Earlier I said:

“If we can’t trust the Australians then we can’t trust anyone.”

Patriarch responded:

“The correct answer is we can’t trust anyone. Imagine a Obama elected president there. They may be one of our MOST trusted allies, but complete trust is never wise.”

I strongly believe that we should have absolute trust in the Australians. However there is a historical example along the lines of Patriarch’s response where our trust was betrayed, i.e. New Zealand under David Lange.

David Lange became prime minister of New Zealand in 1984. He found it politically convenient to declare New Zealand a “nuclear free zone” during the height of the Cold War and effectively breached the ANZUS Treaty. Lange knew that New Zealand due to its geological isolation was under no threat from the Soviet Union. Inclusion of New Zealand within the ANZUS treaty had been more an act of courtesy to another Anglo-Saxon country than a strategic calculation. Lange’s action was intended mainly to boost his local political popularity by appealing to idiot/left-wing anti-Americanism (Lange was the closest thing New Zealand ever had to Obama). Lange’s action was very damaging to the United States because the Soviet Union used New Zealand as a propaganda example for promoting unilateral disarmament in areas where there was strategic significant, e.g. Western Europe.

The United States was stabbed in the back by people who we thought were our friends.