The afterword offers a coda to the volume, without addressing individual essays’ achievements individually. Rather, it reflects on how the essays reconceive the problem of Cold War liberalism as a category less in Atlantic intellectual history or political theory than in the history of the foreign relations of the American hegemon after World War II. The contemporary renaissance of Cold War liberalism suggests that pondering how it arose and dominated in the first place will continue to teach useful lessons about its senescent phase, which is unlikely to end soon. Someday geopolitical transformations will bring into being a different enough world than the Cold War liberal one that emerged in the middle of the twentieth century. Until then, the meanings and outcomes of Cold War liberalism will demand investigation, and this volume will play a pivotal role in an ongoing referendum on how contemporary politics came about, and on what should happen next.

This chapter examines the ideological origins and political impact of the American concept of the “free world.” From the late 1940s to the early 1960s, “free world leadership” served as the organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy. Although American officials imagined the “free world” as the self-evident expression of international liberalism, they defined it negatively as equivalent to the entire “non-communist world.” Cold War liberals’ persistent failure to fill the “free world” with positive content forced them to maintain a series of inflexible and ultimately counterproductive positions, including an intolerance of nonalignment, a commitment to global containment, and an axiomatic insistence on the enduring and existential nature of the Soviet threat. Although the “free world” mostly fell out of circulation after the 1960s, the logic of the concept has continued to underpin an American project of global “leadership” that derives its purpose and extent from the prior identification of a single extraordinary threat.

If anyone is worthy of the title of “Cold War liberal,” you think it would be the celebrity journalist and public philosopher Walter Lippmann. Lippmann coined the phrase “Cold War” in 1947 and had long been considered the guru of modern liberalism. Yet Lippmann was a harsh critic of containment and, by the time of the Vietnam War, considered himself a “neo-isolationist.” He was also self-identified as a conservative by the Cold War era and was an outspoken critic of New Deal “planning.” Lippmann’s career highlights the problem of talking about “Cold War liberalism” in the singular. At the same time, there were few greater champions than Lippmann of a large military establishment and an expansive welfare state that typified Cold War liberal orthodoxy.

The final decade of Sarah Wambaugh’s life would see her appointed technical advisor to the allied-run mission to observe the sensitive Greek elections of 1946, as well as to the soon abandoned plebiscite in Kashmir several years later. However, in Greece Wambaugh’s expertise now stood in contrast to new scientific sampling techniques, while she would keep silent about the fact that women were not allowed to vote, in a bid to support the anti-communists who won the election. Meanwhile her normative rules for the plebiscite would be dispensed with as not culturally relevant by those planning the vote in Kashmir. The chapter ends with an examination of the first UN plebiscite actually held, in British Togoland in 1956, and with the 1955 referendum on the proposal to turn the Saar into a Europeanised territory. Both operations eschewed many of the heavy normative principles which Wambaugh had developed for the plebiscite.

The Australian Army’s commitment to the war in South Vietnam unfolded gradually over several years. It commenced with the deployment of the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV) in 1962, followed by the arrival of a small Australian force headquarters in Saigon and the 1 RAR battle group in 1965, and completed with the establishment of the 1st Australian Task Force (1ATF) in 1966. The task force initially consisted of two infantry battalions with supporting arms and services, deployed to Nui Dat in Phuoc Tuy province under the operational control of the US II Field Force Vietnam (IIFFV), and a logistic element at the nearby port of Vung Tau. As 1ATF operated separately from the established Australian Army divisional structure, it received additional intelligence resources that would not usually form part of a task force, including a detachment of the Divisional Intelligence Unit and a small signals intelligence capability. In addition, the headquarters of 1ATF had assigned a senior intelligence officer of major rank, a captain intelligence officer, and a small battle intelligence, or order of battle staff.

Journalist and historian Mark Dapin argues that ‘every stage of Australia’s Vietnam War has been misremembered and obscured by myth'. This is not unusual. Much of Australia’s military history is coloured by storytelling and the perpetuation of legends. Several myths, legends and falsehoods have also grown around the conduct of operations of the Australian Army’s intelligence personnel during the war in South Vietnam. These range from simple fabrications and ‘storytelling’ to an attempt to deflect criticism from those responsible. One of these relates to a particular allegation of torture and the mistreatment of a prisoner by Australians during the Vietnam War.

When hostilities in the Second World War ended on 15 August 1945, the Australian Army became responsible for an area extending from Nauru and Kiribati in the east, through to Sulawesi and Borneo to the west, and including the Solomon Islands, Timor, New Ireland, New Britain and New Guinea. Army Intelligence Corps members supported each army formation's headquarters through detachments of the Allied Translator and Interpreter Service, Field Security Sections, Air Liaison Sections and Army Air Photographic Interpretation Units. Each army headquarters and infantry battalion were also supported by its intelligence sections, often commanded by Australian Intelligence Corps officers, with other ranks from one of the arms. In addition, Intelligence Corps personnel continued to operate several specialist intelligence units that supported the army even while reducing in strength.

