64

LETTER, DOWNER TO WILSON

Australia House, London, 21 April 1967

Secret And Immediate

I have received this morning the following message from my Prime Minister, and Mr. Holt is most anxious for you to read it as soon as possible.

(begins)

‘My dear Harold,

We are gravely troubled by what we have been told by Hasluck following his talks with George Brown in Washington of your intentions to make a complete military withdrawal from South East Asia.1 While this, as we understand your intentions, is to be phased over a fairly long period of years, it has implications which will take significant effect from the moment your intentions become known, and the consequences will be cumulative. Immediately it became known that Britain would be cutting its presence by half by 1970 and would be off the mainland altogether within eight years a chain of events will be set off damaging undoubtedly to British stature and interests and which might well be dangerous. I feel the decision you are making is so critical that I must put urgently before you my own thoughts in the hope that there is still time for further consideration by yourself and your colleagues. What I now say carries no lack of recognition of your own problems—the serious economic difficulties you are facing so courageously, the responsibilities you have in so many parts of the world—nor lack of understanding of the hopes you rightly cherish of a larger, more influential role on the European scene. But I have just returned from another visit to Asian countries, and what I have seen and learned confirms what I have previously tried to put to you about the great importance of a continuing British presence in this area of the world.

Despite the agony of Vietnam, the seemingly insoluble problems of India, the turbulence and restlessness to be found in much of the area, there is, I firmly believe, a new Asia emerging, in which we can all find hope for a brighter future. Perhaps time will prove me wrong in the judgement I have that the next century will be the century of Asia—but at least there is the encouraging prospect here of spectacular advance. I wish you could have shared my experience of recent weeks in moving around Cambodia, Laos, Taiwan and South Korea, feeling the friendliness, seeing the progress and sensing the drive for better things. I believe the Americans have sensed this, and are shaping their foreign policy accordingly. I also believe that, although this may seem to run against the current of a lot of modem thinking, Asia, for a successful transition to strength, stability and peaceful progress, will continue to need the moral, material, and even military help that the United Kingdom, the United States and countries like my own, Canada and New Zealand can give.

It is against this background that I ask you to consider the course to which, from George Brown’s statements, you appear to be committing yourselves. We do not urge that you carry indefinitely unbearably onerous financial burdens, either of a military or a material kind in this area. But I believe you have not fully realised the moral influence for stability, progress and democratic processes that British wisdom and experience—which must desirably be backed by a continuing British presence—can bring to the Councils of friendly, co-operating nations in this area of the world. I appreciate that you do not intend to tum your backs completely, nor retreat from either military assistance in time of peril, or economic aid, but I feel profoundly that you have wrongly assessed the attitudes of Asian countries to an actual presence where they tell us this is welcomed.

Your withdrawal could not fail to have a serious, and perhaps decisive, influence on the state of American opinion regarding the contribution they should be making in all the directions I have mentioned. My own country is willing to play an honourable and growing part in the tasks, the obligations and the responsibilities of the area. While this can be useful, it is small measured against the moral contribution that can be made by the United Kingdom with its great history, its long-established democratic tradition, and which is so widely held in high respect.

What I would put in concrete terms is that, whatever reduction you make in your military forces East of Suez, it should be neither intended by you, nor publicly presented, as a final withdrawal. Just as our presence with small forces has meant much to the United States in relation to Vietnam, so a continuing British presence, even on a reduced scale, will mean much to the future of Asia.

I know that there are other views strongly held questioning the wisdom of your continued presence on the mainland of Asia. But, looking at this matter not from the standpoint of Australian security and material welfare, but from a long Ministerial experience and much contact with other parts of the world, I sincerely believe you would be making an error which history would condemn if you were to plan, or even contemplate, complete withdrawal of your forces from Asia at this period of time. Future events may produce a different judgement but there is no compelling reason why a final judgement must be taken by you until the total picture is very much clearer than we can see it today. Even a settlement in Vietnam may make the focus clearer than we view it at present. But it would be a quite shattering blow to morale in countries which are successfully raising themselves to higher levels of independence and security, to feel that Britain had deserted them with uncertainties persisting as to how this action might affect the attitudes and policies of the United States and other friendly western powers.

At least I would ask that you give all of us time to consider these matters further and discuss them more fully with you, and, in the meantime, let no encouragement be given publicly by you or any of your colleagues to the belief that the United Kingdom has set its course irrevocably on the path of abandoning its physical presence in an area of the world which closely concerns three-fifths of mankind. So far we have only cabled reports of conversations to go on. It would be helpful if you would let me have your intentions and the thinking behind them.’

(message ends)

1 See Document 60, note 3.

[UKNA: FCO 46/53]