KEY POINTS:
If the United States and New Zealand are dating again, as former US Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage suggested this week, he is a most intriguing suitor.
Built like a bulldog and with a bark to match, Armitage was in Auckland for what is known as the second US-NZ Partnership Forum - or the second date as Armitage called it.
It was his first visit here since the Anzus rift with which he was intimately involved as Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security.
When former Prime Minister David Lange, writing in 2003 about the nuclear impasse, referred to "thuggish" individuals such as Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Armitage, it's a safe bet which one he was picturing.
Hesitation is not in his repertoire, punch is his style. He has the confidence of someone who has survived war - Vietnam in the Navy and Iraq as Deputy Secretary of State to Colin Powell. He exudes assertiveness, and, well, ardour.
But when talk in an interview outside the forum turns to the old rift, he exhibits the frustration of a former flame who can't get you to understand his side of the break-up.
He speaks of meetings, people, dates, as though it were yesterday.
A compliment on his command of historic detail draws an exasperated response, in the imperative, naturally: "You're missing it! This was damned important to us. That's the point. I mean real important. New Zealand mattered."
So he begins a sentimental journey of sorts as he recalls his side of the story.
"If one wants to talk about the suspension of Anzus it has to be seen in the context of the time,"he says, reflecting on Cold War conditions.
In 1983, prior to the new Lange-led Labour Government of 1984, the West was fighting a tremendous struggle to have Chancellor Helmut Schmidt accept INF (Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces) on German soil, he says.
"As we know from the records of the former Soviet Union, the Soviets moved heaven and earth - put in all their money to encourage the Greens and the environmentalists to get every peacenik group they could get to try to stop it."
There were huge demonstrations on the streets of Germany. US Secretary of Defence, Caspar Weinberger, had half a million people in the streets against him.
When Schmidt made what he called the tremendously difficult political decision to accept INF in Germany it was: " a blow to the hopes of the then Soviet Union."
By the time Labour came to office here in 1984, the US was also having problems with many mayors in Japanese port cities who did not want to accept US warships.
"We were afraid of almost an infectious disease [it is sometimes referred to as "the New Zealand virus"].
"At the time, we could see the writing on the wall. It was over for the Soviet Union.
"This is the reason we were so strong in 1986 about New Zealand's participation because we thought we were about to bring home the end of the Cold War. The fabric of security was being rent, we felt."
Weinberger and Secretary of State George Schultz had both served in the Pacific during World War II.
"Schultz and Weinberger had so heavily invested in Australia and New Zealand," he said. "Because of their own war experiences here in the Pacific it was unfathomable for them to think that at what they considered a pivotal moment in history, New Zealand wouldn't be there with us."
Armitage says he met Lange when he was Deputy Opposition leader in 1982 to discuss nuclear policy. He told Lange the US would never say if its ships had nuclear arms but said "we'll respect New Zealand as much as we can, giving him all the code words", at which point Armitage illustrates the understanding with some deliberate heavy winking.
This seems to be a short-hand way of saying Armitage told Lange the US would use words that did not confirm or deny the presence of nuclear weapons but from which he would be able to work it out.
"He got it," says Armitage. "He understood it. Once in office he pretended not to understand it."
Labour and its anti-nuclear policy came to power in July 1984. In January 1985 Lange had been Prime Minister for six months when he headed off to the Tokelau Islands for a holiday. Sir Geoffrey Palmer was Acting Prime Minister when the US asked for a visit for the USS Buchanan.
It was turned down on the basis that the ship might have carried nuclear weapons. New Zealand hoped a request would come for a class of vessel where there was no ambiguity.
That wasn't acceptable to the US, no compromise could be found and the Anzus rift began.
Asked what role he played in forming Ronald Reagan's presidential directives - which set out the reprisals against New Zealand [ban on military exercises, limits on intelligence, and so on] - Armitage says, "a very big role".
He recalls a "pivotal" meeting in Washington in 1985 with Palmer, who was Deputy Prime Minister at the time, six months after the Buchanan was refused entry.
They met in Paul Wolfowitz' office in the State Department on a Saturday, with Gaston Sigur, the senior director at the National Security Council. "We were the action officers, if you will, under the direction of Schultz and Weinberger. It was a very painful time for us all."
One of the reasons Armitage remembers it so clearly is because something Palmer said upset them.
"He started the presentation by saying, 'you have to understand that the basis for New Zealand's stance on this issue was because we are a God-fearing country'.
"Here you had a Jew, two Catholics in the room who were aware that when people in the US go to church every week it's about 75 per cent and in New Zealand it's below 50 per cent.
"We were incredulous. The implication was we weren't a God-fearing people and because we were carrying the burden of this nuclear umbrella that we were somehow bad people. He never said that, of course. He was a gentleman but that was the implication. I remember it very well."
(Palmer this week said that was a "complete misconstruction" of what he had said. "What I was trying to say was a large part of the church-going community in New Zealand were making a lot of representations to Government about keeping steadfast on this nuclear policy and the religious communities in New Zealand were very hot on this. I thought the Americans had to understand this. I'm very sorry they were offended - although my experience of living for 10 years in America is that it is very hard to offend them and it seems to be a very peculiar statement to be making at this time in history.")
Armitage says it was never the intention for the whole relationship between the two countries to become affected, just the security aspect.
"That was not the intent of the directive. But it got so entwined and personalities ... always play a part."
In Washington these days, Armitage advocates a free trade agreement with New Zealand and for a resumption of military exercises - not for New Zealand's sake, but in the US' own interests. It seems ironic how this Cold War warrior so strongly linked to the trouble in the US-NZ relationship is now so closely linked to moves to improve it.
I say: "I'm not sure why you see the relationship as important enough to come all the way down here for the forum."
That brings on another bout of exasperation and reminds him of his past exasperation with New Zealand.
"It drives me crazy! On the one hand, this was important enough at the time of 1986 to tie our entire Government up in knots, we cared so much about it. If we took people seriously, they said just what you said: 'why do you take this seriously when you are 75 times larger than we are? What do you care?' If, on the other hand, we said 'to hell with New Zealand' and just marched off and did whatever we wanted, what would we hear? 'We're a democratic multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy, free trade. Why are you overlooking us?' You can't have it both ways. Unfair! You just got a citation!" he says with the familiarity of an old friend who knows you well enough to know you can take it. Roll on date number three.
