No place for a frigate

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33448, 1 February 1974, Page 16

No place for a frigate

If the navies of France and New Zealand have any real reason for existence in the 1970 s it is to preserve merchant shipping against the implied threat to international trade posed by a growing fleet of Russian submarines. It was never a serious possibility that the two fleets would exchange shots because of the French nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean last year: it did little credit to New Zealand that two of its scarce warships were placed in invidious and ridiculous positions off Mururoa Atoll. At least, the exercise established the readiness of the armed services to obey orders, however silly, from their political masters. Set against the record of the French armed services in attempting to influence policy, rather than carry it out, the behaviour of the frigates Canterbury and Otago “ in the direction of Mururoa ” was of the highest order. All the more reason to be grateful that the Prime Minister has said that this absurd dependence on naval discipline will probably not be repeated this year.

The Government is excusing itself by saying that an adequate protest was made in 1973. In fact, a handful of New Zealanders enjoyed an expensive sea-change, but French behaviour was not changed one whit. The arguments against further French nuclear tests are well known and accepted by almost all New Zealanders. They ought to involve recognition that the health risks are very small, even in Polynesia, but that any further proliferation of nuclear weapons is a threat to the wellbeing of the whole international community. New Zealand will probably win the case it has brought jointly with Australia to the International Court of Justice for a ban on French tests in the Pacific. The French will ignore the findings of the Court. The pursuit of the same kind of national glory which led Napoleon’s cavalry to charge too often against the British infantry at Waterloo is being continued at Mururoa, in spite of a new round of technical developments in the United States and Russia which have rendered even more absurd any nuclear pretensions by other States.

If the New Zealand Government insists on maintaining its hostility to French pretensions the obligation now is to find an effective method. An international fleet which sailed into territorial waters off the testing site might work; it might also lead to an engagement which the French would win. A favourable decision by the International Court would do no more than confer moral approval on New Zealand’s attitude. Further trade union boycotts will simply damage New Zealand’s interests without making any important impression on French behaviour. The full moral force of the New Zealand position will become evident only when the same energies are bent against Chinese nuclear testing in the atmosphere. Even then. New Zealand might find it is still ignored by those States which insist that national grandeur is best measured by the capacity to kill. It might well be a useful reminder that small nations, however sincere and reasonable their desire to be influential, count for little against the realities of power. French nuclear pretensions are absurd, and New Zealand should miss no chance to expose this absurdity. But are France’s pretensions any more absurd than this country’s belief that it might really influence events when a much larger State, rightly or wrongly, believes that its vital interests are at stake?