TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/85/85capts.19

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                                                                                February 18, 1985

ALLIANCES

Big Flap Down Under


A dispute between New Zealand and the U.S. weakens the ANZUS
pact


The first foreign policy dispute of the second Reagan
Administration bubbled to the surface last week from two
improbably spots:  New Zealand and, to a lesser extent,
Australia. What had begun last year as a policy by New
Zealand's new Labor government to establish the country as a
nuclear-free zone was suddenly transformed into a threat to the
33-year-old ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, U.S.) defense pact
between Washington and its longtime allies in the South Pacific.

The trouble dates from Last July, after New Zealand's new Prime
Minister, David Lange, 42, led his Labor Party to victory with,
among other promises, the intent to ban port calls by nuclear-
powered or nuclear-armed vessels. The proscription applied to
all foreign shipping, but it really meant U.S. naval vessels.
At first it appeared that the matter could be compromised or
finessed without great difficulty. U.S. Secretary of State
George Shultz told Lange in Wellington last July that the U.S.
would refrain from sending any naval vessels to New Zealand
ports for six months or more. According to U.S. officials, the
New Zealanders in turn assured the Americans that the problem
could be settled to everyone's satisfaction by then.

It did not work out that way. Shultz was convinced that
Lange's frequently stated intention of remaining within ANZUS
meant that the Prime Minister would find a solution. After all,
Lange had told Shultz that he endorsed a U.S.-New Zealand
communique signed by the previous New Zealand government. The
statement affirmed that "defense cooperation, including combined
exercises, visits and logistical support arrangements, plays an
essential part in promoting mutual security."  Instead of
rebuffing his party's anti-nuclear wing, however, it soon became
apparent that Lange was siding with it. In late December, the
U.S. sent a blanket request to New Zealand for port visits
required for U.S. vessels in 1985. Lange replied that he
preferred to deal with such matters on a case-by-case basis.
To U.S. policymakers, that suggested that the Prime Minister had
painted himself into a corner and did not know how to get out
of it.

Finally, on Jan. 21, deliberately seeking a confrontation, the
Reagan Administration sent a routine request to Wellington
asking for permission for the U.S.S. Buchanan, a destroyer, to
call at a New Zealand port during the ANZUS military exercise,
named Sea Eagle, planned for March. The Buchanan is a
conventionally powered vessel, but since the U.S. refuses, by
long-standing policy, to state whether a particular ship is or
is not carrying nuclear weapons, the New Zealand ban effectively
applied to it.

Frustrated that quiet diplomacy had failed to bring Lange
around, the U.S. decided to try public pressure. It might have
known that this would be counterproductive. Several weeks ago,
Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke had written to Lange urging
him, in effect, to moderate his antinuclear position. Hawke
had faced a similar threat from antinuclear forces within his
own Australian Labor Party but had managed to stave off efforts
to prevent U.S. Navy ships from visiting Australian ports. If
the U.S. considered Hawke's letter to Lange to be a "forthright
expression" of Australia's support for ANZUS, many New
Zealanders tended to see it as meddling by a neighboring country
they sometimes regard as a bullying older brother.

That displeasure was nothing compared with Lange's response to
Washington's request last week. Even before the official reply
had arrived, the State Department declared that a "definitive"
rejection of the U.S. request "would be a matter of grave
concern that goes to the core of our mutual obligations as
allies."  The U.S. would "reconsider" its participation in the
March military exercise and would "have to consider the
implications for overall cooperation with New Zealand in ANZUS."

As Washington by now expected, Lange rejected the request. He
explained that the Buchanan was not welcome in New Zealand
because the U.S. would not guarantee that it did not have
nuclear weapons on board. Washington retaliated by canceling
its participation in Sea Eagle and declaring that antinuclear
movements seeking to "diminish defense cooperation" should know
"that the course these movements advocate will not be cost-free
in terms of security relationships with the U.S."  In the U.S.
view, an important principle was at stake:  the right to use an
ally's military facilities.

With that, Lange charged that the U.S. was "bullying" a small
and friendly ally. Said he:  "I regard it as unacceptable that
another country should by threat or coercion try to change a
policy that has been embraced by the New Zealand people."

