One day we are being tossed out of ANZUS, our nuclear-free policy the geopolitical equivalent of farting in church. A mere 23 years later, a new American President campaigning against nuclear weapons, singles out NZ and invites us to his nuclear security summit precisely because of our nuclear-free status.
As Terence O’Brien just said on Morning Report, the world has moved a long way in the last 23 years, in the direction of New Zealand’s rejection of nuclear deterrence.
Just to add to the weirdness, we now have a former Labour prime minister publicly suggesting it is time for US warships to visit our harbours, and a National Government underlining its support for the nuclear-free legislation.
It is perhaps not so weird. American warships have long been stripped of their nuclear missiles and nuclear reactors. All that remains in the way of American sailors experiencing the pleasures of Kiwi hospitality is their Government’s neither confirm nor deny policy. If the US is willing to publicly comply with it, and send ships that are acknowledged to be non-nuclear, why not?
There is a bigger issue lurking here though. I hope the enthusiasm for bringing back US ships is not a cover for trying to get us back into ANZUS which is still fundamentally a Cold War alliance based on nuclear deterrence. In the years since we left ANZUS, the world has changed and so have we. We have developed a more independent view of our place in the world.
The opportunity now is to springboard off our nuclear-free status and campaign alongside other non-nuclear countries for a new Nuclear Weapons Convention to abolish nuclear weapons, building political support for President Obama’s disarmament agenda, as Phil Goff called for this morning. Now that would really make us flavour of the month in the White House.
L
B 
UR – the nuclear free party! 
).
(and others like the Greens
Phil Goff was excellent on Morning Report, but I have my doubts John Key will live up to hoped for expectations. After all he’s on record as saying… he doesn’t remember where he stood on sporting contacts with Sth. Africa. I expect the same applies to nuclear warships entering NZ harbours. Both controversies were raging during the same decade.
“Phil Goff was excellent on Morning Report”
It was very rare when I was at univeristy for the Commerce students to join protests against springbok ytours or nuclear ships. I was a t university for the later. Neither commerce students nor foreign exchange dealers could be said to line up alogside us in great numbers.
Obviously the English students didn’t either.
Palmer is popping up all over the place, easing and smoothing the way for Key.
I don’t trust Key’s end-goal. If it is some sort of alliance with American business interests for other country exploitation (as in Iraq)then it becomes an even bigger problem for us, even now the publicity with our soldiers giving America some sort of public relations gloss, but tarnishing our pre-2009 even-handed, thoughtful and inclusive foreign relations goal.
I have never felt so insecure since this government and its hamfisted ministers started riding roughshod over New Zealanders’ positive attitude of working towards world peace – a world for people.
Someone needs to grab Palmer, fill him full of booze, and reeducate him!
if US ships are no longer nuclear capable, what’s the problem….
It’s a nasty world out there, and with growing populations with increasing expecations contention for resources could make things a whole lot worse in the future.
If there’s a world food crisis wouldn’t New Zealand make a good offshore farm for some overpopulated agressive state?
A New Zealand defended by a couple of frigates, four patrol boats, a couple of thousand soldiers and a few transport planes would be a pushover. It’s clear we need a few strong friends, just in case. So why do some people seem to want to diss the UK and the US at every opportunity?
I know little old NZ played its part in providing a couple of divs in WW2 (and I say that with great respect – my father fought alongside them in the Western Desert and at Cassino and no one doubts their courage), but if it hadn’t been for the US we would have almost certainly been overrun by the Japanese.
Yet only 2 decades before running amock in the Pacific, Japan was our ally.
Don’t be so stupid as to think that similar things couldn’t happen in the Pacific rim in the next couple of decades.
ANd if they did we’d be begging our cussies (US) and Mum and Dad (UK) to bring their military resources to our aid, because a stern resolution from the UN wouldn’t help us at all.
Palmer was misguided to talk about us changing our policy – he was effectively pandering to the hawks in the Pentagon.
The USA has NATO allies to do not have nuclear ship visits, yet because we do not – and openly said so via legislation -we were marginalised. We were singled out to send a message to Europe during the Cold War stand-off.
Now we are being rehabilitated to send a message about the administration’s non nuclear direction.
The ball is in their court, they can end the contact minimisation policy yet further if they want to – and ask to send a conventionally powered ship to visit. Such ships visit ports of NATO allies in Europe where nuclear powered ships do not visit.
Who exactly has the capability to project military power around the world to where we are, without being able to buy food if they do not have enough of there own – there is global market and free trade.
