KEY POINTS:
Almost every time New Zealand and the United States have an official talk it is hailed in this country as a breakthrough on the nuclear ban. This time it truly could be.
When Helen Clark emerged from her White House meeting this week she told reporters the US concedes the anti-nuclear stance is strongly supported in this country.
The Prime Minister has too fine a feel for foreign policy to have spoken loosely on this point. It would do her purpose no good to misrepresent the US position or exaggerate the concession.
But if President Bush has said the US recognises the strength of political support for the nuclear policy in New Zealand, it is progress indeed.
Remarkable as it may seem, Washington has been hard to convince of this for nearly all of the 20 years the nuclear legislation has been in force.
The fiction has persisted there that the nuclear problem was caused primarily by a deficiency of leadership in New Zealand and that sooner or later we would elect a Government of sufficient courage to put the defence relationship to rights. That view could not be shaken even by opponents of the nuclear ban, such as the Herald, who nevertheless acknowledged the strength of support for the policy.
The persistence of the American misconception was a function of how dimly this country registers on the Washington radar. Our politics are monitored at a junior level in the State Department but at higher desks a simplistic view, once adopted, can be hard to shake. If a realisation of the popularity of the nuclear policy has now reached the Oval Office, we are getting somewhere.
Of course, the fact that the US recognises public support for the policy does not make it any more obliged to accept it. While it proclaims respect for democracy everywhere, the White House acts in US interests as it sees them, and the US interest remains in retaining allies who welcome its support unconditionally.
New Zealand has not been such an ally for more than 20 years and we continue to pay a price for that. In her visit to Washington this week Helen Clark made no progress towards a free trade agreement for this country. All sorts of disparate nations are on a Washington list for free trade negotiations, but New Zealand is not one of them.
The listed countries have one thing in common: all are regarded either as loyal to the US or of potential strategic value to it. Economic virtues or potential trade seem hardly to matter. Security interests are paramount for this Administration.
With less than two years left in office, and Iraq no closer to a solution, George W. Bush is now a very lame duck. Helen Clark's meetings with congressional Democrats on this visit could be as valuable as anything said at the White House.
The Democrat-controlled legislature may be persuaded to extend the President's trade negotiation mandate beyond its expiry in June, which might revive the possibility of a conclusion to the Doha Round. It is to be hoped Helen Clark pressed Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Barbara Boxer as strongly on that front as on the prospect of a bilateral trade agreement. Global trade is always the better deal.
This has been just the third meeting of a New Zealand Prime Minister with a US President since the nuclear problem arose and Helen Clark has managed two of them.
She is one of the veterans of international leadership now and probably respected for her command of issues and judgment. Her reception in Washington, and the realism she has engendered on the nuclear stalemate, is a credit to her.
