Arguing About China.

Fact Check: New Zealand’s own relationship with China might, however, be salvageable if our own Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was willing to equip its minister, Winston Peters, with a few facts. Legislating for the protection of national security – the very action our Foreign Minister is decrying – was specifically provided for in the Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR more than 20 years ago.

ARGUING ABOUT CHINA is fast becoming a “thing” – especially on the Left. On one side stand the old-timers, derided by some as “tankies”, who grew up during the first Cold War and are deeply troubled by the increasingly reckless, United States-led campaign to create a second. On the other side stand the defenders of human rights and democracy, the people who will not countenance any attempt to intrude economic, diplomatic or military considerations into their quest for liberty. These are the people for whom the ancient cry: “Let justice be done, though the heavens fall!” was invented.

Given the obvious dangers associated with deliberately heightening the tensions between the Peoples Republic of China and the “Five Eyes” anglophone association of the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia and (reluctantly) New Zealand, it seems only prudent to test the moral consistency of the Human Rights and Democracy Camp’s position. How much, exactly, are they willing to give up for the liberal-democratic values they are so determined to promote?

Let’s begin with something very close to the average Westerner’s heart – the miraculous technology that connects and transports them to the rest of the world. Since most of the world’s “Rare Earths”, those incredibly scarce and valuable minerals that make our cutting-edge technology function, are sourced from China, are the liberal-democrats willing to stop using their miracle machines until the Chinese Communist Party is dethroned?

Not fair? Okay. Let’s bring it all back home.

New Zealand’s Five Eyes “partners” are currently putting very heavy pressure on Wellington to join them in “decoupling” this country’s 5G network from the Chinese IT flagship Huawei. If the government buckles and Huawei is banned in New Zealand  (as it has just been banned in the UK) and the CCP retaliates by banning New Zealand’s dairying flagship, Fonterra, from operating in China, will the Human Rights and Democracy Camp accept the resulting domestic economic hardship as the price to be paid for standing up to Chinese tyranny?

And what will the Human Rights and Democracy Camp’s position be if, emboldened by their success over Huawei, our Five Eyes partners insist that New Zealand join with Australia in lifting its defence expenditure to a minimum of 2 percent of GDP? Are these stalwart champions of liberal-democracy willing to see the billions of dollars currently earmarked for schools,  hospitals and fighting climate-change redirected to fighter-jets, frigates and submarines? Will this, too, be accepted as the price of securing regime change in Beijing?

Following the logic of this new Cold War, is the Human Rights and Democracy Camp prepared to accommodate something similar to the sharp shift to the political right that accompanied the onset of the first Cold War in the late-1940s and early-1950s? Will they, as so many “liberal-democrats” did in the face of the “red scare” and the McCarthyite witch-hunts, look the other way as artists, writers, journalists and trade unionists are accused of being communist agents of the People’s Republic and transformed overnight into jobless, friendless political pariahs? Will they, too, embrace the paradox of trashing human rights and democracy in the name of promoting human rights and democracy?

Following this descending geopolitical staircase to its dark terminus, will our by now fully-paid-up New Cold Warriors remain silent as their government ranges itself alongside a United States determined to “face down” the Chinese communist tyrants regardless of the cost? Will they be content to leave the management of this confrontation to a US President who, unlike Jack Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, possesses no personal experience of war and insufficient intellectual resources to test and challenge the advice of his Joint Chiefs of Staff? Will they simply hope that the Chinese – as they did 160 years ago – reluctantly surrender their sovereignty to the West’s superior firepower? And what will they tell their children and grandchildren as intercontinental ballistic missiles and their multi-megaton nuclear payloads start criss-crossing the Pacific? That they made sure that justice was done – even at the cost of setting the heavens on fire, bringing down human civilisation and condemning their families to a lingering death from radiation among the ruins?

But isn’t this an argument in favour of craven appeasement? According to its logic, wouldn’t Britain have been wiser to allow Adolf Hitler free-rein in Europe? Aren’t we “tankies”, like the despised Neville Chamberlain, pursuing peace at any price?

The comparison is, of course, entirely spurious. In 1938, neither the UK nor Nazi Germany possessed nuclear weapons. Had they done so, the diplomatic and military calculations of the 1920s and 30s would have been made using the same formulae applied during the first Cold War. Joseph Stalin was, after all, every bit as foul a villain as Hitler, and just as worthy of destruction. But, once his Soviet Union acquired atomic and hydrogen bombs, the costs of making war on it far exceeded any possible benefits – up to and including human rights and democracy! There’s not much call for either in the irradiated wastelands that follow the mutual and assured destruction of a nuclear exchange.

We tankies would like nothing more than to see a China in which human rights and democracy have sunk down deep roots. We are simply doubtful that either goal can be achieved when the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, is openly declaring his determination to force regime change in Beijing. The policy we much prefer is the policy that took the heat (so to speak) out of the first Cold War: “Peaceful Co-existence”. Only when the Chinese Communist Party no longer views the US and its allies as an existential threat will it be possible to resume a meaningful dialogue about human rights and democracy in the Peoples Republic of China. While the Five Eyes powers brazenly advance the diplomatic, economic and military containment of China – also known as the “Indo-Pacific Strategy” – such a dialogue is impossible.

