U.S. Aides Concerned Over Allies’ ‘Nuclear Allergy’

U.S. policy-makers are concerned that anti-nuclear activists in Australia will try to pressure Prime Minister Bob Hawke to follow neighboring New Zealand in refusing to cooperate with U.S. nuclear weapons programs, a senior State Department official said Thursday.

The official, who asked not to be identified, said Australia appears to be the most pressing case of what Pentagon and State Department officials have begun to call “nuclear allergy”--a reluctance by U.S. allies to become involved in any way with nuclear weapons for fear of becoming a target for Soviet missiles.

Other countries cited at the Pentagon, White House or State Department as possible trouble spots include Japan, Belgium, the Netherlands, Britain, West Germany, Canada, Greece and Spain. In most cases, the officials say, the governments want to cooperate with U.S. programs but must face domestic constituencies that are increasingly squeamish about all kinds of nuclear weapons.

“Of course we’re concerned by the effect of anti-nuclear sentiment in a number of countries,” Assistant Defense Secretary Richard N. Perle said. “Some of it, I think, is deliberately intended to disassociate those countries from the United States and from the protective umbrella that we have extended to those countries.

“Frankly, I don’t see how in the long run we can ask the American people to bear the risks of war . . . to defend allies who will have nothing to do with us when delicate issues like the movement of nuclear weapons are involved,” Perle said in an interview on the cable television network C-SPAN.

The senior State Department official said the impact is greatest in Australia in the wake of New Zealand’s refusal to permit a port call by a U.S. warship capable of carrying nuclear weapons.

“You have a very strong anti-nuclear movement in Australia, which will certainly try to use the events in New Zealand to try to bring Hawke down or at least to modify his position,” the official said. “They probably are not strong enough to force him out, but they may try to make him less cooperative or less secure in his pro-American stance.”

At the Pentagon, an official who asked not to be named said the Reagan Administration is concerned “across the horizon” about resistance to nuclear programs.

“We’ve had the resistance, agitation, demonstrations against Pershings and ground-launched cruise missiles in Britain and Germany,” he said, referring to the protests that preceded the arrival of new medium-range U.S. missiles in Western Europe.

Also, he said, “You’ve had the political fandango being performed by the Dutch and Belgian governments.” Belgium is scheduled to deploy cruise missiles later this year, but the Brussels government has avoided giving the final go-ahead because of domestic opposition. The Dutch government has delayed a final decision on accepting the missiles until late this year, having voted last year to delay installation of any nuclear missiles from 1986 until 1988.

The State Department official added that there is also concern about Japan because “there is always a problem in Japan on nuclear matters--there has always been a Japanese nuclear allergy.”

He said the level of nuclear resistance in Western Europe apparently reached its peak just before the first Pershing 2 and cruise missiles were deployed in West Germany and Britain in late 1983 and has declined since then.

However, officials at the State and Defense departments want to make sure that New Zealand’s action does not produce a snowball effect. This, they say, is why the Administration reacted so sternly to Wellington’s decision.

Pentagon spokesman Michael I. Burch said the U.S. government is reviewing its “overall relationship” with New Zealand. There is no possibility that New Zealand could be linked to the United States in an alliance covering conventional--but not nuclear--arms, he said.

“You can’t exist in this world with just a conventional alliance,” Burch declared.

A congressional source said that on Capitol Hill “there is concern” that New Zealand’s decision could lead others to balk at accepting a role in U.S. nuclear policies. “People do talk about it,” he said.

He said that the New Zealand decision “makes people stew up here.” He tied it to what is known as the “burden-sharing” problem--meaning the belief in Congress that smaller nations depending on U.S. defense assistance are not paying a fair share of the costs, both financial and political.

“Everyone’s trying to get a free ride,” the source said.