This chapter provides an analysis of the structure of love in Kierkegaard’s thought, which takes its most developed shape in Works of Love. This analysis will help us understand the four key elements of Kierkegaardian love that constitute it in its proper sense. The four elements of love are: repetition, time, commitment, and the good of the other. The overall argument in this chapter is that for Kierkegaard love necessitates a repeated, hence time-oriented, commitment to the good of the other. The object of this commitment is the other and that which is truly their good, which is their “abiding in love.”

Republican candidate Richard M. Nixon’s promise during the 1968 presidential election campaign to extricate the United States from the Vietnam War, combined with the loss of American domestic political support resulting from the January 1968 Tet Offensive, saw a fundamental change to how the war was conducted. The United States began a process of withdrawing their own combat forces and placing the burden for future combat operations on ARVN formations. While the Australian Government was aware of this change in policy, it was not actively included in American political deliberations and hence was unable to take an active position in the face of Vietnamisation. Left with no detailed guidance on the intended timelines for American withdrawal, the Australian Government could provide no direction to Army on the level of future commitment to the war, other than to reinforce the existing rhetoric that participation in the conflict remained vital for Australian national interests. In this policy vacuum, Army leadership concentrated on the military aspects of the war, with the CGS Exercises of both 1967 and 1968 exploring the implications of increasing the size of the force deployed to South Vietnam.

On 29 April 1965 the Australian Government announced the commitment of an Australian battalion to South Vietnam. Prior to the public announcement, discussions had taken place in Hawaii as to the nature of any future commitment in Vietnam. The staff talks, held early May to late April, were between the American Commander-in-Chief Pacific Command, Admiral U.S.G. Sharp Jr, an Australian delegation led by Air Chief Marshal Sir Frederick Scherger, and a New Zealand delegation headed by the Chief of the New Zealand Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Peter Phipps. The participants discussed broad American strategy and possible options as to where any future Australian and New Zealand forces could be deployed within the overall American design. Sharp strongly supported the concept of American forces being deployed in enclaves. He believed that the mere existence of American forces within these enclaves would deprive the North Vietnamese Government of an opportunity for victory and thus encourage them to begin negotiations. If the Australians and New Zealanders did deploy in an enclave, the Americans would provide all combat support capabilities (armour, artillery and air support) as well as the necessary logistic support.

At the Australia, New Zealand and the United States (ANZUS) security treaty council meeting in May 1962, the US Secretary of State asked the Australian Minister for External Affairs for a contribution of instructors to help the US training mission in South Vietnam. This approach was hardly a surprise to the Australian Government, as the US State Department had made similar approaches for military support to the Australian Embassy in Washington, DC in November and December of 1961. After some negotiation on the nature and conditions of the Australian commitment, on 24 May 1962 the Minister for Defence, A.G. Townley, announced that Australia was to deploy up to 30 military instructors to Vietnam.

In 1968 the dual operational requirements to conduct counterinsurgency and main force operations simultaneously also challenged the way 1ALSG provided logistic support to 1ATF. In 1966, HQ AFV and 1ALSG had constructed a logistic system to provide support to 1ATF centred on a static base at Nui Dat, with 1ATF conducting operations within Phuoc Tuy province. However, the events of the impending VC Tet Offensive in January to February 1968 would bring a radical change in how 1ATF operated, requiring 1ALSG to provide support not only to Nui Dat but also to a series of air-mobile operations and associated fire support bases (FSBs) established outside the province.

The announcement by Prime Minster Holt on 8 March 1966 to send a task force to South Vietnam represented an expansion of the policy associated with the initial deployment of the battalion group. While 1RAR was making an Australian contribution to the conflict, the small size of the force meant it had operational and political limitations. A battalion was too small to conduct operations independently from an American parent unit, reducing its operational flexibility and the political effect of the Australian involvement. Increasing the size of the Australian commitment to a task force would enable Australian forces to exercise their own operational doctrine. It would also placate some criticism that under American leadership 1RAR was suffering a disproportionate number of casualties compared to the American battalions – even if such criticism was unwarranted. Politically, a task force would mark a substantial Australian contribution to the war and thus further reinforce the Australian commitment to ANZUS.

The geography of South Vietnam posed particular challenges for the conduct of any military campaign. Dominated by a mountain chain that runs from the China–Vietnam border to just north of Saigon, the landscape comprises dense jungle in the highland areas flanked by a coastal strip on the South China Sea. South of Saigon, the Mekong Delta combines with the Mekong River to form a vast alluvial plain. The climate is either hot and wet or hot and dry, these conditions respectively producing excessive mud or debilitating dust. The climate also created tropical diseases in endemic and epidemic proportions, adversely affecting the health and efficiency of troops in the field and making medical treatment challenging since it was difficult to ‘preserve and maintain medical supplies and sophisticated medical equipment’.

