Vietnam War

Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War has been given many thoughts into why we became involved into it. Some examples of these reasons are the fear of communism and the domino effect, the forward defence policy and containment, and The ANZUS and SEATO then also the concerns over Indonesia.

The Fear of Communism overtaking Australia was one of the greatest concerns. The Vietnam War was a struggle between nationalist forces attempting to unify the country of Vietnam under a communist government and the United States attempting to prevent the spread of communism. America, Australia and other nationalist country forces were afraid it would overtake their country. People soon believed that the Domino Effect was a prediction that took place. The Domino Effect policy in place to predict which countries would fall in a domino like effect over communism. Australia saw this 'Domino Effect' would collapse the countries bordering Vietnam.

The Forward Defence Policy was another great concern to Australia being involved in the Vietnam War. The Forward Defence Policy was Australia's dominant defence policy between 1972 and 1997. The policy was focused on the defence of continental Australia against external attack. Under this policy the Australian Defence Force was tailored to defending Australia rather than developing capabilities to operate outside Australian territory. The Defence of Australia (DOA) policy was adopted after the previous policy of "forward defence" was discredited in the public eye by Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War. The policy was developed during the 1970s and early 1980s before being formalised in the "Dibb Report" in 1986. But, Containment was another policy that United States used to stop the spread of communism. Containment was a United States policy to prevent the spread of communism abroad. A component of the Cold War, this policy was a response to a series of moves by the Soviet Union to enlarge communist influence in Eastern Europe, China, Korea, Africa, and Vietnam.

Alliances were soon formed over the Vietnam War between Australia and United States and New Zealand, this was called ANZUS. The Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS or ANZUS Treaty) is the military alliance which binds Australia and New Zealand and, separately, Australia and the United States to co-operate on defence matters in the Pacific Ocean area, though today the treaty is understood to relate to attacks worldwide. The treaty itself was not a source of debate for 30 years, though in this period New Zealand and Australia committed forces to the Malayan Emergency and subsequently the ANZUS nations fought together in the Vietnam War. As part of the United Nations deployment, New Zealand and Australia had earlier fought alongside the United States in the Korean War. Also, the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) was