Diplomacy: A Rise in the Temperature

“Our peace is not for sale,” said embattled New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange during a one-day stopover in Los Angeles. Replied a testy U.S. State Department official: “If they deny access to our ships, they are not performing as a responsible ally.” The simmering dispute between New Zealand and Washington over the Prime Minister’s refusal to allow port calls by U.S. nuclear-powered or nuclear-equipped vessels heated up last week as Lange visited first the U.S. and then Britain.

In a speech to California businessmen, the burly Prime Minister said he had been told by a Washington official that the U.S. had instituted a “drastic scaling down” of military cooperation with New Zealand. On the list of cuts: joint military exercises, some intelligence sharing and U.S. training of New Zealand military officers. According to Lange, the cuts threatened the capacity of his country to maintain its military surveillance in the South Pacific, which in turn might affect the ANZUS defense pact.

In Britain, Lange raised the temperature even higher, denouncing U.S. tactics as akin to “totalitarianism” and claiming that the U.S. was trying to force his Labor Party from power.