Parting as friends had been Shultz’s hope all along, and 25 years later he was still anxious to emphasise his desire not to make an enemy of New Zealand.1 But the dispute had dragged on at such length with recurrent outbursts of anger or disappointment on both sides that a considerable body of resentment had built up. Parting as friends turned out to be more difficult than it looked.2
There was considerable astonishment that Shultz had chosen to do it so abruptly. His doubts had been accumulating for months but the American embassy believed that he had finally ‘got off the train’ after Lange’s speech to the Auckland Labour Party conference on 9 May. Even so, he had not mentioned the possibility to his staff or to the Australian Foreign Minister the previous evening. It was understood that in due course a statement would have to be made about the withdrawal of the American security commitment, but during the meeting with Lange he still seemed to be thinking that this would be done at the August gathering in San Francisco. However, as the two set out their positions the Secretary of State – once described by Lange as ‘a man of implacable logic’ – seems to have concluded that there was little left to talk about. He decided – ‘to everyone’s surprise, perhaps even his own’, said Norrish – to end the wearisome and barren dialogue and tidy the issue away.
The Prime Minister was taken aback by Shultz’s announcement, believing that diplomatic practice was always to telegraph a major punch before it was delivered. He made no immediate comment but claimed later that the issue had taken over the subsequent ASEAN press conference and gave a new impetus to Indonesia’s talk of a nuclear-free zone in South East Asia.3 This was straining the evidence; ANZUS took up only the opening minutes of a lengthy press gathering attended by all the Ministers in Manila.
It was nonetheless a very embarrassing moment for Lange, made more embarrassing by the coincidence that he had agreed to the repatriation of the only two French agents to be imprisoned after the Rainbow Warrior bombing, after promising that they would not be released during the term of his government. The Manila announcement marked the collapse of the main plank in his foreign policy. He had gambled or hoped that the nuclear ships ban would in the end be accepted by the United States and for two years had assured New Zealanders (who liked both the ban and the alliance) that their anti-nuclear stance was fully compatible with membership of ANZUS. Now this hope had been decisively rejected by Shultz who told the Australian Minister of Defence that he ‘was tired of being strung along’ by the New Zealanders.4
It was not possible, even for the Prime Minister’s quick mind, to pass this off as other than a setback. His first instinct, when he went on the offensive three days later in Bangkok, was to attack Shultz, departing from another diplomatic practice to give a critical account of what the Secretary had said in the meeting. Shultz had surprised his hearers (and the Australians too) by stating that over time some visiting vessel would be likely to have nuclear weapons on board; the whole point of NCND was that nobody could be sure whether the weapons were there or not. Lange said he found this ‘chilling’; it revealed that the previous National Government had ‘consistently misled New Zealand on nuclear ships’. And it had not proved possible to talk the differences through; the US had ‘almost heroically refused to engage in negotiations or consultation – at each turn of the tide we have been met by statements of rejection’.5
Back home both his and Palmer’s initial comments seemed flurried and indeed contradictory. They swivelled between an anxiety to claim that anyhow there was nothing much to ANZUS which provided only for consultation, and the assertion that the ANZUS treaty remained in force with New Zealand as a full member who could not be ejected. Palmer as Acting Prime Minister just before Lange’s return told a press conference that to say there was a security guarantee was ‘a considerable exaggeration’. In support of this assertion he quoted Weinberger’s statement that the US would not commit its forces to combat unless its vital interests were at stake. But he notably failed to quote the Secretary of Defense’s next sentence: ‘Our interests of course include the vital interests of our allies.’6
Lange made the same points, but more vividly: ‘A moron in a hurry could see that ANZUS was not a security guarantee, but just an agreement to consult.’7 Those in a hurry had perhaps only read the first of the operative articles which obliged the parties to consult if a threat arose in the Pacific. The next article declared that, if the threat became real, the parties would act to meet the common danger – an obligation which the New Zealand negotiator of the treaty, Sir Carl Berendsen, regarded as equivalent to that in the NATO treaty.
The Prime Minister went on once again to revive the claim that the US was willing to accommodate other allies with anti-nuclear policies, such as Denmark and Norway, but was unreasonably refusing to do so for New Zealand. But he also emphasised that the country’s continued membership of ANZUS was not in doubt. It could only be amended with the agreement of all three parties and even then twelve months’ notice was required. As a final bewildering touch, he added on 9 July that the relationship with the US ‘has become much warmer since we became friends and not allies’. He was beginning to feel the strain of these gyrations. In mid-July the British High Commission picked up the first hint that he was tiring of the Foreign Affairs portfolio, causing a Foreign Office official to minute: ‘The thought of Helen Clark fills me with dread.’8
Washington certainly did not think relations had become much warmer and was incensed by Lange’s rather free-spoken accounts of the American position. His statement that the treaty contained only ‘an obligation to consult’ was described by the State Department as ‘at variance with the facts’, a comment which the Dominion thought came ‘as close as a diplomat’s mouthpiece to calling Mr Lange a liar’. To make the point doubly clear, the Department issued a formal statement confirming that ‘it would fully and promptly fulfil its security requirements under ANZUS by both military and non-military means as best would meet the threat’. The American embassy attacked the comparison with Denmark and Norway, pointing out once more that though they had anti-nuclear policies both accepted US naval visits without enquiring into their armament. American warships made thirteen visits to five Danish ports in 1985, including the battleship Iowa and the cruiser Ticonderoga. In the course of a NATO naval exercise Norway had an American aircraft carrier and other large warships in its fiords which were visited by Norwegian Ministers.9
The warm-tempered Shultz was angered by Lange’s accounts of their Manila meeting, and possibly a little embarrassed by the frequent play made with his comment that it had to be accepted that visiting warships would occasionally carry nuclear weapons. He no doubt meant that over time this would be statistically likely, for NCND would be meaningless if it could be assumed that visiting ships were always conventionally armed. It was, though, a point never before publicly acknowledged and came as a surprise to the Australians, and no doubt to the Japanese and others. It was a frankness he never repeated.
