Making up

Opinion

with Uncle Sam

On the 27th of this month, New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jim Bolger, will be feted at the White House by American President Bill Clinton - and about time, too.

Bolger will be given the full treatment guard of honour with New Zealand flags flying in abundance, the formal handshake before talks in the Oval Office for the ben efit of photographers and later another photo opportunity in the Rose Garden and so he should be.

It will be a reception denied New Zealand leaders for more than a decade. It was February, 1984 when the late Sir Robert Muldoon got the White House works from Ronald Reagan.

Since then, New Zealand has been in the American dog box while people like Boris Yeltsin, who inherited what Reagan called the “Evil Empire”, and Yasser Arafat, whose PLO terrorist activities caused terror throughout the world, have been wined and dined in Washington.

As New Zealand’s former Prime Minister David Lange once complained: “I don’t get invited to the White House. I’ve been to Disneyland four times and New York about three times - all sorts of hoods have been to the White House in that time.”

Lange ran through a list of criminal charges against members of the Reagan administration who had served in the White House (some of whom subsequently served time in state penitentiaries) and noted its “patronage of murderous generals in Latin America”.

Many New Zealanders agreed with Lange the United States’ ostracism of the leaders of New Zealand, a long-time ally whose troops have fought alongside Americans in every major conflict in the world this cen tury, was little less than an outrage.

Reason for the freeze was, of course, the Lange Labour government’s anti-nuclear policy. In banning nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed warships from New Zealand

ports, Lange tweaked the nose of Uncle Sam and he didn’t like it. Lange went fur ther, enshrining the policy in legislation deliberately designed to make it difficult for any successor government to reverse it.

The Americans formally stripped New Zealand of its ally status, suspended its par ticipation in the ANZUS treaty with Australia, froze all high-level diplomatic and military contacts and cut off joint troop exercises and the supply of intelligence.

Their fear: That the New Zealand “dis ease”, as they termed it, would prove infec tious, contaminating Australia, Japan and Denmark, among other allies long suscepti ble to anti-nuclearitis. The fear proved unfounded, but that made no difference to a Washington which loudly preached its belief in democracy but refused to accept the democratic decision of New Zealanders to be nuclear-free.

It did, however, contaminate Bolger, who had bitterly opposed the anti-nuclear legis lation in its passage through Parliament but embraced the policy before gaining power in 1990, acknowledging his National Party could not win an election with what would inevitably appear a pro-nuclear policy..

It was to him a pragmatic move, but one the Americans - no slouch in political prag matism themselves - refused to accept.

Once in office, and as the freeze continued, he argued privately that few countries in the Asia-Pacific region shared US values and interests to the same extent as New Zealand.

It amazed him, and many New Zealanders, that the leaders of China (per petrators of the Tiananmen Square oppres sion) and Indonesia (invaders of East Timor) were welcome in Washington while he was not.

The breakthrough came in November 1993 when Bolger met Clinton at the first Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Seattle. Clinton told him a long-

overdue Washington review of US-NZ rela tions was under way.

Overcoming diehard Pentagon opposi tion, the State Department announced in February last year the resumption of senior level and military contacts.

Subsequently, the retiring Commander in-Chief of the Honolulu-based US-Asia Pacific Command (CINCPAQ visited New Zealand, followed by a trip by the Chief of New Zealand’s Defense Force, who - in a major development - was invited to go on to Washington for talks with the joint Chiefs of Staff.

Meanwhile, there had been key political contacts - New Zealand Foreign Minister Don McKinnon meeting US Secretary of State Warren Christopher twice last year.

Still the White House invite ultimate proof of the mending of the relationship was withheld. This finally came, in the hands of visiting deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott on the last day of January.

After nearly 11 years, the US, the biggest economic and military power in the world, had decided to recognise the right of New Zealand, one of the smallest, to keep itself nuclear-free.

There was a sting in the tail of the presi dential invite, however. The Americans are not yet ready to forgive and forget. Bolger will go to Washington as a “friend”, not as an “ally”.

Talbott said the US saw New Zealand’s anti-nuclear law as “unfinished business and it will have to be changed or repealed before the issue can be put behind us”.

With all New Zealand’s political parties sup porting the legislation, Bolger made it clear that change was not on the cards.

At least the US has come round to accepting that it can talk to New Zealand at the highest level and can, at last, agree to disagree. No less should be expected from a mature government.

From

David Barber

in Wellington