92 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
preference for NATO’s leading power to maintain technological
primacy. The Toshiba scandal of 1980, furthermore, seemed to
demonstrate an undesirable looseness of ties among the allies. Japan
benefited from the nuclear military ‘umbrella’ that America held over
it against the Soviet threat; but there was a growth of nationalist
resentment of the American armed presence in the post-war decades.
Nevertheless the shooting down of the South Korean airliner in Siber-
ian air space jolted Japanese public opinion back to an appreciation of
the usefulness of the alliance; and the Americans for their part were
regaining their industrial ebullience as the information technology
revolution spread throughout California’s ‘Silicon Valley’.
America’s network of alliances, including NATO, required dynamic
management as military, political and economic problems arose. Even
the most far-off countries could unsettle the situation. In Australasia
there was little fuss until 1984, when New Zealand’s newly elected
Labour government under Prime Minister David Lange announce a
ban on nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed vessels in its waters. This
challenged the assumptions about American leadership of the world-
wide resistance to the USSR and communism worldwide. Lange did
something unparalleled by any West European, North American or
Asian allied leader. There would have been an angrier reaction from
Washington if those islands in the south-west Pacific had been a
bigger power and Wellington half a globe away and outside the USSR’s
scope of pretensions. When all was said and done, the New Zealand
case demonstrated the looseness and flexibility of the ‘West’ in dealing
with the tasks of defence against the Soviet Union.