New Zealand’s own relationship with China might, however, be salvageable if our own Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was willing to equip its minister, Winston Peters, with a few facts. In relation to Hong Kong, for example, it would have been immensely helpful for the New Zealand Government to have drawn its citizens’ attention to Article 23 of the 1997 treaty by which the UK returned Hong Kong to China as a Special Administrative Region. The article states:

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region shall enact laws on its own to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People’s Government, or theft of state secrets, to prohibit foreign political organizations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region, and to prohibit political organizations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organizations or bodies.

In other words, legislating for the protection of national security – the very action our Foreign Minister is decrying – was specifically provided for in the Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR more than 20 years ago. (Hat-tip to Mike Smith for drawing Article 23 to my attention.)

All that has changed since the West happily signed-off on Article 23 is that China has grown stronger. That strength has helped to make New Zealand a more prosperous country. In joining the reckless efforts of the United States and the other Five Eyes powers to contain and weaken China we will do nothing to strengthen human rights and democracy in that country and may, by heeding the dangerous counsels of coercion, end up weakening them in our own.

Just months before he was assassinated, President John F. Kennedy addressed the students of the American University in Washington. What he said then is as relevant to international relations today as it was in 1963:

So, let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 30 July 2020.

New Zealand's Current Foreign Policy: An Absence Of Realism.

What Are You trying To Say? The contrast between Helen Clark’s stewardship of New Zealand foreign policy and Jacinda Ardern’s is stark. Ardern’s generation, raised in the shadow of Rogernomics, has never evinced the same strong interest in international issues that characterised the Baby Boomers. The USA had won the Cold War, leaving neoliberal capitalism in command of the planet. Taking issue with this new status quo could be seriously career-limiting. With Ardern, it’s not quite a matter of “where Uncle Sam goes, we go” – but it’s close.

NOWHERE is the difference between Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern more apparent than in the field of foreign policy.

Clark’s induction to left-wing politics came, as it did for so many of her generation, from New Zealand’s interactions with the rest of the world.

Be it this country’s relationship with the United States, France or South Africa, there was never any shortage of deficiencies to be challenged and (hopefully) overcome. The Vietnam War, Atmospheric Nuclear Testing, Apartheid: these were the issues that mobilised thousands of young New Zealanders – and Labour was on the right side of them all.

For those, like Clark, who were driven to do more than protest, serious engagement with foreign policy issues required a high degree of intellectual and political discipline. If one’s intention was to do more than shout slogans and wave placards, then the facts had to be mastered and the arguments, both for and against, understood. Without the ability to make a case, and defend it, the chances of being heard by those with the power to effect change were negligible.

What was sauce for the goose of foreign policy was, of course, also sauce for the gander of domestic policy. Mastering the art of the possible in relation to the former pretty much guaranteed equal mastery with respect to the latter. More importantly, Clark soon realised than in a small trading nation tucked away at the bottom of the planet, building and maintaining strong and mutually advantageous relationships with the rest of the world was absolutely crucial to the preservation of national prosperity.

It was an insight which propelled Clark towards the “realist” school of international relations pioneered by Hans Morgenthau. At the heart of Morgenthau’s realism was his belief that the relationships between countries should be guided by an assessment of the power each is able to bring to the task of advancing and defending their national interests. Ethical considerations are not irrelevant to this sort of calculation, but neither are they pivotal. In Morgenthau’s opinion: “A good foreign policy minimizes risks and maximizes benefits.”

Clark’s realism proved highly effective in advancing New Zealand’s national interest. She earned the respect of four-fifths of humanity by declining to join in the USA’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. More impressively, she persuaded the Chinese to put their trust in New Zealand, and thus became the first western leader to negotiate a free trade agreement with the People’s Republic.

The contrast between Clark’s stewardship of New Zealand foreign policy and Ardern’s is stark. Ardern’s generation, raised in the shadow of Rogernomics, has never evinced the same strong interest in international issues that characterised the Baby Boomers. The USA had won the Cold War, leaving neoliberal capitalism in command of the planet. Taking issue with this new status quo could be seriously career-limiting. With Ardern, it’s not quite a matter of “where Uncle Sam goes, we go” – but it’s close.

This is a long way from Morgenthau’s realism. Absent from New Zealand’s current foreign policy is the constant and careful calculation of precisely how much diplomatic power is available to us at any given moment for the advancement of our national interest.

The Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, apparently on his own recognisance, has signed New Zealand up holus-bolus to the USA’s new “Indo-Pacific” strategy. In the process he has gratuitously breached the trust upon which New Zealand’s immensely valuable economic relationship with China rests. He did not see fit to consult his Prime Minister about this radical realignment – and, by all accounts, she saw no reason to object.

Quite what Clark makes of the unholy mess Peters has made of her carefully balanced foreign policy can only be imagined. When the pressure is applied: from Canberra, London, Washington or Beijing; the Foreign Minister is suddenly nowhere to be found. Leaving his hapless Prime Minister to follow the line of least diplomatic resistance. Towards Washington one day. Towards Beijing the next.

From the point of view of the two largest powers on New Zealand’s dance card, squeezing the Kiwis makes perfect sense. If a nation reveals itself to be vulnerable to pressure, then pressure will be applied.

