Herbert W Armstrong

In Wellington, Prime Minister David Lange said New Zealand had no intention of pulling out of the three-decade-old alliance. But when asked if his Labor government would allow port facilities to be used by U.S. ships with nuclear capability, he replied: "No, we have our policy. If they (the United States) make it a condition, they have made a unilateral withdrawal from ANZUS."

New Zealand's anti-nuclear policy, which was introduced with Labor's election victory last July, was put to the test by the United States last week with its request for a port visit by the destroyer Buchanan. Wellington twice rejected the U.S. request because it said the ship was capable of carrying nuclear weapons. The government said that a ship incapable of carrying nuclear weapons would be welcome. The New Zealand policy, which bars visits by any nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ship, effectively closes its ports to 80 percent of the U.S. fleet, military experts believe. In reality, the figure is 100 per cent since as a matter of long-standing policy the U.S. does not choose to inform ahead of time whether any particular ship is nuclear-powered or equipped, or is capable of carrying such weapons.

New Zealand's left-wing government claims that visiting nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ships make the country a nuclear target in the event of war. Mr. Lange's position is similar to that of several municipal councils in the U.S. and Britain which have declared their localities "nuclear-free zones." Mr. Lange in fact has pledged to introduce legislation soon to make New Zealand a nuclear-free zone. He would like to see the entire South Pacific declared "nuclear free."

While Mr. Lange has called his government's dispute with Washington a "smallish issue," the U.S. is not taking it lightly at all. The State Department is concerned that such unilateral action by an ally could embolden anti-nuclear, anti-U.S. elements in other key countries, from Australia to Japan to NATO allies in Europe.

Ironically, even though Australia's Prime Minister Bob Hawke wrote a stern letter to Mr. Lange warning him of the consequences of his action, he must tread lightly in his own country. In a rather embarrassing development on the eve of his current visit to Washington, Mr. Hawke had to inform the U.S. of his country's decision not to provide logistical support to a U.S. test firing of an MX missile, originally to have landed in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand. The generally conservative Mr. Hawke told U.S. officials he was under extreme pressure from the left wing of his party to cancel Australia's involvement in the test. The State Department avoided a second ANZUS crisis by relocating the test to make Australian participation no longer necessary.

For a background on New Zealand's "peace activist" prime minister as well as what some claim to be a rather dramatic shift in New Zealand's public mood, here is a February 5 Reuter's report datelined Wellington, New Zealand:

Fan mail congratulating Prime Minister David Lange on his tough anti-nuclear stand against the United States is flooding into his office, his staff said today...; As the result of Wellington's anti-nuclear stand, Lange finds himself the pin-up boy of peace groups and many ordinary people.

It is an image which sits well with him. The former Methodist lay preacher has progressed in a few years from a backstreet lawyer among Auckland's disadvantaged to a world political figure. Lange speaks of the government's "moral imperative" not to back down. "I have very few really burning convictions in political life, and being opposed to nuclear armaments escalation and their existence is one of them," he told a press conference last week.

Lange did not sweep to power last July on the promise of a nuclear-free New Zealand. He won more by default as New Zealanders put aside their basic conservatism in their anxiety to be rid of the long-serving Sir Robert Muldoon. But once in control Lange has proved himself a remarkably adroit and persuasive leader, according to political analysts....

In a country in which opinion polls are relatively infrequent, it is impossible to judge accurately his current support on this issue. In August last year a poll showed that 58 percent of New Zealanders were opposed to visits by nuclear-armed warships, against 30 percent who supported them. Twelve percent had no opinion. At the same time 59 percent favored visits by nuclear­ powered ships...against 29 percent who were against.

Lange himself had a pre-Christmas public approval rating of 70 percent and analysts believe he will be riding even higher following the events of recent days. Certainly his popularity is at an all-time high in his own party. Rumblings of rebellion among the leftists were silenced by the hard-line stand, and all 55 other members of the government caucus stood to applaud him last week.

