Patching Things Up With New Zealand

Close to six months have passed since New Zealand refused to allow a port visit by a U.S. warship on the basis that it might be carrying nuclear weapons, and Washington reacted by sharply curtailing military cooperation between our countries.

Contrary to the impression nourished by New Zealand, Washington has hardly behaved as an insensitive bully. But it’s time to give the New Zealanders a graceful way out of the situation if they want one.

New Zealand enjoys a deep reservoir of good will in America, and most New Zealanders have not forgotten that, except for the U.S. role in the Pacific war, their country might be a Japanese colony today. Americans are aware that New Zealand, like neighboring Australia, fought valiantly in both world wars. Since World War II, New Zealand troops have served in Korea, Malaya and Vietnam.

For 34 years New Zealand’s external security needs have been met primarily through membership, with the United States and Australia, in the ANZUS defense pact for the South Pacific. New Zealand helps with aerial and maritime surveillance of Soviet naval movements. Before the recent agreement it participated in annual ANZUS naval exercises with Australia and the United States, and U.S. warships made occasional rest-and-recreation calls at New Zealand ports.

However, the United States has no nuclear bases in New Zealand, and wants none. Anti-nuclear sentiment has nonetheless become increasingly widespread.

When the Labor Party entered office a year ago with a declared mandate to bar any vessels that were nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered, Washington was disturbed, but did not go all-a-bristle.

Secretary of State George P. Shultz firmly said that there could be no alliance without port visits, and that U.S. policy prohibited identification of which warships carried nuclear weapons and which didn’t. Trying to give quiet diplomacy a chance, however, he said that no port visits in New Zealand were planned for awhile anyway.

When the United States got around to proposing a new ship visit six months later, it tactfully nominated the 25-year-old Buchanan, a conventionally powered destroyer. The ship may be capable of carrying nuclear weapons, but if David Lange, the youthful new Labor prime minister, had wanted to conclude that it didn’t, he could credibly have done so.

A veteran Labor Party politician commented the other day that he would have let the Buchanan in. But Lange, refusing to fudge the issue, banned the ship. Washington responded by canceling a scheduled ANZUS naval exercise, arranging with Australia for bilateral exercises in their place, and progressively cutting long--standing military ties.

Diplomatic relations are courteous. But Washington has imposed a virtual freeze on high-level contacts. New Zealand officers no longer attend such places as the Army’s Command and General Staff College. U.S. forces do not always tell the New Zealanders when Soviet submarines are heading into their surveillance sector.

The U.S. countermeasures, though considered harsh and uncalled for by New Zealand, have been effectively applauded by both Great Britain and Australia.

New Zealand is far off the beaten path, and may not in fact need a protective alliance. It might be better for all concerned to tear up ANZUS, make a new bilateral arrangement with Australia and leave New Zealand free to look after itself in whatever ways that it judges best. But opinion polls suggest that this idea does not sit well with most New Zealanders.

Why, critics ask, shouldn’t the Reagan Administration unbend and either tell New Zealand privately whether a visiting ship is nuclear-armed or, failing that, simply not insist on port visits as a condition of military alliance within ANZUS?

Washington could not follow a policy of nuclear disclosure toward New Zealand without extending the same “courtesy” to other friends and allies. Such a move would deeply embarrass the Japanese and Australian governments, which would come under heavy pressure to enforce nuclear bans of their own.

As for abandoning the practice of port calls entirely, the direct military effects would be minor if applied to New Zealand, but far more serious if extended to Australia. And Australia’s Labor government, which must contend with an anti-nuclear movement of its own, is dead set against one set of rules for New Zealand and another for Australia.

There are some stirrings of desire on the New Zealand side to patch things up.

The Lange government remains unbending in its public stance. But it has grown uncomfortably aware that defense spending will be higher outside the alliance than in. There is also a quiet concern that New Zealand’s farm exports may grow more vulnerable to protectionist moves by Congress if it loses allied status for good.

Reasonable people should be able to work out an accommodation.

Washington could help by reopening the dialogue and perhaps readmitting New Zealanders to U.S. military-training facilities. If the response were positive, the United States could again propose a port visit by a small warship--giving the Lange government another chance to say yes.

It might turn out that the present New Zealand government simply lacks the will and political flexibility to make an accommodation on anything but its own terms.

If that proved to be the case, America and New Zealand should remain friends, valued trading partners and fellow champions of democratic values. But the basis for a tripartite military alliance would be gone, and Australia and the United States would be well advised to close the book on ANZUS and proceed accordingly.