A brittle relationship: Gerald McGhie reviews a recent Book on New Zealand-Soviet relations.

• Author: McGhie, Gerald
• Position: New Zealand and the Soviet Union, 1951-1991: A Brittle Relationship - Book Review

In his aptly sub-titled book, Tony Wilson provides an excellent overview of some 40 years of New Zealand-Soviet relations. It was indeed a 'brittle relationship'. Government-to-government links were central to the tone and content of what was both a political and a commercial relationship. Rightly in his study Wilson rejects the commonly used models of international relations--that is realist/power politics, capitalist conspiracy/dependency and idealist models. He favours instead the more useful formula of 'complex interdependence, as his working model.

Before going further I should declare an interest. I spent five years in the Moscow Embassy on two separate postings and was interviewed by Wilson for the book.

Viewing the Soviet-New Zealand relationship requires an almost continuing bifocal perspective. Wilson's well-researched study shows clearly how the bilateral contacts were always subject to the vagaries and imperatives of the wider, international agenda. For the greater part of Wilson's book the Cold War dominates the background.

Wilson sees New Zealand attitudes in the post-war period as shaped by defence interests with independent thinking subordinated to Cold War goals. In 1950 the Holland government closed the Moscow mission. Not a great deal of sophisticated thinking was brought to bear, but Sidney Holland, a devout anti-communist, saw New Zealand's main focus as the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. Holland, it seems, was not a man of great subtlety. For their part the United States Embassy saw him as having the limited 'Rotarian' mindset of the small businessman he had been. He had, as Wilson writes, 'a certainty in his beliefs that was unaltered by any wider reading or intellect'.

Tactical ploy

As with Peter Fraser before him and Keith Holyoake, John Marshall and Rob Muldoon afterwards, there was a tactical as well as purely ideological motivation to Holland's anti-Sovietism. He saw advantage in vigorously attacking the Soviet Union, particularly when it committed one of its periodic outrages, as in Hungary in 1956. Domestically, and this is in many ways a precursor to the Muldoon era, his anti-Sovietism served to 'keep the faith with National Party supporters, woo the uncommitted' and highlight New Zealand's commitment to the West.

There was, too, a certain canniness to the New Zealand position. The 1954 Petrov spy case in Australia did not produce in New Zealand a ban on the Communist Party (CPNZ). There was no commission of inquiry and there was no ideological crusade. What did emerge was the establishment of the Security Intelligence Service (SIS).

Further to the pragmatic impulse Holyoake, as Minister of Agriculture, called on Nikita Khrnshchev in 1955--just a year after bulk trading arrangements with the United Kingdom ended. Holyoake wanted to use his visit to facilitate, in a general way, agricultural trade, which might take the form of a bilateral agreement, individual bulk arrangements, or ad hoc trade deals. This approach pretty much established the basic agenda for the future bilateral relationship.

Iconic issue

Wilson charts the bilateral ups (few) and downs (many) of the 1950s and 1960s. New Zealand's eventual involvement in Vietnam produced the fracturing of New Zealand's till then bipartisan foreign policy. Interestingly this iconic issue of the 1960s led National to become more critical of the Soviet Union--probably a reflection of the country's mood anyway.

Multilaterally the two countries engaged in a series of terse exchanges in the United Nations Trusteeship Council, but a glance at the useful statistics in the appendix shows that the Soviets did not allow ideological concerns to get in the way of their trade requirements.

In spite of the necessary emphasis on government-to-government relations, Wilson's discussion of New Zealand union activity provides a wider...