By David Kreger & Gale Warner
Reproduced from Murmurs, The Student Magazine of Harvard Medical School, March 1985, with permission
It is not often that a doctor warmly toasts a disease. But that’s exactly what Dr. Eric Chivan, staff psychiatrist at M.I.T. and treasurer of the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), recently did. “A serious disease has broken out in the South Pacific and is spreading rapidly in all directions,” he told an audience of nearly a hundred Boston doctors at the conclusion of IPPNW’s recent Soviet-American Physicians’ Campaign in the United States. And I’m not contradicting the Hippocratic Oath when I say that I hope this disease continues to spread unchecked. The disease is the nuclear allergy. And nothing will cure it other than the removal of the allergens – nuclear weapons – from the planet.”
During the first week of February the placid island nation of New Zealand did something that few thought it would have the temerity to do. The Labor government of Prime Minister David Lange was swept to power in July 1984 on a party platform that featured a “no-visits” policy for nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed naval vessels. The United States waited not quite seven months before formally requesting permission to dock the destroyer USS Buchanan – a request that was considered a mere formality under the former National Party government, which ruled all but three years between 1960 and 1984. Lange asked the United States to state unequivocally that the ship did not carry nuclear arms. The United States held to its policy of never revealing what vessels may be nuclear-armed. So New Zealand said no. Official Washington went into a tizzy. Apparently few believed that the new government would be able to withstand the intense pressure from conservatives both inside and outside of the country to abandon this policy. But Lange, in a refreshing display of backbone (how many politicians would risk as much to stick to a campaign promise?), is holding firm. New Zealanders, it seems, are overwhelmingly behind him. Polls show that they oppose visits by nuclear-armed ships by a 2-1 margin.
Lange reports that of the thousands of letters, cables, and telegrams he has since received, nine out of ten have been supportive. Reaction from U.S. officials, however, has been less than gracious, ranging from ineffectual squawking about economic sanctions made by a few senators and congressmen to the scarcely veiled threat of Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who termed New Zealand’s action a serious threat to the alliance and said “they are following a course that can only be a great harm to themselves.” Replied Lange the next day, “I regard it as unacceptable that another country should by threat or coercion try to change a policy that has been embraced by the New Zealand people.” Apparently democratic mandates in other countries count for less among U.S. policymakers.
In all the gesticulating, very little attention has been paid to what is motivating the New Zealanders, what their policy really is, and whether we should be afraid of it. On February 14 The New York Times in a front page article said that Pentagon and State Department officials “generally attributed” anti-nuclear sentiment in New Zealand to three factors: “environmentalists who fear all nuclear power, people who think their countries can have American military protection and escape the nuclear consequences, and promptings from the Soviet Union.” One editorial columnist in the Christian Science Monitor went so far as to suggest that Lange was an unwilling prisoner of a tiny but freakishly strong anti-nuclear lobby.
The story is quite different when told by a New Zealander or by someone who has recently visited the country. One of us – Gale – went to New Zealand in November 1983 and by chance happened to witness the furtive dawn departure of a U.S. Trident submarine out of the Auckland harbor. The submarine’s visit had been marked by a peaceful, 20,000-strong demonstration the day before. In speaking to the New Zealanders who had participated in the protest, it was clear that they were fully cognizant of the threat posed by the armaments; their awareness was even more remarkable at that time, as scientists had released the data on nuclear winter only a few days previously. The New Zealanders questioned had not yet heard of these findings, which indicate that the Southern hemisphere will also be catastrophically affected by an all-out nuclear exchange between Northern superpowers.
At that point their concern was two-fold: they were afraid that their harbors might become Soviet targets, and they were morally opposed to the existence, use, or threatened use of what Harvard cardiology professor and IPPNW co-president Dr. Bernard Lown has called “not weapons but instruments of genocide.”
It is ironic that the citizens of New Zealand should be freshly outraged at the thought of nuclear-tipped missiles being aimed at their cities, while we in the United States have grown so accustomed to this notion that many of us accept it as if it were a pre-ordained necessity. New Zealanders, like most people, would rather not “suffer the nuclear consequences” (a phrase worth ruminating on – what on earth do those U.S. officials and The New York Times mean by that?) given the lack of a compelling reason why they must do so. Could any reason be that compelling?
The New Zealanders’ second line of reasoning, however, is the one which has really nonplussed the Reagan administration. “Our policy is against nuclear weapons, not against the United States, not against the alliance, not against ANZUS [a treaty organization consisting of Australia, New Zealand, and the United States],” says Prime Minister David Lange. “I have few really burning convictions in political life, and being opposed to nuclear armaments is one of them.”
One criticism of the no-visits policy heard in New Zealand was that it would not affect the United States’ nuclear policies. The U.S. was likened to a hippopotamus stuck in the mud that would only twitch an ear if kicked. But the flustered response of U.S. officials to New Zealand’s announcement reveals just how precarious a moral position those master-minding American military strategy must feel they are in. The ideology is so rigid and so fragile that any questioning of it turns into a dangerous attack.
If American press coverage of New Zealand’s action is to be believed, anti-nuclearism is an intensely potent contagion that has already spread to Australia and may soon infect Japan, the Philippines, and Europe. The implication is that it must be contained at all costs. There is a great deal of nervous twittering about the crumbling of alliances. Supporters of the military status quo apparently feel quite threatened by this hint of democratic subordination.
What many people in this administration, in Congress, and in the national media do not seem capable of realizing is that it is perfectly possible to be against nuclear weapons and not be against the United States, democracy, or even military alliances designed to protect freedom. Fortunately, the United States and nuclear weapons do not have to be considered inseparable entities. Lange and his New Zealand constituents are clearly making a distinction between what they perceive to be the real enemy – the nuclear weapons themselves – and the nation that at present believes itself to be so highly dependent on them.
New Zealanders are anything but anti-American. Suggesting that they are motivated by pro-Sovietism or “promptings from the Soviet Union” is nothing short of ludicrous. Their policy is not meant to jeopardize their relationship with the United States and will only affect the ANZUS Treaty, a stable military alliance dating from 1951 that reflects a broad and varied web of ties among the United States, Australia, and New Zealand, if the U.S., through histrionic overreaction, allows it to do so.
New Zealanders are demonstrating that “nuclear weapons” and “the American way” do not have to be synonymous. They are clarifying our options. They are helping us to question whether these weapons, which many believe should be abolished from the face of the earth by the common consent of humanity, in fact are the only things that give us strength.
We do not think New Zealanders are morally superior to Americans. They do have the advantage, however, of being somewhat less benumbed. They come to the nuclear issue during a time when these serious moral questions are being raised by physicians, lawyers, scientists, the clergy, and many other thoughtful people all over the world. Physicians in New Zealand associated with IPPNW have played an especially prominent role in formulating this policy, putting it to a democratic test, and encouraging their leaders to stick to it.
What New Zealand has started may indeed spread. But far from being a contagion threatening stability and democracy throughout the world, New Zealand’s “allergy” spreads hope for a cure. “Without exciting moral outrage among the intended victims, and that includes all of us, the dismantling of nuclear weapons will not succeed,” says Dr.Lown.
New Zealanders are taking their stand against these weapons with dignity and firmness. We can hope that their sense of moral outrage will travel from the far corners of the globe to the inner chambers of Moscow and Washington. We should be prepared to support New Zealand in whatever way necessary should the threats of economic retaliation become real. For the nuclear allergy is one “disease” that will only be life-threatening if it is eradicated.