Unholy Fury (26 page)

Pressure to do so no doubt had much to do with public, as well as internal party pressure. In Australia, too, the response to the bombing policy had been one of shock and revulsion. The
Australian
announced it as the ‘diplomacy of terror', asking whether ‘America's image in the world can survive this ferocious onslaught on a small, remote nation with no capability to conduct an aerial offensive itself'. Similarly the
Financial Review
judged that Nixon's efforts to ‘bomb Hanoi to the truce table' were ‘accompanied by such grave threats to the respect in which the US is held around the world that they can only be justified by an all-consuming desire to get out, get out, get out!' In Melbourne the Chairman of the Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party appealed to all workers to ‘knock off from their Christmas parties and demonstrate in the City Square against the bombings'.
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But it was Whitlam's response that really counted. And so early on the morning of 21 December 1972, two Australian diplomats in Washington arrived simultaneously at the West Wing of the White House and at the State Department in Foggy Bottom, carrying with them Whitlam's letter of response to the administration's decision to resume the bombings. American diplomatic records show that the Australian ambassador, James Plimsoll, who was flying out to Australia on that very day, was not exactly an enthusiastic envoy. Marshall
Green, then assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, noted that Plimsoll ‘expressed personal regret that Whitlam had not waited to talk to him first and felt he had acted under pressure from other Cabinet members'.
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He was not the only Australian bureaucrat to feel that his government had left him out in the cold.

Plimsoll's crestfallen countenance aside, the Americans had never seen a letter quite like this from an Australian leader. John Gorton had complained to Lyndon Johnson about the lack of coordination over the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. Billy McMahon had expressed consternation at not being forewarned about the announcement that Nixon would visit China. And yet such episodes, while doing nothing to silence ongoing Australian doubts about the meaning of the alliance—not to mention causing genuine domestic embarrassment for the two prime ministers—did not seriously threaten to split ANZUS asunder. But the Whitlam correspondence was on another level altogether.

And yet Whitlam's private words to Nixon—the letter had been drafted by the secretary of the Foreign Affairs Department, Sir Keith Waller—were mild by comparison to the public condemnation that had characterised his ministers' response. He said first that the breakdown in negotiations had come as a ‘bitter blow to me, the Australian Government and, I believe, to the Australian people as a whole'. A feeling of ‘grave concern' pervaded the country. He questioned ‘most earnestly' whether the resumption of the bombing would achieve ‘the return of the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table in a more forthcoming frame of mind'. Whitlam then expressed his admiration for the ‘patience and resolve' of Kissinger and other negotiators in dealing with the North Vietnamese and his awareness of the many ‘difficulties and frustrations' throughout the talks. Conceding concern that his first message to Nixon ‘might be misconstrued', he reassured the president of his hopes for ‘a period of positive cooperation between our two countries on a wide range of matters'. On this ‘particular question of Vietnam', Whitlam added that he was ‘moved as much by a positive and, I hope, helpful desire to put negotiations back on the rails as by feelings of distress at one particular aspect of your government's policy'.

However, the message carried a sting in the tail. Towards the end of his letter, Whitlam signalled his intention to invite other East Asian nations to join Australia in ‘addressing a public appeal to both the United States and North Vietnam to return to serious negotiations' for peace. From Washington's perspective, Whitlam had done the unthinkable. He had put the United States on the same level as its communist enemy. Further, he hinted that, while he would not make his correspondence with Nixon public knowledge, he might nevertheless have to let the Australian people know that a stern letter of protest had been sent. And indeed the government in Canberra did reveal that Whitlam had sent a ‘stiff message' to the president, a move that was only to further enrage the White House.
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Aside from how it played out publicly, Whitlam's letter contained strong language for a small power in addressing a superpower that it hoped would still act as a shield against possible regional enemies. In Washington, Marshall Green complained bitterly to the Australian chargé d'affaires, Roy Fernandez, that the American press, including CBS news, had included reports of the Australian protest together with a statement by the pope detailing his ‘painful emotion' over the ‘recent frightful exacerbation of hostilities'. Clearly the combination of criticism from a once dutiful ally and the Vatican amounted to the most unholy media attention for the administration. The reports from Australia, Green noted, ‘had created the impression of differences between Australia and the United States out of proportion to the fact'.
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That last comment might be passed off as the typically saccharine language of diplomatic reporting, but British diplomats in Washington got straight to the point: word had ricocheted along the embassy belt that Nixon had taken ‘severe exception to such unaccustomed criticism from one of the most faithful of America's allies'.
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Yet perhaps that, too, was putting it mildly. For an administration already under pressure to bring the war to an end, and besieged by the Watergate scandal, such a move was all too quickly seen as carrying hostile undertones. Australia was pursuing a policy that was in direct conflict with the painstaking efforts of the Nixon administration to reach a negotiated settlement with Hanoi.

