Unholy Fury (39 page)

British officials in Washington were given a summary of the Whitlam meetings, noting above all the ‘perception gap' that emerged in both the talks with the president and the secretary of state. According to this reading, the divergence of views derived from the fact that ‘the Australian Government still wanted to go faster towards what Mr Whitlam called “the new realities” in Asia, and in the third world generally, than the Administration thought wise'. The Americans were also ‘sceptical about the desirability—or even practicability—of trying to bring China into the kind of Asian regional organization which Mr Whitlam seemed to want (although his ideas were still very unclear)'. Nixon had also been ‘naturally worried
about the degree to which the left wing of the Australian Labor Party might prove able to influence official Australian policy'.
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It showed that no matter how much reassurance Nixon was given about Whitlam being able to control the more radical elements in his party, the president continued to see a leftist conspiracy arraigned against his international agenda. And it was not just confined to Australia. On the subject of European resolve, Nixon had continued in the same vein to Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka the day following Whitlam's visit, pointing out that:

 

Excluding leaders like Heath and Pompidou, the other leaders, the intellectuals, have little interest or appreciation of security matters. The trend in public opinion … is that the United States has entered a period of détente in its relations with the USSR and the PRC [People's Republic of China], and therefore the world is safe, peace is at hand, and NATO and all our other alliances should be dismantled … Here we have a ‘new isolationism' which believes that any peace is better than paying the price for defense.
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It was a telling reflection of the gulf between Nixon's guiding philosophy of realism and what he saw as the woolly headed thinking of idealistic liberal internationalists. There can be no doubt that in pouring out his heart to the Japanese prime minister, Nixon clearly had ‘other leaders' like Gough Whitlam uppermost in mind.

