President Nixon, signaling retreat in Vietnam, announced in 1969 that the United States would continue to provide its allies with a nuclear umbrella, but would expect them to do more for themselves. Coming on top of British withdrawal East of Suez, the Nixon Doctrine led many Australians to question the value of alliances. Entanglement with the US, they argued, meant that Australia acquired enemies solely by virtue of the fact that they were America's enemies.
The questioning of 'forward defence' in the wake of the Vietnam war gave the notion of defence self-reliance official standing, expressed in the conservative Fraser government's defence white paper in November 1976. Noting that the European colonial powers had withdrawn from Southeast Asia, and that the US had disengaged from the Southeast Asian mainland, the white paper narrowly delineated Australia's area of prime strategic interest. This was defined as Australia's adjacent waters, the countries and territories of the Southwest Pacific, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and the Southeast Asian region.
In future, rather than basing its policy on the expectation of sending forces abroad to fight as part of some other nation's force, Australia would concentrate on defence self reliance. The 1976 white paper said that "we do not rule out an Australian contribution to operations elsewhere if the requirement arose and we felt that our presence could be effective, and if our forces could be spared from their national tasks. But we believe that any operations are much more likely to be in our own neighborhood than in some forward theatre, and that our Armed Services would be conducting joint operations together as the Australian Defense Force".5
The Hawke Labor government, elected in 1983, commissioned Dr. Paul Dibb to redefine the concept of self-reliance outlined in the 1976 White Paper. Reflecting the Labor government's political imperative of not wishing to remain hostage to the interests of 'great and powerful friends', the 1986 Dibb review represented the global balance as having few consequences for Australia.
The 1986 review concluded that Australia could provide for its own defense, after some reordering of priorities. The review said that "we have an obligation to provide for our own defense, and our defense forces would not be freely available for other situations that the United States might consider as in the general Western interest. Each situation would have to be considered on its merits at the time and in the light of our own defense priorities".6
The review's emphasis on continental defense caused alarm in the United States because it could be read as wanting to take Australia out of the US alliance, from which New Zealand was already in the process of defecting. In Washington, the Dibb review was seen as outlining a vision of Australian defence independent of the United States, which would weaken the global alliance structure on which American security depended, and in which Australia played an important part.