At a White House reception for the diplomatic corps he pulled John Wood aside, visibly angry (he turned red in the face), and said that he and the Prime Minister had understood one another well enough at Manila, but Lange was now giving accounts of their meeting ‘that I do not recognise and which is very, very distressing to me personally, and the United States’.10
This did not bode well for Lange’s more considered response, that New Zealand-American relations would be the better for the break. He hoped that with the wreckage of the crash tidied away it would be possible to turn attention to ‘the enormously important’ wider relationship with America. Given this importance, the new policy he laid down was, as far as possible, to be ‘business as usual’.
Washington was understandably wary but first there was public disquiet to weather. This was more a matter of press unease; polling showed the public more concerned with the imposition of a new consumption tax (GST) and the America’s Cup contest than the loss of the security guarantee. An American visitor noted a widespread view that the argument over the guarantee did not matter much because ‘the US will defend New Zealand anyway’. This was Lange’s own view. He told the Australians that if a crisis were to emerge, the ‘chemistry’ would begin to work and New Zealand would receive the assistance it always had from the US and Britain.11
There was, however, some resentment of what was seen as American sternness. Many New Zealanders felt that the US was unsympathetic and indeed peremptory in demanding that New Zealand either comply with its wishes or leave. A smaller group on the Left were delighted that the country’s ties with America’s global policing had been cut. W. P. Reeves in the Dominion welcomed ‘Kissing Goodbye to America’: ‘Who will wish to be allied to a country locked into an ideological crusade harbouring the illusion of security through military superiority?’12
Editorial opinion, however, was scathing about the government’s inability despite repeated protestations to maintain its treaty relationship with the United States. These protestations, said the New Zealand Herald, ‘can now be seen for the sham they always were’. In an earlier leader it castigated the government for being naive in imagining that ANZUS would not be a casualty of its policy, and naive in talking about a substitute security partnership with Australia which after all relies for its own defence on the United States and ‘accepts occasional calls by nuclear ships as a modest reciprocal courtesy’. It quoted with approval Shultz’s claim that New Zealand’s actions ‘can only encourage those who hope to tear at the fabric of Western cooperation’.
The Christchurch Press worried that ‘New Zealand has come close to isolation from all its former friends and allies in the Western world’ and saw it risking ‘a lonely, exposed and intellectual isolation’. The Wellington Evening Post said that along with nuclear ships New Zealand had tossed out its special trading relationship with the US, its special access to American policy-makers, and its voice as a small, but valuable and respected, member of the Western system of alliances. The only dissenting editorial voice was that of the Otago Daily Times which saw the continuation of ANZUS as conditional on suppressing a policy which had been democratically approved and dancing to American requirements: ‘For all the value of ANZUS that is rather too high a price to pay.’13
All in all, it was, as the American embassy observed, a bumpy week for the government. All governments have bad weeks and the embassy wisely did not make too much of it, saying it was too early to judge the effects. The press smelt blood but ‘media interest in any one story is extremely short-lived here’. It went on to marvel at the way that Lange, when in trouble over the past two years, had been saved by foreign events – the Rainbow Warrior attack, the ‘bellicosity from Anglo-allies’, and even Chernobyl. It asked what could save him this time and gave a firm answer: Washington. Any attempt to force him to jettison the anti-nuclear legislation – ‘anything that smacked of punishment rather than inevitable consequences sadly taken – would give Lange a heaven-sent escape from his troubles’.14
Before Wellington and Washington could work out their new relationship, defining what being a friend rather than an ally really meant, there was some unfinished business from the old relationship to be cleared up. Surprisingly, the British, even after the finality of Manila, were still interested in carrying on the technical talks aimed at finding acceptable wording in the proposed anti-nuclear legislation which would enable their ships to visit. When Howe suggested another round, the Prime Minister’s scribbled reaction was a vehement ‘No! I am not going to be whipped on this one.’15
Palmer on a visit to London was left to convey this sentiment more tactfully. His instructions from the Prime Minister were to say that the government did not see any point in continuing the negotiations. The reality was that British ships would not visit while the American Administration maintained its position, and ‘the climate created by Shultz’ made it politically impossible to weaken the legislation; if anything, the pressure from the party was to toughen it. He told Lady Young at the Foreign Office that it was Shultz not New Zealand who had walked away. He thought that Australian and Japanese influence explained why the Administration had declined to reach an agreement with New Zealand, ‘as they had been willing to do with other small allied countries’. Lady Young, calling this ‘a most unhappy outcome’, pressed him to think again about possible changes to the legislation before their next meeting. Palmer assured the Prime Minister that he had given her no encouragement ‘to believe we could contemplate embarking upon that overgrown directionless track’.16
When they met again almost two weeks later Lady Young accepted that any hopes of compromise were over. She said sadly that ties with Britain would loosen a little as a result but said that London’s real concern was that New Zealand might drift out of the Western camp and slide into non-alignment. Given that the direction of New Zealand’s foreign policy was no longer clear, this was becoming a growing concern among its traditional friends, in Japan and ASEAN as well as Australia and the US. Palmer gave the first of many reassurances, telling Lady Young that his country would not be darting off in new directions and would remain firmly resistant to Soviet influence. He added, though, that this depended partly on American restraint. Any intemperate response might push New Zealand towards non-alignment.