In the White House, Whitlam's letter had landed first on the desk of Winston Lord, a senior Asia specialist in the National Security Council and an assistant to Kissinger. Lord knew instantly that it spelt possible trouble and immediately instructed the State Department to start warning key Asian capitals, especially Tokyo and Jakarta, of a possible Australian initiative on the peace negotiations. They wanted to pre-empt the initiative and kill it stone dead.
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In addition, advisers in the National Security Council began to consider ‘ways to inform Whitlam that we do not believe his proposed public appeal would be helpful'.
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But when the document reached Kissinger the blood really began to boil. This Bismarckian realist knew only one way to respond: with a blunt, forceful warning. At 3.25 p.m. on 20 December he picked up his phone and demanded to be put through immediately to Australian Ambassador James Plimsoll. But he was too late. Plimsoll had already slipped town, departing Washington earlier that afternoon en route for Canberra and consultations with Whitlam. Instead, Kissinger had to accept being put through to the embassy's number two: Roy Fernandez.

Pleasantries were sparse. Kissinger recalled that he and Fernandez met in Saigon ‘a generation ago'. What came after that curt trip down memory lane was to send shockwaves all the way to Canberra. The opening line was itself ominous: ‘About the letter of your Prime Minister'. Fernandez could not have known what was to follow. As only Kissinger could put it: ‘I don't know how I can tactfully convey something which we don't want to have officially recorded, is that possible?' Fernandez agreed in haste. This was no time to quibble over procedure. ‘If you could convey', Kissinger went on, ‘that we are not particularly amused being put by an ally on the same level as our enemy … I must tell you it's not the way to start a relationship with us'.

Then came the threat. If Whitlam's intention became public, he added, ‘it must have great consequences for our relationship'. Kissinger hardly needed to spell out the ramifications. He was talking about the future of the American–Australian alliance. And as if to highlight further the pain the letter had caused, he reminded
Fernandez that the president ‘has his own political difficulties … and it can do no conceivable good to make such an appeal'.

