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A South Pacific Nuclear-Free Zone Is Irresponsible
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12077 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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12 / 1987 |
1,098 Words |
| Author
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Peter Samuel
Peter Samuel, Washington correspondent for The Australian, has
covered wars in Vietnam and the Middle East. |
Guam Rep. Ben Blaz (see THE WORLD & I, September 1987) provides readers with an excellent listing of some of the arguments for and against the United States signing the protocols of the South Pacific Nuclear-Free Zone Treaty, which has been urged by many South Pacific governments. But it is not, as he suggests, in the interest of Western defense to sign or encourage the SPNFZ (or Spinfizz as it is rendered in speech).
The Spinfizz treaty in its inspiration is a product of the international peace movement and in its detailed wording the design of Australian politicians and diplomats. The peace movement in the South Pacific, as elsewhere, is heavily influenced by the Soviets and their political friends, as its connections with the World Peace Council establish. Nuclear-weapon-free zones, carefully tailored to obstruct and delegitimize the Western nuclear deterrent, have been a principal instrument of Soviet foreign policy since the Rapaeki Plan for central Europe in 1957, which attempted to force the removal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Germany.
Nuclear-free zones have been proposed by the Soviets and their friends for Scandinavia, the Balkans, the Mediterranean, Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and the South Pacific. The areas chosen for nuclear-weapon-free zones are always areas of non-Soviet deployment, so we hear no suggestion for one in Indochina since the Soviets have established major bases in that region.
The clear objective of the nuclear-free-zone movement is to hamstring non-Soviet nuclear weaponry so as to maximize the Soviet military advantage.
If the Spinfizz' inspiration is Soviet, its detailed design is the work of Australian Labor Party politicians and diplomats. Highly cynical pragmatists, they crafted an extraordinarily complex and often contradictory treaty that gives a bit to every faction in the multifaceted Australian Labor party. In some ways it is extremely permissive about nuclear weapons, as many in the antinuclear movement have complained. In order to maintain the Australian alliance with the United States, U.S. warships carrying nuclear weapons are to be permitted to continue to visit Australian ports under a Spinfizz clause leaving the issue of transit of warships to signatory governments.
For the same domestic Australian political reasons, command, control, communications, and intelligence facilities, such as those operated by the U.S. Air Force at Nurrungar in South Australia, are perfectly
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