Ultimately, if defence co-operation is restored, the foreign policy issue is whether we return to ANZUS/formal defence alliance. And, if not, where the boundaries are drawn and why.
We have developed a more independent view of our world? Oh please. We are reliant on trade as a child is to his mother.
George, I understand what youa re saying but let’s also not forget that the USA was happy to sitont he sidelines in both WWI and WWII and make money off the war until IT was directly affected, particularly WWII. Let’s not be totally rose tinted in our recollections of our great saviours.
There are those who say Japan would never have entered the war and it may have been over well before dec 1941 if the US had joined in with everyone else in 1939.
SPC says: “Who exactly has the capability to project military power around the world to where we are, without being able to buy food if they do not have enough of there own”
The same could have been said of Japan in the 1920s. In fact many appeasers did take this view and look where than left the world…
I’m not suggesting that we engage in a massive defense spending programme, merely that we stop being petulant – as a default – to those who, if push ever had to come to shove, we’d look to to defend us.
In terms of political maturity we must appear at times like a stroppy know-it-all teenager who mouths off to his elders at every opportunity but who would run straight to Mum and Dad if the going ever got remotely tough. The Kevin of international relations!
Tracey – I don’t think I’m being rose tinted.
I didn’t say that we had to like our potential “saviours”, merely to acknowledge which side our bread’s buttered and stop being openly antagonistic towards them.
And as far Japan’s role in WW2 is concerned, they’d been kicking sh1t out of Manchuria for a decade before they hit Pearl Harbour, opposed by nothing more than a few toothless League of Nations resolutions.
If Manchuria had had a close relationship with the UK or the US I doubt whether they would have suffered quite as long or as hard.
We have a lot of shared background and history with two of the most powerful nations on the planet. Even in a time of peace it seems foolish to deliberately strain these ties. In a time of conflict it would be criminally negligent, but by then it might be too late.
Tracey brings up a really vital point. Sure the U.S.A helped us in W.W.2 but they did not honourably throw their support in as soon as the war began as we did and as alot of the rest of the world did. The U.S.A came in late in W.W.1 aswell.
Remember, Japan attacked Pearl Harbour, and it was not until after that when the U.S.A declared war, NZ and Aus were threatened by Japan before Pearl Harbour. The U.S.A entered the Pacific and the war with Japan on their own accord.
Americans only care about themselves. It’s one of the fundamental laws of humanity. To enter either great war the American people had to be convinced that their own safety was at stake. We, on the other hand, declared War on Germany straight away to defend France, Britain and Poland, even though we were on the other side of the world from Germany.
By the way guys, remember that the U.S.A is a nuclear titan. When Obama calls for these nuclear conferences he is not calling for the disarmanent of his OWN country. He is trying to get other countries to disarm because he thinks that the right to nuclear weapons is the supreme and sole right of the American people as has the president’s previous to Obama have thought. No, I’m not turning this in a negative light in any way, I am being absolutely technical.
If anybody shows me one piece of evidence on the net that Obama is suggesting America itself disarm aswell as other countries I will tip my hat to them.
I don’t see how New Zealanders could miss this point and are so happy about attending these ‘nuclear free’ conferences. The point of the conferences is to get America a greater proportion of nuclear arms than the rest of the world. If anybody here is really so proud of our Nuclear Free policy, then it is your duty to hate America with a passion.
Dylan, you will find the President has been quite openly reported as heading for a nuclear free world, perhaps ‘not in his lifetime’, but a goal never-the-less. I’m not sure that the very loose talk coming out of Johnboy at present is really helping, but it gets a few headlines at home which is all that matters to him. I wonder what David Lange would be saying now were he still with us?
…ANZUS which is still fundamentally a Cold War alliance based on nuclear deterrence.
Do you have the same view about NATO?
Personally I see the objectives of both of these alliances have fundamentally changed; away from state-to-state conflict, and into alliances focused primarily on collective protection from non-state terrorism.
George, I share your world view. I also believe the world is becoming a more dangerous place and the future is unpredictable and likely to be very different from the past.
Anything is possible in an over populated world that is running out of food, water and oil.
No countries have been interested in taking over New Zealand in most of our living memories (though my mother was a child during WW2 and remembers well how fearful people were of a Japanese invasion). Here in New Zealand we have enjoyed decades of peace and relative prosperity and have had the luxury of being able to take moral stands on things like nuclear powered American warships. I’m not sure we have that luxury anymore.
There is no guarantee that the Americans would come to our rescue if we needed help. But if USA warships were regular visitors to our country it may be somewhat of a deterrent to any country thinking of making us a convenient off shore farm.
