New Zealand's Position

The Government believes that a small nation like New Zealand cannot condone aggression in Vietnam if we value international law and order and our own security. In our modern world, where Communist leaders claim the right of supporting wars of liberation, it is frequently no longer possible to maintain a meaningful distinction between civil wars and international wars.

Vietnam Issue Continued On Page 11

It may similarly be difficult to point to a single specific act as in itself constituting aggression. In these circumstances the test of aggression is provided by patterns or conduct. And in North Vietnam's conduct towards South Vietnam, the pattern of aggression — the provision of arms, troops, and supplies across the frontiers, and the direction of military operations in the South —is unmistakable.

If we want security we must establish now that armed assistance across international borders, both provisional and fixed, to sustain "wars of liberation," must be checked.

Because of our relationship to South-East Asia we have a special interest in the Indo-Chinese war. For on that war the whole of our post-war position now turns. In 1941 New Zealand learned that war in Asia directly affected our security, and in 1945 New Zealand joined in the effort to create a new world organisation for world security.

The United Nations Charter dealt with a world community of independent states, each with its own institutions, but co-operating together for the common good. It was this sort of world which the Communists immediately challenged.

Have we already forgotten Czechoslovakia and Greece in Europe and all the Communist campaigns in Asia? New Zealand became involved in containing open Communist aggression in Korea in 1950 and Communist insurgency in Malaya in 1955.

By virtue of the ANZAM relationship, and in accordance with the terms of the Manila (Seato) Treaty, we have established regional defence arrangements which recognise that New Zealand security is directly connected with events in South-East Asia. From 1955 New Zealand provided forces, to assist in defeating and containing Communism, for the Commonwealth Strategic Reserve in Malaya. Indonesian "confrontation" is a much later development, an offshoot indeed of Communist tactics, and a result perhaps of their success elsewhere. Success for either Indonesian "confrontation" or Communist "war of national liberation" would threaten the security arrangements New Zealand entered into the 1950s.