Ardern has led New Zealand into the very predicament Clark worked so hard to keep us out of: caught between an American rock and a Chinese hard place.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 15 March 2019.

If Kobane Falls?

Under Fire: The fate of the Syrian border-town of Kobane has assumed an international significance. Its capture by the forces of the Islamic State would be a serious blow to the West's collective resolve to degrade and ultimately destroy this new and extremely dangerous radical Islamist project.

 

IF KOBANE FALLS – or should that be when Kobane falls – a number of terrible things will happen. Any Kurdish soldiers found alive in the Syrian border town will be killed. For propaganda purposes some will be beheaded, their deaths recorded, and the video clips uploaded to the Internet. Young Shi’ite women will be rounded up and sent deeper into the Islamic State (IS) where many will find themselves being offered to IS soldiers as “brides”. Any professional women (doctors, nurses, teachers, lawyers) found in Kobane will face instant execution by the Islamic State pour encourager les autres. All facilities for the secular education of women will be closed.

 

If Kobane falls – or should that be when Kobane falls – the strategic and geographical coherence of the Islamic State will be greatly enhanced and their victorious forces re-deployed to apply what is likely to prove decisive additional psychological and military pressure on Iraqi forces battling the Islamic State’s advance into Anbar province.

 

If Kobane falls – or should that be when Kobane falls – the resolve of those Western nations pledged to degrade and destroy its aggressive military potential will be further weakened. Turkey, a NATO ally of the US and UK forces already engaged in Iraq and Syria, will face furious international condemnation for refusing to deploy the overwhelming strength of its armed forces in defence of Kobane’s Kurdish defenders.

 

If Kobane falls – or should that be when Kobane falls – many people in the West will observe that if the Syrian people’s nearest neighbour is prepared to sit on its hands and watch while thousands of soldiers and civilians are slaughtered or sent into sexual slavery, then why should nations thousands of kilometres from the fighting be expected to expend blood and treasure on their rescue?

 

If Kobane falls – or should that be when Kobane falls – New Zealand’s Prime Minister, John Key, and his Cabinet will be faced with some extremely difficult decisions. They must weigh very carefully the costs and benefits of committing elements of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) to the international coalition currently battling the Islamic State. If they decide upon a military commitment (most probably in the form of personnel belonging to the NZDF’s elite Special Air Service) then how long should it be for, and under what circumstances might it be curtailed? Should New Zealand remain engaged if the seemingly unstoppable advance of the Islamic State prompts the armies of Turkey and Iran to intervene? With the boundaries of the entire Middle East being re-drawn, what business would New Zealand soldiers’ boots have on any part of its disputed ground?

 

If Kobane falls – or should that be when Kobane falls – what are young Sunni Muslim men and women living in New Zealand and other Western countries likely to make of yet another Islamic State victory? Will they (as we hope) recoil in horror at the brutal battlefield behaviour of their co-religionists? Or will at least some of them attempt the ethical calculus required to determine whether the beheading of a Western aid worker is more or less reprehensible than the “collateral damage” inflicted by an American Predator drone unleashing its Hellfire missiles on a Yemeni or Waziri village? And will those same young Muslims not wonder why Saudi Arabia, in which 57 people have been beheaded in the last year alone, has not merited the same expressions of international outrage as the Islamic State?

 

If Kobane falls – or should that be when Kobane falls – wouldn’t it be a good time to ponder the reasonably obvious fact that in the eyes of many young Sunni Muslims the Islamic State is not the dwelling place of monsters, but the one location in the Muslim world where corruption is ruthlessly rooted-out; where the administration of the law is given over to ordinary people pledged to uphold and enforce the traditions of their faith; where the State is not the enemy of ordinary people but their friend, extending to them not the iron fist of tyranny but the solicitous hand recommended by the Prophet; and where, to be a woman is not to be paraded as a lump of sexual meat, but as a precious vessel to be cherished and protected. Isn’t it time we in the West asked ourselves: just how likely is it that young Muslim men and women are leaving their families and their friends, travelling thousands of miles and hazarding their freedom, their lives, their very souls – for monsters? Internationally acclaimed expert on the funding of terrorism, Loretta Napoleoni, has already asked herself this question. Her conclusion: “It’s not.”

 

The question New Zealanders should now be asking themselves is whether the fight against the Islamic State is their fight? Ethically, militarily, diplomatically and politically – what  should we do if Kobane falls?

 

Or should that be when Kobane falls?

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 14 October 2014.

Forgotten Lessons

Cry Havoc: To hand over prisoners to mistreatment and torture is a clear breach of the Geneva Conventions - but this is what New Zealand SAS troopers serving in Afghanistan have been required to do. Those responsible for placing New Zealand servicemen in this situation must be held to account.

YESTERDAY was ANZAC Day. For most of us, 25 April 2011 was simply a day of remembrance: a day for recalling the 25,000 New Zealanders who, in the 97 years since the outbreak of World War I, have lost their lives on active military service.

For New Zealanders with some knowledge of their country’s history, however, ANZAC Day is about a lot more than remembrance.

It’s about the dangers of blindly committing ourselves to objectives we had no part in setting.

It’s about the folly of believing that any country, other than New Zealand, has the interests of New Zealanders at heart.

