The military hawks in the Pentagon will be pawing over an invitation right now, considering how to accept it without being seen to compromise its long held "mum's the word" policy.

It's a steadfast policy held ever since the Lange Government turned away an American naval vessel, the USS Buchanan, from our ports 30 years ago. They saw it as a monumental snub and the standoff began.

It came to a head the following year in a Manila hotel room when David Lange met with the tough talking American Secretary of State George Schultz from the Reagan administration. At the end of the testy meeting Schultz pointedly told a couple of us waiting in the corridor that "we part company as friends, but we part company."

The Americans are great at sounding nice but actually sneering. Schultz was telling us we were no longer allies, reinforced a few months later when Lange passed our anti nuclear legislation into law. Among other things, it banned nuclear armed and propelled warships from visiting our ports.

Lange went on an anti nuclear crusade, once famously telling a student at the Oxford Union debate that he could smell the uranium on his breath.

The ice began to thaw in the mid 90s when Bill Clinton came to the White House and invited the then Prime Minister Jim Bolger for a cuppa. Although when Helen Clark later visited Washington we were told by the then Secretary Colin Powell that we were very, very, very good friends. When I asked him whether we were finally allies again, he turned on his heel and was swept away in his limo.

His successor and Luigi Peters eyelid batter Conde Rice finally conceded when she came to Auckland that we were allies again.

That will now be tested when the implications of that invitation are pawed over. The Americans, along with around 30 other countries, have been invited to send warships to a naval exercise next year to celebrate the 75th anniversary of our navy.

Barak's golfing buddy John Key has, under the anti nuclear law, got the job of declaring the warship nuclear free after taking advice from his officials. That'll only come of course after the American hawks accept the invitation.

If they do accept it, they accept their vessel's nuclear free, and they could see that as compromising their neither confirm nor deny policy, something they've been so bloody minded about for more than 30 years.

For them that's the dilemma!