03+Australian+involvement

= Australian involvement = ​

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The American alliances
Although the post Second World War alliances with America (ANZUS and SEATO) played an important part in Australia going to war, it is not fair to simply write off the decision as Australia blindly following American policy. It is important to remember that for most of the period before full-scale war erupted in Vietnam, it was Australia who was pushing America into further involvement in the region. SEATO was eventually used by the Americans to justify their presence in Vietnam, but it was the Australians who actually tried to invoke SEATO first.

[|LBJ speech]

Australia had previously committed troops in other countries
Although this did not automatically guarantee that Australia would become involved in Vietnam, the precedents were in place to suggest that they would. Australia's involvement in Vietnam was not an isolated piece of foreign policy. Australians had fought in Korea which was even further away than Vietnam. Korea was not the only precedent for Australian troops becoming involved in the fight against communism. In 1955 they were deployed in Malaya to help the British put down a communist insurrection there.

Fear of communism
There was a genuine fear of communism in Asia spreading to Australia. The entry of Australia into the Vietnam conflict was the culmination of over 15 years of domestic and foreign policy for successive Australian governments. That can be seen domestically in the attempted banning of the communist party and the anti-communist propaganda that Australians had been subjected to for years. As for foreign policy, Australia had already demonstrated its eagerness to stop the spread of 'monolithic' communism by going to war in Korea.


 * 1. What do you think the caption of the poster would be?**
 * 2. Why do you think the poster was published?** **What is its purpose?**

Geography and the domino effect
This reason is pretty straightforward and is linked to the fear of communism. Geographically, Vietnam is on Australia's doorstep. If South Vietnam were to fall to communism, and as the domino effect theory suggested would happen - other Asian countries like Thailand, Myanmar and Malaya were to follow - then where would Australia be?



Requests for Australian involvement
Late in 1961 when the number of Viet Cong activities started to rise dramatically, the Americans turned to the SEATO treaty to help control the situation in Vietnam. They began to ask the other SEATO countries to send in troops as military advisors. The Menzies government considered the request in November 1961 but did not respond immediately as they were in the middle of an election. By March 1962 the Australians had also received three requests for help from the South Vietnamese government and in May the Australian government announced it would be sending in 30 military advisors to assist with the ongoing training of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam.

Australia was prepared for a war
Psychologically, Australia had been prepared for another war since the conflict in Korea. Compulsory military training and universal conscription had been briefly re-introduced in 1951. The Australian people had been told so often to prepare for war that they all thought it was only a matter of time before they would have to go into battle with the communists. Many people were thinking why wait until it's too late and fight them when they invade our own land - let's go out and meet this threat head on. Much of the Liberal government's foreign policy was formed around this idea of 'forward defence'. The threat that Australia needed to defend against at the time was communism spreading from North Vietnam into South Vietnam.