Visit of the Truxtun raises questions

Press, 23 September 1980, Page 16

Visit of the Truxtun raises questions

TERRY WALL, a member of the Christchurch Peace Collective, responds to the article which appeared on this page yesterday under the heading “American officials justify the Truxtun visit.”

Opposition to the visits of nuclear-powered and nucle-ar-weapon-carrying warships is widespread and maturing in New Zealand. The implications of these visits are being perceived and a crosssection of the community is becoming alarmed about the way in which New Zealand is succumbing to entrapment in the strategics of superpower politics. For the Truxtun is not merely a ship with a variety of interesting sophistications. It has become a symbol of the forces of death that seek to dehumanise our world. Truxtun represents life in a moral vacuum where anything can be sacrificed to the security interests of the nuclear Powers. All the resources of life need to be mobilised to resist accepting these monsters as a normal feature of our world. The arms race is out of control. Each year the nations' of the world spend $5OO billion on equipping and improving their ability, to perpetrate mass annihilation. Truxtun represents a travesty of human creativity and epitomises the bankruptcy of our political and economic institutions. New Zealanders do not need banal reassurances from American naval and embassy personnel that these weapons produce security and are themselves safe from accident. The facts reveal that since 1965 there have been seventeen accidents on United States nu-clear-powered vessels. These “safe” ships have been colliding with one another, sinking, catching fire, and these are only the incidents which the media have reported. The vessels are not safe and their record is bad. The arguments in favour of our remaining in the ANZUS alliance need critical scrutiny. While our Government attends the non-prolife-ration treaty meeting advocating disarmament, it welcomes vessels that are known to carry nuclear weapons. The inconsistency needs to be exposed. Far from increasing New Zealand’s security, participation in the ANZUS alliance creates a vulnerability to attack. As the Methodist Church’s International Affairs Committee revealed, the major argument in favour, of ANZUS is circular: We are members of the

ANZUS alliance to prevent our being attacked, fcut we will be attacked only because we are partners in a military alliance. The world is fast becoming an arena for a final nuclear holocaust. Some con-, tend, that the globe ressembles a great chess board on which the players are locked in deadly combat. Each great contestant has a number of pawns at their disposal and in the event of an alert may agree that the pawns will be expended if that makes possible the saving of the king or the queen, New Zealand, as it becomes further committed to the nuclear balance of terror, will be seen as a pawn of the United States. The implications are obvious for all to see.

The sane alternative for New Zealand is to extricate itself from this madness and begin making a creative initiative in establishing a nu-clear-free South Pacific. From the point of view of trading . relations, we have no advantage from ANZUS. Indeed our greatest growth in trade is occuring with the Middle East, China and the Soviet Union itself. We share a community of inter-

est with the island nations of the Pacific who are pleading for New Zealand’s solidarity in their attempt to resist the dumping of radioactive nuclear wastes in .their neighbourhood. Protesters who see the Truxtun as a symbol are wanting to affirm that nu- * clear weapons are the final example of human, destructiveness. To be silent is to be associated with those who place their faith in instruments of genocide. To say “no” indicates that New Zealanders are a “passpeople” capable of refusing to be part of the preparations for global disaster. Ultimately, all the questions resolve themselves in this final ethical challenge: are . New Zealanders prepared to have nuclear weapons used in their defence? There can be no escape from this question. To avoid the moral ijsue places us in the bondage of any technology that may be developed. Science • must be employed to serve human welfare. Welcoming the Truxtun implies that we have' no objections to this outrageous intruder. Truxtun’s presence raises critical questions. Are we to remain involved in such diabolical complicity with the forces of death that rob the. world of justice or will we have the courage to resist worshipping the idols of. power?