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“Because it's there …” A consideration of the decision to commit New Zealand troops to Malaysia beyond 1971
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 April 2011
Extract
Direct diplomatic relations between New Zealand and Malaya/Singapore are a relatively recent innovation dating back only to 1955, and, significantly, the original decision to station troops in the area in peacetime preceded the establishment of formal diplomatic links. It is true that even before the Second World War there had been a growing consciousness of the strategic significance of the area, but it was seen in terms of Singapore as a link in the chain of Imperial defence, never as a region in its own right. Regions were subsumed in the worldwide defence strategy of the British Empire. Thus New Zealand contributed financially to the construction of the base for the Royal Navy at Singapore, but her military commitments were in helping to guard the Suez ‘lifeline’. New Zealand air-force units were stationed in Singapore in 1940, but despite the national trauma associated with the fall of the base and the apprehended threat to New Zealand’s own security, the ground forces remained in the Middle East. Indeed, New Zealand's formal Commonwealth responsibilities were to remain in the Middle East until 1955 and public interest continued to focus on that area to a surprising degree. The lessons of the Pacific War for New Zealand, therefore, were less concerned with the strategic importance of any particular area than with the indispensability of a United States alliance. As one research group put it, ‘in the immediate post-war years New Zealand showed a greater sense of international awareness, but no sense of particular involvement with the Far East; still less with South-East Asia.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 2 , Special Issue 1: Australia, New Zealand and Southeast Asia , March 1971 , pp. 22 - 31
- Copyright
- Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1971
References
1 Mr. Foss Shanahan was sent to Singapore in July 1955 to become New Zealand Commissioner in South-East Asia. The decision to commit troops to the area was announced in March 1955.
2 McIntyre, W.D., ‘The Strategic Significance of Singapore 1917–42: The Naval Base and the Commonwealth’ in Journal of South-East Asian History, Vol. X. No. 1 (March 1969), p. 77.Google Scholar
3 New Zealand Foreign Policy with Special Reference to South-East Asia, New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, Wellington, 1968, p. 8.Google Scholar
4 Earlier at the outbreak of the World War II the term ‘forward defence” had been used to describe the dispositions in Fiji.
5 New Zealand Parliamentry Debates. Vol. 305, p. 23. Holland. See also K.J. Holyoake, External Affairs Review. V. 1 and 2, 14.
6 NZPD, Vol. 305, pp. 21–22. Holland. Neither the shift of commitment, nor the decision to station N.Z. troops overseas in peacetime, attracted any great interest. One journal reported that: ‘A great deal of his speech was in generalities … Many backbenchers began to doze and even some of his Cabinet Ministers continued with their writing’. New Zealand Herald, 25 March 1955, quoted in R. J. Caird ‘New Zealand's foreign Policy and Malaya/Malaysia 1955–65’, p. 41, unpublished M.A. thesis, University of Canterbury, 1970.
7 The announcement of the New Zealand decision to commit troops to Borneo followed by three days a similar Australian announcement and came some sixteen months after the New Zealand Minister of Defence had called for more forthright support for Malaysia, particularly in Eastern Malaysia. See Caird, p. 120.
8 Given that the area has a strategic significance for New Zealand it might be thought that Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines would be as important strategically to New Zealand.
9 On the role of the ‘protector’ see Bruce Grant, ‘Australia's Foreign Policy in the 1970s’, in Brown, Bruce, ed., New Zealand and Australia: Foreign Policy in the 1970s, New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, Wellington, 1970.Google Scholar
10 A–J, 1963, A. 27, Documents concerning New Zealand forces serving in Malaysia.
11 Quoted from an interview with External Affairs Department officials (unnamed) by Caird, p. 75.
12 Strails Times, 10 February 1969.
13 Straits Times, 4 February 1969.
14 Cmnd. 3357, 1967.
15 The Times, 11.2.70. See also ‘Savings by Withdrawal: the invisible balance sheet’, W. P. Manser, The Times, 7.1.69.
16 External Affairs Review, XIX, 2 (February 1969), 30–32.Google Scholar
17 The Post became Secretary of Foreign Affairs in March 1970 when the department was renamed Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
18 Laking, G. R., ‘International Problems confronting New Zealand in the 1970’s, External Affairs Review, XIX, 8 (August 1969).Google Scholar
19 The only exception to this principle in the twentieth century was the New Zealand occupation of Western Samoa (with the support of Britain) in 1914.
