Friends Or Enemies At The Gates?

Crushing The Hegemon: What will/can the USA do to avoid becoming the sick, old man of the Indo-Pacific?

THEY WERE CALLED THE “WINGED HUSSARS”. In 1683, at the gates of Vienna, these elite Polish cavalrymen, sporting feathered “wings” designed to give them the appearance of avenging angels, provided the vanguard of the largest cavalry charge in history. Emerging unexpectedly from the forested heights above the capital city of the Hapsburg Empire, they swept down upon the besieging Ottoman army of Sultan Mehmed IV and swept it from the field.

Never again would the Ottoman Empire threaten the security of Christian Europe. Over the next two centuries, what had been the dominant power of the Mediterranean world would decline to the point where it could be described, by Tsar Nicholas I, as “the sick old man of Europe”. And, as it declined, the hungry powers of the West extended their sway to encompass the entire planet.

There will be those in Beijing who look at the United States of America and see the Ottoman Empire. Not the Ottoman Empire that existed after the Siege of Vienna, but the Ottoman Empire that might, with a bit more luck, and better military leadership, have taken the city and put the whole of Europe in play.

But, those same Chinese geopolitical strategists will also see in the USA of 2024 what was doubtless equally clear to Western European leaders in the 1600s. That, for all its strategic reach, the hegemonic power of their age was over-extended militarily and fatally wounded economically.

The maritime triumphs of Portugal and Spain had opened alternative routes to resources which had previously flowed from East to West through Constantinople. Paradoxically, winning control of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles would end-up proving disastrous for the Ottomans’ long-term prospects.

Similarly, the Americans’ dominant global position has been undermined by the dramatic resurrection of China, and looks set to be further weakened by the rapid growth of India. Perceiving this, the geo-strategic thinkers of both nations are perfectly aware that their leaders need only watch and wait.

Looking to their defence (so that the US cannot do in the Twenty-First Century what the British did to India and China in the Nineteenth) and continuing to broaden and deepen their economies, these rising powers have no sound geopolitical reasons for attacking the USA. Global power has always been zero-sum. The bigger and stronger the Asian tigers grow, the weaker the American Eagle becomes.

The most important question, therefore, is what will/can the USA do to avoid becoming the sick, old man of the Indo-Pacific?

For the moment, at least, the answer would appear to be AUKUS. Two increasingly decrepit former global hegemons have succeeded in ensnaring a much younger and more vigorous regional power in a confused and, almost certainly, fruitless attempt to reassure themselves that their imperial writ still runs in the Indo-Pacific theatre.

Not that Australia has ever played hard-to-get in these increasingly forlorn adventures. It gaily traduced the UN Charter in 2003 alongside its American and British confederates, committing Australian forces to the same “forever wars” that did so much to weaken the military capacity of all three nations. Undeterred, Australia has now cheerfully agreed to put the “A” into AUKUS. Mostly, this entails spending impossible sums of money on a force of Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines, vessels which the Australian geostrategist, Hugh White, is quietly convinced will never be delivered.

Hitherto declared “off-limits” to every other nation on earth, this formidable weapons-system is now being made available for sale – if not to the highest bidder, then certainly to Uncle Sam’s self-proclaimed “Deputy-Sheriff”. The deal may be seen as proof of the USA’s and the UK’s increasingly evident willingness to let others do the fighting – and dying – for them. What’s been good for the Ukrainians is now, apparently, doubleplusgood for the Aussies. In the unlikely event that China does decide to force the issue over Taiwan and/or the South China Sea, however, Uncle Sam will, as White argues persuasively, move swiftly to bring all his nuclear subs under strict American control.

So, why have the USA, the UK and Australia embarked on this AUKUS course? And why are Canada and New Zealand giving serious consideration to joining them?

Much of the explanation undoubtedly boils down to a failure of geostrategic imagination, made worse by the UK’s former colonies’ more-or-less instinctive Anglocentrism. (The less forgiving observer might attribute the five nation’s behaviour to the pernicious legacy of old-fashioned, white supremacist, imperialism.) Bluntly, none of the present AUKUS partners, nor those thinking about signing up for “Pillar 2” of this glorified arms purchase, can envisage a world in which English-speaking white people are not setting the pace, and calling the shots.