Meeting with Vice President Agnew, Whitlam explained the conundrum—both Malaysia and Singapore were apprehensive about growing Chinese and Indonesian assertion, but neither was interested in a military pact: ‘They do not credit Australia or the United States for their military efforts, although privately their leaders want to cling to us'. Agnew could only agree—the dilemma created by countries in the region that ‘privately wanted our presence but publicly not', was acute: it not only delayed the defence self-sufficiency envisaged under the Nixon doctrine, it meant likely cuts to the US defence budget. As Agnew added ‘eventually we will reach the point, not where an open communist attack is a threat, but where it is generally perceived that our relative strength is less than that of the Soviet Union's'. But where the
Americans saw ongoing Soviet strength as a challenge, Whitlam believed that the threat of major international conflict between the great powers had virtually dissipated, a development he attributed to Nixon's opening to China and détente with the Soviet Union.
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In public, however, Whitlam kept to his theme of updating the alliance for the new times. During his speech to the National Press Club in Washington, which came immediately after his meeting with Nixon, Whitlam reaffirmed that ANZUS was not the ‘be-all and end-all' of the relationship and that it should not be the only significant factor in Australia's relations with the United States. He rejected as ‘absurd' the idea that his country was ‘moving into a different ideological orbit'. Rather ‘what we are trying to do is break out of a kind of ideological isolationism which has limited the conduct of our affairs in the past'. Giving voice to his own view that the region around Australia should be kept free of super-power rivalry, he emphasised that ‘in our dealings with all the countries of that region we think it is time for an ideological holiday'. In his peroration, Whitlam came to the heart of the new relationship: ‘we are not a satellite of any country. We are a friend and partner of the United States particularly in the Pacific but with independent interests of our own'. And he added that ‘what is sometimes called a new nationalism' was what he hoped to be ‘really the beginning of self-confidence'. Above all he wanted his government to preside over a new era of ‘creative maturity'.
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Here Whitlam laid out the meaning of the ‘new nationalism' for Australian foreign policy. It was not to be a recipe for brash selfassertion. Rather he wanted the United States to realise that, under the ANZUS agreement, it should give consideration to the different needs and interests of its allies. As an Australian policy planning paper on relations with the United States aptly summarised the Whitlam visit, it was an ‘essay in definition, not a declaration of independence'.
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Some definitions of Australia, however, were clearly going to prove much more difficult to shift. When Whitlam was introduced at the National Press Club, its president had light-heartedly accused him of ‘pursuing Kangaroo diplomacy', a foreign policy ‘in which decisions
are made in wild leaps around the globe'. That no doubt brought the house down. At the end of the speech, Whitlam was then presented with a sports jacket, or windbreaker—suitably emblazoned with the National Press Club seal—suggested apparel for playing golf with Marshall Green. And the very last question to the Australian prime minister? ‘Sir, are you an expert with boomerangs?' Whitlam, perhaps weary after his morning talks, or annoyed that he had to come down so quickly from the heights of his discussion with Nixon to answer these kinds of frivolities, just didn't get the joke, answering that ‘for those who are interested in anthropological things … this is one of the most interesting aero-dynamic developments in the history of the world'.
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Still, the new Whitlam approach attracted praise in Washington. During coffee with members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Capitol Hill, the Australian leader told them that ‘Whoever is our prime minister or our president, there is a basic relationship between our two countries that will endure beyond the present incumbents'. The committee chairman, Senator J William Fulbright, emerged from the meeting to hail Whitlam as a ‘fresh breeze out of the Pacific' and observed that ‘to encourage us along a mistaken policy is no great favour'. Marshall Green, returning to the language of the previous year, said that ‘We are not in lock step … One of the healthiest developments is that [Australia] can speak in a critical voice and we can listen'.
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Newspaper headlines in both America and Australia seemed to award Whitlam high marks for his efforts. The
Chicago Tribune
welcomed the ‘reaffirmation of friendship' that had emerged from the ‘welter of snubs and hurts', commending the Australian prime minister for jabbing ‘some sharp new wrinkles into our comfortable, old-shoe relationship'. In the
New York Times
, Bernard Gwertzman contended that the visit provided ‘a better basis for a durable relationship than existed in the past'.
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Australian headlines were even more effusive: ‘Whitlam wows Washington', ‘A job well done', ‘Whitlam makes the right connection', while the
Australian
lauded the prime minister for making the ‘most impressive impact on Washington of any visiting Australian Prime Minister in memory'. The
Age
was relieved that
the visit was ‘free from provocation or sycophancy', judging it to be ‘a first step towards a healthier and more realistic partnership'. Even the
Sydney Morning Herald
had to admit grudging respect for the ‘cordial and frank' talks.
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If there was a certain euphoria about how well Whitlam had carried off the visit, there was also sheer relief that it had been free of the kind of cantankerous rhetoric that had been flowing earlier in the year.

In New York, the day after his meetings in Washington, Whitlam faced another American constituency in search of some kind of reassurance: Wall Street. Since the early 1960s, foreign investment in Australia had risen considerably and by 1971 US, not British capital constituted the largest component of this rapid expansion. Moreover US-based corporations held the majority share in the biggest and most profitable industries in Australia: petrochemicals, mining and automobiles. American transnational companies were increasingly taking over local Australian firms.
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The governments of John Gorton and William McMahon had already taken significant steps to apply greater scrutiny to such moves, but Labor had signalled it would take an even more activist role in ‘buying back the farm', a phrase that had become the catchcry of this economic nationalist impulse. Earlier in the year, Whitlam had increased the value of the Australian dollar by 7.05 per cent from the market rate, a move that raised the costs for American companies' activities in Australia. ‘At least for new ventures', the
Wall Street Journal's
Canberra correspondent commented, ‘foreigners won't have such an easy time of it in this country anymore'.
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In several speeches Marshall Green tried his best to emphasise that ‘sophisticated foreign investment is one of the most effective vehicles for the rapid spread of new technology as well as of managerial expertise', but his efforts to clear away the ‘misconceptions' in sections of the Australian political community were mostly in vain.
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For every argument about new efficiencies and ‘know-how', there was a chorus of critics resentful of what they perceived as rapacious American greed.