It’s about how easy it is to send young men to kill and be killed in far off lands – especially when those responsible for sending them are seldom, if ever, required to witness the killing or the dying.

When the casualty-lists ran into the tens-of-thousands we used to think that dying was the worst part of war. We look at all those names, weathered to near illegibility on a thousand memorial plaques, and we ask ourselves: “Why?”

Time passes and the answers change. Once we told ourselves it was for King & Country. More latterly, we’ve reassured ourselves our servicemen and women died for Freedom and Democracy. As New Zealanders, we’re willing to fight and die only for causes that are just and good.

Because what happens to a country when it finds itself on the wrong side of war’s moral ledger? When it’s no longer a matter of dying but “killing in the name of”? What happens when it’s no longer fighting to put an end to the torture and killing of innocent civilians – but alongside the torturers and killers?

Specifically, what happened in the little Afghan village of Band-e-Timur?

If the international award-winning investigative journalist Jon Stephenson’s account of this engagement, published in the latest edition of Metro magazine, is accurate, then New Zealand’s finest troops, the troopers of the Special Air Service (SAS) were ordered to involve themselves in something wrong and shameful.

According to Mr Stephenson, SAS troopers led the assault on Band-e-Timur in May 2002. During the raid, in which the village headman was shot and killed and a tiny six-year-old girl, fleeing in terror, tumbled into a well and was drowned, the SAS took scores of prisoners – including men as old as 70 and a boy as young as twelve. These prisoners were entrusted to the “care” of Americans – who then proceeded to abuse, terrorise and torture them.

This was not what the troopers signed up for – and they said as much to their commanding officer. We wouldn’t expect Kiwi servicemen to do anything less.

But what about their military and political bosses?

Sadly, they do not appear to have learned the bloody lessons of the Gallipoli Campaign.

New Zealand’s decision to participate in the Afghan conflict, like its decision to participate in World War I, was an act of imperial solidarity.

The United States had been attacked and we had no intention of staying out of the fight. After 16 years of cool-to-frigid relations with the world’s sole remaining super-power (not to mention the frowns and finger-wagging of all the other members of the Anglo-Saxon Club) here, at last, was an opportunity to once again become a member in good-standing. Or, as the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, put it: “Very, very, very good friends.”

Except the America we opted to march alongside in 2001 was not the America of Woodrow Wilson or Franklin Roosevelt. Twenty-first Century America was an altogether darker and more dangerous beast.

The America of President George W. Bush decided to ignore the Geneva Conventions. His war in Afghanistan would be fought according to an entirely new rule book: one in which the abuse, humiliation, terrorising and torture of prisoners would become a routine aspect of battlefield practice.

“You are either with us”, President Bush admonished an astonished world, “or you are with the terrorists”.

If New Zealand wanted to fight alongside the Americans, it would be according to rules no decent New Zealand soldier – or citizen – could possibly, in good conscience, accept.

At this point our government should have withdrawn New Zealand service personnel from Afghanistan altogether. But it did not. Instead, politicians, civil servants and the military’s top-brass contrived a form of words which they believed would protect our servicemen and women from charges of complicity in the torture and murder of suspected Afghan fighters.

But it doesn’t, it hasn’t, and it won’t. International law on this matter is unequivocal. Everyone involved in the arrest and detention of persons – of whatever status – has a legal obligation to protect them from harm.

In 1915 blind colonial subservience cost us 2,700 young lives. In 2011 we stand to lose something even more precious.

Our national honour.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 26 April 2011.

The Price

Blood on Our Hands: Is the price of New Zealand’s re-admission to the Anglo-Saxon club now to be measured in the blood of her children?

IT’S THE OVERPRESSURE WAVE that poses the most immediate threat.

The detonation of an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) compresses the surrounding air and blows it outward in a deadly shockwave. The speed at which this shockwave travels is measured in milliseconds and the resulting high-energy pulse can cause serious damage to the human body’s "hollow organ systems" – that’s your ears, lungs and abdominal cavity.

An overpressure pulse of just 4 psi is powerful enough to kill any human-beings located in the immediate vicinity of the blast. At 10 psi human bodies simply disintegrate.

The shockwave is followed by the fragmentation effect. The enormous heat and pressure generated by the explosion disintegrates all but the most solid adjacent objects - sending superheated fragments flying outwards at supersonic speed.

Following the detonation of an IED, the metal container in which the explosive mixture is packed is instantly transformed into hundreds of lethal shards called "shrapnel". Depending on the sophistication of the bomb, the shrapnel may simply disperse in all directions, or be "shaped" to discharge in a single direction, like a shotgun blast.

The effect of a sudden large explosion is extremely disorientating. The flash, the overpressure pulse, the fragmentation effect and the deafening noise simply overwhelm the senses and render the individual acutely vulnerable for at least several seconds.

This is why the detonation of IEDs is such an effective military tactic. Deployed in conjunction with carefully positioned machine-guns and rocket-propelled-grenade launchers, they give the attacking force a deadly window of opportunity to pour fire into an enemy who is, at least momentarily, incapable of fighting back.

That the twelve person unit of New Zealand infantry ambushed this morning (4/8/10) in Afghanistan’s Bamyan Province, by a so-far unidentified insurgent unit utilising a combination of IED and small-arms fire, emerged from the engagement with only one fatality is remarkable. It speaks volumes about the superb training of the New Zealand foot-soldier.