He was thinking of the meeting in San Francisco on 11 August where the United States and Australia were expected to read New Zealand out of the alliance. In the event that occasion passed off quietly. The formal statement was stern. The US said it was ‘suspending its security obligations to New Zealand under the ANZUS Treaty pending adequate corrective measures’ and Australia said ‘it disagreed completely with New Zealand policy on port and air access and expressed its understanding of the action which the United States had taken’. In their comments, however, both took a more conciliatory line. Shultz gave a polite account of the discussions over the previous two years: ‘In the end New Zealand chose, as it has a right to do, basically to withdraw itself from the alliance by denying port access. And we’re sorry about that. I miss New Zealand, and as I said after my meeting with Prime Minister Lange in Manila only a few weeks ago, we part as friends, but we part on security matters.’ Hayden added his support, saying that the New Zealand Government’s policy violated the long-standing principle of NCND: ‘It’s not a policy we accept; we’ve had the opportunity of adopting that policy, and we rejected it overwhelmingly as a party.’17
All this, as usual with international meetings, had been agreed behind the scenes and took up little of the conference’s time. Most of the discussion, unprecedented in previous ANZUS meetings, was devoted to trade and an Australian attack on protectionist policies. They were wrathful over Washington’s decision to sell surplus wheat to Russia and stockpiled sugar to China and expressed their resentment at some length, at the meeting and in the communiqué. As Hayden said ruefully at the press conference, sometimes it was better to be a friend than an ally.
There had been some inter-agency argument in Washington beforehand about the right line to take on New Zealand. The legal experts (sometimes a little inflexible in international relations) had argued that New Zealand had by its ban placed itself in ‘material breach’ of the treaty, and thus should be expelled from the alliance. Shultz, to the relief of the more pragmatic, ‘took it away from the lawyers’ and made a political rather than a legal decision, speaking not of membership of the treaty but only of ‘the security obligations’ of the US. Hayden and Beazley were insistent at the meeting that New Zealand’s policy could not be cost-free, but they too were more comfortable with the decision not to expel New Zealand but simply to suspend its membership, leaving it free to return if it ever changed its mind.
They were helpful in another way. The only battle over the communiqué was their insistence on inserting the statement that ‘Australia retains its traditional bilateral security relationship with New Zealand’.18 The Americans were initially resistant on the grounds that this had nothing to do with ANZUS, but the Australians were responding to an appeal from Lange. With all his security eggs now in the Australian basket he was worried that the US might put some constraints on this. A few days before the meeting he asked for Hayden’s help; ‘New Zealand’s bilateral relationship with Australia is considerably more important to us in every respect’ and he hoped that nothing at San Francisco would cause it damage.19
Though he had some qualms about how to handle the situation, at home Lange dismissed the San Francisco decisions as a formality: ‘in effect, nothing has changed’, this had been the situation for the past two years. In the subsequent parliamentary debate he fell back on legal quibbling more reminiscent of his earlier days in court, arguing that ANZUS was not a security guarantee but only an agreement to consult; the treaty said nothing about port access so it was the US which was trying to rewrite it; and in fact it was the US which had walked away from the treaty. His irritability showed when he referred at his press conference to the visit of the battleship New Jersey to Japan. Disclaiming any intention of commenting, he then did, saying, ‘there can be few classes of vessel more likely to be nuclear-armed than the New Jersey’. This was gratuitous mischief-making and the American embassy did not report it for fear that Washington would ‘go up like a rocket’.20
The San Francisco meeting attracted editorial rather than public interest. After months of American warnings the result brought little surprise. A Herald poll put ANZUS and the nuclear issue well down on the list of people’s concerns: 26 per cent were worried about the economy, 25 per cent about unemployment, but only 3 per cent about ANZUS.21 In any case, lingering embarrassment over the suspension was quickly overlaid by a greater embarrassment when the Defence Committee of Enquiry reported a week later.
