In 1964,I was witness to another independentCanberra initiative overVietnam. It was a bizarre attempt by thenExternal Affairs minister,Paul Hasluck, to persuade Moscow to joinwith the West in Vietnam tostop alleged Chinese aggression.

Cavan Hogue recently on thissite (’Australia did say no to Vietnam in 1954’) noted how Canberra refused to go alongwith a US seeking to create a coalition tosupport the French inVietnam.He saw it as demonstrating therewas a time when Australia had anindependent foreign policy.

Just ten years later, in 1964,I was witness to another independentCanberra initiative overVietnam. It was a bizarre attempt by thenExternal Affairs minister,Paul Hasluck, to persuade Moscow to joinwith the West in Vietnam tostop alleged Chinese aggression. Somedetails.

LateOctober 1964, shortly after the demise of Soviet premier, NikitaKhrushchev, our Moscow Embassy received an urgent cable fromCanberraasking us to arrange a meeting for Hasluck with the topSovietleadership. We were told that he had an important message todeliver.

Thereaction from the Soviet side was not encouraging.But Hasluckcameanyway.And after waiting several days we were ushered into aKremlin hall with premier Alexei Kosygin and foreign minister AndreiGromyko on one side of the standard green baize table; ourselves,Hasluck and I, on the other.

TheChinese were also occupying the formerRussian territory of Sinkiangand pressing against Sovietterritory in eastern Siberia. We inAustralia were even moreconcerned, with China sponsoring the war inSouth Vietnam andthreatening to move even further south in thedirection ofAustralia.

Kosygin was not impressed.Moscow could handle the war of wordswith Beijing by itself, he said.As for Sinkiang, that had long beenunder Chinese control and Moscowwas perfectly happy with that.Where did Hasluck get the idea thatit wasorhad beenSoviet territory?Gromyko then chimed in to say thathe assumed Hasluck was talkingabout the Soviet Far East(DalniyiVostok) and not eastern Siberia.In either case theUSSR did notface any Chinese problem.

AsforVietnam, Kosyginsaid that the USSR would continue todo everything possible to helpthe brave Vietnamese people intheir struggle to resist USaggression.He added: ‘And we wishour Chinese comrades would domuch more to help.’

Hasluck realised he was out ofhis depth.He told me that a report toCanberra about the meetingwas not needed. On arrival back inAustralia heboastedhow he had been thefirst Westernleader to congratulate the new Soviet leadership afterKhrushchev’s fall.

Cavan Hogue mentioned how in 1954was influenced by its ties with theUK (which showed littleinterest in helping French colonialism inVietnam),and thatobedience to USdemandscame later.But theHasluck Moscowinitiative also was Australia’sown (though there were hints thatWashington had endorsed the move).It was the product of thefantasy view of China that had developed inCanberra between1954 and 1964.

Itbegan with the eruption of the Sino-Soviet dispute in the latefifties,then seen mistakenly as a conflict between Moscow’s moderateform ofCommunism and Beijing’s more militant version.Thencame the October 1962 Sino-Indian frontier clash, provoked byNehrubut seized upon by Western hardliners as proof of Chineseaggression(I have written elsewhere how as China desk officer inCanberra atthe time I had the clear information that India had initiatedthehostilities. But my report was summarily rejected by the peopleaboveme saying they saw it in the Western interest to have the blamepoured on China). Soon after,Canberra began issuing warnings thatevents in Vietnam were the first stage in China’s ’thrust southwardsbetween the Indian and Pacific oceans, relying in the first instanceonits puppets in Hanoi.’ This despite the already available evidencethatHanoi was much more pro-Sovietthan pro-China.

Soon andmuch more sinisterCanberra, this time in Washington - at the time ourembassy there Waller and Renouf were warning that Washingtonhadseemed to be losing interest in its Vietnam intervention.Australianeeded to do something commit troops was one suggestedoption-to keep the US involved and the Chinese menace atbay.

Forme at the time the idea that Canberra’s mistaken view ofChina couldhelp lead to a meaningless war in which millions ofVietnamese woulddie, was grotesque. Resigning from ExternalAffairs I set outwithgreat difficultytowrite a book ‘In Fear ofChina’ explaining China’s policies in lessthan fearsome tones-the Sino Soviet and Sino-Indian disputesespecially. I imaginednaively thatsinceCanberra’s anti-China complex had helpeddrag the US into Vietnamthen writing something to change thancomplex might help to put anearly end to that war.AllI got formy pains was further black-listing in Australiaconservativeacademia.

Later Michael Sexton, workingfrom cables unearthed during theWhitlam years, was ablewiththis 1981 book ‘War for the Asking’togive a much fuller account of Canberra’sugly1964attempt todragthe US deeper into Vietnam.But even that book did little toshake the popular belief thatAustralia went into Vietnam solelyto support its big and powerfulfriend in Washington. Few want torealize that Canberra was actingindependently, that Australiawas amorethanwilling partner inthat war without honour.

Gregory Clark joined theExternal Affairs department in 1956,with postings to Hongkong (hewas the first EA person postwarto be trained in Chinese) and Moscow.After resigning in 1965 hemoved to Japan where has been closelyinvolved as acommentator and educationalist (president of TamaUniversityand joint-founder of a very successful liberal artsuniversity inAkita).