Australia Cold War

The conclusion of WWII didn’t mark the termination of wars and conflicts in a global perspective; as a result, Australia’s involvement in wars had perpetuated through various foreign conflicts and confrontation. From 1945 to mid 1970s, Australia’s perception of aid and support towards copious world powers, namely US and UK had resulted in our involvement in pivotal Asian conflicts from the northern sector to the Pacific war. However, was the driving force behind Australia’s military participation within the Asian region an initiative to please her constituent? Or was there an agenda for Australia’s government to please the major powers? In order to analyse this proposition, it is substantial to examine the role of Australia in major Asian conflicts
The apparent accusation between Soviet Union’s spread of communism and US’s ‘imperial’ control over European countries (NATO non-aggression pact), further reiterated by disarmament and ideological differences, paved the road to the Cold War crisis (historydiscussion.net). In a bi-polar world dominated by the United States and Soviet Union, Australia was unequivocally aligned with US and the ‘free world’ against the Soviet Union and ‘international communism’ (M. McKernan and M Brown, 1988, p. 296). The tumultuous nature of Korea within the world politics during 1950s became the tipping point of Cold War. The United States and the Soviet Union divided responsibility for the country between them at the 38th parallel (rslnsw.or.au). The war began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea. The superior North Korean forces were on the verge of conquering all of South Korea when United Nations forces intervened. In terms of the social and political climate in Australia, the growing ‘Red scare’ that infected the Australian political life saw the transfer of power from Chifley’s quasi-socialist governance to Menzies’s conservative Liberal Party-Country Party coalition during the poll election in 1949 (A. MacDougall, 2012, p. 422).