Unholy Fury (35 page)

In this environment, senior Labor figures were desperate to get in Green's ear about the visit. Even before he had submitted his official credentials—normally the moment an ambassador assumes formal diplomatic status—Deputy Prime Minister Lance Barnard was at his door. During what Green reported as a ‘moving discussion'—Barnard had come on his own initiative, and without telling Whitlam—he was told that the question of whether Nixon would receive the prime minister had become ‘an emotional issue in Australia', with ‘average Australians' now concerned about the state of the relationship. There was a gentle reminder that should Whitlam have to appear at the Labor conference—scheduled for early July—without an invitation from the president, it would yet again expose him to feverish criticism from the party's left wing. As Barnard stressed, it was now a matter of the ‘health of the alliance'. He wanted to reassure Green that Whitlam had given a ‘stern dressing down' to those ministers who had spoken out earlier in the year, and that he and his leader had staunchly defended the presence of American intelligence facilities.
⁴⁸
As a result of this remarkable intercession, Green was himself now imploring Washington to make a decision on the visit—still unaware, of course, that Kissinger and Wilenski had virtually sorted out the matter only a few days before. The White House had not bothered to tell Green before his departure that the deal had been done. But Nixon and Kissinger were going to make Whitlam wait as long as possible for the formal announcement.

That only prolonged the pain for all concerned. The following day, it was Whitlam's turn to officially meet with Green. Again, the prime minister showed clear signs that he was struggling to suppress his irritation over the lack of an entrée to the Oval Office. Referring to the continued speculation in the Australian press about a visit as ‘this dramatic, tedious thing', Whitlam repeated that he simply ‘did not need an official invitation' to the White House. In contrast to his predecessors who had sought an ‘ostentatious embrace' of the president or a ‘coronation' in Washington, Whitlam told Green of his belief that it ‘should be possible without formal planning for [the] Prime Minister to stop for [a] chat at [the] White House'.
⁴⁹
Yet such a vision of easy informality not only failed to find a sympathetic ear in Washington, it was also distinctly at odds with Whitlam's desire to move relations with the Americans onto a more ‘foreign' footing.

Whitlam, however, remained ever keen to contextualise for Green the new Australian position on the alliance. If Kissinger gave Wilenski a mini lecture on the nature of power in the world of the 1970s, Whitlam was going to indulge his passion for the past. The Australian leader explained to Green that Labor's period out of office—23 years—was the ‘longest such stretch in western democracy … since Grover Cleveland came to office'. His primary goal was to rid Australia of the ‘satellite mentality' that he believed had for too long characterised the relationship with America. The overview continued to the subject of the evolution of US society and foreign policy. Whitlam readily agreed that Americans would find it annoying to ‘hear leaders of middle sized powers such as himself moralizing and reprimanding the US'. Despite America being a beacon of freedom and refuge for mankind in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—Whitlam again invoked the ideal of a better, more idealistic America—there ‘had been alienation over the past ten years', with US policy in Vietnam ‘hard even for friends to comprehend'. As Green reported:

 

Whitlam believed America's first historical error was overreaction to [the] Russian Revolution. At that time the US began to oppose change generally. Then, Whitlam continued, the bizarre
‘loss of China' concept in the late 1940s and 1950s seemed to confirm US opposition to any change, even the French departure from Indochina. Then, developments in Europe in the 20s and Asia in the 50s placed US ‘offside'. Whitlam said Australia wished to avoid similar historical mistakes in Asia. Nevertheless, he concluded, the US remained the world's finest society, admirable for its openness and public debate. A great and generous people whose alliance was important to Australia.
⁵⁰

 

In this sweeping historical panorama, Whitlam demonstrated the extent to which he himself remained wedded to a rigid and fixed view of the US role in the world, one that allowed for little appreciation of the rapid and dramatic changes since 1969—changes which in many ways had created the environment in which he could alter the fundamental parameters of Australian foreign policy. For his part, Green told Whitlam he too was ‘concerned by problems of the American past'. Contemporary American foreign policy, he stressed, was now ‘more pragmatic' and had ‘moved away from ideology and cold war definitions'.
⁵¹
Green was clearly as eager to move on from that past as Whitlam was to remind him of it. Arguments over history, however, were not going to solve the problem.