As an aside- the American military put out a report a few days ago that predicted major oil shortages by 2015. Peak oil is a reality but our government seems oblivious. New Zealand is not at all prepared for what is to come. Interesting (and frightening) times ahead.
I don’t see that Phil, many countries not part of NATO are allies in the prevention of terrorism. NATO is a collective security organisation, originally set up to contain the Soviet Union, and now activated on an ad hoc basis as and when required – usually related to having a UN mandate (thus involved in liberating Kuwait and Afghanistan, but not Iraq).
To be realistic, whatever scenario one poses of some threat to us, no one could send a force to take New Zealand without going through Oz first, and they have a security relationship with the Americans.
The key factor for us, is if we have a mutual security relationship with Oz – so that we come to their aid if they are attacked (as they are the real front-line).
As to history, Manchuria was not a country it was an area of China, tolerance of its occupation of this area was based on their earlier war with Russia in the East (thus the willingness to allow them to threaten the Soviet Union).
After the betrayal of Poland by Stalin, sanctions on Japan were applied more seriously – this left the Japanese dependent on conquest to sustain their economy.
Dylan, the area of interest to us is the Americans changing the role for nuclear weapons in their defence strategy – this speaks to how they operate relations with other countries in defence matters.
I fail to see any realistic threat of some nation state trying to occupy Australia and New Zealand to control our resources. The countries with the (import) demand for them are earning the money to buy them and or use them to make profits on the global market – they have more to lose (in terms of economic growth serving that global market) than we do, if multi-lateral peace and free trade is lost.
SPC – your 8:51 posting seems to suggest that we get our security through an indirect relationship (via the Australians) to the US. Isn’t this an acceptance of the need for a security long stop without the dignity of having that relationship face to face?
Re your 8:58 post – I think that the tightening of sanctions was more to do with agressive acts within China that affected the US and their interests (the sinking of a US patrol boat and the shelling of Shanghai) than the reds helping Hitler to carve up Poland.
Re your 9:10 post – there was a similar vociferous minority in the thirties who thought that you could prevent wars by the good guys disarming. Although their rhetoric was pretty enticing it is fortunate that they didn’t manage to get their own way, otherwise we might all be saluting either a swastika or the rising sun today.
While removal of all these nuclear weapons is a good thing, the numbers that will be still retained will be enough to kill us all 10 times over, this pledge is hardly going to make a dent on the total amount of weapons still out there.
I haven’t read all the posts so I will say this.
Phil: yes it is all just “weirdness” and a little uncomfortable…almost as much as former Labour & National Ministers being responsible for misleading investors in the Lombard saga.
I don’t really care who pushes the issue, all I want is to remain nuclear free and hope that the rest of the world will, in my lifetime, become nuclear free too. I don’t mind nuclear power for energy, but for war it is no no no.
I have no issue with US ships coming into NZ provided they have no nuclear arms capability.
In terms of the US being the great saviour of us all – well, they are. They spend all their money on military might….ask all their poor people, they will be the first to tell you how hard done by they have been by respective US administrations.
So it is with great reluctance that I accept we do need them as we are tiny, would not be able to fight our way out of a paper bag, and they are MASSIVE.
However, I do not like the US as a nation in terms of its history. They have no moral compass, are all about number one – both WW1 & 2 being classic examples along with Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, the Gulf War & Afghanistan. They are all about their interests – especially where money & oil is involved.
While there are clearly a lot of ideological differences between our political parties in NZ, I do like the fact that overall we have always been consistent since the 4th Labour government in terms of wanting to remain nuclear free and not getting involved in wars that have nothing to do with us (or the rest of the world), but still being quick to put our hands up to help restore stability, democracy and hopefully peace.
“Labour & National Ministers being responsible for misleading investors in the Lombard saga” At least that meant the news coverage wasn’t politically biased.
I agree with nuclear free, but power isn’t without its risks, and let’s face it in the event of a meltdown we have no where to flee
And with the Main Island covered with waste we henceforth we became known as Monster Island 
But even the greenies in Europe are now reassessing their views on nuclear energy, I believe, as a least bad alternative for something that is an absolute necessity (power generation).
Any views on how long it will be before our lot follow suit?
George: Never. Nuclear is last century technology. There is a whole lot of untapped potential with light energy that will probably be developed in the near future.
Nuclear is last century technology.
