Political Crossfire Forums

Nailed it eric. China's the obvious driving factor here. And NZ are natural allies of the West--no reason to cut ties over an issue like this (even though it is an important one from the US' standpoint).

To be fair to the U.S it was N.Z (And their wacky domestic politics) that f**k with the treaty in the first place.

It's a really dumb policy though.

I recently had a series of meetings with the NZ Minister of Customs (among other things he is minister over). This subject came up briefly. We kind of both agreed that the US position of not letting NZ ships into port was childish. But, I was also of the opinion that not allowing nuclear "powered" ships was kind of silly. After all, NZ allows nuclear power plants to exist in their country. A nuclear ship is nothing more than a nuclear power plant that doesn't sink.

Now, would that change much? Not really. The reason that the US doesn't send ANY ships to NZ is because they don't want the rest of the world to know which ships carry nuclear weapons and which only carry conventional ones. As a policy, it makes sense. You don't want your enemies (whoever they are) knowing which ships have which types of weapons on board. Have a nuclear weapon isn't a deterrent if it's not deployed.