In early 1967 the new commander of 1ATF, Brigadier Stuart C. Graham (succeeding Brigadier Jackson), planned and conducted a ‘classical’ counterinsurgency campaign. His focus on intensive patrolling, intelligence gathering, enemy logistics, political infrastructure, and the need to separate the civilian population from the influence of the VC were all elements germane to the British Army’s campaign during the Malayan Emergency. Graham emphasised the political and psychological nature of counterinsurgency warfare as opposed to the American approach of kill ratios and body counts, which he considered to be misguided. By the end of Graham’s tenure in October 1967, he believed that VC forces had either been forced out of Phuoc Tuy province or confined to their sanctuaries at the margins of the province.

The Australian Government’s involvement in South Vietnam was undertaken as a war of choice, driven by the desire to maintain the ANZUS alliance and keep America engaged in the defence of South-East Asia. While Menzies justified the Australian deployment in South Vietnam as responding to a direct threat to Australia from China, there was no Australian military assessment to support such an assertion. Since Australian national sovereignty was not at risk, the conflict did not require the significant economic and manpower commitments typically associated with the Second World War. Indeed, keeping the Australian commitment to the Vietnam War limited was the primary and recurrent aim of government policy. For defence planners and politicians alike, there was little other guidance, as the conflict suffered from a clear lack of aims in both Washington, DC and Canberra.

In 1962 the Australian Government deployed Australian military forces in support of the Republic of Vietnam. Before the cessation of combat operations and complete withdrawal in 1972, this commitment would escalate from an initial advisory team, to a battalion group, to a three-battalion task force with supporting armour, cavalry, aviation, artillery and associated logistics elements.After the war in Afghanistan, this would be the Australian Army’s second-longest conflict, lasting almost 11 years and surpassing the previous longest Australian commitment which was to the Malayan Emergency (1955 to 1963).

Who am I? Where am I going? These are two of the most fundamental questions facing young people during the transition to adulthood. However, these two questions cannot be dissociated: identity resolution is incomplete without a sense of purpose, but finding a purpose in life is difficult without a growing sense of personal identity. Thus, purpose and identity can be seen as dialogic components in the transition to adulthood; they are the two legs young people need to move, in coordination but not necessarily in simultaneity, for personal development and positive life trajectories.

This chapter explores purpose as a resource for identity development in emerging adulthood, and identity achievement as a catalyst for a stronger sense of purpose in life. It is structured in four parts. First, we will introduce the concept of identity exploration and resolution. Second, we will review the literature on purpose in life and its association with well-being and mental health. Third, we will discuss the relationship between identity and purpose, through the lens of commitment, as a bridging element between both constructs. Finally, we close with a conclusion on the need to provide young people with a set of skills and resources to help them navigate the transition to adulthood, understood as the acquisition of a strong identity and sense of purpose.

During development, cells sequentially lose their ability to differentiate into other cell types and become committed to different cellular states. This process can be described as a landscape in which the valleys are canalized one by one. This process of canalization is understood in terms of dynamical systems of interacting cells. In fact, as cells with oscillating gene expression proliferate and interact with each other, they differentiate into other expression states. Cells with oscillatory gene expression have pluripotency, either to replicate the same state or to differentiate into other cellular states, whereas cells that differentiate and lose their oscillations of expression simply replicate themselves, that is, they are committed. The proportion of each cell type is robust to changes in initial conditions and noise perturbations. Differentiation by protein expression dynamics is further stabilized by a feedback process of epigenetic modifications, such as DNA modification. The irreversibly differentiated cell state can be initialized to a pluripotent state by restoring an oscillatory state by forcing the expression of multiple genes from the outside, known experimentally as reprogramming.

The Introduction makes the case for privileging idealism in our accounts of Zola’s thought and writing, and, in turn for recovering the fundamental role it plays as a cornerstone of naturalism’s self-image. Exploring naturalism’s relationship to its chief antagonist can open up new perspectives on two thorny critical questions. First, how to grapple with the gap between naturalist theory, in all its dogmatism, and the experimental, even contradictory, nature of naturalist writing in practice. Second, how to make sense of Zola’s own eventual destination as the author of utopian novels (1899-1902), where the rhetoric of idealism, of the dream, surfaces as the best expression of the writer’s political commitment. Against prevailing accounts of Zola’s ‘late’ fiction as a product of subterranean, emotional, or instinctual impulses, the Introduction reframes Zola’s idealism as a strategic political and intellectual project.

When Australians woke on the morning of 13 October 1899 to headlines announcing war had broken out in South Africa, it must have come as little surprise. Since the collapse of talks between the Transvaal and Britain in June, war had seemed increasingly likely. The failure of these talks had prompted discussion, both in London and Australia, of the possibility of Australian contingents being raised and sent to South Africa in the event of war. A meeting between the six colonial commandants in late September to mastermind the raising of a united Australian contingent force collapsed in intercolonial bickering, but this proved only a minor speed bump. By the time the Boer ultimatum that made war inevitable was delivered on October 9 four of the six colonies had already received requests from London for troops, and the proposition was being openly debated in colonial parliaments. While there was vocal opposition from a minority, all six colonies ultimately agreed to send contingents to South Africa. It would be a small commitment for what was expected to be a short war.