In 1984, the newly elected Labour Government’s antinuclear policy collided with a United States foreign policy based on nuclear deterrence. After two years of angry meetings, fraught diplomacy, and free-wheeling press conferences, this outbreak of “friendly fire” led to the unraveling of the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) military alliance, established in 1951. Based on previously classified government files in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom as well as interviews with key protagonists and the author’s own involvement in events, this account tells the inside story of this dramatic confrontation. This is the definitive account of a key turning point in New Zealand history and a dramatic story of powerful personalities tackling critical questions on the world stage.
In 1984, the newly elected Labour Government’s antinuclear policy collided with a United States foreign policy based on nuclear deterrence. After two years of angry meetings, fraught diplomacy, and free-wheeling press conferences, this outbreak of “friendly fire” led to the unraveling of the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) military alliance, established in 1951. Based on previously classified government files in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom as well as interviews with key protagonists and the author’s own involvement in events, this account tells the inside story of this dramatic confrontation. This is the definitive account of a key turning point in New Zealand history and a dramatic story of powerful personalities tackling critical questions on the world stage.
Friendly Fire: Nuclear Politics & the Collapse of ANZUS, 1984-1987
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Friendly Fire: Nuclear Politics & the Collapse of ANZUS, 1984-1987
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Overview
In 1984, the newly elected Labour Government’s antinuclear policy collided with a United States foreign policy based on nuclear deterrence. After two years of angry meetings, fraught diplomacy, and free-wheeling press conferences, this outbreak of “friendly fire” led to the unraveling of the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) military alliance, established in 1951. Based on previously classified government files in New Zealand, Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom as well as interviews with key protagonists and the author’s own involvement in events, this account tells the inside story of this dramatic confrontation. This is the definitive account of a key turning point in New Zealand history and a dramatic story of powerful personalities tackling critical questions on the world stage.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781869407414 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Auckland University Press |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2013 |
| Pages: | 336 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
Gerald Hensley was appointed New Zealand Secretary of Defence in 1991 and retired from the public service in 1999, when he was honored with the Companion New Zealand Order of Merit. He is the author of several books, including Beyond the Battlefield, which was a finalist in the 2010 New Zealand Post Book Awards.
Read an Excerpt
Friendly Fire
Nuclear Politics & the Collapse of ANZUS, 1984â"1987
By Gerald Hensley
Auckland University Press
Copyright © 2013 Gerald HensleyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77558-070-6
CHAPTER 1
New Zealand Adrift
Alliances, said General de Gaulle, are like flowers and pretty girls: they last while they last. In 1984 the ANZUS alliance had reached the age, perilous at least for pretty girls, of thirty-three. For half of its life the alliance, linking the United States, Australia and New Zealand in a common defence, had attracted little notice. It was an insurance policy against the risk of an aggression which never became real and so could rest quietly in a bottom drawer.
The instability in South East Asia which culminated in the Vietnam War changed this, emphasising to all three countries that they had a common interest in the region's security which fell well short of an attack on their territories. The ANZUS treaty did not cover this situation and though it was the risks in South East Asia which brought the three countries closer together, it was the treaty which became the symbol of this tighter relationship and, when some disillusion set in, the target of complaint. In Australia a newly elected Labor Government responded to party restlessness in 1983 with a review of the treaty but concluded there was no reason to seek any change. In New Zealand, though, the two major parties were more deeply divided over the treaty's value, and its future there hung on the swing of the electoral pendulum.
The treaty itself was a legacy of the Second World War which Australia and New Zealand had tenaciously sought for six years after the war's end. In 1941 both countries had sweated over their defenceless state in the Pacific. While Japan clearly intended to drive south, Britain with its back to the wall at home was in no state to help its Pacific dominions. The United States was the only hope but it was determinedly neutral and there was no certainty that it would intervene if any British territories were attacked. The Japanese settled these worries by attacking Pearl Harbor as well as Hong Kong and Malaya, but for a few anxious weeks with much of its Pacific Fleet destroyed it was not clear that the United States could provide any more immediate protection for the two southern countries than Britain. In Washington there was talk of pulling back to a defensive perimeter around Hawaii and abandoning everything else for the time being. Admiral King, the head of the navy and no Anglophile, squashed this decisively: 'We cannot in honour let Australia and New Zealand down. They are our brothers, and we must not allow them to be overrun by Japan.'