As the independent NZ war correspondent, Jon Stephenson, observed on Radio New Zealand – National’s "Nine to Noon" show, if an ambush is properly organised there should be no one left to walk away. And yet we are informed that the Kiwis were able to return fire, and in spite of the misty conditions (which prevented effective air-support and the swift evacuation of the wounded) held off the insurgents until the arrival of a relief force.

Even so, the casualty rate of this engagement was a sobering 25 percent (not counting the Afghan interpreter who was one of the three persons wounded in the attack). New Zealanders should, therefore, take the opportunity provided by this deadly encounter to consider the wisdom of their country’s continuing participation in the Afghanistan conflict.

Our participation in the Bamyan Provincial Reconstruction Team had been blessedly casualty-free up until today. Bamyan, we were told, was a "safe" and "friendly" province where the winning of hearts and minds by the Kiwis was proceeding apace. Clearly this is no longer the case.

Though the local Hazara population may be the historical enemies of the largely Pashtun Taliban militiamen, this has not prevented the insurgent forces from repeatedly infiltrating the province. Today’s attack suggests that those forces are now moving backwards and forwards across the mountainous terrain with increased freedom and enhanced military effectiveness. If New Zealand’s soldiers remain in Bamyan more casualties are unavoidable.

The Prime Minister, John Key, has declared that, in spite of this morning’s fatal attack, it is not New Zealand’s intention to "cut and run". Viewing the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, however, "cutting and running" seems like an eminently sensible suggestion.

If Bamyan is no longer safe (and the failure of locals to pass on their usual warnings to the Kiwi patrol is as worrying as it is significant) then nowhere in the whole war-torn country is safe.

More and more of the participants in the ISAF are declaring the battle for the Afghans’ hearts and minds to be lost, and that the US counter-insurgency strategy has failed. The government in Kabul is simply too venal, too corrupt, too ineffectual and too compromised by its relationship with the occupying NATO forces to command the loyalty of the Afghan people. They simply will not send their sons to die for Hamid Karzai and his drug-running mates.

And if the Afghan people themselves are not willing to die for the discredited and dysfunctional Afghan State – a regime installed, funded and protected by the armies of the West – then why should young New Zealand soldiers?

Is the price of New Zealand’s re-admission to the Anglo-Saxon club now to be measured in the blood of her children? If so, then the price is too high. We must not allow the bravery of our soldiers to be harnessed to the folly of our politicians.

It’s time to go.　

Farmers - Not Peasants

To lose land is to lose sovereignty: This was the lesson Maori learned from Pakeha. Are all New Zealanders about to be taught the same lesson by the Chinese?

THE OUTRAGE was as plain as a Chinese pikestaff. Responding to Agriculture Minister, David Carter’s, comment that the sale of sixteen dairy farms to the Chinese-backed Natural Dairy (NZ) Ltd was "unlikely to go through", the company’s vice-chairman, Graham Chin, cut straight to the chase.

Not only were the Minister’s comments "completely unacceptable", snapped Mr Chin, but they also raised "serious questions as to how genuine and understanding the Minister of Agriculture is in relation to New Zealand’s trading and investment relationship with countries such as China."

Forget the "such as". Mr Chin was bluntly reminding our government that, along with all the international kudos and commercial opportunities, New Zealand’s highly prized Free Trade Agreement with the Peoples Republic of China also included a number of fundamental obligations and responsibilities.

Foremost among these is the New Zealand Government’s obligation to ensure that the same commercial opportunities made available to New Zealand investors in China are fully reciprocated in relation to Chinese businesses seeking to invest in New Zealand.

China will not tolerate a trading partner who attempts to have it both ways. If Beijing is willing to open doors for Fonterra, then Wellington must be equally hospitable to Mr Chin and his Hong Kong backers.

And it would be very foolish to suppose that Chinese officials will be fooled by New Zealand politicians attempting to wash their hands of all responsibility by pointing to the "independence" of our Overseas Investment Office (OIO). China’s ambassador will know as well as the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) spokesperson, Murray Horton, that the OIO hasn’t turned down a land purchase application in twenty years.

Once Natural Dairy’s application is granted, however, New Zealand’s farmers, and the politicians who represent them, are going to have to do some very serious thinking.

China’s purchasing plans for New Zealand are unlikely to stop at the Crafar family’s former properties. Indeed, Natural Dairy (NZ) Ltd’s principals have made it clear that their long-term objective is to construct a New Zealand-based, wholly-Chinese-owned, vertically integrated dairying operation in direct competition with Fonterra.

It must be as obvious to Chinese business interests as it is to this country’s Australian-owned banks that for more years than we care to admit, New Zealand’s dairy farmers have been in business not to sell milk, but to realise the enormous capital gains engendered by the ever-rising price of rural land.

With the global financial crisis having brought New Zealand’s rural property boom to an abrupt halt, a great many dairy farmers (and their bankers) are now stuck with properties their cows’ udders can no longer finance. Overextended in their rural lending, the Australian banks want to effect a quick exit from our agricultural sector with the minimum possible damage to their bottom-lines. They are looking for buyers of agricultural land, and, as luck would have it, the Chinese are looking for anyone with agricultural land to sell.

