Peter Edwards: ‘One of the Greatest Examples of Australian Statecraft’ Australia’s Military Commitments Under Menzies

The Robert Menzies Institute recently hosted renowned military and diplomatic historian Peter Edwards for a talk entitled ‘From Korea to Vietnam: Menzies’s Cold War military commitments’. Prior to the event, Peter sat down with the Institute’s CEO Georgina Downer to talk through the complex issues involved in the defence of Australia during the Menzies era.

It is natural and just that Australians should be drawn towards remembering and commemorating the Vietnam War, in which 521 Australian combat personnel lost their lives, as a defining moment in our history. However, this conflict has tended to overshadow the otherwise successful implementation of strategies of ‘graduated response’ and ‘forward defence’ which characterised defence policy during the Menzies era. The aim was to use targeted and small troop commitments to help snuff out conflict before it could reach Australia, assisting friendly governments resist insurgencies so that the ‘dominoes’ of the Asia-Pacific would not fall to international communism, whilst simultaneously keeping Australia’s ‘great and powerful friends’ engaged in the region. During the Malayan Emergency and the Indonesian Confrontation, carefully integrated military and diplomatic actions helped achieve outcomes that were favourable for Australia, and with the nation once again facing a troubled international landscape, there are crucial lessons to be drawn for the present.

Peter Edwards AM is a writer, historian and biographer who has published extensively on Australian and international history and politics. He is the official historian and general editor of the nine-volume Official History of Australia's Involvement in Southeast Asian Conflicts 1948-75, including authoring volumes on strategy and diplomacy, Crises and Commitments (1992) and A Nation at War (1997). Peter won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, and has been affiliated with numerous Australian and international universities, as well as receiving official appointments to work for organisations including the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Australian War Memorial. Peter is a Member of the Order of Australia (AM), a Fellow of the Australian Institute for International Affairs, and a former Trustee of Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance. A former editor of the Australian Journal of International Affairs, Peter is a longstanding member of the Research Committee of the Australian Institute of International Affairs and of historical advisory committees in the Department of Defence and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.