Pim Opinion

Between them the new prime minister of New Zealand, Mr David Lange, and the left wing of the Australian Labor Party have put white ants into the ANZUS Treaty, which has been a cornerstone of the security of the Pacific Region for 30 years.

By announcing in virtually his first breath as prime minister that nuclear-powered, and nuclear-armed ships would be banned from New Zealand ports Mr Lange threw a spanner into world defence thinking.

What New Zealand itself does about visiting ships is not really important. The effect of Mr Lange’s clearly-stated policy is upon Australia, the ANZUS alliance, and the willingness of the United States to continue carrying the major burden of everyone’s security.

It is more than possible to accept that everyone is acting with the noblest of intentions. It is not possible to believe that Mr Lange has weighed the hard realities of world affairs. If they understand that the future of ANZUS is at risk, what do they suggest should come in its place?

Mr Lange seems to think that ANZUS could continue as an alliance, based on conventional weapons. At that level, New Zealand, he says, will demonstrate it is a good partner. But given that we are in the nuclear age, what sort of a deterrent is a rifle?

Forty per cent of the U.S. fleet is now nuclear-powered, and, as the Americans have made clear, it isn’t possible to have the strawberries without the pips.

The nobility of Mr Lange’s stand is the desire to have the Pacific kept free of nuclear weapons, testing, and all other aspects of the doomsday technology. In this he is joined by a majority of Pacific leaders. The hard fact is that a unilateral nuclear ban not only does nothing to remove the spectre from the scene, but it renders everything vulnerable to those powers to whom public opinion is unimportant and brute strength is everything. Kampuchea, Afghanistan, and Czechoslovakia ought to have been worth something as examples.

It is significant that the Soviet Union has been expanding its forces patrolling the Ocean and that they are in process of building a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier as big as the USS Enterprise.

New Zealand, Australian states, PNG, or anyone else may ban nuclear forces from their ports, and the Americans would observe those bans. That would make life harder for the crews of ships maintained by an ally, without in the slightest way limiting the existence of nuclear arms, or making the world any safer. Rather, the reverse might be the case. Mr Lange, who has given every sign of being a tough-minded and determined leader may ultimately bend, if only a little, to pleas and persuasion.

The real problem is the application of a blanket ban. If it were to be amended to something less rigid, based, perhaps upon a right of passage, the political tangle into which Mr Lange has thrown ANZUS would be more easily straightened.

Meantime, in Geneva, Australian Foreign Minister, Bill Hayden, threw another cat into the fight by telling the international conference on disarmament that Australians would tolerate the continued presence of American bases on their soil only if the major world powers agreed to negotiate on disarmament.

Mr Hayden’s statement in Geneva, which obviously added to Washington’s growing uncertainty about its South Pacific allies, was quickly “re-interpreted” by Mr Hawke. He said it “was putting the emphasis the wrong way.”

If the Americans have a public fight with Mr Lange they would make him a hero of the Australian Left, give anti-American sentiment a boost, and embarrass Mr Hawke. But if they let the ban go unanswered their own position, and not only with ANZUS, would be weakened.

The hope left was that Mr Hawke was correct in forecasting that involved political processes had to be worked out in New Zealand.

The euphoria of sweet victory over Sir Robert, “Tiger of the South” Muldoon had to evaporate and a workable, practical,solu tion found by patience, understanding and recognition of some hard facts.