Word: zealanders
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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...
...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 Ranh Bay, once the main U.S. military complex and naval base in Viet Nam. Says a U.S. official: "We are facing a real problem of Soviet penetration...
...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...
...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 be 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...