The Committee had been set up the previous December to enquire into public views about defence and the ANZUS relationship. Its membership of five was headed by Frank Corner, a former Secretary of Foreign Affairs. He had apparently been suggested by Helen Clark who perhaps overlooked the sharpness of his mind and his lengthy experience in foreign policy going back to 1943.22 The other members followed a more predictable pattern: a Maori major-general, Brian Poananga (who said he still held to his views as a ‘geriatric general’); Diane Hunt, a Wellington planner and scientist; and Dr Kevin Clements, a sociology lecturer and peace activist. Announcing this mixture the Prime Minister said, to no one’s surprise, that he expected the members to have differing views when they reported: ‘It would have to be a report of such stupefying blandness that they could all agree on it.’23
The Committee called for submissions and had received over 500 by February, most expressing intense anti-nuclear feeling. That month Corner told Radio New Zealand that the majority saw New Zealand situated solely in the South Pacific among a group of small countries, a big change from a generation earlier. The idea, he said, that ‘New Zealand’s defence was bound up with protecting certain ideas, a certain kind of civilisation’ did not come through in the submissions. Collective security under ANZUS was firmly rejected. Helen Clark, presenting the Labour Party’s submission, said that members did not want ANZUS even if the alliance could accept a nuclear-free policy.24
Rather than rely wholly on self-selected submissions, the Committee undertook a comprehensive range of polling to seek to establish what most New Zealanders thought and took statistical advice on how to interpret the resulting figures. Its own discussions were predictably contentious. Corner told the Australians that the left-leaning members were refusing to consider contrary arguments as ‘fascist’.25 So the result when it came was a surprise to everyone. The Committee’s report was unanimous and it concluded that by a small but clear majority New Zealanders would prefer to stay in ANZUS even if this meant accepting nuclear ship visits.
As expected, the polls showed the country to be deeply divided: 72 per cent wished to be in the alliance, but 73 per cent, many of them the same people, wished New Zealand to be nuclear-free. While different meanings could be (and had been) attached to the concept of a nuclear-free New Zealand, the government’s was a ban on nuclear-armed or -powered vessels. The best-liked option would be membership of ANZUS without its nuclear obligations but the positions of the US and New Zealand did not permit this. When pressed to decide on what was on offer, 52 per cent of respondents favoured accepting ship visits in return for an operational ANZUS while 44 per cent preferred to withdraw from the alliance.
It was clear from the polling that most New Zealanders did not wish to be neutral, non-aligned, or even the more mysterious ‘semi-aligned’ (Helen Clark’s suggestion). But there was no consensus on a preferred defence policy: enhancing the security relationship with Australia was the only option left open – ‘Hobson’s choice’ Corner called it. The Committee’s parting shot was that enquiries of this sort should precede, not follow, major policy changes.26
When shown the report at the beginning of August, Lange was upset, coinciding as it did with New Zealand’s suspension from ANZUS. As Ian Templeton, writing in the Guardian, said: ‘The committee had sung in unison, and he did not like the tune.’27 He delayed publishing the report pending ‘clarification’ and presented the Committee with detailed critiques prepared by John Henderson, the head of his office. But the Committee stood its ground and took its revenge by adding to its published report the ‘distinctly sharp’ exchanges with the Prime Minister’s Office over the parts objected to, ranging from interpretation of the polling to the (literally) more academic charge that insufficient footnotes had been supplied for the historical background.
Lange’s subsequent press conference was lengthy and ill-tempered. He described the Committee’s basic recommendations – the need for an enhanced defence relationship with Australia and for a greater focus on New Zealand’s own region, the South Pacific – as clear and perfectly valid. Regrettably, the Committee had also indulged in ‘a series of speculative and totally unfactual pieces of reporting’. He attacked the poll results as invalid, clashing irritably with several questioners, and explained the continuing support for ANZUS as the result of New Zealanders having always seen it as a non-nuclear alliance.28
The newspapers gave extensive coverage to the report. In a detailed commentary Roger Mackey, the Evening Post’s defence correspondent, concluded that New Zealand had an anti-nuclear policy ‘but not much of a defence policy’. He thought it was difficult to argue that the policy had not been a net loss to the country. It had given hope to those who marched against the entry of American warships but on its own this would be an admission that the anti-nuclear policy was ‘the most expensive form of middle-class psychotherapy yet practised in this country’. The Prime Minister conceded it had failed to diminish the world’s nuclear arsenal; the only important effects had been to cut ties with New Zealand’s largest ally and to begin to reduce the capabilities of the country’s armed forces.29
Several editorials saw the polling as exposing the government’s claimed mandate for its policy as a sham, and Lange’s criticism of the methodology used was seen as carping. Opinion was more evenly divided over greater dependence on the Australian connection. The Evening Post saw this as a second-class option which left the country dependent on Australian goodwill, but the Dominion thought that a return to ANZUS would divide the whole country and was unacceptable. A closer relationship with Australia was full of uncertainties and perhaps costs but that was what life was like after ANZUS and New Zealanders would have to get used to it.30
While this excitement flared and faded, both the United States and New Zealand were thinking about their new relationship. Rowling called on Wolfowitz’s successor, Gaston Sigur, to say that Humpty Dumpty had fallen and they now needed to pick up the pieces. He hoped that both sides could still do sensible things outside the alliance.31 This was a reasonable expectation; the mood in Washington was one of sorrow rather than anger. The sense of betrayal had come when the Buchanan was declined, and the subsequent events were seen by the Congress and public as the sadly inevitable consequences. The relationship went into a diplomatic limbo. The existing constraints remained in place but Shultz gave no guidance about any new measures. There was no open season on New Zealand; instead a feeling of leaving well alone for a while. A formal review was postponed until November and was cursory when it came, simply confirming that there would be no going back to ‘business as usual’ but adding nothing new.32
Rowling was told that the Administration had no intention of doing anything or of encouraging Congress to do so, though some adjustment would have to be made in military cooperation. This was confirmed when Rowling took soundings with Congressmen. Solarz called it ‘worse than unfortunate, a tragedy’ and Jim Leach thought it might be ‘half a decade or a decade’ before a working relationship on defence could be re-established. They confirmed that the Administration was not trying to activate the House and that, despite the usual calls for restrictive measures by one or two representatives from dairy districts, Congress was not inclined to take any action on trade.33 The only Bill introduced was one cutting back on military sales and assistance to which the Administration gave lukewarm support as the least it could get away with. It passed the House but died in the Senate.