At the end of January 1968, the VC and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) launched their Tet Offensive, a series of coordinated attacks on more than one hundred towns and outposts in South Vietnam. These attacks aimed to foment rebellion among the South Vietnamese population so that they would revolt against the corrupt South Vietnamese regime and break the United States’ resolve before peace talks. In response to this offensive, the US and South Vietnamese forces commenced a massive operation, Toan Thang (Complete Victory), which aimed to destroy the remaining enemy involved in the Tet Offensive and prevent fresh enemy forces from moving towards the capital, Saigon. In these objectives neither side obtained complete success. In April 1ATF became part of this operation with its infantry battalions conducting ‘reconnaissance-in-force’ operations to block enemy infiltration routes. In May, the task force changed its concept of operations by deploying several units outside Phuoc Tuy province into Area of Operations (AO) Surfers, which had been sub-divided into battalion areas of operation Manly, Newport and Bondi. Artillery located at Fire Support Bases Coral and Balmoral would support these tactical areas.

The action at the Long Tan plantation on 18 August 1966, about six kilometres east of the Australian base at Nui Dat, was the Australian Army’s most significant and costliest single-day battle during the Vietnam War. Eighteen Australians died in action, and 24 were wounded. Over the years, several myths and accusations have emerged about the battle. This includes the role of some senior officers, the number of enemies that faced the Australians and the number killed, and even the timings of the battle. Some of these myths were reinforced, and new ones were created through the Danger Close feature film. Among the myths and accusations are claims of an ‘intelligence failure’ and post-war statements by the task force commander, Brigadier Oliver Jackson, that he did not have good intelligence. From an intelligence perspective, the various claims related to how a large enemy force could have approached within a few kilometres of the 1ATF base at Nui Dat without the task force’s intelligence detecting it.

After the Second World War, the Australian Army changed from one mainly comprising part-time citizen soldiers to a new generation of Royal Military College-trained officers and professional soldiers, and it witnessed the reraising of the Australian Intelligence Corps. As such, it became part of the army’s first combat deployment of the new Australian Regular Army and its transition from jungle warfare to occupation duties in Japan, to conventional action in Korea (1950–53), and then back to jungle warfare and counterinsurgency operations with the Malayan Emergency, Konfrontasi with Indonesia and the Vietnam War. The Cold War was also dominated by Australian Army operations in a combined arms and joint environment, operating as part of a multinational force and often within a multinational command organisation.

There can be little doubt, and it is arguably conventional wisdom, that the role of intelligence in the Malayan Emergency was critical to the success of the British counterinsurgency campaign against the Malayan Communist Party (MCP). Indeed, according to the author and unaccredited ‘official historian’ for the Emergency, Anthony Short, ‘intelligence was the key that locked counterinsurgency in place’. This view is endorsed by Lieutenant-General Harold Briggs, the Director of Operations (1950–51). He emphasised the importance of intelligence in his plan for the counterinsurgency in Malaya, known as the Briggs Plan. Briggs’s replacement was General Sir Gerald Templer, a former British Army Director of Military Intelligence (1946–48). Templer was well versed in intelligence processes and understood that an integrated and efficient intelligence system was ‘undoubtedly one of the greatest battle-winning factors in counterinsurgency warfare’. More recent authors argued that the Emergency had a far-reaching influence on the development of military intelligence. Historian Rory Cormac, for example, concluded that the Malayan experience marked the beginning of the need for coordinated intelligence assessment by integrating all intelligence resources, civil and military, and ensuring all sources were exploited.

On 18 August 1971, the Australian Prime Minister, William McMahon, announced that Australian forces would commence a phased withdrawal from Vietnam. In effect, this phased withdrawal had already started. When 8 RAR completed its tour in October 1970, the Australian Government decided not to replace it. By then, Phuoc Tuy province was quiet, and the enemy was close to being defeated. The two VC battalions that had operated in Phuoc Tuy, D440 and D445 Provincial Mobile Battalions, were significantly understrength and had either left the province or become inactive; highway 15, the main supply route through Phuoc Tuy from Saigon to Vung Tau, was open to unescorted traffic; the people increasingly separated from the VC; and both VC and NVA were suffering from low morale and severe food shortages, and had difficulty recruiting from within the province. The task force’s intelligence teams reinforced this picture through analysis of captured enemy documents and the interrogation of prisoners, which ‘told of shortages of men, key cadre, food, medical supplies, ammunition and weapons’.