In the case of Australia and New Zealand this failure of imagination is especially egregious. Both nations are, to slip into antipodean, “a bloody long way from anywhere”. Except, of course, from Asia. Both countries have always known this, but resisted strongly the obvious conclusions to be drawn from their extreme geographical isolation from the metropolitan power that created them.

For a few terrifying months in 1942 that isolation from the “Mother Country” was brought home to Australians and New Zealanders in ways impossible to ignore. But then the deus ex machina of the American Pacific Fleet at Midway restored Anglophone supremacy – albeit with an American accent. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki sealed the deal. In a matter of milliseconds, Asia had, once again, ceased to be a problem.

Except, as the Ottomans discovered, nothing stands still. Even successful attempts to enlarge their power only end up lumbering expanding empires with more peoples, more territories, to defend. And all that effort, as the UK learned in the Boer War, and as the USA discovered in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, is not only economically draining, but it also saps the citizenry’s willingness to go on footing the bill – in blood and treasure – of imperial greatness. That’s when making your country great again means telling the rest of the world to go to hell.

Which way New Zealand elects to jump in this geopolitical game will not trouble China greatly. Its diplomats and spies have doubtless already explained to their bosses in Beijing the present New Zealand Government’s curious conviction that the certainties of the past are recoverable and durable. That Australia’s Labour Government is as convinced of this as its National Party-led trans-Tasman ally merely confirms the unwillingness of both nations to see clearly the nature of the global reality that is fast emerging.

Hugh White has noted how easily Aussies and Kiwis slipped into the comforting assumption that “America would keep us safe, and China would make us rich.” For a while, it even appeared to be true. Now, however, the Americans are at our gates, determined that their hegemony in the Indo-Pacific region remains unchallenged. Exactly what shape the Winged Hussars of the Twenty-First Century will take is yet to be seen. But that they will come should not be doubted.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 5 August 2024.

Lord Liverpool's Ghost.

Taking It From The Top: Though more than a century has passed since the outbreak of the First World War, there remains a deeply-embedded fraction of the New Zealand state apparatus which continues to regard New Zealand as simply a loyal cog in a much larger and more powerful imperial machine. Like their forebears, these civil servants see no meaningful role for the democratic public in determining matters of national security and defence.

WHEN NEW ZEALAND WENT TO WAR on 5 August 1914 it was by vice-regal declaration. The Governor of New Zealand, Arthur William de Brito Savile Foljambe, the Second Lord Liverpool, chose to announce the commencement of hostilities with Germany from the steps of what is now the General Assembly Library. Although the country’s leading politicians were gathered around him, there wasn’t even the slightest nod in the direction of democracy. Neither the House of Representatives, nor the Legislative Council, saw any need for debate. In London the King-Emperor, George V, acting upon the advice of his ministers, had declared war, and as a loyal Dominion of the British Empire, New Zealand fell in behind the “Mother Country” without hesitation.

Though more than a century has passed since the outbreak of the First World War, there remains a deeply-embedded fraction of the New Zealand state apparatus which continues to regard New Zealand as simply a loyal cog in a much larger and more powerful imperial machine. Like their forebears, these civil servants see no meaningful role for the democratic public in determining matters of national security and defence. Thankfully, they are no longer so arrogant as to sanction a declaration of war without allowing Parliament to go through the motions of democratic debate. The possibility that a solid majority of MPs might decline to follow their advice would not, however, occur to them.

That this fraction remains so sure of itself on matters of national security and defence is rather odd. At least three times in the last 50 years, its expectations have been overturned by a democratically elected government – all of them Labour. The first rejection came in 1973, when Prime Minister Norman Kirk astonished the world by sending a New Zealand navy frigate to protest French atmospheric nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll. The second came in the mid-1980s, when Prime Minister David Lange refused to renege on Labour’s promise to create – and enforce – a nuclear-free New Zealand. The third occurred in 2003, when Prime Minister Helen Clark and her Labour-led Government refused to join the USA, the United Kingdom and Australia in their illegal invasion of Iraq.

