New Zealand and the Vietnam War: Politics and Diplomacy

456 Pages·2005·4.752 MB·English

by  Roberto Rabel

New Zealand
and the Vietnam War
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New Zealand
and the V i e t n am War
Politics and Diplomacy
Roberto Rabel
Auckland University Press
University of Auckland
Private Bag 92019
Auckland
New Zealand
www.auckland.ac.nz/aup
© Crown Copyright, 2005
ISBN 1 86940 340 1
Published in association with the Ministry for Culture and Heritage
This book is copyright. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study,
research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no
part may be reproduced by any process without prior permission of the publisher.
Printed by Astra Print Ltd, Wellington
CONTENTS
Preface vii
1. New Zealand and the First Indochina War, 1945–54 1
2. From Geneva to the Tonkin Gulf: A Decade of
Decisions Deferred, 1954–64 31
3. In the Cold War’s Shadow: The Origins and Evolution
of Domestic Debate About the Vietnam War, 1945–64 63
4. ‘An Acceptable Price to Pay’: The Diplomacy of
Combat Intervention in the Vietnam War, 1964–5 80
5. The Domestic Politics of Combat Intervention,
January–June 1965 103
6. Part of the Way with LBJ: New Zealand Defers an
Expanded Commitment, June 1965–December 1966 127
7. ‘A War of Words’: Defining the Domestic Political Debate
about Vietnam, June–December 1965 155
8. The Domestic Politics of the Vietnam War in an Election
Year, 1966 176
9. Paying a Higher Premium: The Escalation of New Zealand’s
Military Effort, 1967–8 199
10. Dialogue of the Deaf: The Domestic Politics of the Vietnam
Conflict, 1967–8 230
11. ‘Concluding a Chapter’: The Diplomacy of Military
Disengagement from Vietnam, 1969–72 261
12. The Fracturing of Foreign Policy Consensus, 1969–72 284
13. New Zealand and the Ending of the Vietnam War, 1972–5 328
14. The Historical Significance of New Zealand’s
Vietnam Experience 348
Notes 366
Bibliography 425
Index 434
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PREFACE
The Vietnam War was New Zealand’s most prolonged, most reluctantly
entered into and most politically divisive military experience of the
twentieth century. It had a decisive impact on subsequent policy-making
and public debate about national security, even though the country’s troop
commitment was minimal. This book examines the diplomatic, political and
social dimensions of New Zealand’s participation in the conflict. It seeks to
explain how and why New Zealand was drawn into the Vietnam War, and
to assess the diplomatic and domestic consequences of that experience.
This volume is one of a series of works covering New Zealand’s
involvement in international conflicts since the Second World War. It was
commissioned by the Historical Branch of the New Zealand Department of
Internal Affairs, which has since become the History Group in the Ministry
for Culture and Heritage. The book is an ‘official history’ in the sense that
the state has sponsored its preparation and facilitated access to a wide range
of official records, most of which are now in the public domain. I have not
been subject to censorship of any sort and the arguments advanced are
strictly my own.
This book is intended to serve primarily as a reasonably comprehensive
and authoritative narrative history. It relies heavily on research in the New
Zealand government’s voluminous files on this subject, supplemented
by more selective use of the records of other governments, newspapers,
materials pertaining to the anti-war movement, private papers and some oral
history interviews. The book does not offer an exhaustive treatment of all
diplomatic, political and social developments associated with New Zealand’s
involvement in the Vietnam War. Significant international developments
such as the Korean War, Indonesia’s ‘Confrontation’ policy toward Malaysia
and Britain’s withdrawal from ‘east of Suez’ all affected policy-making on
Vietnam and receive attention in that context, but their wider implications
for New Zealand’s regional security policy cannot be fully elaborated. On
the domestic front, the book analyses the overall character and impact of
the anti-war movement that arose during the Vietnam War, but I have not
attempted to reconstruct the detailed histories of the numerous so-called
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new zealand and the vietnam war
Committees on Vietnam and analogous groups, with their diverse and
distinctive local features. Similarly, I have been able to give only passing
attention to the relationship between opposition to the Vietnam War and
other contemporary protest causes, such as the women’s, anti-apartheid
and anti-nuclear movements. Nor does the book discuss all facets of New
Zealand media coverage of the war. These and other specific subjects related
to the impact of the Vietnam War on New Zealand are beyond the scope of
a general history. Also explicitly excluded is the combat experience of the
New Zealand military personnel (fewer than 4000 over the course of the
war) who served in Vietnam, which will be the subject of a separate volume
by another historian.