For all the fears and occasional stories of the abrupt cancellation of orders for luxuries like flowers and fresh raspberries, trade was not affected.34 The United States remained New Zealand’s third-largest export market and the slight decline in trade for the 1986 year was due to a rise in the New Zealand dollar rather than to ANZUS. The weakening of New Zealand’s ability to lobby against occasional outbursts of protectionist sentiment remained a worry. Four years earlier the Vice President, George H. W. Bush, had intervened to halt the sale on the world market of $US350 million worth of American butter which would have damaged New Zealand’s returns, and two years later the Administration had stepped in to remove a legislative attempt to block the country’s casein exports. This kind of influence had now gone but in practice the US Department of Agriculture continued to consult quietly on sales of butter and the irony, as Hayden noted, was that New Zealand suffered less from surplus disposals than Australia.
The one possible cause of friction was the American Antarctic base at Christchurch known as ‘Deep Freeze’. US aircraft used it to support operations on the ice but also staged through it on a ‘milk run’ to the joint base at Pine Gap in Australia and on to the Indian Ocean. It might have been a prime target for anti-nuclear and anti-American protest but it was in Jim Anderton’s electorate and jobs were at stake. The New Zealand Government was anxious not to disturb this arrangement: the draft legislation simply provided a blanket clearance for Deep Freeze aircraft. The Administration agreed, with Shultz saying that the existing arrangement was ‘the right thing for the moment’.35
New Zealand’s reluctance to see any change in Christchurch, however, gave one or two critics in Washington the opportunity to pull a few feathers from the kiwi for a change. The Navy was resentful of its treatment by New Zealand and the Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman, was for a time outspoken in calling for the base to be shifted to Tasmania. He was barely able to be held back when passing through Christchurch on his way to the ice but once in Australia called for a review of the base’s location and muttered about economic sanctions as well. He was slapped down by Ambassador Cleveland who put out a crisp release saying that Lehman’s view was personal and not Administration policy. This damped the issue down but it continued to grumble like a retreating storm on one or two occasions when Lange sailed a little too close to the NCND rocks by assuring the public that the transiting aircraft were not carrying nuclear weapons.
Otherwise the tone in Washington was mainly one of regret – regret over the loss of the close personal contacts that had grown up over the years. Armitage said that above all he would miss the opportunities to discuss a wide range of issues with New Zealand representatives through which they had indirectly influenced American thinking. The relationship would no doubt improve over time but he ‘did not see that situation coming back in the future’.36 Jim Kelly of the National Security Council thought the New Zealand people had not been aware of how the close the relationship had been and therefore did not miss it when it was gone. New Zealand, he said, had been a full player – not large but full – in all the things that ‘go on around this town’. The damage now was ‘deep and long lasting’; things would never be quite the same again between New Zealand and the United States.37
Influence is notoriously difficult to trace, but Wellington’s diplomats, regarded as clear-sighted and representing a small country with few interests to push, roamed in and out of offices all over Washington with privileged access almost everywhere in the huge bureaucracy. When issues were sharply fought between agencies, the view of a trusted ally could occasionally have unexpected leverage.38 A Pentagon official took issue with Shultz’s statement that New Zealand’s principal contribution to ANZUS was through port access. No one, he said, believed this. New Zealand’s contribution was by being there, a valued member of the highest inner circle of American allies. He was not ‘ecstatic’ about contemplating a future where Australia was the only consultative partner in the Pacific.39
In the grip of single-issue diplomacy, the New Zealand Government could not afford to be greatly concerned about its influence in Washington. With the argument over, Wellington made it clear that the anti-nuclear legislation would go ahead as originally drafted. There was a little anxiety over the consequences of the abrupt departure from the alliance.40 When Armitage said that New Zealand’s new defence relationship would be like Malaysia’s, Wellington was offended, feeling that even as a non-ally New Zealand should have a distinctive position and not be ranked with other non-allies. The offence was briefly deepened when by an oversight New Zealand was invited to a briefing on arms control with the non-aligned and neutral group.
