ABSTRACT
This chapter presents for comparative analysis the stories of events in the United States – Australia alliance relationship in which a putative military alliance was articulated into close cooperation within three war zones. The zones are: The war in Vietnam from 1965 to 1972, the UN sanctioned and Australian-led peace enforcement operation in East Timor between September 1999 and February 2000, and the 2003 Second Gulf War between the United States and its 'Coalition of the Willing' and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The chapter utilizes these three examples of Australian and American armed forces fighting on near and distant battlefields as a means of evaluating the changing context in which the Australia New Zealand and the United States (ANZUS) alliance, in the broadest sense, has drawn the two nations together against supposed 'common enemies'. Australia has been an acknowledged activist for many years in most aspects of global attempts to stem the tide of growth in armaments of all kinds.
