The years 1976 to 1980 were an especially dynamic period for Australian relations with the South-West Pacific. The claim for a significant role in the region which Canberra had staked during the first half of the 1970s was developed and defended with considerable vigour in the second half of the decade. And, in many respects, this expansion represented something more than a continuation of the undertakings of the previous five years. There were qualitative as well as quantitative changes in the character of Australia’s relationship with the South Pacific during the second half of the 1970s which marked a fundamental shift in the Australian view of the Islands from the preceding five years.

In the preceding volume in this series Professor Macmahon Ball has described how in the period 1952 to 1960 the following factors operated to reconcile Australians to Japan: (1) with the realisation that Japan could again become a threat to Australia only if allied to her powerful Communist neighbours came the realisation that Japan must be assured of friendship, prosperity and international respect by the members of the Western camp; (2) the desire to fall in with Washington’s policies; (3) increasing dependence on Japan as a market. He also noted that, beyond the level of policy, good relations were being strengthened at the popular level as more and more Australians visited Japan as tourists and traders. He predicted that political relations between the two countries would become closer and indicated points at which, he hoped, Australia would take advantage of Japan’s special interests or capacities

Foreign policy is the means by which a country tries to achieve those national objectives that lie outside its exclusive jurisdiction. For many years foreign policy in most Western countries has been conducted, wherever possible, above the rough and tumble of domestic politics. In Britain especially but also to some extent in Australia, foreign policy has been ’an idol to be hidden in the temple, untouched by profane hands’. The content of foreign policy is now becoming less distinctive, its conduct less exclusive, and the years 1976–80 witnessed some changes in the foreign policy process which reflect the broadened compass of foreign policy. That process was also influenced of course by a number of transient political or personal factors.

“Australia’s policy on West New Guinea is almost a unique test of the wisdom, maturity and far-sightedness of our diplomacy. Almost every other foreign policy issue since 1945 has been in some way obscured or compromised by our relations with our powerful friends. But our stand on West New Guinea is our own.” The extent to which purely domestic considerations of sentiment and strategy have influenced Australia’s relations with her Asian neighbour is nowhere illustrated more baldly than in the case of her policy towards Indonesia, and in particular her stand on the Indonesian- Dutch dispute over West New Guinea. Except on a few rare occasions great-power politics have little influence on Australian policy in this area. Under both the Chifley and Menzies Governments we have frequently been out of step with our powerful friends. And in no other field of Australian foreign relations have our policies traversed so wide an arc.

When in January 1976 the Fraser Government restored the use of “God Save the Queen” as Australia’s alternate national anthem, the London Daily Telegraph editorially welcomed the decision. Although admitting that Britain could “no longer act as chief investor or market protector or nurse” to Australia and New Zealand, it commented: We share with the Australians and New Zealanders a common parentage: we are of the same family ... And now, at a very dark time for us when everything seems to be going wrong for us and all certainties are in doubt, we hear from the other end of the earth a resounding symbolic reaffirmation of belief in the values and loyalties which were once our own and will—God willing—be ours one day again ... We may learn from down under that self-respect does not reside in vulgar novelty, or rude disrespect for what we were and still are.

As a small middle power in the Pacific, Australia’s major foreign policy problem is the problem of creating a framework of security within the general context of the United Nations and the specific geographical context of South-East Asia or the South-West Pacific. The traditional security afforded by the British navy disappeared after 1939 as effective British power contracted towards Europe and the United States became a major Pacific power. Attempting to pursue an independent policy, Australia has found that the global strength of the United States has set limits within which diplomatic manoeuvring is possible, and consequently that one of the major tasks of Australian diplomacy has been to collaborate with the United States and to influence, perhaps attempt to orientate, American policy in an area that is often of peripheral interest to Washington. London and Paris, Ottawa and Berlin, Moscow, Peking and New Delhi are all points of greater focal importance than Canberra to the United States.

On entering the 1980s, Australia’s defence planners were still coming to terms with the demise of our earlier policy of ’forward defence’ following the US defeat in Indochina and its subsequent (and continuing) withdrawal from our region of interest. While it was generally recognised that Australia had to become more self-reliant in defence, little progress had been made in formulating the strategies and organisational structures needed for this new role. Australia’s higher defence establishment had been reorganised between 1973 and 1976, in part to reflect our changing strategic circumstances, but its armed forces were still structured along single service lines and continued to be equipped and trained to operate as part of larger allied armies.