In all three cases the reaction of what some now refer to as the “Deep State” was one of alarm and embarrassment. Of the five digits making up the Anglo-Saxon fist, New Zealand is obviously the “pinkie finger”. When the USA, the UK, Canada, and Australia set out to deliver a geopolitical blow, New Zealand is expected to contribute to its impact – not witter on to the rest of the world about morality and international law.

It is the job of the defence chiefs, the national security apparatus, and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to make sure that when the “Empire” (aka “The Five Eyes”) delivers its orders, New Zealand stands to attention and salutes. Any wayward lefties are to be brought into line by the defence and security experts who best understand New Zealand’s permanent interests – and know who its friends are. Failure to secure the pinkie-finger’s compliance can only mean a huge loss of face for all those Kiwi soldiers and spooks who, for years, have been reassuring their Anglo-Saxon colleagues that everything is under control.

The democratic public (as opposed to the leading financial, commercial, industrial and farming interests, for whom democracy is either an irritating distraction from the all-important job of generating profits for shareholders, or a genuine threat to same) have never warmed to the idea of expending blood and treasure for the greater glory of British and American imperialism.

As a people living in one of the oldest enduring democracies on Earth, albeit a very small one, New Zealanders have long grasped the concept of “soft power”. Going all the way back to the Liberal Government of Balance and Seddon (1891-1912) the democratic public have revelled in their country’s description as “the social laboratory of the world”. In both the League of Nations and the United Nations, New Zealand has taken advantage of the fact that it offers not the slightest military threat to anyone to become a consistent voice for peace, justice and the rule of international law.

It is interesting to note that Sir Robert Jones’ New Zealand Party (1983-93) although resolutely free-market in its economic outlook, also advocated massive reductions in military expenditure and withdrawing New Zealand from the ANZUS alliance. Jones personally favoured following the example of the tiny Central American state of Costa Rica and abolishing the New Zealand armed forces altogether!

Such was the heterodox political environment out of which the Fourth Labour Government’s anti-nuclear policy (and the United States’ angry reaction to it) gave birth to the broadly supported idea of New Zealand operating – and maintaining – its own “independent foreign policy”. That this was essentially Labour’s diplomatic position was strongly reinforced when Helen Clark eliminated the fighter-arm of the RNZAF and refused to participate the invasion of Iraq.

Small wonder, then, that Defence Minister Andrew Little’s release of the latest Defence Policy Review, and New Zealand’s first National Security Strategy, has elicited such a critical response from Helen Clark. As Clark herself notes, the documents bear all the hallmarks of those defence and national security “experts” whose primary allegiance has always been to the “Anglosphere” rather than the people of New Zealand. This was her tweet:

Defence policy and security strategy documents released in Wellington today [4/8/23] suggest that NZ is abandoning its capacity to think for itself and instead is cutting and pasting from 5 Eyes’ partners. Drumbeat from officials has been consistent on this for some time.

This is reminiscent of the Frank Corner-led Defence Committee of Inquiry of 1985 set up by David Lange, which in effect – and in the end unsuccessfully – tried to put brakes on the Govt’s nuclear free and independent foreign policy.

Now there appears to be an orchestrated campaign on joining the so-called ‘Pillar 2’ of AUKUS which is a new defence grouping in the Anglosphere with hard power based on nuclear weapons. New Zealand removed itself from such a vice when it adopted its nuclear-free policy.

It is extremely rare for a former Labour prime minister to intervene in a live policy debate with such acerbic force. Clark’s tweet (viewed more than 90,000 times and counting) indicates just how seriously these documents, formulated under Chris Hipkins’ Labour government, threaten the legacies of Kirk, Lange and Clark herself.