Whitlam now had the dubious honour of his political enemies stepping in to lend a hand. The leaders of the opposition conservative parties in Australia took the unusual step of writing to Nixon, conveying their concern that a ‘refusal' to grant Whitlam a meeting ‘could be misrepresented as a slight to the Australian people', pledging that ‘upon our return to government we will immediately move to restore the special relationship of our two nations'.
⁵²
Of course, Billy Snedden and leader of the National Party Doug Anthony were really saying that only the Coalition could properly nurture the alliance.

A somewhat different note was struck by shadow minister for manufacturing industry Andrew Peacock. Whilst visiting Washington around this time on an International Visitor's Grant, Peacock expressed his concern to Undersecretary of State William Porter about the ‘state of relations, particularly the propensity in both countries to overreact to actions or statements by one concerning the
other'. Although he could not condone the recent utterances by Labor ministers, Peacock did add that ‘a closer examination of the Australian domestic scene will help explain things'. He was doing his best to put the recent difficulties into a wider context. Labor's left-wing minority had to be heard, he added, even though its views were not accepted by the mainstream of the party. Whitlam had been ‘forced into many of his actions by the realities of the ALP', and overtures to the third world should not be taken as a challenge to the basic alliance with the United States. Peacock assured Porter that Whitlam ‘believes fervently in the closest possible ties' with America and that ‘Australia's ties with the United States would have changed even if the Liberal-Country coalition had been re-elected'. Peacock promised to warn the Labor prime minister on his return of the ‘justifiable US sensitivities regarding his statements', but he hoped that Nixon would make time to see Whitlam.
⁵³
It was a view that Peacock claims he made to the president himself during an impromptu meeting with Nixon arranged for him by the Republican Party's national chairman, George HW Bush. That encounter followed Peacock's meeting with Vice President Spiro Agnew, in which Agnew had expressed his pungent and colourful frustration at Labor's criticism of the United States. Peacock remembers not only the fiery language from Agnew but also the piece of beetroot that had fallen on the floor from a salad sandwich which the vice president, with feet up on the desk, was eating.
⁵⁴

Some in the press, however, were only too willing to make fun of the entire episode. Writing in the
Bulletin
, the satirist Alan Fitzgerald delighted in the uncommon spectacle of an Australian leader stuck outside the gates of the White House. Depicting Gough and Margaret Whitlam stalking the president's residence, with Peter Wilenski up a tree in Lafayette Square looking for any signs of Nixon walking the White House grounds, Fitzgerald made mischief with Whitlam's discomfort at the situation. ‘I know he's in there, Margaret, I saw the curtain move', says Whitlam. His wife, her feet hurting, retorts with impatience ‘How much longer are we going to hang about?' Fitzgerald even depicted Ambassador Plimsoll as a sacrificial lamb, ready to throw himself ‘under the wheels of the presidential vehicle'.
‘At least it should hold Nixon until I can get there', Whitlam said. Chastised by his wife for ‘traipsing off to Washington for a picture on the White House lawns', Whitlam is made to respond ‘It's not the prime minister he's snubbing this time, it's the Australian nation. Personally I couldn't care less whether I saw him or not.' The farce finally ends with a brief glimpse of Nixon, but Whitlam is hopelessly marooned, the accompanying media unable even to get a ‘quick cut' from the Australian PM ‘to a telephoto shot of the president' over his shoulder. It is a disaster. ‘Next time we sight him', says the fictional Whitlam, ‘I want the band to strike up the anthem while I move in on him, and I want those cameras rolling from the time I drop over the fence … I want this meeting to appear dignified yet spontaneous, as befits the new spirit of nationalism.'
⁵⁵
Fitzgerald had exemplified one of the enduring themes of the period of ‘new nationalism', in which any pretence to innovation or a new departure—in this case a more assertive Australian presence in Washington DC—invariably attracted a healthy dose of scepticism or ridicule.
⁵⁶