The touchiness reflected the fears of New Zealand’s traditional friends that suspended from the alliance the country would drift towards non-alignment and that under pressure from the Left it would look with more sympathy on Soviet aims in the Pacific. Backed by a sizeable fleet using the former American base at Cam Ranh Bay, the Soviet Union was looking to expand its influence in the South Pacific through ‘fishing boat diplomacy’, agreements with island countries like Kiribati and Vanuatu to support its fish harvesting. Palmer therefore touched a sore spot during his visit to the United Kingdom in July when he contrasted the ‘dogmatic and inflexible’ regional fishing policy of the United States with that of the Russians who were prepared to pay for what they took.41
After Armitage warned in Yomiuri that the Russians were taking advantage of Lange’s position to extend their presence in the South Pacific, senior Japanese officials felt it necessary to emphasise more than once the need for New Zealand to maintain Western solidarity and resist Soviet influence.42 The British too were concerned, warning that the Americans would look closely for any signs of cosying up to the Russians, such as the drydocking facilities or Aeroflot landing rights for which Moscow frequently pressed, and ‘would see red’ if any of these were accepted.43 It was only natural also for the Russians to wonder whether new opportunities were opening up and towards the end of August, Mikhail Kapitsa, the able Deputy Foreign Minister and Pacific specialist, made a ‘private visit’ to Wellington to assess the possibilities.
Despite the ‘undisguised anti-Americanism’44 still on display at the Labour Party conference the prospects were not promising. The Prime Minister, who regarded Soviet diplomacy in New Zealand as ‘insensitive’ and based on a curious misreading of the situation, was firmly opposed to any further links.45 For lack of anything more substantial the International Department of the Soviet Communist Party tried its hand at some people-to-people diplomacy, inviting several influential members of the Labour Party for visits to the Soviet Union. The President of the party, Margaret Wilson, and the Associate Foreign Minister, Fran Wilde, were given a lavish welcome the following January. They were received by the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet and in a statement which showed signs of having been drafted for them praised the ‘numerous peace initiatives of the Soviet Union’ and hailed the important practical steps it had taken on nuclear tests and the South Pacific nuclear-free zone. Lange clamped down on further visits.
There were a few further ripples, but none could be attributed to Soviet influence. The decision to withdraw New Zealand’s battalion from Singapore after eighteen years was if anything a belated acknowledgement of reality and the Singapore Government raised no objection. In a decision announced just before the party conference and clearly aimed at the lingering fears of nuclear war, the Prime Minister announced a Nuclear Impact Study to look at the consequences for New Zealand of a nuclear war in the northern hemisphere.46 The study was by a pleasant irony funded from the compensation money paid by the French Government for the Rainbow Warrior affair and carried out by a team of five from the Planning Council. Its first report came to the unsurprising conclusion that the most important need was to avoid a nuclear war. It proposed extensive further study into something called ‘southern trade’, alternative sources of medicines, recycling lubricating oils, greater use of vegetable feed stocks, and the possible decentralisation of government. Lange had little interest in such survivalist thinking, especially after the peace movement ungratefully said the money could have been better spent on enquiring into South Pacific health, and the project was allowed to lapse.
By then it had become clear even to the worriers overseas that the country’s foreign policy was not going to drift into the Red sunset. The Prime Minister’s statements were quite categorical that, apart from the ANZUS break, New Zealand’s foreign policy would be unchanged. Even a blip a year later, when a New Zealand delegate in Geneva made a speech attacking nuclear deterrence, caused only temporary alarm. The British delegate said it had little effect in Geneva ‘where New Zealand carries little or no weight’, except to draw favourable comment from the Soviet bloc. There was a flurry of messages, with the American embassy describing the speech in a testy cable as ‘a specious argument for the self-indulgent, unrealistic and preachy strategic approach New Zealand is currently taking toward the world’, but the fuss died away when it was realised that it was merely an over-zealous pitch for election to the Committee on Disarmament.47
After San Francisco the government’s main preoccupation was with plugging the gaps in defence and intelligence left by the loss of ANZUS access. Reviews of both were commissioned. The intelligence review led to the abolition of the Intelligence Council and the merger of its functions into a new position of Coordinator of Domestic and External Security, reflecting the government’s passing interest in the concept of ‘comprehensive security’ which was hoped could cover all emergencies from trouble overseas to earthquakes and floods at home. It found itself almost immediately dealing with a coup in Fiji.
The defence review had much the harder task. The United States had for years underpinned the exercising, training and armament of the Defence Force. Relying on the Australians was very much a second-best since they themselves depended on the Americans for their doctrine, interoperability and weapons. Nonetheless it was the only substitute available and the greater financial and political costs, the Prime Minister said, just had to be accepted. The public did so with little protest; unexpectedly it was the Australians who showed more reluctance.
Henderson in the Prime Minister’s Office was commissioned to prepare an ‘interim review’ in preparation for a defence White Paper but two deadlines for its completion passed while he wrestled with the complexities of the new relationship with Australia. The Americans were inclined to dismiss the new emphasis on the Anzac connection as ‘a convenient figleaf to help disguise the fact that New Zealand’s security foundation since World War II had come to an end’ and the Australian High Commission in Wellington told them that Australia was not going to ‘bend over backwards’ to meet New Zealand’s political needs. The American ambassador noted a contrast between ANZUS, in which the country had been one of two junior partners in a relationship that did not make large demands, and the new economic and now defence dependency on Australia. New Zealand, he thought, ‘could drift into a far more dependent and uncomfortable relationship with its abrasive big cousins’.48
This was underlined a month later by a visit to Wellington by Hayden whose blunt comments rather shook the new hopes placed in the trans-Tasman relationship. The Australian military had told the Henderson review team that they would do what they could to help, provided there was no great increase in costs and no risk of jeopardising their own relations with the United States. Canberra felt that this ‘cold shower’ had not been absorbed in Wellington and Hayden was commissioned to deliver a firmer message, though even the Americans were surprised that he did so in public.
