House protocol when prime ministers visited Washington: the firmness of the presidential handshake; the hosting—or not—of a state dinner with black tie and other accoutrements; the chances of a quick, informal chat in the Oval Office. Invariably, there were the comparisons with how this visit would measure up to those afforded prime ministers Holt, Gorton and McMahon. These ‘political physicians clustered
reverently around the bed of the Australian-American alliance' had, according to the
Age
, missed the point: they ‘presupposed an alliance that was something rather magical, something which was strengthened if a White House visit included an arm-round-the-shoulder tour of the White House Rose Garden. They presupposed an alliance in which unquestioned loyalty brought reward and that reward was an umbrella against the nasty things of this world like aggression and nuclear attack'. Few expected the Whitlam visit to result in a poetic outburst or a snatch of song—there was clearly going to be no ‘All the way' or ‘Waltzing Matilda' moment this time around.
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And yet there was also the feeling that this was Whitlam's most important test on the world stage to date. As the
Courier-Mail
intoned, the trip was ‘the most important of the five he has made as Prime Minister'. And ‘one hour of it'—the sixty minutes allotted to his meeting with Nixon—‘will be perhaps the most important of his eight months in office'.
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KEEPING WHITLAM IN LINE

Even before Whitlam had landed, some members of the National Security Council in Washington were still clearly determined to strip his itinerary in the American capital to the very bone. The mood had been struck early: Whitlam was sent a short, curt letter from the president confirming the visit for 30 July, but it had been written only because the Americans feared he might be irritated if he found out that Nixon had sent a warmer, more effusive personal message to New Zealand Prime Minister Norman Kirk, who was scheduled to visit Washington not long after his Australian counterpart.
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Henry Kissinger was even advised by one of his staffers in the strongest possible terms not to meet the Australian leader: ‘It would be a waste of your time and an indication of excessive interest in the Prime Minister, given the present state of relations with Australia'. According to Jack Froebe in the National Security Council, the meeting with the president and a luncheon with Secretary of State Rogers would be ‘all the attention Whitlam deserves or requires'. Kissinger, however, disagreed.
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Perhaps he remembered the storm that had erupted in late 1971 when he had cold-shouldered Whitlam
as Opposition leader. It is more likely, however, that he wanted to get to the Australian prime minister first: in effect, to soften him up before the meeting with Nixon.

But the national security adviser was certainly not going to gild any lilies or gloss over any past difficulties in the relationship. Speaking with Australian ambassador James Plimsoll just days before Whitlam's arrival, he got to the point very quickly. There was no need to review the whole record of relations over the previous six months, since in the end they faced a stark reality. As Kissinger put it: ‘A warm feeling does not exist'. ‘Rationally', he quickly added, ‘we believe that Australia is an important country with which we want to be on good terms'. It was hardly compelling reassurance. Plimsoll did Whitlam no favours by gratuitously drawing attention to his leader's ‘weakness': the prime minister ‘had a big mouth in letting some things come out before thinking'. But Kissinger was more interested in doling out tips for how Whitlam might approach his meeting with the president, who ‘takes very badly … when he gets the feeling that he is being lectured to from a sense of moral integrity'. Kissinger recounted the story of when British foreign secretary, Labour's Michael Stewart, had met with Nixon in 1970 just before his party lost to Ted Heath's Conservatives. Stewart had taken the opportunity to leave Nixon with his ‘distilled wisdom', and did so, apparently, in a patronising tone. As Kissinger recounted, ‘I have never seen such a disaster'. The story was a warning, a flashing light for left of centre leaders intent on putting Nixon in his place. And it was delivered with a certain intent: Plimsoll was encouraged to whisper the tale of Michael Stewart in Prime Minister Whitlam's ear.