All Fernandez could do, with his ear glued to the phone and his pen scribbling furiously, was to keep saying ‘Yes'. Sometimes, even, a hastier, clipped ‘Yep'. Examining the official record of this exchange forty years later, one can almost feel Fernandez quivering under Kissinger's relentless assault. He undertook to convey the essence of the conversation to the head of the Foreign Affairs Department in Canberra, Sir Keith Waller. ‘I'll get this back for sure, Dr Kissinger' was his solemn pledge. And that was it. The call was so swift and so brutal that the White House staffer who typed up the verbatim transcript misspelt the Australian capital as ‘Kenbrook' and Sir Keith Waller, eminence grise of Australian diplomacy, made his only appearance in the document as ‘skeef walla'.
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What Kissinger had made abundantly clear, too, was that the Americans would not officially reply to Whitlam's letter. Although a draft for Nixon's signature was prepared, it was never sent. That reply set out a calm and reasoned explanation of Nixon's frustration at North Vietnamese intransigence and included a polite request for Whitlam to refrain from approaching neighbouring Asian states to issue a joint appeal to the United States and North Vietnam. As Nixon's draft put it: ‘The whole history of our talks with the North Vietnamese on settling the Vietnam conflict has been one of an effort by us to arrive at serious negotiations. Our proposals have consistently been serious, which unfortunately cannot be said for the other side'.
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But in the end the Americans could not bring themselves to bestow any sort of dignity on Whitlam's message—something they did do for New Zealand Prime Minister Norman Kirk, who had written his own protest letter to Nixon questioning what issue could have been so ‘overwhelmingly important' as to ‘justify throwing away the chance of peace', and lamenting ‘the return to the bloody business of war'. Nixon's reply left Kirk in no doubt as to the offence that had been taken: ‘For an ally to have taken such a position without having heard from us our explanation of the circumstances which led to the current situation is a matter of deep concern'.
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What the Australians received instead was the embassy's summary of Kissinger's icy blast. As a British diplomat recalled, the national security adviser had ‘blistered' Fernandez.
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Keith Waller told the Australian China scholar Ross Terrill at the time that he had ‘never seen such language' in a communication from one government official to another. Terrill, a former student of Kissinger's at Harvard and at the time an informal confidante to the US administration on China policy, visited his former teacher at the White House on 23 December, just days after his receipt of Whitlam's letter. Encountering Kissinger frantically ‘waving' Whitlam's letter aloft, he then recalled another tirade from the national security adviser: ‘It's unforgiveable for this new Australian government to put Hanoi and Washington on the same footing. How can an ally behave like this'? Terrill's self-confessed ‘meek' words of reassurance about Whitlam's ‘unshakeable' support for ANZUS were forcefully dismissed:
‘Can
it be unshakeable?' Kissinger shot back: ‘You can't apply ANZUS on some points and not on others'.
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This was another classic example of Kissinger's anger and emotion jostling with his self-styled realism.
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It was also a potent statement of the American take on the treaty: it equated to unswerving loyalty to the cause or else it amounted to virtual irrelevance. Certainly the United States had acted from the 1950s as though it could apply some points and not others.

The same sense of disbelief at Whitlam's move was apparent when a senior American diplomat in Canberra, Hugh Appling, who had not seen the text of Whitlam's letter, called on Waller to obtain a copy of the correspondence. Waller was not at liberty to give him one, but made sure he left the meeting with the strongest of impressions as to its contents. The message, Waller told him, ‘deplored' the resumption of the bombing. Moreover it was ‘vital', he stressed, that Appling:

 

realise and bring home to Washington the depth of revulsion of the Australian government against the bombing of North Vietnam. This was not a piece of domestic politics. It was a deeply held moral conviction. Australian ministers felt that the bombing was morally wrong and politically indefensible.

 

Hanoi could not ‘be bombed to the conference table', a point Waller hammered into Appling several times. Stunned, all Appling could do was to retreat to the tried and true explanation for Labor behaviour: he asked ‘whether the government was anti-American'. It was as if he had no other framework for understanding the Australian initiative. Waller stood his ground, stating he was ‘convinced they were not anti-American. The Prime Minister knew the United States well; one of his sons had had part of his education there; he visited it frequently; there were many aspects which he admired'.
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The two met again on Christmas eve, but this time Appling was more concerned about how Whitlam had ‘spoken very forcibly' to a visiting United States senator about the bombing.
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At about the same time that Terrill had walked in on a foul-tempered, cable-waving Kissinger in the White House, Whitlam, along with Deputy Prime Minister Lance Barnard, was a guest of the American ambassador at a private dinner in Canberra. One of Nixon's strongest supporters on Vietnam, Republican Senator Charles Percy, was then visiting Australia, and so the meeting provided the first real contact that Whitlam had had with a senior US official and a member of the Congress since writing to Nixon. Although the dinner was informal, the discussion was always going to revolve around Vietnam. It started innocuously enough, Whitlam seeking to assure his hosts that his government would be ‘middle of the road' and that he would avoid building a wall around Australia and withdrawing from the world. Opting for the sometimes soporific language of the diplomatic cocktail circuit, he added that the friendship between the two countries was ‘so strong that differences could be aired frankly', as he had done in his recent letter to the president. Percy was initially willing to respond with niceties of his own, praising Australia's progress since his last visit in the mid 1950s. But he was sure to add that only ‘misdirected nationalism', along with isolationist and protectionist tendencies, could halt Australia's impressive progress.