‘More appropriate pact than A.N.Z.U.S. needed’

Press, 11 February 1986, Page 6

‘More appropriate pact than A.N.Z.U.S. needed’

NZPA staff correspondent Washington The A.N.Z.U.S. pact should possibly be replaced by a broader alliance network in the South Pacific says an article to appear soon in the winter edition of the United States “Strategic Review” magazine. In their article, two Australians, Brigadier F.P. (Ted) Serong, now a writer and lecturer on national security matters, and a journalist, Peter Samuels, say 1 that A.N.Z.U.S. was conceived as a transitional defence pact. The time could have come for it to make way for something more appropriate.

That would be, they say a broader but more differentiated alliance network in the South Pacific. “The project would take time. There is no need to scrap the A.N.Z.U.S. treaty as such, now or ever. "The international archives are bulging with lapsed but unterminated treaties, of which the Manila pact is a recent example. A.N.Z.U.S. can continue to exist while its replacement is constructed,” they say. Messrs Samuels and 'Serong say it would be a “step-by-step” building process, with interlocking bilateral agreements offering the “best and

most expedient building blocks.

“They can be moulded to the different needs and capabilities of the partners.”

Brigadier Serong, an authority on counter-in-surgency operations, and Mr Samuels, a correspondent for the “Bulletin,” say that flexibility in the structure could be used to bring in other countries that could contribute to the common good. "Thus, with New Zealand linked to Australia and the latter to the United States, the good offices of Australia and New Zealand might be exploited to offer association to the nations of the South Pacific forum. “The cords of such association would be logistic support and long-term extension of existing economic aid. Direct United States involvement in this process is not necessary, and perhaps not desirable at this juncture.”

The authors argue that the broad concept “promises a closer relationship of the South Pacific nations with the United States, and a much better

equipped and better prepared regional defence structure.

“Most important, it would offer a completely new scenario for strategic negotiaion within which those politicians committed to certain lines of action or inaction could be given room to manoeuyre, and thus to extricate themselves from the corners into which they are now painted.” Messrs Serong and Samuels] say that history has preyed impatience to be the worst counsellor of policy and statemanship.

“Alliance structures, like all institutions erected by man, can be challenged by time, circumstances and human caprice — and they can be challenged to the core. “Yet rather than permitting them to collapse, thus forfeiting the field to uncertainty and to peril, the enlightened course is to build a new and more appropriate framework of security around them. “This is the task that calls to the United States, Australia, and a hopefully sobering Government of New Zealand in the South Pacific,” they say.