Visit of US warship blocked A naval training exercise between the ANZUS powers — Australia, Nev sealand, and the United states - has been cancelled following the withdrawal of the United States. The exercise, Sea Eagle 1985, had been scheduled to take place off the southeast coast of Australia in March. Neil JARDEN
The Pentagon has also announced that it will conduct its next Pacific region tests of the MX missile without using bases in Australia. The move followed the announcement by Australia's Labor Party premier Robert Hawke that antinuclear sentiment in the party would force him to reverse a prior agreement to allow use of the bases.
The US government's withdrawal from the ANZUS naval training exercise followed the refusal of the Labour government in New Zealand to allow a port visit by a US warship the USS Buchanan. The Labour government which is based on New Zealand's union and was elected last July, has said it will no longer allow nuclear-armed vessels to visit New Zealand ports.
The government's stand has wide popular support among working people in New Zealand. There has been an ever deepening opposition to visits by US nuclear-armed warships since they were resumed in the mid-1970s under the previous National Party government of Robert Muldoon. The National Party is New Zealand's main capitalist party.
Opposition to the entry of nuclear-armed vessels has been expressed in protests by waterfront unions and other workers against such visits, and by street demonstrations involving tens of thousands of people. The main union federation, many individual unions, and successive Labour Party conferences have adopted policies opposing the visits and calling for New Zealand's withdrawal from the Anzus alliance.
In addition, throughout the Pacific the past decade has seen a growing movement of the indigenous people of the region for the Pacific to be nuclear-free. It is in this region that are found most of the world's victims of nuclear weapons -from those who had atomic bombs dropped on them at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the people of the various Pacific islands and the aboriginal people of Australia, who have suffered the effects of US, French, and British nuclear weapons testing.
The stand taken by the New Zealand Labour government reflects the pressure of this sentiment. For example, in 1983, when Labour was in opposition, party leader David Lange, now New Zealand's prime minister, attempted to have Labour's antinuclear policy overturned. This move was forcibly blocked by opposition from the party's ranks and by the unions.
Since Labour came to office, peace organizations in New Zealand have mounted an extensive campaign to pressure the new government to maintain an antinuclear stand. While seeking to accommodate this pressure, Labour's officials have repeatedly stressed their continuing political and military commitment to the "Western Alliance" and to the ANZUS pact. No fundamental change in imperialism's policy
ANZUS is a military alliance, signed in 1951, that was sought with the United States by New Zealand's and Australia's imperialist rulers as a result of the replacement of Britain's world military predominance by that of the United States following World War Two.
From the beginning ANZUS has been imperialist pact, aimed primarily against the Soviet Union (plus China, Vietnam, and other emerging workers' states) and against the national liberation struggles of colonised peoples in the Pacific and Southeast Asia.
It is one of more than 100 military and intelligence treaties that link New Zealand, Australia and the United States (as well as Britain and Canada), and reflects the common interests that unite the capitalist ruling classes of these countries economically, politically and militarily.
New Zealand's special role under ANZUS is policing the colonial island nations of the South Pacific. In return, New Zealand imperialism receives a range of special privileges from Washington -from favoritism in trade to military equipment and assistance.
This is an arrangement that New Zealand's rulers do not want to give away lightly - especially as policing the South Pacific, for them, is not a burden, but something that enables them to secure there own economic domination over the region.
From the time of its preparation in the 1940s (under a previous Labour govern-
International Viewpoint 25 March 1985
ment) till today, ANZUS has received full support from both the National Party and the reformist leadership of the Labour Party.
The Labour government's refusal to allow the USS Buchanan to visit New Zealand represents no fundamental change in this imperialist foreign policy. Prior to declining the proposed visit of the USS Buchanan, David Lange had requested the US government to send an alternative vessel, a frigate, that Lange claimed had not yet been fitted with nuclear weapons. Such a visit, he said, would allow his government to demonstrate its "continuing and deeply felt commitment to the ANZUS alliance and their desire to work in the closest cooperation with their treaty partners.
Lange described the subsequent cancellation of the Sea Eagle naval maneuvers as "regrettable", • New Zealand's warships have been conducting such training exercises in the Pacific and elsewhere for over twenty years with the US and other nuclear-armed vessels.
In 1985 alone, New Zealand's armed forces are scheduled to take part in 22 army, air and naval training exercises with the Pentagon, many of them involving nuclear weapons.
It is this close military partnership, and the integrated character of the ANZUS forces in the Pacific region, that makes New Zealand itself a de facto nuclear power.
This was illustrated by recent revelations surrounding the sinking of the Argentine warship General Belgrano during the British war to hold on to its colony of the Malvinas. The British navy, itself nuclear armed, relied on signals International Viewpoint 25 March 1985 from New Zealand's military radio systems for much of its south Atlantic navigation during the war.
The past decade has seen a major increase in the US military presence in the Pacific. This has been justified by propaganda claiming an "expanding Soviet presence" in the region. In actual fact, the Soviet Union has no military bases in the Pacific outside its own territory. In contrast, Washington is reported to have 517 military bases and installations of various kinds in the region outside its own mainland.
The imperialist military build-up in the Pacific has been fully supported by both the National and Labour governments in New Zealand. New Zealand itself has established a rapid deployment force in Pacific Island "trouble spots."
In fact, the whole New Zealand military is structured, equipped and trained to participate in Vietnam-style counterrevolutionary wars abroad, and it has been used in this role in successive wars in Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam.
New Zealand's forces today serve with the UN multinational force currently stationed in the Sinai desert. The New Zealand government provides aid to the right-wing guerillas attacking Kampuchea from Thailand. It is increasing its military ties with the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. And it maintains its own 1,000-strong military base in Singapore.
In its first budget, last November, the Labour Party government increased military spending by 15%, while cutting spending in social welfare and almost all other areas.
During the recent upsurge in New Caledonia, Lange has said not a word in support of the Kanak people, but instead has backed the French government. And his government has refused to oppose the escalating US-led war against the workers amd farmers of Nicaragua.
The cancellation of Sea Eagle 1985 has focused much media attention on the New Zealand government and its foreign policy. David Lange's refusal of port entry to the USS Buchanan has been hailed by leaders of the peace movement in New Zealand and internationally as a "courageous blow for world peace."
An editorial published in the February 15 issue of the New Zealand newspaper Socialist Action, which reflects the views of the Socialist Action League, puts forward a different view. It says: "The only way working people can achieve peace is to fight against imperialist war policy, which means, first and foremost, the imperialist war policies of their own government.
"It means demanding New Zealand troops out of Singapore; support for the Kanak people's struggle in New Caledonia; no support for the US government's war against the people of Central America; no support for the British in the Malvinas; freedom for East Timor and West Papua; real aid without strings attached to Vanuata, Fiji, Samoa and other Pacific and Third World nations: and so on."
For people here, this means "demanding an end to New Zealand's participation in ANZUS and all other imperialist military alliances, including all secret military and intelligence treaties.
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