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He also described his desire to see US warships in New Zealand waters, and discussed staging a basketball game on the ship.
"I would love to see one of our aircraft carriers come down, in Auckland Harbour, the City of Sails, so that you can see what it is and what we have.
That yank can fuck right off back where he came from.
You know what? I'm quite happy that the US doesn't send it's war fleet down here.
"I'm very disappointed - I don't mean to scold New Zealanders - but disappointed that they feel that way."
"It's important that you care as much about your defence as we care about your defence, and that does mean increasing spending."
He's either stupid, naive, or malicious. Whatever the case he can fuck off.
It’s important that you care as much about your defence as we care about your defence
Do they care about our defence at all?
Our nuclear policy bans vessels that are nuclear armed or nuclear powered, so even if the USA can guarantee they don't have nuclear weapons on board, their nuclear propulsion rules them out.
Interestingly though, it is about the ships. Although we have no nuclear power plants, they are not banned.
So while it does ban nuclear propulsion, I would suspect it's not about the nuclear propulsion and is instead because we don't trust them not to lie.
This was always my thought. If they dont tell us what boats have the bombs then any boat that throws off a wonky rad signiture is banned. We cant tell the difference and know immediatly that we could not trust their word on it.
I'm pretty sure there is no way to detect a nuclear bomb stored in the belly of a ship.
I dont think old mate is heading out in a row boat with a giger counter. There would be military inspections and signoffs right?
Yeah, nuclear power plants being banned is another common misconception.