The 1980s brought far-reaching and often unsettling changes to Australia. In retrospect, it was a time of transition from the earlier postwar decades when Australia could, with little effort, bank on high international prices for its commodity exports and when its security seemed to be safely locked into the American alliance. It became increasingly evident that the accustomed benefits of isolation from international turbulence, and the comfortable economic and security margin over its Asian neighbours were all drawing to a close.

It is a truism that the larger an Ambassador’s staff the harder he must work. I remember as a young man being in charge of our legation in Manila with a staff of one consular clerk, one stenographer and a messenger. They were the most carefree days I ever experienced. Any problem was something one coped with oneself. There were no temperamental attaches worrying about their rank; no-one to demand more staff; no-one who wanted to rent larger and more expensive accommodation than that to which he was entitled; no-one to complain that he had been given a dud stenographer or to complain that he could not have a car and chauffeur to take him to golf, in conflict with the regulations. These are just a few of the problems which bedevil the life of a conscientious Ambassador with a large and varied staff.

Facilis descensus Averno. This old Latin tag is often in the minds and sometimes in the mouths of those who discuss colonial affairs. For one thing, once the path to independence or self-government becomes even faintly discernible, it appears to many people as a slippery descent, down which one slides all too easily. For another, the after-effects of independence or self-government often seem to Western observers to resemble the chaos of hell; the name ’Congo’ echoes in the background. But these are Western, European, observations. Former colonial people, especially their leaders like ex-President Nkrumah, frankly say that they prefer an independent hell to a well administered paradise, if hell and heaven are defined in terms of the absence or the presence of measurable economic benefits and the operation of Western democratic institutions.

This is the first time that a chapter on an Australian relationship with Eastern Europe has been included in the series Australia in World Affairs. The decision to break such new ground is surely a reflection of change in the world situation. The immensity of overall change needs no documentation but whether it has materially affected an Australian–East European connection has to be investigated. Is there, in other words, sufficient evidence to indicate a complementarity of interest, of resources, and of a perceived capability and need to cause a clearly identifiable, meaningful relationship to develop? Or are these two areas not only geographically distant but also still too unconnected, extraneous and aloof to make this chapter no more than a rather sterile chronicle of unrelated attitudes and opinions?

The half-decade from 1976 to 1980 was a period of exceptionally rapid change and considerable instability in the central balance of power. That in itself necessarily affected Australia’s position in the world of powers, and the impact of the changes was magnified by the circumstance that most of them took place in what came to be called the ’arc of crisis’, a great geographical crescent running from south western Asia (Afghanistan) through the Persian Gulf area, the Arabian peninsula and the Red Sea to the Horn of Africa, and further south. The region may be regarded as a sort of in-depth extension of the Indian Ocean littoral, and it seemed to develop in the late 1970s as a kind of ’fault zone’ in international politics, an area where earthquakes must be expected. The epicentre of these earthquakes was of course Iran. Australia, as the only Indian Ocean power which was also a full member of the loose tacit alliance-structure of the West and its fellow-travellers, thus found itself uncomfortably close to the main prospective theatre of international crisis. Certain facilities on its shores rose sharply in importance and thus in potential controversy.

Australia, like Great Britain, entered the twentieth century without a professional espionage or counter-intelligence agency. Secret service work was carried out, when the occasional need arose, by adventurous young officers and patriotic civilians. The immediate origins of the modern secret intelligence communities in both Britain and Australia lie in the spy scares which preceded and followed the outbreak of the First World War. Wildly exaggerated reports of ’an extensive system of German espionage’ in the United Kingdom led to the foundation in 1909 of the Secret Service Bureau whose home and foreign departments have since become, respectively, the counter-intelligence agency MI5 and the espionage agency usually known as SIS or MI6. Australia’s first, rather smaller, spy scare in 1908 concerned reports of espionage by Japanese business persons, storekeepers, pearlers and prostitutes along the Barrier Reef and the north of Queensland.

Australia has been a capital importing country almost continuously since 1788, Immigration and capital inflow, and the transfer to Australia of overseas business and technical knowledge associated with both, have been an important aspect of the building up of Australia’s economy and the development of its natural resources throughout Australian history. After a relatively low ebb during the depressed 1930s, both immigration and capital inflow revived after the second world war and played a major part in the two post-war decades of sustained rapid economic development.