The Korean War has been called the quiet war fought by a silent generation. Perhaps, more correctly, it should be described as the most remembered ‘forgotten’ war in history, with Google listing about 18,600,000 results. Indeed, aspects of the conflict have been forgotten. Even 70 years on, the literature is quiet on intelligence, with few historians or authors even discussing intelligence's role. Battlefield intelligence has been almost entirely neglected, except for the occasional mention in some American and British regimental histories. As Australia played a minor role in the Korean War, it is unsurprising that the part played by the Australian Army’s battlefield intelligence has hardly been mentioned.

There were two fundamental problems that the commander of 1ATF, Brigadier Oliver Jackson, had to deal with when the task force was established at Nui Dat. The first was the presence of main force enemy in Phuoc Tuy province. The second was the VCI: ‘the extortionists, the terrorists, the standover men, [and] the tax men’. This infrastructure provided a shadow government and support network for the North Vietnamese military and VC local forces in the south. Most villages and towns had representatives of this network – men, women, and children – who provided a recruitment base for the VC, an intelligence network, a supply service and various other forms of support. The VCI enabled the enemy to conduct operations in the south. While it was the National Police, ARVN and associated paramilitary forces that were responsible for its destruction, this proved to be beyond the capability of the Saigon government.

Psychological and civil affairs operations in Vietnam, while very different in scope, resource requirements and primary objectives, were also of specific interest to the intelligence staff of 1ATF. The former had the dual aims of countering VC propaganda while appealing to the ‘attitudes, vulnerabilities and susceptibilities’ of the local population to persuade them to accept and assist the South Vietnamese authorities and Australian forces. In this way, it aimed to attack the enemy’s morale and induce them to surrender. The latter sought to complement the former and support the Australian Government’s foreign policy objectives in Vietnam. From an intelligence perspective, both aided in what is now called the Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace, which built an extensive database on each operational area’s environment, including people, terrain, infrastructure and the level of VC support in each village. The information collected also covered ‘sociological, political and economic aspects which when related to the enemy can indicate his strengths and weaknesses’.

Historians, academics and military officers have viewed the Malayan Emergency as an exemplar of how counterinsurgency warfare should be conducted. Numerous studies and authors dissected British operations in Malaya during and in the aftermath of the war in South Vietnam. They looked for parallels with Vietnam and why Vietnam failed while Malaya was a success. In recent years, some authors have compared the Emergency with British and American operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, British troops studied the Malayan insurgency of the 1950s before deploying to Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in 2006. According to Australian historian Professor David Horner, the Confrontation with Indonesia was ‘one of the most successful applications of military force in a low-level conflict since the Second World War’ but has been largely ignored and has attracted a dearth of scholarly interest. This has been particularly evident in the role of the Australian forces generally, and especially the Australian Army’s intelligence services.

This book evaluates and defines the contribution made by the Australian Army’s combat intelligence services in supporting the force commander during operations in the Cold War (1945–1975). Its primary focus is on the Australian Intelligence Corps, with a secondary emphasis on the intelligence teams and staff attached to the infantry battalions and on the headquarters of deployed army formations. It focuses on the roles, organisation, administration, training, doctrine and performance of the army’s tactical intelligence in the field to achieve this. It also explores the ability of intelligence systems to mature, adapt to technological change, and work within a coalition force. It also examines some of the more prevalent myths and criticisms of battlefield intelligence services during service in South Vietnam. It argues and explains why the various intelligence teams and systems were imperfect. Their members made mistakes, and, at times, their prejudices and biases unduly influenced their analysis. They were also generally understaffed, poorly prepared, trained and equipped for their duties. However, this study shows how they proved resilient, adaptable and capable of providing a high level of support to the force commander, whether the commanding officers of the Australian battalions in Korea, Malaya or Borneo or the task force commanders in South Vietnam.

By the end of the Second World War, the Australian Army’s intelligence system had evolved into a diverse, highly specialised and efficient system involving around 4000 men and women, including Australian Army positions within allied intelligence organisations. The war had highlighted the importance of maintaining a regular intelligence force that could monitor the development of foreign armies, share intelligence with allies and develop Australia’s signals intelligence capability. However, its future development was part of the broader reform of Australia’s post-war military forces and its existing military commitments in Australia’s region. It may seem unusual to include the occupation of Japan in a study of the combat role of the army’s intelligence. However, the occupying armies, including the Australian Army, deployed as a fighting force, supported by their nations’ air forces and navies and fully equipped to deal with a broad spectrum of conflict.

From 1945 to 1975, the Australian Army always served overseas as a junior partner in a coalition, usually as part of a British Commonwealth force. This was the case during the occupation of Japan and the Korean War and under British command in Malaya and Borneo. However, the Vietnam War highlighted several problems for the junior partner in an American-dominated alliance. Relations remained cordial throughout the war in South Vietnam, especially at the individual level. However, stress points soon emerged that had the potential to damage the relationship and adversely affect intelligence collection, analysis and sharing.