20 Holyoake, K. J., A Defence Policy for New Zealand, New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, Wellington, 1969, p. 8.Google Scholar
21 Stenson, Michael, New Zealand and the Malay World, New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, Wellington, 1970, p. 10.Google Scholar
22 This tendency is reinforced by the nature of the New Zealand political system where the only free discussions tend to take place behind locked doors in departments, cabinet or caucus. With our small highly disciplined parties the individual party politicians does not have the freedom to dissent that is publicly available for example to his British colleagues, with their larger parties and rather looser discipline.
23 There is also an element of national pride. Both Australia and New Zealand have spent years trying to establish their national identity in South-East Asia and to escape the taunt that they are merely colonial pawns. Withdrawal at this time could well have fatally tarnished this image. Thus one Australian journalist openly declared that: ‘Australians could not afford to withdraw in the wake of the British. Australia's future depends in very large measure on the trust and confidence she can establish with Asian neighbours.’ Sydney Morning Herald, 26 February 1969.
24 Admittedly there must be some difficulty in determining the relative importance of economic and military considerations in the decision to station the troops in Singapore. Terendak had certain obvious advantages in terms of training facilities and the New Zealanders, no doubt not expecting to bear the brunt of the cost, seem to have been more keen to maintain troops in Malaysia itself than the Australians.
25 The force consists of: two squadrons of Australian Mirage aircraft, in all 42 aircraft, 34 to be stationed at Butterworth and 8 at Tengah; one New Zealand Air Transport Squadron; two frigates (one Australian and one New Zealand); together with a joint two-battalion organisation of ground troops.
26 First the British decided for example to retain the jungle training school at Kota Tinggi (albeit as a ‘Commonwealth’ organisation) and this was then followed up by the plans for Bersatu Padu, the major military exercise held in the area in 1970. See Cmnd. 3701. The Daily Telegraph, 30 October 1969, reported that Sir Michael Walker, British High Commissioner in Kuala Lumpur, had said that British forces ‘would still maintain their presence in Malaysia after 1971 although none of the units would be permanently based there’. The paper noted that the High Commissioner's statement accorded with the government policy of continuing the Far East training of troops, but that ‘it has not hitherto been implied that this training would constitute a presence’.
27 E.g. Straits Times, 25 June 1969.
28 M. Stenson, New Zealand and the Malay World, p. 9.
29 Thus the Finance Minister Dr. Goh Keng Swee, envisaging 4500 fully trained Singaporean troops by 1979, was reported as saying that if these forces had been available in 1942 they would have succeeded in giving the Japanese a black eye.
30 ‘The United States will have put ₠1000 million into Singapore by the end of this year’. Dennis Bloodworth, Observer Foreign New Service, No. 27250, 4 March 1970.
31 Straits Times, 27 February 1969.
32 External Affairs Review, XIX, 2 (February 1969), 30.
33 Ibid., p. 35.
34 Bersatu Padu was modelled on the U.S. exercise Operation Reforger in which 15,000 U.S. troops were ferried to Europe from the U.S.
35 e.g. Straits Times, 8 August 1969, suggested that recent reports indicated that the Americans wanted Australia and New Zealand to stay in Vietnam even after large-scale American withdrawals as a symbolic gesture towards regional defence co-operation.
36 McIntyre, W. D., Britain, New Zealand and the Security of South-East Asia in the 1970s, New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, Wellington, 1969, pp. 20–22.Google Scholar
37 Stenson, p. 5.
38 The Bulletin, 21 June 1969, p. 28.
39 Both Singapore and Malaysia threatened the possibility of turning to the Russians in the event of a complete withdrawal and, although this new development contained an element of bluff, the USSR quickly responded with suggestions for a collective security arrangement in the area.
40 Straits Times, 25 June 1969.
41 Stenson, p. 14.