A victory worth celebrating, but nuclear disarmament a long way off
After 30 years the United States has finally accommodated to our nuclear-free status. It is a victory we should celebrate. We, the New Zealand people, stood up to the world’s superpower and refused to let nuclear-armed or powered warships into our ports. The superpower has buckled first.
We shouldn’t downplay the significance of America’s change of heart, as Prime Minister Key is trying to do. Key portrays the forthcoming visit by a US warship as a deepening of military ties with America. Unfortunately, in one sense that’s true. It has become increasing difficult to distinguish New Zealand’s military policy from America and Australia’s. All three former ANZUS partners had troops in Afghanistan, and now have forces in Iraq. Sadly, the Key government completely buys in to the US government’s military “war on terror”, drone bombings and all. This means that while I celebrate our anti-nuclear victory, I am not, as a peace campaigner, enthused by any American warship visit.
It would be wrong to think that military relations between Wellington and Washington have now been “normalised”. New Zealand’s exclusion of US aircraft carriers and submarines from our waters, under our nuclear-free legislation, thankfully means that we can’t go back into ANZUS as a full-status American ally. John Key has been forced to admit this and talk about New Zealand’s supposedly “independent” foreign policy – not that his government actually demonstrates much independence.
Hopefully, other nations will take heart from the US superpower’s accommodation to our anti-nuclear policy, and now move to ban US aircraft carriers and submarines from their own ports.
Holding fast to our nuclear-free policy also means we can promote nuclear disarmament on the world stage with a clear conscience. There is a lot left to do. There are nine nuclear powers and at present we are trusting that they won’t do something silly, or that there won’t be an accidental nuclear exchange through some technical malfunction or a wrong signals’ interpretation. Do we really trust the generals in Pakistan, Israel, India and North Korea to always get it right and never to press the button? Do we trust the leaders in Britain, France, Russia, China and America? There is political turmoil in most of those countries. And what would a Trump presidency mean? Can we really trust Donald Trump to act responsibly?
There are over 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world and we still live in the shadow of a potential nuclear war. New Zealand has much more to do on the disarmament front, and has the support of our people for any anti-nuclear initiative. As we did for 30 years against nuclear warships, New Zealand needs to confront the United States and other nuclear states on their continued possession of weapons of mass destruction. For us, nothing short of full nuclear disarmament should be acceptable.
Can we trust Clinton ? She is a damn site more bellicose than Trump.She has signed up for every war going.
The nuclear free status won by the protest movement in the 1980s was surely a victory. In the context of the cold war and a cultural and political climate where nukes were both a very real threat and the symbolic essence of superpower rivalry, the anti-nuclear stance was much more than the literal details of the legislation. It was a serious affront to US military hegemony, and although it was never a fully blown rejection of New Zealand’s imperial alliance with the US, it strained the terms of this alliance and constituted a symbolic challenge which resonated around the world.
Since the 1980s the place of nuclear weapons in the political imagination of the west has changed massively. Nuclear weapons still exist in huge numbers, and the US in particular continues to spend big money on developing them. But as the symbolic markers of an anti-imperialist, pro – peace protest movement they just don’t have the same status. This isn’t to claim that they are any less dangerous – arguably there is more chance of them being used now than during the cold war. But the significance of them as a focal point for struggle has changed.
As nukes receded as a focus for anti-imperialist politics, New Zealand and the US have become closer and closer. Continued participation in US led wars in the middle east, training exercises like RIMPAC and a massive recent boost to NZ’s military spending are all ingredients in this process. No, we don’t have the ANZUS treaty anymore but how much does that really matter? The latest move is the real clincher of the deal: the US will send a non-nuclear ship this November to help the Navy celebrate its 70th birthday. Happy Birthday!
The weirdest part of this is who is singing Hip Hip Hooray. I’m frankly amazed that the likes of Nicky Hager and Keith Locke are proclaiming this upcoming visit as a victory for the nuclear free policy. It might honour the legal details of the legislation, but it completely undermines the passionate symbolism that the nuclear free movement once represented.
I absolutely despise her views, but Herald Philosopher Kerre McIvor is on the money when she says:
“For the young ones, however, those born around the time the no-nukes legislation was passed, they have far more pressing concerns – like finding a job, paying off a student loan, finding an affordable home. This isn’t their issue. But for those of us who lived through that time, the visit by a US Navy ship is a big deal. And a sign that not only have we grown up. But that the US has too.”
That’s the awful ‘truth’ that the upcoming visit will insinuate.
The US Warship visit is testimony to the Key Govt complicit obedience,
TPP, TISA, NATO, privatisation et al involvement is not what the public want but they will be bombarded with propaganda as they are forced into further subservience to US and transnational corporate war machine dogma.
Nuclear science is likely to provide ongoing developments in understanding matter. The Use of such information to make weapons to build empires for the profit of a few, produce power with all its criminal accumulation of deadly wastes with no sustainable method of dealing with such wastes; are equally devastating to any hope of a future.
Just as Key and co have been forced to admit climate change, the people need to rise and force them to publicly spurn the political shackles that lead to war.
Our best defence is to help regulate peace using peaceful means while laying down a real future for ongoing restoration of the damage wrought to date. More damage, waste, conflict and criminal greed must be opposed or their is no hope.