Indeed Kissinger gave every indication that he simply wished the Australian problem could disappear, that there could be a return to ‘the confidential exchanges we used to have with you, which doesn't mean there should always be agreement'. And he wanted the discussions between the president and prime minister to tactfully sidestep the recent disagreements:

 

We recognise the importance of Australia on an intellectual level, and we are sure that you realise the importance of our
bilateral relations. It is somewhat a psychological problem at the moment. They [the President and Whitlam] can have a humanly [sic] discussion on problems, if we don't go about enumerating on what we agree and disagree. We will probably emerge with a ninety per cent agreement on policies and one hundred per cent on objectives. We will see eye to eye.
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That might have enabled Plimsoll to sleep more soundly over the next few nights, but Kissinger spoke quite differently, of course, to Marshall Green around the same time. Ever the peacemaker, Green believed Whitlam had ‘much in common with the President—they have both climbed the political ladder, they both have a deep interest in foreign policy'. Here was an opportunity for both Nixon and Kissinger to ‘press our general world-views on him'. But behind the commonalities, mistrust clearly lurked. Kissinger was not swayed by Green's arguments. He saw no change in the power equation: ‘Don't Australian interests make it more necessary for them to be on good terms with us than for us to be on good terms with them?' His main concern, too, was whether Whitlam would leak the conversation to salivating journalists: ‘I don't want to hear him going out to the press afterward with any “depths of depravity” line'.
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It showed the sting of Australian criticisms had still not entirely abated; a palpable American fear remained that Whitlam was unpredictable and had not quite made the transition from parliamentary pugilist to prime ministerial statesman. As Green concluded in a detailed biographical portrait of Whitlam for the White House, he ‘continues to play the outraged MP when he should be handling himself as a dignified PM'.
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Other descriptions that littered the briefing material for Nixon spoke volumes about how they wanted Whitlam to be understood—‘histrionic', ‘arrogant, blunt and intemperate', a ‘voracious reader but only partly informed', ‘a performer'. The Americans clearly thought they had his measure.
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Despite the personalities, however, much of the argument used to break down Nixon's resistance to hosting Whitlam had centred on the perception that Australia was moving in a hasty and haphazard fashion in dealing with Asia. There was still very much the feeling in
the White House that this errant ally needed to be given something of an education. Kissinger had suggested that an encounter with the Australian leader would be useful, if only to make completely clear to Whitlam ‘the extent to which we see his Asian policies cutting across our own'.
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Moreover Kissinger stressed that such a meeting might help ‘keep Whitlam in line' on Asia policy, while Marshall Green advised that it offered the opportunity to ‘broaden [Whitlam's] approach' to regional affairs. He needed to be taught, for example, that ‘North Vietnam only understands power'.
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Clearly, Whitlam's letter of 20 December the previous year still rankled.

Outlining the Australian leader's schedule in Washington, Kissinger stressed that a central message to be conveyed was ‘our belief that the inter-relationship of our two Asian policies is not a question falling completely outside our ANZUS relationship'.
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The White House saw not only a ‘widening gap' in Australian and US foreign policies, but also a ‘divergence' of approaches on key regional policy issues, especially SEATO, the Five Power Defence Arrangement for Malaysia–Singapore and regional security architecture. Taken together these issues raised serious questions in the minds of some policy makers in Washington over the future viability of the alliance. It showed yet again the American dilemma: eager on the one hand to recognise a more nationalist Australia; resentful and troubled when that new stance worked directly against its own regional policy. Although there was general acceptance in Washington that Australia no longer perceived Asia as a threat and that Whitlam wanted to deepen his country's engagement in regional affairs, it was the way he ‘vigorously resisted any suggestion that the Alliance carried any obligation to support major US policies in Asia' that got under the skin of US officials.
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It underscored the ongoing discomfort for Washington in coming to terms with an ally whose support during the Cold War had been more or less assumed. In addition, Whitlam not only appeared to be questioning existing regional security arrangements—he was proposing new ones for which the United States had little patience.

