12 - In the Shadow of War: New Zealand and Vietnam

Summary

Introduction

The history of relations between New Zealand and Vietnam since 1945 is punctuated most dramatically by the period in the 1960s and 1970s when New Zealand was drawn into direct military participation in the Vietnam War. As a consequence, Vietnam is the only country in Southeast Asia which, for a time, provoked heated domestic debate about some of the most fundamental features of New Zealand foreign policy. It is also the only nation in the region whose existence in its current political form as a unified communist-led state was actively opposed for several decades by the New Zealand government. Yet, for all the drama associated with participation in the Vietnam War, interaction between the two countries after 1975 reverted to the mutually limited interest which had generally characterized bilateral relations prior to the early 1960s. Indeed, from 1978 to 1989, the only prominent issue in the bilateral diplomatic relationship related to a third country, because of Vietnam's invasion and ongoing occupation of Cambodia. As had occurred during the Vietnam War, New Zealand's policy on this issue was not driven by bilateral concerns but by alliance considerations — in this instance, principally relations with the ASEAN states. Since the 1990s, the relationship has settled into a more common pattern of New Zealand's evolving interaction with Southeast Asia, involving more diverse forms of engagement which are centred not so much on politics and security but primarily on trade, investment, export education, and immigration.

The First Indochina War: 1945–54

As was the case generally for Southeast Asia, developments in Vietnam drew little interest from New Zealand in the immediate post-war years. Even after the First Indochina War broke out in 1946 between the communist-dominated Viet Minh and France and its local allies, there was no discernible New Zealand policy towards Vietnam for several years thereafter. Only from 1949 did New Zealand policy-makers begin paying closer attention to the fighting there. This burgeoning interest in France's colonial war in Indochina reflected broader shifts in Wellington's thinking about regional security and coincided closely with American and British concerns about the conflict, though tempered by practical qualms about direct New Zealand involvement. Officials in the New Zealand Department of External Affairs opposed communist control of Vietnam, but they were dubious about the strength and legitimacy of indigenous non-communist forces there.