Analysts agree that Lange's stance appeals to New Zealanders. The isolated country of just over three million people is seen to be standing on its own two feet, telling the world's most-powerful nation that it is not about to be shoved around on point of principle, they said. The previous Labor government of 1972-75 generated much the same feeling when it sent a lone frigate to Mururoa in the South Pacific to protest against French nuclear testing, and helped force the program underground in 1975.

The conservative U.S. daily THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, as expected, took a rather dim view of the New Zealand government's moral posturing in its February 6 issue. The JOURNAL's editors urged "Kiwis" to look at the broader implications of their actions.

After months of hanging by a thread, it now appears that the ANZUS security treaty among Australia, New Zealand and the U.S. has finally unraveled.... A frustrated U.S. may follow through on its earlier threat to scuttle ANZUS and negotiate a bilateral pact with Australia.

The demise of this 32-year-old treaty wouldn't mean the end of the Western world. But neither would it be just another diplomatic sideshow. The West in general, and Pacific nations in particular, has a bigger stake in ANZUS than many people realize....

Allowing U.S. ships to dock is one of the few obligations undertaken by New Zealand as part of ANZUS.... In return, the U.S. agrees to aid New Zealand if it's attacked, while Australia plays host to U.S. defense equipment and a submarine base that could become Soviet targets in a nuclear war. New Zealand thus gets a lot for very little. Why should Americans want to defend allies who won't share even a small part of their defense?

And while New Zealand isn't now threatened by anyone, it's important to remember that this debate coincides with the steady buildup of the Soviet military in the Pacific — - modest forces a decade ago, the Soviets now deploy some 825 ships of all descriptions in the Pacific, including ships and subs with nuclear weapons. Mr. Lange's sentimental dream is that banning U.S. nuclear ships New Zealand will contribute to world disarmament. But will the Soviets unload their nukes, too? And there's always the chance that some coup in the South Pacific might produce that region's first genuine Soviet ally.

As for the rest of the Pacific, the collapse of ANZUS would set an unhappy precedent. It would mark the first time we can recall that a Western ally had chosen in effect to leave a long-standing defense accord. Australia's growing anti-U.S. and anti-nuclear lobby would draw support from this "success," and so would the pacifist left in Japan.

It's exactly these concerns that have induced most other Pacific countries to quietly urge New Zealand to change its mind. Australia's Labor prime minister, Bob Hawke, went so far as to send a stiff warning to Mr. Lange last month. Leaked to the press, Mr. Hawke's letter said that, "We could not accept...that the ANZUS alliance had a different meaning and entailed different obligations for different members."

The New Zealand action is upsetting the leaders of most of the island groupings of the South Pacific. Only the tiny nation of Vanuatu (formerly New Hebrides) officially supports New Zealand in advocating a nuclear-weapons­ free Pacific.

The biggest concern is the growing might of the Soviet navy in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. The Soviets have deepened the former U.S. port at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam and have stationed a sizable year-round fleet there.

The leader of the Cook Islands government (associated with New Zealand), Sir Thomas Davis, when asked why he disagreed with the nuclear-free policy, said: "I could agree with it if Russia came up with an equal and adequate programme. I see the Russian threat increasing daily. I see no reason for us to make it difficult for ourselves."

I'm sure there will be more on this building story in the weeks ahead. Suffice it to say that the defensive shield which has protected New Zealand and Australia appears on the verge of being torn down.

"No One Calls for Justice...."

One of the more sensationalized news stories of the day in the United States deals with the case of Bernhard H. Goetz. On December 22, Goetz shot four teenagers in a New York City subway train. They had demanded $5 of him. Goetz, who had been accosted and permanently injured before in an assault, did not wait for the threat to go further — he just "let' em have it." It turns out that the youths, all blacks, had concealed weapons on them (sharpened screwdrivers). All four had criminal records. One youth is partially paralyzed, in a coma and not expected to live.

Goetz used a pistol for which he did not have a permit. (He had applied for one, claiming the need for self-defense, but was denied.) A Manhattan grand jury refused to indict Goetz on a charge of attempted murder, calling instead for lesser assault charges.

