A declassified conversation with George Bush shows Jim Bolger ‘wanted’ to remove the nuclear ban in 1991. But he couldn’t.

First published in Henry Cooke’s politics newsletter, Museum Street.

In much of the English-speaking world, the right wins when talking about defence.

In the UK and Australia, anyone who wants to become prime minister embraces the centre-right orthodoxy – that America must be kept happy and the security state spared austerity. Canada hews a different path, but still cooperates with America’s nuclear weapons system. And America itself only flirts with isolationism after decades of presidential candidates competing to out-tough each other on military matters, from Hillary Clinton saying Barack Obama didn’t have what it took for the “3am phone call”, to Donald Trump calling for a renewed nuclear arms race.

Down in New Zealand things are very different.

It’s not that the right never runs up wins on defence policy. It’s just that they all pale in comparison to the massive win the left of the Labour Party managed in the 1980s, when it wrote into law that nuclear-powered weapons and ships could never visit New Zealand in any form. That same Labour left seems to have won another large defence policy victory over the weekend, with the party announcing that it now opposes New Zealand joining the new Aukus security pact.

No one can know exactly what the usually centrist Labour leader Chris Hipkins thinks of this policy personally. But one is reminded of his predecessor David Lange’s line to the US ambassador when explaining Labour’s nuclear-free policy in the 1980s: “Ambassador, I would be grateful if you told your president that he stands for election once every four years; I am potentially up for election every Thursday at caucus.”

Yet the real win this 1980s group on the Labour left had was not getting their leader to back the ban, it was moving the Overton window by so much that the National government of the 1990s – the most rightwing in a generation – could do nothing to change it. This is well-illuminated in a fascinating conversation transcript I’ve unearthed between NZ prime minister Jim Bolger and US president George Bush from 1991 that I don’t think has been reported on in this level of detail.

Bolger: ‘I want to revoke the legislation’

The US had put New Zealand on the deep freeze after the government first barred its ship from visiting and then put that ban into law, effectively kicking us out of Anzus. One of Ronald Reagan’s staff in 1985 had briefed that we “could hardly be said now to be in the status of a good ally” and would see our trade access harmed. Newspapers closer to the Reagan presidency like The Wall Street Journal went as far as praising the French for bombing the Rainbow Warrior.

In 1991, after newish prime minister Bolger backed President Bush’s first Gulf War, things started to warm back up, with the two leaders grabbing a meeting on the sidelines of a United Nations meeting in September. According to the memoir of a diplomat who was there, the pair were both drinking whiskies in a side room of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, with national security adviser Brent Scrowcroft also in attendance. A transcript of the full conversation has been declassified and makes for some incredible reading.

The two leaders, who had met a decade prior, have some chemistry. But the purpose of the conversation is Bush pushing for New Zealand to change its nuclear-free policy, especially in the light of Bush’s then unannounced move to take nuclear weapons off surface ships.

The president: I am glad to have this quick chat with you. I have heard from our able ambassador all about what you have done. That’s just fine. I would like to ask Brent Scowcroft here to plant a ray of hope in our relations.

Scowcroft: We will soon be announcing something big with respect to nuclear weapons.

The president: Really, pretty big.

Scowcroft: What we will announce will have an effect on your policies, we believe.

The president: What you have done with your law makes it complicated with us and with the Australians. And now, here we are, we are cooperating in the Gulf and there have been things that you have been willing to stick your neck out on. If this problem were not on paper, we could make progress.

Bolger spoke about this meeting recently, and reportedly said that he “did not concede anything” on the nuclear-free policy, “and hoped [New Zealand] never would”. But while the transcript shows Bolger resisting making any promises to overturn the ban, it certainly shows him telling Bush he’d like to.

Let’s dig in closer. First Bolger reminds Bush that National had “inherited” this policy, and then discusses National’s woeful polling at the time (TVNZ/Heylen had National at 22%, 20 points behind Labour), saying the party was too far out on a limb to reverse the ban right now.

Bolger: I have to get some wealth for New Zealand. We are really down in the polls, but I am totally optimistic. All the polls are against us, but I am confident that we will be reelected in two years. It is also important that we be credible, and that is why we have to stick to our policy on ship visits.

After some joking about trout fishing and some bromides about how the countries should really work this out (Bush suggests Bolger just tell everyone he’s a “World War II guy”), Bolger says he really would like to revoke the ban – but it would just result in Labour instantly reversing it the moment it got back into power.

Bolger: In terms of the future, I want to revoke the legislation. But we cannot just change overnight. We cannot turn the legislation over. I want an amendment that allows you – and the Chief of Defense Forces of the United States – so that you can come back. I want the Chief of New Zealand Forces to be able to participate in exercises of your forces. If I said right now that I want to change, after I am gone, the opposition instantly will repeal any changes.

Soon after the conversation, a leaked telex suggested the US believed New Zealand was going to try to repeal the legislation.

Now, who knows exactly what was in Bolger’s mind. His long march towards social democracy since retirement has included him now forcefully joining Helen Clark in rejecting Aukus, and perhaps he was just saying what Bush wanted to hear.

But it certainly seems like he wanted to get that pesky nuclear ban out of the way – yet couldn’t. This is quite something when you consider the massive range of things that Bolger did do in the 1990-1993 term, such as slashing benefits and other public spending, introducing user pays in hospitals, and introducing the referendum that would create MMP. This government could and would do a lot – but it could not do this. Labour had made the issue far too toxic for National to touch.

In the decades since, we have seen how powerful this issue is for Labour. In 2004 Labour foreign affairs minister Phil Goff released briefing notes his ministry had taken at a meeting then National leader Don Brash had held with the US ambassador, where Brash had reportedly said the nuclear-free policy would be “gone by lunchtime”. This bit of political ratfuckery undoubtedly played a part in Brash failing to win the election, and kept Brash’s successor John Key from ever touching the issue.

But is Aukus nuclear free? Obviously the original deal involved nuclear subs, but whatever was going to be in the “pillar two” New Zealand might join was a lot more mushy, and harder to make toxic for the New Zealand public. There’s also an open question about whether the policy feels as important to New Zealand as it did back in the 1980s, when the threat of nuclear war and the reality of nuclear tests were far more salient. As China asserts itself in the Pacific, might this be a matter where National retakes the initiative on defence policy?

At this time it’s hard to tell. Yet you can certainly see why Labour thinks it can win here, given Trump’s re-election. It’s far easier to reject the US when it is embodied in a man so disliked in New Zealand, and when the idea of a security “threat” from China still feels a bit far-fetched. Yet even Trump has a term limit. Xi does not.