US Diplomats and Their Spouses during the Cold War

Americans Looking down on Australia and New Zealand

Anthony J. Barker

This study examines 324 oral history transcripts and explains the recruitment, training, and deployment of US diplomats. Amid growing feminist hostility to Foreign Service treatment of spouses, some couples resented postings to distant Australasia but most enjoyed a welcoming English-speaking environment. While New Zealand assignments involved complex negotiations with Pacific islanders, diplomats in Australia were powerless to control the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean, including the fortification of Diego Garcia and peace negotiations threatening US Navy access to the port of Fremantle. When the Australian Labor Party won power in 1972 the vulnerability of vital military and intelligence facilities alarmed the US more than opposition to nuclear ship visits that removed New Zealand from the ANZUS alliance in the 1980s. Notable exceptions to a principal focus on diplomats below the highest ranks are Marshall and Lisa Green. After meeting John Stewart Service in post-1945 New Zealand they remained for years his loyal defenders against the assaults of McCarthyism. Lisa's interview implicitly but decisively refutes allegations that, as US ambassador to Australia, Marshall plotted the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975. Despite persistent rumors of a CIA coup, declassified cables reveal resident US diplomats' hostility to the governor general's unprecedented action.

Lexington Books

Pages: 276 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-4985-9179-9 • Hardback • November 2019 • $142.00 • (£109.00)

978-1-4985-9180-5 • eBook • November 2019 • $134.50 • (£104.00)

Subjects: History / United States / 20th Century, History / Pre-Modern

US Diplomats and Their Spouses during the Cold War

Americans Looking down on Australia and New Zealand

Hardback

eBook

Summary

This study examines 324 oral history transcripts and explains the recruitment, training, and deployment of US diplomats. Amid growing feminist hostility to Foreign Service treatment of spouses, some couples resented postings to distant Australasia but most enjoyed a welcoming English-speaking environment. While New Zealand assignments involved complex negotiations with Pacific islanders, diplomats in Australia were powerless to control the geopolitics of the Indian Ocean, including the fortification of Diego Garcia and peace negotiations threatening US Navy access to the port of Fremantle. When the Australian Labor Party won power in 1972 the vulnerability of vital military and intelligence facilities alarmed the US more than opposition to nuclear ship visits that removed New Zealand from the ANZUS alliance in the 1980s. Notable exceptions to a principal focus on diplomats below the highest ranks are Marshall and Lisa Green. After meeting John Stewart Service in post-1945 New Zealand they remained for years his loyal defenders against the assaults of McCarthyism. Lisa's interview implicitly but decisively refutes allegations that, as US ambassador to Australia, Marshall plotted the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975. Despite persistent rumors of a CIA coup, declassified cables reveal resident US diplomats' hostility to the governor general's unprecedented action.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 276 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-4985-9179-9 • Hardback • November 2019 • $142.00 • (£109.00)

978-1-4985-9180-5 • eBook • November 2019 • $134.50 • (£104.00)

Subjects: History / United States / 20th Century, History / Pre-Modern

Author

Anthony J. Barker is senior honorary research fellow at the University of Western Australia.

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Prelude to Pearl Harbour: Joseph Grew versus Stanley Hornbeck

Chapter Two: The Eccentric and the Charlatan: Ministers Johnson and Hurley

PART TWO: POST-WAR INSIGHTS AND OVERSIGHTS

Chapter Three: Glimpses of New Zealand Through the Long Black Cloud of McCarthyism

hapter Four: Looking at Regional Variations in Backward Australia

Chapter Five: Overlooking Britain: American Hubris Adrift on the Coral Sea

PART THREE: IGNORING WHITLAM'S RISE AND WATCHING HIS FALL

Chapter Six: Overlooking the impact of the Vietnam War

Chapter Seven: Far from Real Friendship: Marshall Green and Gough Whitlam

Chapter Eight: US Diplomatic Hostility to Whitlam's Dismissal

PART FOUR: A TALE OF TWO OCEANS: ANZUS THREATENED, THEN DESTROYED

Chapter Nine: Ignoring Australia while Looking Down on the Indian Ocean

Chapter Ten: Staunching the New Zealand Disease in the Pacific

PART FIVE: FIFTY YEARS OF EVOLVING ATTITUDES TO RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER

Chapter Eleven: The Complexities of Racial Attitudes in Three countries and Two Oceans

Chapter Twelve: Looking for Class Conflict but Finding Bob Hawke

Chapter Thirteen: Denouncing Australian Sexism While Feminism Stirs the Foreign Service

Reviews

Making extensive use of previously-ignored oral histories, Anthony Barker has written a perceptive and fascinating account of the attitudes and experiences of American diplomats and their spouses in Australasia. Probing beyond the formal, elite processes of foreign policy decision-making, Barker uses personal histories to cast new light on diplomatic and political history. Written in an engaging and accessible style, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in the United States–Australasian relationship.
— Chris Dixon, Macquarie University

Give us the gift of seeing ourselves as others see us—a very important intelligence task, and Anthony J. Barker does us a service in trawling the oral and private written assessments of American diplomats in Australia. Barker explores the shifting power relations between Australia and the United States, demonstrating how Australia was very much an unequal ally in the 1930s and 1940s but became more important to the United States in the 1960s with the introduction of joint facilities. Barker has made an important contribution to debates about this diplomatic relationship, and his insights will be useful to scholars and politicians alike.
— Kim Beazley, Governor of Western Australia, served as Ambassador of Australia to the United States from 2010 to 2016

Anthony J. Barker is to be congratulated for his innovative approach based on 324 interviews conducted by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training of foreign service officers and their spouses who served in the antipodes to explore trans-Pacific relations.... US Diplomats and Their Spouses During the Cold War: Americans Looking Down on Australia and New Zealand will be consulted by historians and political scientists for years to come.

— Pacific Historical Review

This is an exceptional piece of work detailing the impact of American diplomats and their spouses on the trilateral relationship between the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.

— H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online