The analysis so far has suggested that strategic drift in the ANZUS relationship and lack of political management was paralleled by flourishing defence co-operation, particularly between Australia and the US and between the Anzacs. Ironically, the alliance partners had originally had a minimalist conception of military commitments. Australian politicians, however, were disposed to accept nuclear connections as a way of tying Britain and the US into Australia's security concerns. We have seen how one of the components of defence co-operation, visiting rights and warship access, had been subject to strain as a consequence of technological developments in the USN. Strategic changes and the increased deployment of nuclear-powered warships became a matter of interest to Australian and New Zealand governments and then to environmentalists and peace campaigners.

This chapter contends that a key factor in the ANZUS crisis, the political effectiveness of anti-nuclear opinion in New Zealand, was more nationalistic than ideological in character. In the favourable conditions of strategic drift and attenuated connection with nuclear strategies, public opinion could outweigh the resistance of defence advisers and the ambivalence of the Labour leadership. US policy-makers misread the breadth of passive support for anti-nuclearism, and assumed that, as in Australia and Europe, activists would be kept in their place. At first sight, indeed, the effectiveness of the New Zealand peace movements is baffling.