Creation
The FESR originated from a June 1953 letter from Harold Alexander, the British Minister of Defence, to Philip McBride and Thomas Lachlan MacDonald, his equivalents in Australia and New Zealand, respectively. The letter suggested the creation of a joint military force based in South-East Asia and tasked with protecting strategically important Commonwealth interests in the region, such as Malaya, Sarawak, North Borneo (the three nations later combining to become Malaysia), and Singapore, from the threat of attack by communist forces. The freeing up of military resources following the end of the Korean War was another factor.
Correspondence between the defence ministers of the three nations and their subordinates led to a meeting in Melbourne, Australia during October 1953. From this meeting, it was decided to create the FESR: a multinational force consisting of Army, Navy, and Air Force units from the three nations' armed forces. It was not until 1955 that the Reserve was established.
Read more about this topic: Far East Strategic Reserve
Famous quotes containing the word creation:
“There’s something wonderfully exciting about the quiet sing song of an aeroplane overhead with all the guns in creation lighting out at it, and searchlights feeling their way across the sky like antennae, and the earth shaking snort of the bombs and the whimper of shrapnel pieces when they come down to patter on the roof.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)