He made it clear that Australia could not replace the United States as a strategic partner. Even enhancing the bilateral security relationship would require significantly more spending by Australia which had gone about as far as it could, given the costs of conducting the defence relationship on a bilateral rather than trilateral basis. This did not go down well and led Corner to say that the country’s defence policy had effectively been hijacked by a small group within the anti-nuclear movement. His Committee had seen an enhanced defence relationship with Australia as the only recourse left, but Hayden’s statements had shown that there were real difficulties even with this.49
The White Paper came out the following February and as expected stressed regional self-reliance and closer ties with Australia and foreshadowed the move to ‘comprehensive security’ which appealed to the Left because it held that military threats were less likely to trouble New Zealand than eruptions or earthquakes. New Zealand would continue to meet its ANZUS obligations through conventional means, doing so by strengthening collective security in ‘our part of the world’, which Lange defined to the American ambassador as covering Polynesia to Tuvalu and Kiribati, revealing how much the country had narrowed its outlook on the world.
The paper received a lukewarm reception, doubts being widely expressed that funding would be available to support the new security policy and the equipment it would need.50 Nor were the Australians mollified. Some months later the Australian noted tartly that New Zealand was able ‘to export thousands of its unemployed and potentially unemployed to Australia while relying on this country to carry out its obligations in the defence of the region’.51
Corner called the White Paper the work of ‘amateurs’ and Lange was stung. He had been showing signs of strain from the end of the previous year. Behind the booming voice and jolliness there had never been a great self-confidence; early in his term he had said to Margaret Pope, ‘I don’t think I can do this job.’52 He hated confrontation, and the strain of the long wrangle over ANZUS and of managing a Cabinet increasingly divided over economic reform began to tell. It showed over the turn of the year in the long and rambling interviews he gave to Vernon Wright for a projected book, with spiteful remarks about reputable New Zealanders and sad claims about the great press conferences he had given to packed audiences. Indeed an unknowing reader might have thought these were the reminiscences of an entertainer rather than a Prime Minister.53
Now his irritability burst out in public with an intemperate attack on both Corner and Jamieson. The Hoover Institute had organised a seminar in Washington, called ‘The Red Orchestra’, on Soviet influence in the South Pacific and listed both men as speakers. Lange told Wright: ‘I am going to unload on the unsuspecting world the real role of Ewan Jamieson, the man commenting with lofty objectivity on our defence needs’ and planned to announce this ‘at a moment of maximum inconvenience to Uncle Ewan’.54 In a press conference he lashed out at the seminar which he said was arranged by Washington, with the collusion of the Opposition in New Zealand, as a ‘campaign to undermine New Zealand’s defence policies’. He abused Corner as ‘a sort of bard of Thorndon in search of a punchline’ and Jamieson as ‘pursuing his interests in selling armaments on behalf of United States missile manufacturers’.55
The bomb went off in the maker’s hands. Corner and Jamieson turned out to be in Wellington, with no plans to go to Washington. The American embassy flatly rejected the Prime Minister’s conspiracy accusations as ‘extraordinary’ and ‘unbelievable’. Lange had to make a full public apology for his offensive and inaccurate remarks. He wrote to the ambassador rather lamely to say that he had been misquoted, an explanation that Cleveland politely but firmly said was not borne out by the transcript.
