Diplomatic Tangles

Three Duties and Talleyrand’s Dictum: Keith Waller: Portrait of a Working Diplomat
by Alan Fewster
Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2018, 312 pages, $39.95
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Alan Fewster has written another diplomatic biography. A former diplomat and journalist, he is suited for the task, following his biography of Sir Keith Officer in 2009. He attempts to capture the essence of biography: to surmise on character and the subject’s relationships with others amid the span of the subject’s life and times.

Sir Keith Waller (1914–1992) joined the External Affairs Department in 1936. His overseas postings included Chungking, Rio de Janeiro, Washington, Manila, London, Bangkok, Moscow and lastly Washington again, interspersed with increasingly senior roles in Canberra. He served as its secretary, from 1970 to 1974, exchanging with Sir James Plimsoll, who replaced him in Washington. Waller had a flair for management whereas Plimsoll was deemed an unreflective administrator.

Fewster did not plough a lonely furrow as Waller wrote an autobiography and many of the same source notes were retrieved from our National Archives and the National Library. Much material is replicated, so it is coherent, yet often inchoate, from the blizzard of detail he had to surmount. The title is an awkward mouthful, yet he somehow dovetails it by the book’s end.

Waller’s wartime service in Chungking was heroic. Among other officers, he flew on perilous flights over “the hump” (Himalayas) from China to India. But for an educated man, Waller was unenlightened in his lazy racism towards Charles Lee, who joined the chancery and served for a record eight years in China. Lee was a filter and a popular conduit to a myriad of Chinese for his language skills.

A posting to Washington as ambassador is the apogee of a diplomatic career, for Waller was the first professional diplomat to be so appointed. He had working relationships with Johnson and Nixon, but less than he would have liked to share with Nixon. The Whitlam years (1972 to 1975) challenged the relationship and strains were apparent. The Nixon administration was slow to acknowledge the sudden impact of the change on the political landscape. Gough was not anti-American per se. He observed that some of his ministers were disappointed that the US did not live up to its great ideals.

The book has a restrained narrative drive but its structure and pace are often unwieldy and not always syncopated in workable time lines, being somewhat clunky and chunky. Chapter 17 on our information arm (“A mere propaganda tool”) is not juxtaposed. The history is fine but it segues on until 1975, whereas Waller retired in 1974. His attachment to the Hope Commission is documented as it describes the turf battles between Foreign Affairs and Defence on the latter’s claim for overall primacy on strategy. Alan Renouf also shared those concerns, not wishing to cede all departmental authority for the over-arching foreign policy implications of national security policies, political intelligence and any assessment of threats to Australia.

Now what of Alan Renouf, Waller’s replacement in early 1974? Recall that Keith Waller was appointed to Washington as ambassador in 1964. Sir Arthur Tange was later exiled to New Delhi, whereas he would have preferred America. Waller was available and suitable. Decent man that he was, Tange’s passage to India was celebrated by many staff. He had stayed too long at the fair. I was present, in 1974, when Alan Renouf, as the new secretary, exhorted his officers. He used the French term équipe. Renouf sought renewal after Waller’s tenure, urging that all staff should now be “retooled”. To work on the street of a thousand artisans?

The most compelling theme of the book is on Sir Keith Shann, whom Waller boosted. Renouf was sympathetic to Labor and his Bulletin “job application” (January 6, 1973) coyly disguised as a paean to Evatt, was not a handicap to his selection over his peers. Nor was his congratulatory overseas telegram to Gough after the 1972 election. His remorseless lobbying trumped senior competitors. Whitlam was adamant.

Philip Flood quickly replaced the incumbent secretary, Michael Costello, when the Coalition returned in 1996. The late ambassador Geoffrey Price dismissed Costello as a juvenile, but he was not delinquent, for his adult work on Cambodia and APEC, as he was well supervised by his minister, Gareth Evans. Flood made a gracious tribute in affirming his predecessor’s honourable legacy. Philip was an able administrator and was well regarded by his staff. It was an honour and a privilege to work for him, for his inspired leadership. He had John Howard’s confidence, being politically neutral. Diplomacy is as internecine as ecclesiastical politics. It is a blood sport where sudden hand moves should be avoided.

Poor “Mick” Shann. Adroit and flamboyant, it was neither his time nor his place. Fewster cheerfully avoided any deep immersion in the Wilenski papers at NAA, which would have afforded his analysis more context. No discussion of Labor’s denunciation of the Nixon administration, over the renewed 1972 Christmas bombing of Hanoi, can be sustained without examining all the files. In 1973, Peter Wilenski, in his demi-official correspondence, wrote to his colleague, Stephen FitzGerald, in Peking: “Shann … has turned more and more bitter and … reserves his greatest blame for what has happened to his future (quite unjustifiably) on me and Dick Woolcott.” Ouch!

As to Talleyrand’s dictum, applied by Woolcott, Rawdon Dalrymple gently chided his peer on his misuse of it as n’ayez pas de zele (Quadrant, June 2003). Dalrymple stated it should be n’ayez pas trop de zele (do not be overzealous). Fewster privileges: Surtout, pas trop de zele (above all, not too much zeal). Despite these minor quibbles, frankly, in diplomatic parlance, Alan Fewster has written an interesting book.