New Zealand bans US navy

To put it charitably, it is rare to see New Zealand, that remote and beautiful country, headlined in American newspapers and on the television networks' evening news and I'm sure that the oldest living employee or ex-employee of the New York Times cannot remember a photograph of any New Zealand prime minister ever making the front page.

Whatever is to happen to the political career of Mr David Lange, he ought to get a photocopy of the New York Times's front page for Wednesday 6 February 1985 and frame it and keep it in his study for his old age, when he can peer at it and say to his grandchildren, 'Chillun' there were giants in our parliament in those days!'

Well, this astonishing novelty has come about because Mr Lange, who's been in office only seven months, refused to allow an American navy destroyer to make a port call in New Zealand next month. This is because the Americans, on principle, will never say whether any of their ships at sea are carrying nuclear weapons or even if they are propelled by nuclear power.

Anyway, the previous New Zealand government of Sir Robert Muldoon was willing, like Australia, to have American nuclear-bearing ships visit its shores as a procedure in keeping with the so-called ANZUS Alliance which was created so long ago as September 1951 in a mutual defence pact between the three countries.

We've not heard much about this alliance lately but when that pact was signed 33 years ago in San Francisco, it was hailed by Australians and New Zealanders alike as the guarantee of an American shield over the huge Pacific. The binding article said each party recognises that an armed attack in the Pacific area on any of the parties would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes. In other words, the Three Musketeers – all for one, one for all. At the time.

Only six years after the end of the war in the Pacific, this was an immense relief to the Australians and the New Zealanders and a handsome recognition of their fighting contribution to the Second World War which was larger in proportion to the population than that of the other Western allies. And, since then, there's been hardly a ripple of disturbance in the relations between the three countries.

New Zealanders, it's worth reminding Americans and, for that matter, Britons, not only fought with Americans in Italy with heavy losses and under American command against the Japanese in the Pacific and in the United Nations war against North Korea, but also were the first non-American forces to go into Vietnam. More than any other of the Commonwealth peoples, I think, the New Zealanders have been most plainly loyal to their British heritage and most responsive to the Pacific alliance with the United States.

Well, now, an American destroyer would like to pay a call and Mr Lange says, 'No thank you!' And the Reagan administration declares that the refusal has precipitated a foreign policy crisis and a matter of grave concern. The visit of the destroyer Buchanan was not just a courtesy call of a ship on remote patrol, it was to mark the end of joint naval exercises next month by the United States, Australia and New Zealand. After Mr Lange's rebuff, the exercises have been cancelled and, now, a question that President Reagan and Australia's prime minister Mr Hawke have to decide is whether the United States and Australia should plan a naval exercise without New Zealand.

Mr Hawke happened to be in Washington when Mr Lange fired his shot across their bows. If he hadn't done it then and waited awhile, I think the main item of news to come from the Australian prime minister's visit would have been that Australia does not want to let American aircraft on its soil to monitor some MX missile tests that are to be held in the Tasman Sea. Would that have been ballooned into a matter of grave concern? Evidently not, because no sooner had Mr Hawke been welcomed here than the White House announced that, as a matter of logistics, it wasn't absolutely necessary to do the monitoring on Australian territory. The Pacific is wide enough and there are other places from which it can be done.

So, therefore, the United States has yielded a point to Mr Hawke because there are people in his Cabinet who see red or nuclear involvement at the mention of the MX missile. Not, though, at other cooperation with America, which Australia provides abundantly on its own soil by way of ground stations that regularly monitor Soviet nuclear tests and one important ground station that is going to pick up information for the interception satellite launched by the latest space shuttle, Discovery.

Now, of course, the 1951 treaty had in mind mainly naval and aerial attacks in the fashion of the Japanese in World War Two. We always, inevitably, try to forestall the next war by prohibiting the methods of the last one. Treaty or no treaty, Australia has had no difficulty helping the United States in these other powerful ways, but mention the MX and there are, as we know, thousands, perhaps millions of people who see themselves as a signed-up combatant of the United States and a target for the Russians.

I think we can say that Washington handled Mr Hawke's anxieties with sensible diplomatic speed, but its handling of Mr Lange is another thing. The New York Times calls the furore 'baffling' but the administration should have recognised the first baffle plate in Mr Lange's electioneering promise – it was a crusading point with him – that, if elected, he would keep all nuclear devices away from New Zealand. The issue of port calls by American ships came up then. It's true that White House people in the know about New Zealand – and they're pretty thin on the ground – fully expected that Sir Robert Muldoon would be, as usual, unstoppable.

But, surely, once Mr Lange had pulled his surprise election, there should have been fairly quick calls, if not conference calls, between the navy, the Pentagon, the White House and Wellington? Surely, it could have been quietly agreed not to have the destroyer visit New Zealand – the exercises could have taken place, presumably with nuclear-propelled vessels, at least between the three nations, but comfortably away from New Zealand's islands? And thus, the alliance would have been unruffled and Mr Lange would have been seen to keep his country hygienically protected from the nuclear infection.

I doubt the thing would have been blown up to be a matter of grave concern if somebody – it's not clear at the moment who – had not advised the president to threaten horrendous retaliations, such as...

Well, it came out that one or more administration officials, trigger cocked the moment Mr Lange spoke, began to look into suspending all security intelligence with New Zealand, ending New Zealand's trade preference in its main exports, lamb and wool. I'm surprised one of the Californians in the White House didn't add kiwi fruit. For some time there's been a very lively battle going on between the California kiwi growers and the New Zealand importers – and, also, unlocking for sale on the world market all those millions of pounds of American butter and cheese that American farmers have been subsidised to produce in order to store for rotting purposes. You'd think Mr Lange had just signed a treaty of friendship and mutual protection with the Soviet Union.

At any rate, the body of opinion of people outside the administration is that the administration didn't take Mr Lange seriously during his election campaign, acted too late and overreacted too quickly. It is the administration's massive reaction that has turned this little difficulty into a matter of grave concern. For it has advertised to the world a small tiff with one American ally as if it were a thundering break in the democratic alliance and one country that will surely take the incident at the administration's over-valuation is the Soviet Union.

The administration will then be right to say that this has come at a bad time, just before the Geneva talks on arms control, for the Russians would be missing a trick if they didn't convey to their readers and listeners that the ANZUS Alliance is only one of the security treaties, like NATO, that the United States negotiated in the early 1950s as a bulwark against the threat of Russian and Chinese Communism and, of course, that's right!

There is an historical irony in New Zealand's and Australia's original motive for signing the ANZUS mutual defence pact. The Americans wanted it as a Pacific shield against the rise of Communist states there. In September 1951 we were all in San Francisco covering the drafting and signing of the peace treaty with Japan. The Australians and New Zealanders were not bothered over much about the spread of Communism through their part of the world, but they were worried, as the Westerners were not, about the possibility that Japan, once freed from her hangdog status as an ex-enemy, would repeat her gift for outstripping the West in the things the West does well, like navies and, now, surely, atomic power.

So, the Australians and the New Zealanders joined the Americans in the mutual defence pact as insurance against not a Chinese or other Communist attack, but against the chance of a reinvigorated Japan.

I wonder how they're taking all this in Japan? I should guess, with courteous and well-concealed amusement, because, as we all know, Japan is now America's strongest ally in the Pacific. THE dependable ally against any warlike intentions from Communist China. So the Japanese allow American nuclear weapons and American nuclear monitoring stations? They do not. Long before Mr Lange, they officially banned all nuclear weapons.

So why isn't there a Japanese crisis? Because the Japanese choose not to enquire whether any visiting ship does or does not carry nuclear materials. Simple.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

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