In Memoriam: Denis Warner
By Michael Richardson, Published The Straits Times, 31 Jul 2012
EVEN before I arrived in Singapore in 1971 to report on Asia, I had on my shelves books written by Denis Warner or co-authored with his wife, Peggy. They were a goldmine of information, explanation and analysis.
By the time the Warners had finished writing books on Asia, at least a dozen had been published, often to critical acclaim. Their books were widely read, as were Denis' reports from Asia as a foreign correspondent for newspapers and magazines in Australia, Britain, the United States and Canada.
On hearing that Denis had died recently, Mr Richard Woolcott, a former head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade who has represented Australia as a diplomat in many South-east Asian capitals, described Denis as a "a guiding star of Australian journalism" and a man of "great integrity".
Denis and Peggy were married in June 1945. Peggy died in September 2010, after they had celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary in June. Denis died on July 12 this year. In the post-Pacific War era, with Asia in ferment, the Warners lived and worked in the region for many years. For a time, they made their home in Japan and Singapore.
In the course of his long career as a foreign correspondent, Denis developed contacts in high places both in Australia and Asia. One of them was Singapore's prime minister and later elder statesman, Mr Lee Kuan Yew.
Denis told me that he remembered going to a party in 1955 given by the Singaporean lawyer and politician, the late David Marshall. Mr Lee and some other people were there, including several foreign correspondents. They clustered around Mr Lee, discussing the outlook for Singapore.
According to Denis, Mr Lee was pessimistic about the future, saying there was a serious risk Singapore would become a communist republic. Denis asked what Mr Lee would do in that situation.
The man who would become leader of a non-communist Singapore four years later, in 1959, and stay at the helm as the small island-state blazed from Third World to First World status in barely a generation, shot back: "Oh, I expect I'll be a petty functionary denying visas to foreign correspondents like you!"
Denis told me that he got to know Mr Lee well in the dark and uncertain days following Singapore's expulsion from the Malaysian federation in 1965. Mr Lee invited him around to his home and talked to him for three hours about the problems facing Singapore. Afterwards, Denis kept in regular touch with the Singaporean leader, often seeing him on his way to and from Vietnam and other parts of South-east Asia.
On hearing of Denis' death, Mr Lee wrote to the family saying that the news had caused him great sadness. "We shared similar views and became great friends," Mr Lee said. "He had a grasp of events in the world and understood what was going on."
Denis was born in New Norfolk, Tasmania, on Dec 12, 1917, a year before the end of World War I. In World War II, he served with Australian forces in the Middle East from 1941-1943. After being discharged from the army, Denis became a war correspondent.
The initial phase of Denis' career focused on the Allied push to recapture Asia-Pacific territory seized by Japan and to force a Japanese surrender. The next, much longer, chapter involved coverage of the Cold War in Asia and its consequences, as communist and anti-communist forces struggled for control in many countries across the region.
Established governments battled guerilla insurgents, subversion and armed propaganda. This shadowy form of warfare, with its undertones of coercion, blackmail and terrorism, was something Denis became remarkably skilled at reporting and explaining.
I want to highlight two aspects of Denis' work, which was often supplemented by Peggy in their long partnership.
One was their role in educating Australians about Asia and in helping to break down the barriers that divided Australia and Asia. The other was Denis' reporting of the Vietnam War through its full course.
The Warners' work helped to unravel and illuminate Asia for Australian and other foreign readers. It bridged the knowledge gap, and thus the psychological divide, between Australia and the region.
Australia was anchored to Asia by geography. But until the early 1970s, Asia was held at arm's length by a White Australia policy that discriminated against Asians and made it difficult, if not impossible, for them to settle in Australia.
Denis and Peggy were among the first Australians to understand Asia, its strategic significance and its importance to Australia. They were prominent in a group of Australian writers and activists who helped to bring the White Australia policy to an end and usher in an immigration system that no longer discriminated on grounds of race.
As a result, Australia has been transformed into a vibrant multi-ethnic and cosmopolitan society. As Asia started its rapid economic ascent in the late 1970s and 1980s, this transformation enabled Australia to integrate more closely with the region, leading to a huge expansion in two-way trade, investment and people-to-people exchanges.
In the introduction of his memoirs, Wake Me If There's Trouble, Denis summarised the astonishing change in Asia's geopolitical and economic landscape: "The end of the Pacific war," he wrote, "lit the fires that drove the Western colonial powers through the emergency exits. Against the background of the Cold War, revolutions, insurgencies and other wars marked the beginning of the new era…
"Then, out of chaos and confusion and conflicting ideologies, came a renaissance, an industrial transformation, unpredictable, exciting and as dramatic as the revolution that took Europe from sail to steam and later into the jet age.
