• myGriffith
    • Staff portal
    • Contact Us⌄
      • Future student enquiries 1800 677 728
      • Current student enquiries 1800 154 055
      • International enquiries +61 7 3735 6425
      • General enquiries 07 3735 7111
      • Online enquiries
      • Staff phonebook
    View Item 
    •   Home
    • Griffith Research Online
    • Book chapters
    • View Item
    • Home
    • Griffith Research Online
    • Book chapters
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

  • All of Griffith Research Online
    • Communities & Collections
    • Authors
    • By Issue Date
    • Titles
  • This Collection
    • Authors
    • By Issue Date
    • Titles
  • Statistics

  • Most Popular Items
  • Statistics by Country
  • Most Popular Authors
  • Support

  • Contact us
  • FAQs
  • Admin login

  • Login
  • Defending Australia’s land border: The Australian military in Papua New Guinea

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    Moss524504-Published.pdf (206.1Kb)
    File version
    Version of Record (VoR)
    Author(s)
    Moss, Tristan
    Griffith University Author(s)
    Moss, Tristan E.
    Year published
    2021
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    Although no war was fought there after the defeat of the Japanese in 1945, Papua New Guinea (PNG) occupied an important place in Australia’s strategic thinking during the early Cold War. Not only was the island seen as a barrier to Australia’s enemies, it was also a potential base from which to strike the Australian mainland should it fall. During the 1950s it continued its position as a barrier to invasion against the threat of communist aggression from the north. However, with the Indonesian takeover of West Papua in 1962, Australia, for the first time, shared a land border with a potentially hostile nation, and when ...
    View more >
    Although no war was fought there after the defeat of the Japanese in 1945, Papua New Guinea (PNG) occupied an important place in Australia’s strategic thinking during the early Cold War. Not only was the island seen as a barrier to Australia’s enemies, it was also a potential base from which to strike the Australian mainland should it fall. During the 1950s it continued its position as a barrier to invasion against the threat of communist aggression from the north. However, with the Indonesian takeover of West Papua in 1962, Australia, for the first time, shared a land border with a potentially hostile nation, and when Indonesia embarked on its policy of Confrontation with Malaysia the following year, PNG was never far from Australian planners’ minds.1 As a result, throughout this tumultuous period PNG was closely integrated into Australian strategic thinking and wider planning in the event of a conflict with Indonesia, with Australian forces also drawing on experiences in Borneo against Indonesia to inform their preparations in PNG. At the same time, the Australian Army’s units in PNG had a clear peacetime role, helping to patrol the border, gathering topographical and human intelligence, and building relationships with the people on whom they would rely during any war or conflict.
    View less >
    Book Title
    Fighting Australia’s Cold War: the Nexus of Strategy and Operations in a Multipolar Asia, 1945–1965
    DOI
    https://doi.org/10.22459/FACW.2021.08
    Copyright Statement
    © 2021 ANU Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License, which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited.
    Subject
    Australian history
    History of the pacific
    Publication URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10072/410435
    Collection
    • Book chapters

    Footer

    Disclaimer

    • Privacy policy
    • Copyright matters
    • CRICOS Provider - 00233E
    • TEQSA: PRV12076

    Tagline

    • Gold Coast
    • Logan
    • Brisbane - Queensland, Australia
    First Peoples of Australia
    • Aboriginal
    • Torres Strait Islander