The Americans were also seeking clarification of Whitlam's idea for a new regional grouping, which they noted embraced states
‘in the arc from Iran to Korea, including the People's Republic of China'. They wanted to know precisely how such a gathering would relate to existing security arrangements in the area and whether there was a role intended for the US. The idea itself flowed from the Australian leader's view that the country faced no military threat for the next ten to fifteen years. Such an outlook allowed Whitlam the freedom to experiment with what he called ‘new ideas of regional cooperation'. He wanted to keep the super powers and their conflicts from troubling Australia's region in the west (Indian Ocean), north (South-East Asia) and east (South Pacific). To this end, in his first major speech on international affairs in January 1973, he had given his blessing not only to the proposal for a ‘zone of peace' in the Indian Ocean, but also for a new grouping of non-aligned nations in South-East Asia.
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Such a system accorded with Whitlam's liberal internationalist prescription for a region free of ideological overtones and great power competition.

Marshall Green had voiced some private support for the new regional forum, but conceded that ‘it would take a long time and require the adoption of a tougher stance with communist countries to be successful'. More generally, the US government feared that such a grouping might constrain its influence at a time when it was trying to shore up existing regional alliances. Green told the British High Commissioner in Canberra that any multinational Asian forum had to ‘be what the local leaders wanted', and he repeated this view when he spoke publicly in Sydney around the same time—stressing that the ‘effectiveness of regional institutions depends in the last analysis upon the attitudes of their members'—a speech that was widely interpreted at the time as pouring cold water over Whitlam's proposals.
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Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew also dismissed Whitlam's ideas as ‘lacking in sensitivity' and scolded him privately for failing to properly consult regional partners about the idea, while some in Washington even flirted with asking the Indonesian government to bring pressure to bear on Whitlam so that he might ‘avoid abrupt changes in Australia's established security arrangements in the region'.
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Kissinger urged Nixon to stress the ‘destabilising effects of trying to alter [regional arrangements] substantially at this time'. Ultimately,
Whitlam had to concede that he had no substantive ideas as to how such zones or regional groupings would work, though he did believe that there needed to be a ‘loose forum' for Asian leaders to meet and discuss common problems. He had in mind something along the lines of the Organisation of American States or the British Commonwealth, and wanted above all to get beyond the ‘unfortunate tendency to assume that any regional organization would be interested primarily in matters of aid or mutual defense'. Here again it was the very looseness of such an arrangement that concerned American policy makers. William Rogers pointed out that while the United States supported ‘regional organizations of all types', recent developments had ‘also shown that countries can have improved relations with both China and Russia without changing their regional relationships'. It was a pitch for the status quo.
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Marshall Green highlighted that a major problem in setting up regional organizations in Asia was the number of divided countries'.
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Whitlam's initiatives therefore fell on barren soil. In practice he found it too difficult to obtain the consent of all the parties. But the point here is that, once again, Australia had acted independently of the Americans. It no longer sought to maintain peace in the region through cooperation in forward defence with its great and powerful western friends.

Coming then to the essence of the Whitlam approach, Henry Kissinger concluded that the Australian leader was ‘committed to building a new Australian identity more independent of the US'.
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In some American minds, there were likely to be consequences for Australia's adopting such a stance. Meeting with the Shah of Iran on the Friday before Whitlam's arrival, Kissinger gave another insight into the administration's
modus operandi
. Referring directly to the Australian leader's views on Indian Ocean neutrality, he laid out a broader strategy for dealing with recalcitrant friends: ‘What we want to do is to get our allies into a frame of mind where they feel that they have more to lose than we do when they criticize us or take us to task'.
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But Kissinger never articulated just how the United States intended to deal with these wayward friends. And he was going down this path with a badly weakened, tarnished and distracted commander in chief. As he remarked to Marshall Green before the meeting with
Whitlam, ‘the President has many preoccupations. He may not be on target on all questions. You and I must help him out'.
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