The resulting wartime alliance worked well but when peace came something of the old anxiety returned. The hopes cherished in Wellington of a global collective security system run by the United Nations were quickly dashed, and though New Zealand still had nostalgic longings for the old imperial defence arrangements it was clear that security in the Pacific now depended on the United States. Washington, however, seemed no more ready to assume the burden of defending Australia and New Zealand than it had in 1941. The Truman Administration was engrossed in the need to stabilise Western Europe, which culminated in the formation of NATO in 1949, and had little interest in Asia and none in any further security guarantees.
This outlook changed, partly because of the fall of China to the Communists that year, but most of all because of the attack on South Korea in 1950. Clearly the United States could no longer ignore the momentous changes under way in Asia. More practically, since Japan was the main base from which to fight the Korean War, a peace treaty with Japan was now urgently needed. Australia and New Zealand had been dragging their feet on a settlement for years. They were genuinely afraid of a renewal of Japanese militarism (as German militarism had revived after the earlier war) and were fearful that it would be encouraged by the growing Soviet-American rivalry. They wanted to see Japan disarmed rather than free. At one discussion the New Zealand delegate put it bluntly: 'The substance of physical disarmament should not be sacrificed for the shadow of hypothetical democratic reform.'
The Americans wisely saw that the most generous peace settlement was also likely to be the most lasting, but the urgency of their need gave Australia and New Zealand their chance. Quite simply, they would only agree to the settlement with Japan if the United States would also conclude a treaty guaranteeing their own security. Both treaties were signed at a formal ceremony in San Francisco in September 1951, with the New Zealand signatory, Sir Carl Berendsen, telling his government that the wording of the new treaty was surpassed only by the NATO treaty in the firmness of the guarantee given by the United States.
The text of eleven articles was commendably brief–so brief indeed as later to vex the lawyers in the Lange Cabinet who felt it should have been more prescriptive as to what was and was not included. It did not name Japan or anyone else and simply gave an open guarantee that the three parties would support one another if attacked. After obeisance to the United Nations and expressing the hope (still to be met) that the treaty would in time be replaced by a comprehensive system of security in the Pacific, it laid down that in the event of a threat to any one of them the parties would consult, and in the event of an armed attack each would 'act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes'. The only machinery established was an annual meeting of Ministers – significantly Foreign rather than Defence Ministers, for the treaty was political rather than directly military in its purposes.
The agreement was purely defensive; it guaranteed only the homelands of the parties and was deliberately unclear about how far the boundaries might extend. What attracted unfavourable comment at home was not the commitment to the United States but the exclusion of Britain. The New Zealand Prime Minister had to claim that its purpose was 'to bolt the back door', leaving the country free to help Britain elsewhere. An exchange of letters in 1963 agreed that it did not necessarily cover the armed forces or overseas territories of the parties, but then in the only known occasion when the treaty was invoked the American Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, warned the Indonesian Foreign Minister in 1964 that an attack on the Australian or New Zealand forces in Malaysia risked bringing in the United States.
As the nuclear stalemate turned attention to regional uncertainties and away from the Third World War widely expected in the late 1940s, New Zealand's guarantee sat quietly in its drawer. The new societies emerging in South East Asia were all threatened by Communist takeovers or insurgencies because for many of the youthful overseas Chinese the new China of Mao Zedong seemed a more convincing path to the future than parliamentary democracy. So New Zealand and Australia went back to working with Britain to counter the Malayan insurgency and help bring Malaya and Singapore to a stable independence. This effort, which entailed the longest military deployment in New Zealand's history, did not involve the new alliance with the United States which remained largely invisible.
