Backbencher

The Cold War has been a topic that I have been interested in for a long time. The book, “Menzies and the Great World Struggle” had to do with the Cold War in Australia, and focused on the Australian Prime Minister from 1949 Robert Menzies. The feeling in this book was generally what people think about when they imagine the Cold War. Australia as well as other nations like the United States were very weary of Communist powers around the world. China as well as Russia posed threats to Australia, and a lot of what Menzies did was targeted at safe guarding the country of Australia. Menzies was crucial in coming up with many different policies including an alliance with the United States and New Zealand called ANZUS. The ANZUS treaty was a military alliance which bound Australia and New Zealand and, separately, Australia and the United States to cooperate on defense matters in the Pacific Ocean area, though today the treaty is understood to relate to attacks in any area. Another defensive action that Menzies brought about for Austrlia was the joining of SEATO. SEATO or the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization was an international organization for collective defense that was signed on September 8, 1954. The organization was created to block further Communist gains in Southeast Asia. One of the points in the book that I found most interesting was that Menzies really had to push for the realization and recognition that it was necessary to take measures to protect the country of Australia. People didn’t want to accept that war was imminent and the times of peace were over, for that time at least. The high court as well as a referendum actually denied him constitution powers to treat the Cold War as an actual war like WWI and WWII. Menzies did not see anything positive about Communism, and actually probably made Communism seem worse than it actually was to the people of Australia so he could get them on his side. This book was very informative and also very interesting because of the Cold War topic. I have read books on the Cold War from an Amerian standpoint, and it was really insightful to see how the Australians dealt with the threat of communism in their area of the world.