Not before time, New Zealand has invited the United States Navy to send a ship here. Such a visit could end a 30-year suspension of visits to our ports. The invitation to the Royal New Zealand Navy's 75th anniversary celebrations next year is probably not the first to have been issued, quietly, since President Bush (the elder) announced US surface ships no longer routinely carried nuclear weapons. But it is the first to become known and will be a test of whether old attitudes have changed in the Pentagon and here.
The US Defence Department's position - that New Zealand's anti-nuclear law would effectively disclose whether a visiting ship was nuclear-armed - has served no purpose since that presidential declaration nearly 25 years ago. It survived only as a point of principle.
US military leaders have never liked the idea that a visiting vessel might be greeted by a New Zealand Government statement that it is satisfied the ship is not nuclear-armed. But our law does not require such a statement. It merely requires the Government be satisfied the ship is not nuclear-armed or powered.
Many warships from nuclear-armed countries such as the United Kingdom and China have visited our ports since the nuclear-free law was enacted, and none have needed a well-publicised government clearance.
Public opinion has never been as opposed as the protest movement to an American alliance. Indeed, polls recorded strong support for Anzus as well as opposition to nuclear ship visits all the time the public were led to believe they could have both. Opinion turned against the US on this issue only when retaliatory steps were taken in Washington for the refusal of a ship visit in 1985. The US response turned the issue into a point of national pride for New Zealand, attracting favourable comment in other countries and entrenching the nuclear-free law so deeply in our political identity that no government can change it. If the US accepts the latest invitation, the reconciliation will be complete. NZME
