The New Zealand Labour Party was elected to office in 1984 with the promise of keeping nuclear ships out but preserving the ANZUS alliance. When the USS Buchanan was refused permission to call at a New Zealand port in 1985, the Americans initiated a series of retaliatory measures culminating in the formal withdrawal of the U.S. security guarantee to New Zealand in August 1986. This forced the government's hand in regard to reviewing defense options. The review was conducted in three stages: a discussion booklet released in December 1985, a public inquiry by a four-member Defence Committee which published its report in August 1986, and a formal White Paper on Defence published in 1987.1 The thinness and insubstantiality of the official White Paper was an embarrassment even to supporters of the government's policy. Nevertheless, the perception of a firmly antinuclear, Labour-led New Zealand colliding with a bullying United States has become part of conventional wisdom. The government of David Lange (July 1984 to August 1989) is commonly perceived to have acted with courage in opposing the wishes of a superpower; the United States is perceived as having acted against the democratic preferences of a small ally that was adopting a moral and independent international posture, and further is accused of refusing to accept a policy that it had previously found tolerable during the third Labour government of New Zealand (1972-75) and presently finds tolerable in Denmark, a NATO ally.