What is a Kiwi cow-cockey, technically insolvent and unable to borrow, supposed to do when Natural Dairy (or something like it) comes calling with an open cheque-book? As one veteran farmer of my acquaintance put it recently: "If a Chinese buyer offers me $3 million, cash, for my property – I’m not going to turn him down."

There’s only one way New Zealand can avoid losing, farm by farm, its core agricultural assets, and that is to make it illegal to sell agricultural land to anyone except the Crown.

Like the Maori before us, we face the prospect of seeing our most valuable taonga, land, and the key resource which will soon be worth even more than land, water, being sold out from under us. Only then will we discover, as they did, that losing one’s treasure means losing one’s sovereignty.

Turning our farmers into Crown Tenants, or, if they bridle at that term, into "Stewards" of the nation’s most treasured resources, would allow them to do what they do best: grow protein. Rather than farming for capital gain they could, once again, farm to feed a hungry world.

And to China’s inevitable protests our response should be:

"As a people, you have known the humiliation of being brought low by foreigners, but also the exhilaration of rising, proudly, to your feet.

"We are happy to be China’s farmers – but we will not be her peasants."

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 28 May 2010.

Epic Fail

The sharp end of Japanese Foreign Policy: The Japanese whaling fleet's security ship Shonan Maru No. 2 deliberately rams the New Zealand boat Ady Gil in the waters off Antarctica. New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister, Murray McCully's response? He accuses the protesters of wanting to kill people!

JAMMER looks like he should stink to high heaven – but he doesn’t. At least, not in a bad way. Those brown dreadlocks piled high behind his head, like he’s carrying a furry octopus up there, exude a resinous, piney-wood scent (special oils, apparently) which is actually rather pleasant. And his gypsy wardrobe, which looks like it’s been assembled at random in the nearest Salvation Army store, carries the reassuring aroma of Sunlight soap and Janola.

With Jammer, appearances can be deceptive.

"’S’up?" He asks as he slumps down at my table.

"Not a lot", I reply. "How about you? Keeping out of trouble?"

"Nope."

Jammer lifts a squat bottle of Australian ginger-beer in mock salute to "trouble".

"Let me guess," I say, raising my own glass of pinot in reply, "Stanley Street? Shahar Peer?"

"Nope. Palestine was last week. I’ve just come from the Japanese Consulate."

"Ah", I shake my head in what I hope is an appropriately sympathetic fashion. "Bad business."

"Business is right", says Jammer. "And what’s with this dude McCully? A New Zealand boat is rammed by the Japanese whalers’ attack-ship, a bunch of people are nearly drowned, and our Foreign Affairs Minister goes on National Radio and accuses the anti-whaling protesters of sailing down to Antarctica to kill people. I mean, that is just so fucked-up. So wrong. You know all these politicians, Chris. What’s the guy into?"

The emphasis which Jammer lays on "into" communicates a world of youthful disdain.

"You’ve got to understand where McCully and his colleagues are coming from, Jammer. What they’re trying to achieve."

"What? Earn a few brownie-points with the Japanese? Keep our trading partners happy? That sort of thing?"

"Actually, no, I don’t think that’s what’s driving McCully at all. From a short-term political perspective, his indifference to what is taking place in the waters off Antarctica is doing the National-led Government a lot of damage. And he’s far too well-versed in the dark arts of public relations not to know it. Sure, Japan’s an important trading partner of New Zealand – but with the rest of the world as pissed-off with the Japanese as we are, there was nothing to be gained, and a lot of public support to be lost, by down-playing this country’s opposition to ‘scientific’ whaling."

"So why all the aggro towards the Sea Shepherds? Why the refusal to speak out against the sinking of the Ady Gil?"

"Well, partly it’s just McCully’s Tory reflexes kicking-in. As you and John Minto discovered last week, conservative New Zealand still has no great love for protesters."

"Yeah! Did you see all those comments on John’s blog? Five hundred of them! People just don’t get it, do they?"

"Nope, they don’t. And believe me, Jammer, they were just the same at the beginning of the anti-apartheid movement fifty years ago. And that, really, is the point. It’s that very Kiwi impulse to come out in support of the under-dog; to stand up and be counted in the face of injustice – even if it pisses-off the French and the Rugby Union, like Norman Kirk did; or the Americans, like David Lange and Helen Clark did – that McCully’s out to eradicate."

"No way!"

"Yep, I’m afraid so. National has always hated the way progressive and idealistic New Zealanders have hauled this country kicking and screaming onto the moral high-ground. It’s always detested, and done its best to douse, the beacon fires of principle we’ve lit there for all the world to see. As Foreign Minister, McCully wants New Zealand to become a follower – not a leader. He wants to show the big powers, America and China in particular, that we’ve finally abandoned our troublesome predilections for standing-up and being counted. He means to show the world that, henceforth, New Zealand will be only too happy to take things lying-down – and count for nothing.

"So that’s why, for the first time in 10 years, this country wasn’t represented at the International Whaling Commission by a Cabinet Minister?"

"Yep. And it also explains why we’ve got the SAS in Afghanistan, and why we hardly said boo to a greenhouse-gas-emitting goose at Copenhagen."

"And why the cops were so bloody heavy-handed with us outside the tennis?"

