Shifting Priorities: Australia's Defence Ties to Britain in the Aftermath of Empire

For the best part of two centuries, the defence of the Australian continent was almost entirely dependent on the global supremacy of the British navy. The decline of British sea power, particularly in the years after the Second World War, was therefore highly unwelcome in Australia, and brought recurring difficulties in the Anglo‐Australian relationship. Most scholarship to date has focused on the two symbolic moments of British capitulation in Australia's region – the fall of Singapore in 1942, and the decision of the Wilson government some twenty‐five years later to withdraw all British forces from east of Suez. A familiar picture has emerged of overstretched British governments reluctantly cutting their losses in the Far East, while Australian governments applied every means at their disposal to persuade the British to stay. But this picture fails to take into account the impact of the decline of British power on Australian strategic thinking. An examination of British–Australian defence relations in the immediate aftermath of Wilson's ‘East of Suez’ policy shows that the Australian government not only recognized the necessity of Britain's withdrawal, but also regarded the Conservative Party's threat to reverse Wilson's decision as potentially inimical to Australia's interest in the region. For the first time in modern Australian history, Australians questioned the traditional precepts of imperial protection as a possible liability rather than the keystone of their survival.