Caroline Page

The Vietnam War was the first war that Australia and New Zealand fought without British combat involvement, and it signalled a radical realignment of their foreign policies - towards the United States and away from Britain. The propaganda campaign needed to justify this new foreign policy departure was, therefore, particularly important. This volume focuses on the efforts of the Australian and New Zealand Governments to `sell' the deeply divisive Vietnam War, and their combat involvement in it, to their respective populations. It examines the propaganda campaigns conducted, and assesses the reasons for the successes and failures of those campaigns. It also evaluates the official rhetoric on the war, comparing this to both the private views held by government officials, and the type and amount of information that these officials received from their own sources and those of the U. S. administrations and UK governments. Australasian Propaganda and the Vietnam War examines the impact of this controversial conflict on these countries, and its legacy for Australian and New Zealand foreign policies and the whole region.

In recent decades, advances in communications technology, coupled with international conflicts and societal upheavals, have again highlighted the importance of the use of propaganda by both state and non-state organisations in the international arena. This book explores the dimensions of propaganda, in both theory and practice, using examples such as the Bolshevik campaigns and the Gulf War to illuminate its possibilities and limitations as a foreign policy tool.

United States involvement in the Vietnam War was one of the most important events in the post-World War II period. The political, social and military consequences of US involvement and defeat in Vietnam have been keenly felt within the US and the international community, and the ‘lessons’ learned have continued to exert an influence to the present day. This book focuses on the effects of US propaganda on America’s Western allies – particularly France, West Germany and Great Britain – from the time when the Vietnam War began to escalate in February 1965, to the American withdrawal and its immediate aftermath. One of its main aims is to assess the amount and veracity of information passed on by the US administration to allied governments and to compare this with the level of public information on the war within those countries.