[New Zealander]

I wish I knew more about what was actually going on when ANZUS began to break down - I wasn't really old enough to take much of it in at the time. I too struggle to understand fully why nuclear powered ships were banned - but then, as kiwigal says, anti-nuclear policy is quite entrenched, and among other things, I'm sure if we were ever to renounce it, it would be bad press for the whole 'clean-green' thing everyone talks about, and our tourism industry would suffer for it.

Hoping to find out more about the ANZUS breakdown, I came across this, which contains both the original treaty, and the anti-nuclear act. The ANZUS treaty constantly mentions Asian threats (including Japan), and the pacific region, and also goes on to say that parties will 'meet the common danger in accordance with [their] constitutional processes'. It doesn't specifically mention any right to ship visits, and it cannot be seen to speak the language of global nuclear war - it's just too old to do that. What it does say that favours the American decision, is that parties will 'maintain...collective capacity to resist armed attack'. However, it doesn’t mention suspension of members - just that there is a requirement to give a years notice if a member wants to leave the treaty.

It seems to read as a document designed for wars in the Asian/pacific area in the wake of the second world war, and wars such as Vietnam, which me met our obligations over - despite large protests from the now standard rabble of all too idiotic and idealistic peace-obsessed halfwits (haha). The kind of people you seemed to be thinking of in an earlier post.

ANZUS wasn't designed for the kind of 'war' the US was involved in with Russia - and I think our suspension from it was more to do with making an example of someone’s anti-nuclear policy - after all, there were countries, and as you say, even cities, that were getting a little sick of the nuclear aspects of the cold war. It seems quite possible that it could have been reinstated any time since ?1994(?) when US warships stopped carrying nuclear weapons.

I’ve had a brief read of the paper at the site above, and it seems to go as far as to say that the suspension decision was based partly over ignorance of New Zealand – the kind we’ve seen so much on this thread with all those silly communist claims. The paper also mentions that over 70% of the US fleet uses non-nuclear propulsion – which rules out capital ships and submarines. Maybe there was good reason for the stranger part of the anti-nuclear act. Seems it's about time the suspension ended anyway.

[Kiwigal]

It is definitely about time the suspension ended. Ideally, NZ should let US ships, nuclear-powered or otherwise, come to NZ. No wonder we are forbidden from undertaking joint military exercises when we place such restrictions on American naval vessels. Unfortunately, to rehash my point about the failure to appreciate the distinction between nuclear weapons and nuclear power, if the policy were reversed on nuclear propulsion there would almost certainly be some bad reporting and green party panic. The combination of all that would be that a story would appear somewhere overseas that NZ was in the middle of a nuclear meltdown. Uh oh, no more tourism. This would be similar to the debacle when Ruapehu erupted and even in Australia they thought the whole of the North Island was going up.

Many NZers are very insular - something we accuse Americans of! - and extremely suspicious of new technology. Not that nuclear power is new technology but hey, it's less than a hundred years old right? And besides, our worthy leader has reassured us that no-one will attack us anyway so why do we need to do joint exercises with the US. Military friendship has nothing to do with economic growth, if you are on the left in politics.