Canberra, 6 April 1971
Personal Secret
The need to provide some comments in reply to points raised in your letter of 26 March2 provides me with the opportunity to say how much we have valued all your reporting on the progress of American thinking on China issues and how much we will rely on more of the same in corning months. Inescapably, given that we are a small wheel on this issue, our policy operations on this issue are neither startlingly original nor fast-moving. Nevertheless, we have every reason to be grateful for the input we have received from you and from the Embassies in Taipei and Tokyo; and we are conscious that this input has often depended on sometimes inadequate guidance and instructions from this end.
Your letter requires comment in two particular respects. In the first place, we are very glad to have received from you further insight into Ambassador Brown’s conversation with Mr Gorton, on which we have also had reports from Hugh Dunn and, under the counter, from the United States Embassy here. You may be sure that we will provide full protection to Feldman in respect of the Canberra records.
Secondly, the remarks towards the end of your letter about the dangers, on the one hand of falling behind the Americans and on the other of possible erosion following adoption of a dual representation resolution, can best be answered, somewhat indirectly, by telling you for your own information the background to, and some of the argument of, a further Cabinet submission which is at the moment being considered by Mr Bury.3 As to the background, we have all along been deeply concerned that the Americans would leave us behind, but this concern related to the wider issue of the development of some sort of accommodation with Peking rather than to the relatively narrow one of representation in the United Nations. It was because of this concern that the Policy Planning Group’s Cabinet paper4 sought to open up the whole range of options so that, in the wider ranging discussions on China policy which might eventuate, our representatives would be able to discuss the hitherto unthinkable.
When we get down, however, to the more immediate issue of the representation of China in the United Nations, slightly different emphases apply, and these come to the surface in the draft submission. In its present form, the draft first rehearses, in summary, the talks we had with the Americans and New Zealanders here and the subsequent talks Brown had in Taipei and Tokyo. It then discusses, in terms which I am sure would be pretty familiar to you, the Japanese and United States positions, bringing out at the conclusion of each of these discussions the extent of the uncertainty about the durability of the respective positions. In respect of Japan, we have pointed to grounds for believing that for various reasons the Japanese may prefer not to be too closely linked with any United Nations formulas. In respect of the United States, after referring to the recommendation you have reported the Secretary of State as making to the President, and to the reasonably clear commitment of the United States to the defence of the ROC and its position in the United Nations, we express mild qualifications about the intentions of the United States in the longer term, and suggest that in that term it is striving to keep open all possible options in its relations with the ROC and the PRC.
Although the drift of our draft recommendations will already be clear to you from the listing of these qualifications in the argument of the submission, I think I should explicitly say that we have proceeded to express agreement with the United States assessment that a dual representation formula offers better prospects than any other of furthering our policy objective of preserving the ROC’s membership of the United Nations if it so desires. For this reason we go on in our draft to seek Cabinet’s authority to pursue with the United States, Japan and New Zealand the consultations already opened into forms of dual representation and other possible resolutions. We also recommend that, while participation in the projected further consultations in Washington tends inevitably to lead to a commitment to support whatever formulas may emerge, our representatives should stress that at this stage our participation is without commitment.
To revert to the argument of the submission, our draft goes on to warn that new tactics based on dual representation may run into greater difficulties than American calculations of voting patterns suggest, if not at the 1971 General Assembly then in later years. We substantiate this warning by very much the same arguments as Hugh Dunn touched on in paragraph 5 of his telegram 213. In our draft this warning leads to the conclusion that Australia should avoid being too prominent in wider advocacy of alternative formulas. We should try to minimize the risk that our position and activities on the representation issue might unduly prejudice our longer-term chances of establishing some form of dialogue with Peking as well as upsetting our existing relations with the ROC. In short, the belief is expressed that in our efforts to support the position of the ROC, we, like Japan and the United States, should endeavour to retain the maximum scope for manoeuvre. This argument, of course, has its direct reflection in the recommendation section.
At this point I do not feel that I should say any more, although I do have David Anderson’s authority to give you and Hugh Dunn this general background. I shall try to keep you informed of our progress, even if my hope to be able to let you see the results of our labours (just as you have seen the PPG product) may not bear fruit.
I am sending a copy of this letter to Hugh Dunn.
[NAA: A1838, 3107/38/18, vii]
- 1 J.L. Lavett, Counsellor, Australian Embassy, Washington.
- 2 Lavett had, inter alia, given Robertson an account of the US record of conversation between Brown and Gorton, as shown to him in confidence by Feldman, and had closed with two warnings: that Australia was in danger of falling behind the United States, insofar as the latter would inform rather than consult, and, secondly, that the possibility of eroding support in the United Nations was real even if a Dual Representation formula was passed initially. The second point was made in the context of an expression of support for comments by Dunn as related in paragraph 5 of his Cablegram 213 (26 March). Dunn had argued that it would be risky to rely wholly on a dual representation formula the support for which might soon be eroded. He believed that the aim of ensuring a place for the ROC in the United Nations would be best served by an attempt to have passed some form of an Important Question resolution.
- 3 Draft not published.
- 4 Document 149.