That began to change in the 1960s as the United States increasingly became embroiled in Vietnam. It looked for other allies in the region who shared its concern for a non-Communist South Vietnam and especially at Australia and New Zealand. Wellington was distinctly unenthusiastic about involvement in a war to defend South Vietnam because it was doubtful of the chances of success. But the United States was the guarantor of New Zealand's security and, in the words of Sir Alister McIntosh, the Secretary of External Affairs, it was necessary to pay the insurance premium.
It was not that New Zealand's security was ever directly threatened; it was that the United States had become the only credible guarantor of a stable and non-Communist South East Asia. In 1965 this was a considerable worry in Wellington. The aftermath of war and decolonisation had left new governments struggling to establish themselves. Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines all faced insurgencies; Indonesia had weathered one attempted Communist coup and was about to have another; and Singapore's future was still fragile. To many it looked as if the dominoes were poised to fall. Chairman Mao certainly thought so, telling the Secretary of the Vietnamese Workers' Party in 1964 that one by one the countries to the south would fall to Communism.
The British, who had laid the foundations for Malaysia and Singapore, were economically exhausted and about to withdraw. Australia and New Zealand would face the coming turmoil in South East Asia alone unless the interest of the United States could be maintained. If a down payment on the insurance could encourage this, then it would be a bargain. So an artillery battery and later an infantry company joined the American forces in South Vietnam and ANZUS became a closer and more active alliance. Australia and New Zealand gained a special status in Washington, their wider access and influence reinforced by the reluctance of the other members of the wartime club – Britain and Canada – to join the war.
The war, fought with an army of young men drafted into the ranks, became increasingly unpopular in America; and in a pattern that was to become familiar, American protest spilled over to the two southern countries where activist techniques like the Committees on Vietnam and teach-ins were easily assimilated. Though the protesters were energetic and highly motivated, their number fluctuated and they were far from a majority. The number of committed activists was estimated by the official war historian as in the 'low hundreds'. Their protests had no effect on New Zealand's part in the war; the combat troops were withdrawn along with most of the remaining American forces in 1971. They left however an enduring legacy, a lasting suspicion of the ANZUS alliance among the young and on the Left.
This distrust was reinforced by growing worries about nuclear weapons. As early as 1975 the American embassy noted that the word 'nuclear' 'still starts New Zealand blood churning'. The problem then was not so much weapons as nuclear propulsion. Conventionally powered American warships came and went in the years of the Labour Government – a total of at least 22 in the years 1972 to 1975 – and what weapons they carried was never questioned. The immediate difficulty was over public fears of nuclear-powered ships and the dangers of their spreading or leaking radioactivity. In 1969 the Holyoake Government had banned such visits pending US acceptance of absolute liability in the case of an accident. The embargo was satisfactorily settled five years later but the Rowling Government, still nervous, put off allowing a nuclear-powered warship to visit until after the impending election. By then it was clear the issue was broadening beyond fears of propulsion. In June 1975 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was already warning that there would be a growing problem with visits by ships capable of carrying nuclear weapons.
Opposition to nuclear weapons had much longer and deeper roots in the feelings of New Zealanders than the war in Vietnam, but it inevitably became entwined with doubts about the direction of American policy, doubts assiduously fed by the hard Left which argued that the alliance entangled the country in American nuclear-war-fighting strategies and thus risked New Zealand's own safety. There were fears about whether the US might become reckless in wielding its nuclear deterrent, and worries about whether Washington was in earnest in wishing to make progress in the stuttering talks on nuclear disarmament. But most people simply felt a horror of nuclear weapons and the enormous destruction they were capable of. Mutually Assured Destruction might be the doctrine which underpinned an uneasy security but its implied acceptance of a universal holocaust was repellent when looked at in the cold light of day. The security of the West, in other words, rested on a paradox: a doctrine that was acceptable only if it stayed out of sight.