A couple of articles that suggest that some leading environmentalist don’t believe this, and have had Road-to-Damascus-like conversions:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4836556.ece
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/nuclear-power-yes-please-1629327.html
George – there are other ways to get power without putting us all at risk
Spud “let’s face it in the event of a meltdown we have no where to flee”…..was that a pun?
In terms of not minding nuclear energy – I should have added so long as it is not in NZ!
Like Hilary has said, it is so “last century” and there are plenty of other wonderful and safer alternatives – e.g. wind farms! God knows there is enough wind!!!
I’m curious, what pun?
The somewhat giant oil reserves in our southern waters will keep US very interested. We have allowed Muldoon to let US interests get involved way back then and further ground has been gained by US oil in a venture since.
Japan was allied to NZ during the WWI and escorted our ships away. At the end of that war when the spoils were shared out Japan got nothing. NZ and US divied up Samoa. Japanese interests were desperate for land at the time.
Japan has had a long relationship with Hawaii and much of the Polynesian population have some Japanese decent.
Helen Clark was a professional politician with long academic training and apprenticeship in the dark years of Labour being hijacked to the right, and radical right in some policies during the 80s.
She was uneasy about any involvement with US military interests as are many US citizens.
Even Dwight Eisenhower warned of the US economic/military power and dangers to democracy posed by this machine. We have seen Vietnam, Iraq and many other interventions by the US war machine.
The greatest casualty is truth.
During the Vietnam war all NZders had available was US propaganda played along by Holyoake who defended the totally unjustified insurgence of the US into Vietnam for minerals. The great Commie scare was abound as an excuse. Even the president of the US was alarmed at developments. Not until National was booted out was NZ able to gain its senses. Kirk withdrew our forces.
Helen played her hand well and did not let NZ be active in US led combat during her time as PM.
John Key has done just that – smiling.
His statement on terrorism again aligns NZ with the US war.
911 was the excuse but now this is not only seriously questioned but growing evidence puts US in shame over the WTC demolition.
The question of why some middle east groups are hostile to US interests is pretty easy to see. US and Britain have a long history of interfering with middle east politics for their own ends – oil.
We should not get mixed up with that and Helen was astute enough to guide us away from foolish involvement.
John Key and National are back to their old tricks of following the US military machine. Why? Perhaps that is a question to which only speculation and provide consistent answers.
“Gone by lunchtime” was a revealing episode and consistent with many other moves to impose US style structures here without asking NZders. Just who are our “leaders”. Who are our masters – is it the voter.
Does she/ he know what is happening.
George
1. I would put it that Australia is our front-line defence and just as they steal our skilled workers with no compensation to us we can bludge off them in defence matters. So long as their relationship to the USA holds “our” front-line we are OK.
The only question is whether we formally recognise this with a formal defence pact while we are not in ANZUS.
2. Sure Japan moving south away from Russia was not justifying the earlier tolerance for their occupation of Mnachuria as a smart move.
3. arming by defence alliances causes war (acts of deterrence, getting in the first attack as the enemy is under-going a military build-up).
There is no purpose to us engaging in an arms-build-up we cannot afford and have no need to be involved in – we have a very low security risk (being behind an OZ-USA alliance shield).
It would be more appropriate for us to engage in advocacy against security by armament (does the world really need the developing nations to spend up on weapons – we certainly gain no economic advantage from that unlike weapons producers).
We can best do that maintaining our anti-nuclear weapons position (we have no need for nuclear power and the environment risk that poses) and our multi-lateral collective security tradition. The concept of a rules-based international activism which provides for the protection of nation states mitigates the need for arms build-up and the tensions that brings within regions of the world.
That approach would serve us better as we face peak oil and water and food issues in the decades ahead.
The concept of a rules-based international activism which provides for the protection of nation states mitigates the need for arms build-up and the tensions that brings within regions of the world.
Gee, that sounds just like the League of Nations.
Pretty sure I wouldn’t want my freedom from tyrany resting on rules-based activism.
George, if the only historical lesson you can learn from is one of the 1930′s, the 21st C is going to be a long one.
The world is not a safer place if more people have more weapons. That is one message from news of this week (albeit in the matter of nuclear weapons alone). It is, if an organisation established for the purpose of the collective defence of nation states (as one was in 1945 – the only time more leaders gathered in the USA for a discussion on this topic).
The whole of history up to and including the present shows that unless you are strong, or have strong friends, you’re liable to be walked all over if a beligerant state wants what you have.
Organisations such as the League or the UN have done nothing to change this.
Describing the world and reality as you wish it was may give you a smug warm feeling but it doesn’t, unfortunately, change the way things actually are.