After that the relationship with America faded from sight. The passage of the anti-nuclear legislation at the beginning of June 1987 caused not even a ripple. The August General Election saw the government returned with only a 3 per cent swing against it. Lange was able with relief to hand over the Foreign Affairs portfolio to Russell Marshall and turn his attention to a reform of education. Marshall immediately and pointedly signalled a new approach, saying, ‘I am not about the business of having our negotiations or discussions with the Americans constantly at the confrontational level’ and that he had no desire to be ‘aggressively promoting a particular New Zealand view around the world and getting offside with people’.56
The Prime Minister worked with enthusiasm at his new portfolio but the divisions in his Cabinet and party deepened after the election. The Labour Party conference in November should have been a celebration – Labour had not won a second term since 1938 – but it was not. Delegates worried instead about the government’s economic and social policies which they belatedly felt betrayed the traditional roots of Labour’s support. The British High Commission saw a party governing against its instincts. When Cleveland remarked to Lange that he seemed to be successful in running a government without a party, the Prime Minister said he had been doing that for three years, commenting that he was no longer the ‘fat, fair-minded and benign’ young politician of the late 1970s. He struck the ambassador as ‘evidently weary’ (and if more worldly-wise, still fat) and was preoccupied with the restlessness in the party and caucus.57
The ensuing year went by with Cabinet resignations and open feuding over economic policy. There was an autumnal tinge to the government. The ANZUS quarrel slipped from sight, to make a last and quite unexpected reappearance on Anzac Day in 1989.58 The Prime Minister went to the United States for a week, the main purpose being to speak at Yale University. But for the speech it might have been something of a romp; as a journalist pointed out, the week started with him walking in Strawberry Fields in New York with Yoko Ono and ended with him rolling in the grass like a starlet in a photo for Time magazine.59
The Yale lecture was on ‘New Zealand Foreign Policy: The Nuclear Issue and Great-Power Small-State Relations’ and it exploded a landmine under his weakened premiership. The speech drew in general on familiar material, except for a paragraph which said that ‘as between the United States and New Zealand, the security alliance is dead’. If the present sterile situation continued for long New Zealand might formally withdraw from the ANZUS Council. This might not have seemed especially inflammatory. Shultz himself had said the two countries had parted company on security, and Lange had more than once hinted in public that there might be little point in New Zealand remaining a formal member of the alliance.60
But in politics as in stand-up comedy timing is everything. Lange had not prepared the ground and reports of the speech reached New Zealand as people were attending Anzac Day services. The Minister of Police, speaking at a wreath-laying, was hissed. The public reaction was uniformly hostile. The Press called it ‘The Next Step to Isolationism’; the Auckland Star ‘Another Shot through the Foot’; and the Dominion declared ‘Lange’s tilt at ANZUS Backfires’. The Christchurch Star pointed to the government’s ‘ever-narrowing base of support’ and the Evening Post concluded that ‘Mr Lange’s leadership deserves to be on the line’.61
Lange had distributed a number of copies of the speech in Wellington before he left but when everyone hastily checked their text the offending paragraph was not there. John Henderson had been despatched to Washington to brief the Americans two days before the speech. His message was reassuring and did not mention the possibility of a withdrawal of which he was presumably unaware. The additional paragraph seemed to have been added by Lange in New York just before he left for Yale. The delivery copy of his speech shows no sign of the interpolation.
His motives for the sudden decision were, as usual, unclear. Anderton had resigned from the Labour Party in protest at the government’s free-market economic policies and set up New Labour which in an Orwellian way stood for old Labour policies. It was attracting a steady flow of defectors and shaking the loyalty of some in the caucus. Lange may have decided on a gamble, an appeal to the anti-nuclear cause to stem the losses and restore his waning popularity. The old magic, however, no longer worked. He had misjudged and even the peace groups were ungrateful, dismissing his statement as ‘a hollow gesture designed to soften opposition to the [purchase of the] frigates’.
When he moved on to Ottawa the next day he seems to have lost his composure. Richard Griffin of Radio New Zealand, travelling with him, said that no one had ever seen anything like it, ‘and although the Prime Minister argues vehemently, it still doesn’t convince I think even the people travelling with him’.62 He alternated between denouncing the journalists for not telling the truth and saying that the comments on ANZUS were self-evident truths which should not have been a surprise to anyone. Disturbed by the reports of Cabinet dissatisfaction coming back from Wellington, he lashed out even in the middle of a press conference with Canadian journalists. ‘A very strange overreaction’ his own entourage thought as the Prime Minister ranted about malice and invention, powerful forces at work and ‘a campaign of lies’, declaring darkly that there were some people who would stop at nothing to have nuclear weapons back in New Zealand.63
He said that the speech had been discussed with Cabinet and all key Ministers had a copy ‘well before it was delivered’. And, ‘it was another lie that it was done without consultation with other countries’ – both the US and Australia knew what was going to be said. None of this was true as far as the controversial paragraph was concerned. It had not been discussed or approved by Cabinet. In early March he had mused with some colleagues about the possibility of leaving ANZUS but a week later assured Cabinet that he would not do so.64 Ministers therefore knew nothing of what he planned to say and the Foreign Minister was embarrassed to have dismissed the possibility of a withdrawal at a farewell dinner for the American ambassador the night before the speech.65 Both the Americans and the Australians denied that they had been given any advance warning; the Australians said they had only received a copy of the speech after it had been delivered.
Palmer told Parliament that Cabinet would not necessarily endorse the Prime Minister’s ‘suggestion’. The proposal directly contradicted the 1987 Defence White Paper which said ‘the New Zealand government does not plan to give notice of intent to withdraw from the ANZUS Council’. Lange’s popularity dropped further and the first poll after the speech suggested that 56 per cent of respondents wanted him replaced as Prime Minister.66 More importantly, his Cabinet colleagues had lost their remaining confidence in him and critically Palmer, who had been the most loyal of lieutenants, walked away. It was the end of the line and three months later he resigned.
It would, however, have been untrue to life with Lange if the disaster had not also had a moment of comedy. In Ottawa, returning unexpectedly to his rooms in the government guest-house (guarded by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police), he found someone with a camera and tripod taking photographs in his bedroom. The Canadian Government explained hastily that the photographer was taking pictures for a future redecoration of the room, but it seemed odd that they had not waited until it was unoccupied or at least warned their guest. The Canadian Opposition said the explanation ‘seems rather thin’. Nothing more was said and the affair remained murky. Yet it was somehow appropriate that David Lange’s last journey as Prime Minister should end on the ambiguous note that had always marked his involvement in international affairs.67