"From the depths of defeat, from which it once seemed it might never recover, Japan rose to shine even brighter than the rising sun in the economic sky. Singapore grew from a crumbling colonial slum into a new Manhattan on the Strait of Malacca. Little tigers stepped from the economic forests in South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
"Suddenly China, home for more people than there were in the entire world a century ago, joined in the economic chase. Everywhere there has been change, most of it for the better."
This was the Asian tapestry that Denis so meticulously disentangled, analysed and chronicled over the decades. However, although Denis was an accomplished writer of books, he was first and foremost a field reporter in Asia. He made his name as a war correspondent, especially in Vietnam.
Why was this? Because Vietnam was different from World War II. It was a guerilla war, usually without front lines, and with few controls on the movement of journalists or censorship of their reports.
It was not a conflict dominated by set piece battles and entrenched fighting positions as were World Wars I and II. These were wars that favoured the military censors, prompting US Senator Hiram Johnson to observe in 1917 that: "The first casualty when war comes is truth."
As the Vietnam War progressed, journalists' accounts were also published or aired with unprecedented speed, thanks to modern communications. Independent-minded reporters like Denis were in their element in Vietnam.
Denis' dispatches were widely read by the readers of the newspapers and magazines he wrote for. In addition to Britain's Daily Telegraph, they included at various times Reuters news agency in conjunction with the Australian Associated Press, AAP; the Melbourne Herald; and the US magazines, Reporter and Look, for whom Denis wrote long, in-depth and authoritative pieces.
His reports from Vietnam and other parts of the region were closely scrutinised by officials because he was often better-informed than they were.
Denis was candid and clear in his analysis and assessments. Jules Roy is the author of The Battle of Dienbienphu, when French colonial troops in 1954 were defeated by North Vietnam's guerilla army.
Roy wrote that in July 1963, "Denis Warner, the Australian journalist, told me how astounded he was to find the American generals in South Vietnam deluding themselves with the same false optimism the French generals had professed during the first Indochina war. Warner… had just returned from a trip through the villages and rice paddies of the Mekong Delta south of the capital.
"Warner noted sadly that the Saigon government's position was crumbling there just as rapidly under the hammer blows of the Viet Cong guerillas as the French position in the Tonkin Delta in North Vietnam had eroded under pressure from the Vietminh insurgents in 1952."
The end came in April 1975, when Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong. Was it all in vain, those long years of fighting, death and injuries suffered by South Vietnamese and foreign troops in Vietnam? It certainly seemed at the time to have been a disastrous defeat for US-led forces.
When I was the Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune based in Singapore, I asked Denis to write a series of articles reflecting on the events he had covered in Asia. One of the articles in the series is particularly relevant to Denis' Vietnam reporting. It appeared in April 2000 in both the IHT and The New York Times to mark the 25th anniversary of Saigon's takeover.
In it, he argued that the fight in Vietnam had bought time for the non-communist countries of South-east Asia to strengthen themselves, and concentrate on reform and economic development, so that by the time the Vietnamese communists emerged victorious in the Vietnam War, the South-east Asian "dominoes" stood firm instead of falling, as Hanoi's propagandists predicted would happen.
Instead, it was the communist-led states of Indochina - Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia - that were economically shattered. They had to accept peaceful co-existence and later join non-communist Asean.
In the article, Denis quoted Mr Marshall Green, the US ambassador to Indonesia in 1964-65 as the country was threatened by an armed takeover from a local Indonesian Communist Party with three million members and 10 million sympathisers supported by China.
Mr Green had written that a "successful Sino-Indonesian alliance would have created a great communist pincer in South-east Asia, with the largest and fifth largest countries in the world enclosing not only Vietnam but also the vulnerable countries of mainland South-east Asia".
After reading the article, Singapore's Mr Lee wrote to Denis to say that the piece had given him great satisfaction.
"You put it well," Mr Lee said. "I was, and still am, convinced that if LBJ (then US President Lyndon B. Johnson) had not got US forces to stay in Vietnam in 1965, but had bowed out, the will to resist in South-east Asia would have melted.
"The Thais would have yielded to the seemingly inevitable, and Malaysia and Singapore would have been chewed up. Indonesia would also be overtaken."
Mr Lee added: "What a joy and a relief to have a living witness speak out the truth, although it is unpopular with the liberal media."
The writer is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
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