Inevitably, when presenting conclusions about such a contentious conflict,
no historian can hope to meet with universal agreement. I have tried to be
balanced in setting out the competing sides in the domestic debate about
foreign policy that was triggered by this war. Readers will have to decide
for themselves if my interpretations of the significance for New Zealand of
the Vietnam War are persuasive.
This book is organised around two overarching arguments, one princi-
pally diplomatic, the other principally domestic. On the diplomatic front, I
have concluded that New Zealand was reluctantly drawn into the Vietnam
conflict for Cold War reasons relating to the perceived threat of communist
expansionism in Southeast Asia. It committed military forces there from 1964
to 1972 largely to demonstrate alliance solidarity with the United States and,
to a lesser extent, with Australia. Once committed, New Zealand pursued a
relatively effective diplomatic strategy, which differed in crucial respects from
those of its more powerful American and Australian allies. As a perceptive
diplomatic officer commented in 1970, New Zealand was ‘the most dovish
of the hawks’. My second line of argument concerns the domestic debate
about the Vietnam conflict, which precipitated the splintering of an earlier
bipartisan consensus on foreign policy and brought to public prominence
competing views on what constituted an ‘independent’ foreign policy. This
book will suggest that Keith Holyoake’s National government remained
essentially impervious to domestic criticisms of military involvement in
Vietnam. But many other New Zealanders, including a generation of future
political leaders, came to accept those criticisms. Indeed, the nationalist
criticism of official foreign policy first popularised by domestic opponents
of the Vietnam War arguably attained its greatest influence during the later
anti-nuclear dispute between New Zealand and the United States, climaxing
in the suspension of the ANZUS alliance in the 1980s.
For practical reasons, the book is organised chronologically, with most
chapters alternating in developing the two major themes. Although, for the
most part, the diplomatic and domestic ‘stories’ unfolded independently,
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new zealand and the first indochina war, 1945–54
this book rests on the assumption that there was an underlying interplay
between the two dimensions of involvement in the conflict.
I have been assisted in many ways by individuals and institutions without
whose generous support the completion of this book would not have been
possible.
I owe thanks first to the New Zealand government for appointing me to
write this history and for funding a year of research in Wellington, where I
was based in the Historical Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs.
This provided a uniquely convivial and collegial environment in which to
sift through thousands of pages of official documents and other manuscript
sources housed in the capital. As a university-based historian (and then ad-
ministrator) with teaching and other commitments, it took many more years
to absorb the significance of those documents and to complete supplementary
research, but that initial period of uninterrupted research was indispensable.
The Branch has since evolved into the History Group of the Ministry for
Culture and Heritage, which continued to provide institutional support and
supervision during the final stages of the project.
I am grateful to my own academic home institution, the University of
Otago, which granted me a year’s leave without pay to carry out initial
research and provided sabbatical leave and research grants. I would also
like to thank successive heads of the University’s History Department for
their support and encouragement, especially Erik Olssen, who was an
inspirational mentor. I am similarly indebted to other former colleagues,
especially Tom Brooking, Barbara Brookes and Ann Trotter.
Like all diplomatic historians, my work has been eased by the knowl-
edgeable assistance of librarians and archivists at numerous institutions. I
must thank the many staff members who helped me in the following cities:
in Wellington at the Alexander Turnbull Library, Archives New Zealand,
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Ministry of Defence; in
Dunedin at the University of Otago and Hocken Libraries; in London at
the Public Record Office; in Washington DC (and Suitland, Maryland) at
the United States National Archives and the Library of Congress; in Boston,
at the John F. Kennedy Library; in Austin at the Lyndon Baines Johnson
Library; and in Princeton, at the Princeton University Library and the Seeley
G. Mudd Manuscript Library.
A succession of research assistants identified newspaper sources and
carried out other tasks for me. I am especially grateful for the efforts of
Wayne Angus, Megan Cook, John Muir, David Thomson and Gary Witte.
I would also like to thank two other former students, Peter Bell and Sam
Elworthy, for sharing source materials with me. Another former student,
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