Correspondence.

• Author: Plimmer, Neil
• Position: Letter to the editor

Sir,

The March/April 2016 NZIR (vol 41, no 2) includes Ken Ross's paper about ANZUS and NZ/US relations. This has plenty of interesting observations but it is unclear that his eclectic selection of events and players supports his broad conclusions.

One of these is the view that since 1965 Wellington has seldom had a comfortable relationship' with Washington and that from then, with the exception of the Bolger years, the relationship has been 'either strained ... or essentially non-existent'.

We can all have our potted histories of this. At the beginning of the period Lyndon Johnson was president and Keith Holyoake prime minister and the record suggests that they and the rest of the NZ/ US establishment had a very warm relationship. Johnson made a rare and hugely popular visit to New Zealand in 1966 and Holyoake responded to a reciprocal invitation, visiting Washington DC in 1968. There was an intimate ANZUS Council meeting in Washington in 1968 and on a more continuous basis extremely close co-operation over the Vietnam War. The United States for a while wished that New Zealand would increase its commitment to that war, but it then accepted that what was there was all there was going to be, and no noticeable dent was made in the relationship over that. Johnson frequently referred to his 'seven fighting allies', of which we were one, and the Economist wrote an article around 1968 complaining that New Zealand and Australia exercised more influence in Washington than Britain.

In the 1970s the positive and close relationship remained for all practical purposes. Not even Muldoon's peanut farmer comments early in Carter's presidency seriously dented this. It was overcome in about six months with Carter inviting Muldoon to the White House for exceptionally cordial meetings. That same year, 1977, New Zealand hosted a highly successful ANZUS Council meeting, which in part reflected the warmth of the relationship between Foreign Minister Talboys and Under-Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

Ross's article covers Lange and the nuclear ships ban but puzzlingly attributes the 'non-existent' years to Shipley and Key. But Clinton invited Shipley to Washington and the stories are legion about how he kept his appointment with her even though it coincided with a crucial day in his impeachment over the Lewinsky affair. He came to New Zealand for the APEC summit in Shipley's time. Key's and New Zealand's record with Obama, his first secretary of state and...