Even as the U.S. was trying to find a way out of the impasse,
it received a second jolt to its defense posture in the South
Pacific. Australia's Hawke, arriving in Washington on a
previously arranged visit, told the Administration that because
of strong opposition in his party, he would have to renege on
an earlier promise to allow U.S. planes to use an Australian
staging base to monitor the testing of the MX missile later this
year. Seeking to defuse the matter, Shultz announced later that
the U.S. had decided to oversee the testing of its newest
intercontinental ballistic missile, which will be launched from
Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to a target area in the
Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, "without the use
of Australian support arrangements."

The Administration, seeking to protect its basic rights as an
ally, came down hard on New Zealand. But Washington felt that
it could accommodate Australia without damaging ANZUS. The two
developments underscored the pressures that have been building
in one of the "safest" corners of the world. The U.S.,
Australia and New Zealand were friends and allies long before
they made their relationship formal by signing the ANZUS treaty
in 1951. They had fought together in World War II; it was
widely accepted that Australia and New Zealand had been saved
from a Japanese invasion by the U.S. victory in the Battle of
the Coral Sea in 1942. In the postwar era, two-way trade has
flourished, and the U.S. has extended preferences to such
exports from Australia and New Zealand as lamb, wool and butter.
Close military cooperation has been the norm, in everything
from the standardization of equipment to regular joint
exercises. Australia, in particular, has been extremely helpful
to U.S. intelligence gathering, providing satellite-listening
stations and other facilities.

For the U.S., the ANZUS pact has been a vital part of its
global defense obligations. For Australia and New Zealand, the
treaty has provided a measure of protection under the U.S.
nuclear shield - even if external threats to life and freedom
have seemed remote in the South Pacific. The U.S. is
specifically concerned about the growth of the Soviet Union's
blue-water navy, pointing to increasing Soviet use of facilities
at Cam Rahn Bay, once the main U.S. military complex and naval
base in Vietnam. Says a U.S. official:  "We are facing a real
problem of Soviet penetration."

It is apparent that most Australians and New Zealanders do not
take that threat as seriously as Washington does. In the past
five years, antinuclear movements have made headway in both
countries. In Australia, Hawke has managed to contain the
antinuclear demands of left-wing Laborites without compromising
Australia's defense commitments, even though he has come under
fire for not consulting enough with his party's caucus --
especially in recent days over the MX issue. In New Zealand,
Lange seems determined to fulfill his campaign pledge of
denying access to nuclear ships.

To a large extent, the issue is symbolic. Last year only one
U.S. nuclear-powered vessel called in New Zealand; it would be
relatively easy for the U.S. to send nothing but conventionally
powered vessels to that country for the time being. But the
key issue is whether they are nuclear-armed, and with that in
mind, the Administration maintains that partners in a defense
pact have no business imposing restrictions on one another.
Says a senior Administration official:  "Naval forces and their
needs are as central to ANZUS as ground forces in Germany are
central to NATO."

Moreover, U.S. policymakers are worried about the strides of
antinuclear movements elsewhere. Japan officially forbids the
entry of nuclear weapons into its ports but does not insist in
practice that the policy by scrupulously followed. Beyond
that, the U.S. fears that New Zealand's stand could refuel the
antinuclear movement in Western Europe, where West German,
British, Dutch and Belgian activists are trying to bar the
continued deployment of U.S. medium-range cruise and Pershing
II missiles.

The result has been a series of U.S. threats, both explicit and
implied, to suspend military cooperation with New Zealand if
Lange refuses to give in. Such an approach may raise hackles
down Under even more. New Zealanders resent any kind of
pressure, from Australia or the U.s.; Australians are only
slightly less sensitive to strong-arm tactics, wherever they
may come from. New Zealanders are divided in the current
national debate. Recent polls show that while 58% of the New
Zealand population of 3.2 million opposes visits by
nuclear-armed warships, 59% would not be troubled by calls by
ships that are merely nuclear-powered and 60% would like the
country to remain in ANZUS. But since Lange has the general
support of 70% of his countrymen, the U.S. might have a lot to
lose by trying to turn the screws too tightly.


By William E. Smith. Reported by John Dunn/Melbourne and
Johanna McGeary/Washington.