By the middle of June, the continued delay in a formal announcement was beginning to unsettle even Marshall Green. And he now used Labor's own line in his reporting. In yet another cable back to Washington, he warned that the issue had now assumed a different, nastier edge: the daily press speculation was now that Nixon was ‘consciously slighting not Whitlam, but the Australian nation'. The question of the visit had become a ‘national and nationalistic obsession' in Australia. After his lengthy discussion with the prime minister the previous week, Green was convinced that ‘we can work with Whitlam and influence him'. He did, however, have some clear advice for his readers back in the State Department, namely his observation of the widespread feeling across the political spectrum in Australia that the country ‘has for too long been taken for granted by the United States'. A ‘stirring nationalism' unleashed by Whitlam was now draining the reserves of Australian goodwill and empathy for the United States. And, saving his trump card for last, Green added that the president's failure to invite Whitlam would not only ‘insult' Australia, but put at risk the US defence facilities and $5 billion worth of American economic investment. The plaintive tone in
his final paragraph said it all. Green was now urging the matter to be brought to Nixon's personal attention and that an announcement be made ‘this week, repeat: this week'.
⁵⁷

As Green's cable was received in Washington, some in the American press were also beginning to apply the pressure. The
New York Times
called Nixon's behaviour towards the Australian prime minister a ‘foolish display of public petulance towards a friend and ally', characterising it as ‘all but incredible during a period in which the White House will have gone all out to welcome the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party'. And given that the administration had already announced the visit of President Bhutto of Pakistan—who like Whitlam was passing through Washington en route to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting—it asked ‘Will Mr Nixon really discriminate in this petty way between two important statesmen, each of whom has had his differences with the United States?'
⁵⁸
The
Times
had put their finger on it: Whitlam's exclusion was the most flagrant exhibition of Nixonian spite.

On 17 June, the long wait was finally over. The announcement was made that Nixon would receive Whitlam at the White House on 30 July. It would be an informal meeting only: no official welcome on the South Lawn, no playing of ‘Yankee Doodle' by the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps in their eighteenth century colonial uniforms, no speeches, no black tie dinner and no overnight stay at Blair House. This was as bare as it got in terms of Washington welcomes. And that, after all, was precisely what Whitlam had wanted.

The timing of the visit now resolved, Green could turn to repairing other chinks in the alliance. In his early speeches he focused first on the need to explain changing US priorities to his new Australian listeners. Thus when he spoke publicly for the first time at the National Press Club in Canberra, he drew on all his previous experience in East Asia to explain the novelty of Nixon's foreign policy. Green had an eye, too, for the apposite anecdote. After admitting that Australia was a posting to which he had ‘long cast speculative and covetous eyes', he recalled the signs that had greeted him in his previous ambassadorial post—that of Jakarta in 1965, at the height of Indonesia's hostility towards the major western powers.
Upon his arrival, the streets had been festooned with signs saying ‘“Green go home”, but under one of these signs somebody had written in lipstick, “and take me with you”.' It had given him faith, he added, ‘in a people who were friendly even in the darkest days of our relationship'. During this speech Green also made pointed references to the US–Japan alliance, and its ability to withstand disagreements over the stationing of American bases there. He was using his experience in the region to show that relationships could survive tension and trauma. And his message for Gough Whitlam was this: that no matter how improved America's relations with China and the Soviet Union were, no matter the moves towards peace in the ‘divided countries' in the region—Vietnam and Korea—this was not a time to rest on false laurels. Green warned that ‘we may run the risk of suggesting that the dangers of this world are greatly less and that our alliances are less viable. We should be very cautious about reaching such conclusions'. Making these alliances work required an ongoing ‘willingness to compromise on a reciprocal basis'. Then, his message clearly delivered, he reached for the nearest State Department phrasebook, concluding his remarks by stressing what American diplomats said to their audiences in any number of countries throughout the world: ‘From an American viewpoint, there is no better friend than Australia'.
⁵⁹
Back in Washington, Nixon might have hit the roof to hear these words uttered at this time.