I nod. Jammer puts down his ginger-beer, shaking his dreadlocks sadly.

"Epic fail, dude" he sighs. "Epic fail."

This essay was originally published in The Timaru Herald, The Taranaki Daily News, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Evening Star of Friday, 15 January 2010.　

Foreseeing the Unforeseeable

The Battle of Midway

I am reprinting my keynote address to the "Defence - A Debate" symposium, organised by the Centre for Strategic Studies and held at Victoria University of Wellington on 30-31 May 2001, for two reasons. First, because elements of it now seem strangely prophetic, and second, because, with a new National Government and a new Defence Minister, the key elements of that pre-9/11 debate are probably due for a re-airing.

I WOULD like to begin this short address by quoting a few lines from the Australian novelist, Frank Moorhouse’s, Grand Days. The novel is set at the headquarters of the League of Nations in Geneva in the 1920s. The heroine Edith Campbell Berry, a young, idealistic Australian, employed in the Secretariat of the League, is discussing the Kellogg-Briand "Pact of Peace" with Robert Dole, a cynical English journalist:

"Dole leaned over their table. ‘You know that the pact is really France trying to marry America,’ he said. He went on to say that the Kellogg-Briand Pact, if signed, was simply France manipulating America into a military alliance disguised as a peace treaty."

This is too much for Edith who "becomes defensive, arguing in what she called her ill-behaved voice, which rose unpleasantly to just below a shrill."

Later, Edith’s lover, Ambrose, admonishes her: "'Edith, you give it all too much heart.'" But the young Australian won’t admit defeat: "'Please – before we change the subject – you agree, don’t you? … Everyone agrees that since Locarno, and since the proven power of the League to settle conflicts – Germany in the League, and so on – you agree that things have never looked better?’ He smiled. ‘I agree. It is a historical fact. Things have never looked better. But you must also keep a realpolitik view of things Edith.’"

When I hear the Prime Minister, Helen Clark, dismiss the critics of her defence policies with the airy assertion that New Zealand faces no discernible threat to its security for the foreseeable future, I am reminded of Miss Edith Campbell Berry and her touching Antipodean faith in the efficacy of diplomatic devices, like the ill-fated Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 - which "outlawed war as an instrument of national policy". Like Ambrose, I feel the need to remind her to "keep a realpolitik view of things".

That is not always easy. For there have been moments in history when the prospects for international peace and security have, indeed, "never looked better". Ms Clark’s predecessor, Sir Joseph Ward, surveying the world in May of 1929 would have encountered just such a state of affairs – a beneficent global order which the best brains of the era confidently predicted would continue well into the foreseeable future.

There were many reasons for this sanguine assessment of international relations. Four years earlier, Germany, with France and Great Britain, had signed the Treaty of Locarno by which she guaranteed the existing frontiers of France and Belgium and undertook not to alter her eastern boundaries except by negotiation. In 1926 Germany was admitted to the League of Nations, and in 1928 joined the other peoples of Europe in signing Edith’s ill-starred "Pact of Peace".

In the United States an unparalleled economic boom roared on and on – prompting the newly elected President, Herbert Hoover, to predict that the USA was "in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from the nation". Japan, though racked with internal political difficulties, remained at least nominally democratic. China and Russia, struggling to rise above the vicissitudes of famine and civil war, posed no military threat to anyone.

As a loyal Dominion Prime Minister, Sir Joseph Ward happily left the serious business of international relations and national defence to the British. The Royal Navy provided all that was needed by way of strategic guarantees. New Zealand’s army was tiny, ill-equipped and intended primarily for the maintenance of internal security. As a separate branch of the armed services, the Air Force did not exist.

If asked, Sir Joseph would undoubtedly have had as much difficulty as Ms Clark in identifying any foreseeable military threat to New Zealand’s security.

Ten years later, in May of 1939, the world had changed – changed utterly. The happy dreams of "outlawing" war had disappeared – worldwide economic failure had seen to that. Germany and Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations had rendered it powerless to resist aggression, and everywhere re-armament was proceeding at breakneck speed. Japan was engaged in a bloody war of conquest against the Chinese; the Spanish Republic was in its death throes; and Hitler, having swallowed up Austria and Czechoslovakia, was preparing to dismember Poland. All over the world people recalled the horrors of the First World War and despaired. No one bothered to ask if war was coming; the only question in May 1939 was when it would break out.

These sombre observations, as you will no doubt have guessed, place me in the camp of the Robert Doles of this world – rather than the Edith Campbell Berrys. Those bright moments in the historical landscape – such as the 1920s and the 1990s – when world peace seemed possible, were more often than not periods of rest and recuperation following the terrible exertions of war.

The League and its philosophy had its hey-day in the decade following the "war to end all wars". The relative peace of the 1990s followed the aggressive assertion of US power against Saddam Hussein in the Gulf, the final collapse of the Soviet Union, and the ending of the Cold War in 1991.

A prolonged period of international stability should put statesmen – and women - on their guard. As the grizzled cavalry scout always says in the old westerns: "I don’t like it. It’s too quiet."

Should it suddenly get noisy – how is New Zealand placed?