Goetz has been erroneously dubbed, in the press, the "subway vigilante." He didn't set out to avenge a crime — he merely wanted to ride the subway. Goetz has elicited a lot of support from New Yorkers who defend his action, noting how rampant crime and the threat to life and property is on the city's transport network.

In tapes broadcast on New York's WNBC-TV Goetz insisted: "What I did, I turned into a monster and that's the truth," he was quoted in the tape. "If most people would have been in my shoes they would have done the same thing.

"People have to fight back. You have to, you know. As I see it, if you don't you're just living, you're living like a dog," he said on the tape. "If you corner a rat and you're about to butcher it — OK? — the way I responded was viciously and savagely, just like a rat. In the past three years I have been attacked — if you count this one — I have been attacked three times and threatened twice seriously. The people have to have guns and yet the city tells you, don't you dare have a gun. The legal system is a farce. It's a self-serving bureaucracy."

In his column in the January 7 issue of NEWSWEEK, George F. Will revealed the consequences of the breakdown of law and order in America's largest city:

One of the tangled topics is the moral status of what the man did. The other is how to characterize the city's rejoicing. Let us get the easy part over by saying, straightaway, that it is wrong "to take the law into your own hands," and the state should have a monopoly on the use of violence. But such moral near absolutes wobble when the law seems increasingly unable to cope with crude violence or the community comes to feel that the state chooses not to act vigorously against such violence as the 12,000 felonies reported in New York's subways in the first 10 months of this [past] year....

Social theories and their consequences — government policies — have been teaching irresponsibility: the poor are not at all responsible for their condition, men are not responsible for the children they father, women are not responsible for becoming pregnant, criminals are not responsible for their actions. Vigilantism is an individual saying: "I've got to be responsible for my own safety." Vigilantism is private enterprise in the justice business. It is apt to occur when public-sector institutions of justice fail on a wide scale. Public officials are right to insist that what the man did to the youths — at least three had criminal records — cannot be condoned. But officials should be shaken by the vehemence of the public's reproach, expressed in visceral approval of the man's deed. New York City is a welfare state. Its comprehensive solicitousness is expressed in hundreds of ways, from rent control through subsidized arts. But it has failed to provide an essential prerequisite of civilization — safety in public places....

Many New Yorkers are angry because they believe justice is a rare accident. They believe that few violent criminals are caught, that many fewer are convicted, that most of those convicted plea-bargain their way to leniency. That is true. In 1983 in the city there were 84,043 reported robberies. There were just 7,351 convictions, all but 663 by plea-bargaining. There were 26,808 reported felonious assaults, just 727 convictions, all but 61 by plea-bargaining. Persons dependent on the subway — a nightmare of spray-painted graffiti that underscores the menacing environment of lawlessness — can become desperate....

When a society becomes, like ours, uneasy about calling prisons penitentiaries or penal institutions, and instead calls them "correctional institutions," the society has lost its bearings. If pr isoners are "corrected," that is nice but it is an ancillary outcome.

The February 8 issue of NATIONAL REVIEW had a couple of news snippets in its "The Week" column, which compared the remarkably different approaches to law and justice in the People's Republic of China to that of the United States:

The Chinese claim great success for a decidedly nonliberal anti­crime campaign begun last year. Crime rates "plunged," says Peking, after more than five thousand cr iminals wer e shot. "It is good to have some people executed," says an official communique...

In 1983 (the last year for which there are figures) there were five executions and 19,308 murders [in the U.S.]. Guess which statistic prompted Tom Wicker [liberal columnist of the NEW YORK TIMES] to employ the word "bloodbath."

Correction

Finally, a correction and an addendum to last week's "Chunnel" story. To set the record straight, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and French President Francois Mitterrand authorized detailed studies of a channel link at their summit conference in France at the end of November 1984, not "late last spring" as stated in a parenthetical insert in a TIMES of London article. In addition, the cost of a transchannel link is estimated to be $3.3 billion.

— Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau