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Saturday, March 24, 2007

US finally gets it

The media were touting it as a turning point in the relationship between New Zealand and the US. In his meeting with New Zealand Prime minister Helen Clark, George Bush indicated that he recognised that New Zealand’s nuclear-free policy is a core value of New Zealanders. This policy has been a major point of division for the past two decades.


The major sanction that the US placed on New Zealand for going nuclear-free—a ban on joint military training exercises—will remain. As I said before, this bonehead policy is “a startling act of myopic petulance” on the part of the US. Someday, there will be a president not so bound up in neocon myths who will recognise that and drop the sanctions.


Nevertheless, the US has at least finally recognised that there’s no chance of the policy being repealed. Both of New Zealand’s two main political parties, Labour and National, are committed to keeping the ban as are most minor parties and, of course, the voters. In fact, former National Leader Don Brash’s support for repealing the nuclear ban is one of the factors that caused National to lose the last election. The current leader, John Key, won’t make that mistake.


So the US has finally seen the reality of the situation: Being nuclear free is extremely important to New Zealanders, and it would be political suicide for any party to try and change the policy. The US has decided, apparently, to focus on the areas where the two countries agree and are already working together.


The NZ news media talked about how Helen Clark left Washington without anything tangible. They’re wrong. If the US has finally recognised that New Zealand has the sovereign right to make laws that the US doesn’t like, that’s pretty dramatic progress. If the US government now realises that their pressure over the past two decades has done nothing to change NZ’s nuclear free policy, that’s positive. And if the US is finally willing to move on and concentrate on the areas where New Zealand and the United States share common goals and objectives, that’s a tangible sign of progress.


As I said in my recent post on the subject, “it would be nice…if the US was better able to see the countries that are its friends.” Maybe it’s finally willing to do that.

2 comments:

Evil European said...

How the US government views 'friends' does seem rather short sighted. It seems friend and sycophant are the same thing. If you do not blindly support US policy you are not a friend. You only have to look at the treatment that France and Germany got for their opposition to the Iraq War.
SHOCK HORROR, sovergin democratic nations hae a different opinion! The usual 'option' of just stating that they are undemocratic would not work so it all degenerated into name calling and ugly nationalism, freedom fries anyone?
Funny thing is, France and Germany where right....isnt there a saying about friends dont let friends drive drunk? France is a far better friends for the US than sycophants Australia, Poland and the UK.
The US is not going to get rid of its nukes, but friends respect that they have a difference of opinion. The nuclear free policy is important for New Zealand and a region which has been home to countless nuclear tests. We need countires to say 'no thanks', and the more that join that cause the better. If only Australia would join in......

Arthur Schenck said...

I completely agree, EE. I remember at the height of the anti-France hysteria someone (I’ve forgotten who it was) said that true friends tell you to your face that you’re wrong, so by that definition, France was a real friend.

About the anti-nuclear thing: The New Zealand Prime Minister at the time NZ went nuclear free, David Lange, apparently felt that the whole American over-reaction was really intended to send a message—first to other countries, so that they wouldn’t also go nuclear free, and also to make sure that Japan was kept in line. The Japanese constitution bans nuclear weapons (as you’d expect), yet the US has sent nuclear-powered and probably nuclear armed ships there. The last thing the US wanted was for Japan to start living up to the letter of its constitution. Punishing NZ was an easy way to stifle any further anti-nuclear activity (I may be wrong, but as I recall, no other nation has gone nuclear free since New Zealand did).

I believe that the Reagan Administration cooked-up the whole USS Buchanan incident precisely for that reason. To this day, NZ news media report that New Zealand ended the ANZUS alliance when it was actually the US that did that. Blaming the Lange Labour Government has been constant right wing and neocon propaganda for twenty years, and successfully promotes a lie and slander.

As for Australia, its current conservative government considers the alliance with the US to be more important than anything else in the world. It would take a change of government for them to steer a more independent course and recapture some of their lost sovereignty.