Whitlam told American journalists at the National Press Club in Washington that ‘the natural aspiration for us is to see that the degree of overseas ownerships and control is not extended, that in
fact we buy some of it back, that we enlarge what share we retain'.
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These were fighting words. While his comments to a gathering of the American–Australian Association in New York—an audience largely composed of American businessmen—were less blunt, he still emphasised the need for ‘a deep and serious reappraisal of the role of foreign investment'. His government would ‘cast a more critical eye over individual investment proposals than hitherto'. Whitlam was arguing for increased Australian participation in American direct investment and for the application of a stricter national interest test. Australia, he added, was ‘determined to be master of its own household'. If these were meant to be words of conciliation, they had the opposite effect. The rhetoric simply scared American investment away: its level in Australia dropping from A$554 million in 1972–73 to A$90 million in 1973–74.
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The ‘new nationalism' had its costs.

A ‘RESIDUE OF CAUTION AND RESERVE'

As the exodus of the US investment dollars continued apace, Whitlam left the United States for Canada and a Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. He was in an ebullient mood. As the stewardess on his plane out of New York was beginning to serve the champagne, the prime minister walked down for his customary informal chat with the journalists accompanying him. ‘He knows he has done well', recorded Alan Ramsey at the time, ‘and it shows'. Kissinger needn't have had any concern about Whitlam leaking—the prime minister was most reluctant to talk on the record about the content of his talks in Washington, a point of deep frustration for the travelling scribes. Despite the prime minister's seeming good humour, he simply said that he needed to catch up on sleep, and thus returned to his seat. Later, his staff scrambled to prepare a brief form of words that was quickly shuffled down to the back of the plane and the waiting reporters:

 

Commenting on his working visit to the United States, Mr Whitlam said that he had found it cordial, friendly and informative. In the course of a wide range of discussions with American leaders he said that he felt he had been successful both
in asserting and explaining the more independent and diversified Australian stance in international affairs, which included the maintenance of very close and friendly relations with the United States, recently adopted by Australia and, at the same time, removing any lingering strains and misunderstandings which might have arisen between the two governments last December and January.

 

As Alan Ramsey complained, ‘it seems a long way to come for 98 words, one full stop and seven commas. Surely his American connection is worth more than that … the pompous, bureaucratic prose doesn't do Mr Whitlam justice'. Despite the clumsy wording, which ‘must include the longest paragraph ever to appear under Mr Whitlam's name', Ramsey detected a lingering paradox in the statement. For the first time, there was a public admission that relations with the United States had nosedived at the beginning of the year, a point Whitlam had steadfastly refused for much of that period to acknowledge in his press conferences. Moreover, Ramsey argued that the anodyne words showed that for all his stress on newfound Australian self-reliance, Whitlam was equally desperate to show that he was now on good terms with the White House. It had ‘the same depressingly familiar ring about it that has marked every exit from Washington by an Australian PM for the past 20 years'. And, like his predecessors, Whitlam ‘too has gone through the ritual of paying court to the Godfather at the White House and insinuating the Australian public with the knowledge. It's just that his methods are different and he hopes it isn't obvious'.

It was a harsh judgement. But Ramsey was not the only observer to inject a note of hesitation in proceedings, to comment on the ‘residue of caution and reserve' that remained in Republican circles towards the Whitlam government.
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One Australian official summed up the visit by saying that its primary achievement was to remove the ‘sour taste' of the bitter exchanges over the Christmas bombings, but warned too that ‘we would be kidding ourselves if we thought all was now sweetness and light. There are still some sharp fishhooks to be straightened out'.
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In the
Courier-Mail
, Peter Costigan reminded
readers that the ‘lingering bitterness' of the White House ‘about what it saw as disloyalty in Canberra last December' has been ‘far from forgotten'.
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