American Interests in the Southwest Pacific During a "Post-ANZUS" Era

Abstract

AMERICAN INTERESTS IN____ THE SOUTHWEST PACIFIC DURING A "POST-ANZUS" ERA William T. Tow Un 'mil the mid-1984 election of New Zealand's current Labour government and the formal abrogation of the Australia-New Zealand-United States (ANZUS) treaty operations by the United States and Australia in San Francisco in August 1986, the alliance had been viewed by successive U.S. foreign-policy architects as perhaps the West's most stable security arrangement. Intermittent differences that had risen between the ANZUS partners over commerce, resource management, and strategy had never been so great as to overcome more enduring mutual interests, values, and collaborative policy instruments. Successive postwar U.S. administrations regarded Australia and New Zealand together as a pillar of Pacific defense within the overall framework of the collective defense strategy extended to the Asian-Pacific region. Despite Washington's generally positive image of the South Pacific defense environment, an underlying set of tensions has been sensed within U.S. policy circles ever since the formation of ANZUS concerning the scope and function of the alliance. New Zealand's commitment to a regional nuclear-free zone is only the latest manifestation of a gradual yet unmistakable process of uneasy adjustment by both Canberra and Wellington to their future destinies as Asian security actors. From ANZUS's beginnings there seemed to be a tendency by U.S. strategists and diplomats William T. Tow is assistant professor at the School of International Relations, University of Southern California. The author is grateful for the assistance of Henry Albinski and Ishtiaque Zaman for preparation of the manuscript. This paper was originally prepared for the Pacific Forum, the Australian Institute of International Affairs, and the Australian Studies Center of the Pennsylvania State University's conference on "Strategic Imperative and Western Responses in the South and Southwest Pacific" held in Sydney, Australia, 9-12 February 1986. 143 144 SAIS REVIEW to regard Australia and New Zealand as fortunate but incidental beneficiaries of U.S. global deterrence because of these nations' geography, language, and ethnicity rather than by intentional U.S. geopolitical design. New Zealand's current prime minister, David Lange, has seized the offensive against the long-standing U.S. perception by insisting that his nation will conduct its future defense relations with Washington on Wellington's terms as opposed to endorsing U.S. expectations concerning allied behavior pro forma. From a historical perspective the legacy of ANZUS congeniality seemed to ill-prepare the United States for coping with this overt challenge to its predominance over its postwar alliance partners. Both the moral approach that Lange chose to incorporate as a justification for his nonnuclear politics and his timing for pressing the issue with the Americans just as NATO allies were debating their own dependence on Washington's nuclear deterrent guaranteed that the drama and impact of the ANZUS dispute would supersede any previously experienced by the alliance. Even Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam's criticism of Nixon's bombing of Vietnam in the early 1970s failed to elicit any serious doubts that ANZUS not only would survive intact but would do so with Canberra as a stronger and more useful ally of the United States in the end. Lange's election signaled to U.S. security planners that a new faction had come into power in New Zealand, challenging the very premises of U.S. collective defense policies in the Southwest Pacific. The United States' preoccupation with geopolitics seemed especially incompatible with Lange's nuclear-free regional agenda. New Zealanders were frustrated because their dramatic national change was seen by most Americans as irrelevant. This was graphically illustrated by the Lange government's ambassador to Washington, former prime minister Sir Wallace Rowling. Rowling noted that there had been no attempt anywhere in the United States to assess public opinion on the ANZUS question following New Zealand's early 1985 decision to prohibit a U.S. destroyer capable of delivering tactical nuclear weapons from berthing in New Zealand ports.1 In light of Lange's challenge to the U.S. view of ANZUS an evaluation of the continued U.S. interest in maintaining defense ties with South Pacific nations is needed. One problem facing U...