In their dislike of nuclear weapons and the uncertain stalemate called peace, New Zealanders were no different from most other people, but there was a strange twist. The inhabitants of three remote islands in the South Pacific were by any yardstick among the least likely to suffer a nuclear attack, yet they often seemed more concerned than those in Europe and North America who were undeniably in the firing line. There were explanations for this: the British and American tests in the Pacific, one of which the young David Lange saw from an Auckland balcony; the French atmospheric tests in the South Pacific from which some fallout drifted over New Zealand and put radioactive strontium-90 in the nation's milk and which led Norman Kirk, the Prime Minister, to send a frigate to the test area in protest; and the continuing tests underground at Mururoa long after the other nuclear powers had retreated to their own countries.
But the strength of New Zealand's distaste was probably reinforced by distance. Where most in the West (and in the East no one had any voice) reluctantly accepted being defended by these weapons as a necessary evil, some New Zealanders felt that their country in its remoteness could perhaps dissociate itself entirely from this evil, and in doing so give a lead which might help the world to come to its senses on disarmament. A dissenting missionary zeal was never far below the country's consciousness, and the hope of setting a moral example and leading the world to better things was beguiling.
New Zealand had long been a non-nuclear country by law. It had been one of the first countries to sign and ratify the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 and in doing so had pledged among other things not to hold nuclear weapons on its territory. The only loophole, for the anti-nuclear campaigners, was that this commitment did not cover ships or aircraft in transit. Norway, also opposed to the entry of nuclear weapons, met this difficulty by making a distinction between 'stationing' and 'transit' of the weapons, placing a limit of five days on visits by warships which might be carrying them. Most other countries, including New Zealand, did not, but since almost all nuclear-capable visits were by American warships, this was the point at which the anti-Americanism ignited by Vietnam and the larger worries about nuclear weapons came together and gained critical mass.
So from the early 1970s the bipartisan consensus about the value of the alliance began to fray. The treaty, it was argued, dragged New Zealand into wars which were not its concern and worse, wars that were in support of American 'imperialism' and global dominance. By its uncritical acceptance of American ships New Zealand risked becoming a target for Soviet missiles. The country should think for itself and not be content to tag along as a dependent and junior partner, forever condemned to say nothing more than 'me too'. It should, in the words of an anti-war paper, stop looking at the world 'through spectacles of United States manufacture'. There was increasing talk of the need to follow an 'independent' foreign policy, a phrase never clearly defined but which was usually shorthand for views that ran counter to those of the United States and even in some cases of the West in general.
The pugnacious Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon, reacted with the policy of confrontation always congenial to him. He was uneasy that the United States, under the impact of Watergate and Vietnam, might lose interest in New Zealand, and publicly cited this as a reason for welcoming nuclear-propelled warships (NPWs). Since he did nothing by halves he was suspected of pressing for more ship visits than Washington would have liked. An article in the Wall Street Journal quoted 'a former New Zealand diplomat' as saying that he had requested ship visits whenever it suited him domestically, such as on the eve of a conference of his political opponents. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had no material on its files suggesting that the timing of visits 'has been determined by other than naval operational requirements'. But the sequence of NPW visits which began in 1976 had the effect, intended or not, of further polarising opinion.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Friendly Fire by Gerald Hensley. Copyright © 2013 Gerald Hensley. Excerpted by permission of Auckland University Press.
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Table of Contents
Preface ix
Cast of Characters xvi
1 New Zealand Adrift 1
2 The Government Changes 25
3 Growing Concerns 45
4 The Search for a Solution 66
5 Access Denied 91
6 The Aftershocks 116
7 The Excommunication 139
8 The Oxford Union Debate 158
9 The Palmer Mission 185
10 The British Step In 215
11 We Part Company 241
12 The End of the Argument 268
Epilogue 296
Select Bibliography 308
Index 309