The Australian Army’s commitment to the Vietnam War between 1962 and 1972 had much in common with its commitments to previous wars. Again the issues of strategy and command were important. In the Boer War, the two world wars, Korea, Malaya and Malaysia, Australian Army formations and units came under the operational control of an allied commander. Australia had little say over the higher strategic direction of the war or indeed over the strategy employed within each theatre of war. The main exception to that pattern was in the South-West Pacific Area between 1942 and 1944 when the Allied commander-in-chief, General Douglas MacArthur, was based in Australia and discussed his strategic plans with the Australian Government, although ultimate direction came from the Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington. Furthermore, the Commander of the Allied Land Forces, General Sir Thomas Blamey, had a measure of independence in determining how and where the units of the Australian Army would fight.

After the chronic political instability that marked the conservative collapse and then the feverish pace of the truncated Whitlam regime, the ensuing years present an outward appearance of equilibrium. Between 1975 and 1991 there was just one change of government, and two prime ministers held office for roughly equal terms. Both in their own ways were striving for the security the electorate desired, and both held to the middle ground. Yet in the circumstances that now prevailed there could be no security without upsetting the ingrained habits of the past. One prime minister preferred confrontation and the other consensus as the way to bring change, but the changes were never sufficient. There was always a need to go further, to abandon yet another outmoded practice and make additional improvements. The first of the leaders was Malcolm Fraser, who headed a Liberal–National Country Party coalition from 1975 to 1983. In 1983 the voters rejected him for a new Labor leader, Bob Hawke. Both leaders searched for solutions. In the absence of older certainties, governments sought to restore national cohesion and purpose. Most of all, they tried to repair an economy that no longer provided reliable growth and regular employment.

The election of the Labor government led by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in December 1972 marked a major change in Australia’s approach to international peacekeeping. To a large extent, the change grew out of the philosophy of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). A self-declared ‘internationalist’ party, in government it was far more willing than its conservative predecessors to look to the United Nations to help solve world problems, and hence it was keen for Australia to play its part in international peacekeeping missions. This approach was championed by Whitlam, who was also Minister for Foreign Affairs in the first year of his government.