The answer, sadly, is "not well". Most New Zealanders have experienced an enormous feeling of pride at what our troops have accomplished in East Timor. But New Zealand’s professional soldiers are only able to perform so creditably in that theatre (with military equipment inferior to that issued to the Australian territorials!) because of the superb training they have received as part of a fully integrated military force.

By decommissioning the combat wing of the RNZAF, the Labour-Alliance Government has fundamentally compromised the future combat readiness of our defence force. Without the contribution of close-air-support training, the capability of the New Zealand infantryman and woman will rapidly diminish. Our future ability to inject and extract military personnel into and out of combat zones - without sustaining heavy casualties - has been seriously degraded by the Government’s decision to scrap the Skyhawks.

At this point in any dispute over New Zealand’s military posture, someone inevitably throws down the challenge: "So, who is going to attack us? Who should we be preparing to fight?" It is a challenge that politicians, academics, and "responsible" journalists are loath to answer for fear of sparking a diplomatic incident, or being branded that most risible of creatures – a "conspiracy theorist".

Since I am none of the above, I have no hesitation in identifying the Peoples Republic of China as the most likely source of military aggression in the Pacific Region.

My reasons for viewing the PRC as a potential military aggressor are probably identical to those of the Pentagon and the US State Department.

The modernisation of the Chinese economy is producing a tidal wave of lay-offs and redundancies as the inefficient plant and machinery of the Maoist era is being upgraded and replaced by much more efficient and less labour intensive technology. Millions of industrial workers, and tens of millions of agricultural labourers, are being tipped out of the labour market into a society whose welfare and housing provision is still intimately bound up with the workplace.

This is a recipe for social and political disaster.

To make matters worse, China’s political institutions are singularly ill-suited to managing the looming social crisis. In essence the Chinese Communist Party leadership has only two options – to democratize the country’s political system, or to divert the grievances of the Chinese people down the channels of aggressive nationalism. With the sobering example of the Soviet Union before them, China’s leaders are unlikely to embrace the democratic option. Nationalism is, therefore, the most likely strategy to be adopted. That can only mean the re-conquest of Taiwan, and that can only mean war with the United States.

This scenario – which anyone involved with strategic studies in Australia will tell you pretty much underpins current US military doctrine – requires the New Zealand Government to make a choice between the two great powers of the region: - the PRC or the USA.

The choice is not as straightforward as it may seem; while our common language, and shared cultural values impel us towards the United States, there are pressing economic reasons for keeping on the right side of the PRC. In fifty years, barring a full-scale military confrontation with the US, China will boast the world’s largest and most dynamic economy, and all of East Asia will move to the rhythms of what will have become a Sino-Japanese condominium. If Australia and New Zealand decide to place themselves outside the strategic and economic perimeters of the Western Hemisphere, then our diplomatic and economic priorities will increasingly be determined in Beijing.

Every political fibre of my being tells me that Australians and New Zealanders will not tolerate a foreign affairs and defence policy which isolates this nation from its cultural, linguistic, historical and ideological allies. We are heirs of the European Enlightenment and Liberty - not of Confucianism and the one party state.

As a Marxist, I consider myself to be a part of the West’s long pursuit of human emancipation, and so my choice is simple. Though the United States has been guilty of many crimes in its brief history as an imperial power, its extraordinarily open society has always proved equal to the task of challenging the delinquency of its leaders. Vietnam was a terrible error of American policy – but it was an error corrected by the robustness of American democracy. The "mistakes" of the PRC’s leadership – be they the 25 million dead of the Great Leap Forward, or the thousands massacred in Tiananmen Square, have never been the subject of popular correction – for the simple reason that the Chinese people are not free. And if the 20th Century taught me nothing else, it is that the freedom which socialism is supposed to deliver can never grow out of the barrel of a gun.

The Australians need no lessons in the superiority of open societies to closed dictatorships. They, like the Americans, have accepted the challenge of foreseeing the unforeseeable, and have glimpsed very similar pictures. They realise, for example, that it would not require a Chinese invasion of the Australian continent to place the Australian people in mortal danger – merely the assertion of Chinese hegemony throughout the Indonesian archipelago.

The Australian Government – unlike our own – has not forgotten that Britain dominated the 19th Century world by controlling the sea, not the land. In the 21st Century that means a tightly integrated air and naval capability - something which both major political parties in Australia have chosen not only to preserve – but to enhance.

At some point in the future – and it may be a lot closer than people think - Helen Clark, Jim Anderton and the Greens are going to face the choice the Aussies have already made. I hope they chose wisely. In a small, under-populated nation, political disagreements should cease at the water’s edge. The secret to preserving our independence, and safeguarding the welfare of our citizens, lies in contributing to the collective strength of our friends – not in relying upon the good-will of our neighbours.

Coming to our cinemas in a few days time is a movie called Pearl Harbour. I hope that the subject matter of the film serves as a wake-up call to young New Zealanders; that it reminds them that last week’s "unrealistic fears" can all-too-easily become this week’s unbelievable headlines. I hope also, that Pearl Harbour reminds them that New Zealand can never isolate itself from the great events of planetary history.

In the weeks after the real Pearl Harbour, before the crucial Battle of Midway, terrified New Zealanders cursed the parsimony and short-sightedness of previous governments; recalling, too late, the ancient Roman adage: He who desires peace – should prepare for war.