How Did The Vietnam War Influence Australian Imperialism
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Writing in March 1943, Johnson linked Australia’s “deep-distrust” of US foreign policy to its fears of “the stark terror of unemployment … when peace comes.” He felt that “Australian industrial leaders are already looking to the future and the needs of the newly developed Australian industrial machine with fear, and distrust the principles of the Atlantic Charter.” The Charter, like Article VII, committed the Allies to the principle of free trade; from the Australian perspective this would give America, as the leading economic power, the ability to dominate, as Frederick Eggleston, Australian Minister in Washington explained, in comparing the US economic superiority and adoption of free trade to Britain in the mid-nineteenth century:
America is in the same position as Great Britain was then, and the same urge is showing itself. It cannot be sufficiently realised that in a situation where one power is immensely superior to all others, econom¬ically free trade is the short way to economic imperialism.…show more content… In February 1942, as Chifley explained, the Curtin government had pushed for Britain to sign the Lend-Lease master agreement despite the commitment to free trade but, as Australian fears of Japanese invasion declined, so too did the government’s acceptance of American pressure. The pro-Commonwealth Round Table journal had recognised that American aid, although indispensable at the time, would come with conditions, in an article published as early as July 1942:
The conditions under which this indispensable help has been received and the obligations we incurred on that account have not so far aroused much public interest. We wanted help badly and took it without question wherever we could find it. The terms and conditions could be thought about later. The immediate question was the war on our