Pim Opinion

Dense fog on Wall St.

For all of this year, and particularly in the last three or four months, the Pacific has been the focus of considerable international political attention. Events there managed on the one hand to disrupt one of the West’s oldest, and seemingly most secure, defence alliances and, on the other, to cause a major upset to the French government, even, perhaps to advancing its expected downfall early next year.

While the ANZUS predicament is not, at first sight, a matter in which the French are involved, some blame for the continuing impasse over New Zealand’s ban on nuclear ships should be laid at their door. New Zealanders were having second thoughts about the loss of their ANZUS membership, were beginning to see that in today’s world no-one can play ostrich and be safe, were realising the wider implications of their government’s policy.

And then not only did French government saboteurs blow up the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior as she lay in Auckland harbor, but they followed it by having President Mitterrand perform an imperial strut on Moruroa which, as New Zealanders and many others in the region saw it, was lifting an arrogant two fingers to some genuine anxieties and some very sincere objections.

As our commentators report in this issue, the Greenpeace incident, and the curled presidential lip, outraged New Zealanders of every political slant even those who had regarded anti-nuclear activists as “pinko pawns” in the heady game of international power politics.

Then the US refused to condemn France for the attack, and former US ambassador to the United Nations, Jeane Kirkpatrick, made some widely-reported gratuitous comments which, in sensitive New Zealand ears, sounded as if they were being told to shut up, and never mind the radio-active fallout because it was only in their backyard and not in any place which mattered to the major powers.

All of that quite rapidly slammed the lid down on careful efforts being made to moderate the New Zealand position on nuclear ship visits. Nobody is more stubborn than a New Zealander affronted and outraged.

French motives can be well enough understood, but why did the Americans play so rough or, at least give the appearance of utter unconcern for small nation Pacific interests? In their case it is, if not unknown, uncharacteristic to so ignore image, courtesy and at least the appearance of concern. We do not pretend to know, but we may have found a clue in the editorial columns of no less an institution than the Wall Street Journal.

There, on September 20, four days before the notable Pacific policy speech in Washington to the Asia Society by Australian Ambassador Rawdon Dalrymple (see PIM, Nov), the Wall Street Journal betrayed that, in their circles at least, Americans had very faulty knowledge of the facts and the issues involved.

Given the Journal’s pretensions to expertise, the editorial is remarkable for its profusion of errors. And, given that, there is then nothing to be surprised about the errors of its conclusions.

They advance the extraordinary theory, illustrated by a map more suitable for Le Canard , that by wishing the French and their nuclear weapons gone from the Pacific, New Zealand is seeking to extend its exclusive economic zone to a radius of 3000 miles.

The editorial writer suggested the French were nobler colonists than the British, whom he seemed to think were still in control of New Zealand.

“...a patriotic Frenchman will tell you that the French have been in Tahiti as long as the British have been in New Zealand,” he said, swerving violently away from the real point. “New Zealand’s moral point, we take it, is that instead of granting French citizenship to the Polynesians, the French should have done to the islanders what New Zealand’s settlers did to the Maoris.”

Where is George Washington? What was the War of Independ ence all about?

They attributed responsibility for the South Pacific Nuclear-Free Zone Treaty to Mr Lange. We wonder what Bob Hawke, whose initiative it was at the last Forum, would think about that. They also showed they completely misunderstood the thrust of the Treaty for they saw it as an attempt to remove not only the French, but also the US Navy. In fact, the Treaty specifically permits nations to approve of and accept such as the US Navy.

Indeed, the Journal seemed even to blame New Zealand for the Greenpeace bombing; “However stupid an event may be uncovered, France has not been moved to similar desperation in the harbors of more supportive nations,” the editorial said.

“Our view could not be stronger that both the French nuclear tests and the French presence in the Pacific make the world safer, not more dangerous,” the editorial continued.

The writer went on to record, with reasonable accuracy this time, the strength of the Soviet Union’s base at Cam Ranh Bay, and its fishing agreement with Kiribati.

“If the French left the Pacific,” he wrote, “the Soviets would have more chances to infiltrate and meddle.”

Of course one may see France’s interests being primarily with the Western alliance. But letting them do what they like in other people’s territory is no way to ensure that sovereign nations, however small and under-developed, will not take umbrage and, as Kiribati did, sign deals with the enemy.

The French as a powerful and helpful presence in the Pacific is one thing. But, as a nuclear-testing nation, or as a colonial power in New Caledonia, they invite reactions which will do nobody any good.

France is trying to do something constructive about New Caledonia, and deserves support in that developing quagmire. But that will not be achieved by the sort of thinking displayed by the Wall Street Journal.

With that sort of ivory-craniumed ignorance about the place is there any wonder that the Reagan administration cannot see that its own policy, if such it may be called, of choosing the French over anyone in the Pacific, is, in fact, damaging its own interests and those of the West in an area of increasingly vital importance?