On display in Little’s defence of these documents is just how far the centre-left of New Zealand politics has drifted from the foreign-policy and defence shibboleths of even 20 years ago. What we appear to be witnessing is the same moral surrender that accompanied the “Red Scare” of the early 1950s, when Labour abandoned its traditional socialist objectives out of fear of being branded Red China-loving “commies”. Indeed, it would not be surprising, at this point, to hear Little say that he his “neither for, nor against” New Zealand having a nuclear-free and independent foreign policy. (Just as the Labour Opposition leader, Walter Nash, infamously declared that Labour was “neither for, nor against” the Watersiders during the bitter Waterfront Lockout of 1951.)

Those passing the steps of the General Assembly Library late at night should not be surprised to encounter the ghost of Lord Liverpool – smiling.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website of Monday, 7 August 2023.

Opting Out Of The Coalition Of Containment.

The dove is never free - Leonard Cohen 

That there has been no outcry against the decision of the Australian government to purchase eight nuclear-powered submarines from the United States is astonishing. These formidable weapons of war are intended to patrol the waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans – and their strategic choke-points – and should have occasioned loud protests from “nuclear-free” New Zealand.

RIGHT NOW, New Zealand is in a very awkward geopolitical position. Heedless of its vital economic relationship with China, the United States and its allies in the Indo-Pacific region are pushing New Zealand into a growing coalition of containment aimed at weakening the Chinese state and economy.

The most obvious outcome of this diplomatic pressure (and in all likelihood its purpose) will be a sharp deterioration in the Chinese-New Zealand relationship. Most probably, Chinese displeasure will be expressed through restrictions on New Zealand exports. Not that the United States and its allies will make good any consequential losses to New Zealand’s economy. The Coalition of Containment’s sole purpose in precipitating such a break is to erase the irritating question-mark beside New Zealand’s name on its list of “trustworthy” allies.

New Zealand’s national security apparatus, whose loyalty to the people of New Zealand, as opposed to the decision-makers in Washington, London and Canberra, has always been open to doubt, has been pushing the Labour Government hard in the direction of Uncle Sam’s Coalition of Containment. Its efforts have, as usual, been seconded by all the usual suspects in the mainstream news media. (As well as some interesting recruits from the blogosphere!) The resulting upsurge in Sinophobia must be a source of considerable satisfaction to China’s enemies in New Zealand. It is unusual, these days, to hear a kind word spoken publicly about China – without the guilty party being subjected to the most vehement reproof.

That the Left has allowed itself to be drawn into this anti-Chinese discourse is especially disappointing. There was a time when the machinations of US imperialism were subjected to consistent and sophisticated critique by New Zealand communists and socialists, and even one or two intelligent members of the Labour Party. So effective were these critiques that the left-wing arguments advanced against such imperialistic interventions as the Vietnam War were able to win massive public support. The political upshot of such campaigns was a weakening of New Zealand’s relationship with the United States and its allies. The high-point of the Left’s influence on New Zealand foreign and defence policies came in 1986, when New Zealand withdrew/was excluded from the ANZUS Pact.

What passes for the Left in 2023, however, is, for the most part, content to echo the principal talking-points of US imperialism and its Nato accomplices. The obvious fiction that China is an aggressive power seeking global domination is repeated ad nauseum, along with the absurd charge that the Chinese government is overseeing a genocidal campaign against the Uighur population of Xinjiang. (It is a curious exercise in genocide that leaves twice as many Uighurs in Xinjiang today as there were 50 years ago!) It is no accident, however, that this “softening-up” of an historically ignorant Left, addicted to emotionally-charged international campaigns, preceded the creation of the Australian, United Kingdom, United States (AUKUS) military relationship in 2021.

That there has been no outcry against the decision of the Australian government to purchase eight nuclear-powered submarines from the United States is astonishing. These formidable weapons of war are intended to patrol the waters of the Pacific and Indian Oceans – and their strategic choke-points – and should have occasioned loud protests from “nuclear-free” New Zealand. At the very least, this present Labour Government might have been expected to gather the small nations of the South Pacific behind it in a concerted diplomatic effort to uphold – and enforce – the 1986 anti-nuclear Treaty of Rarotonga.

If New Zealand continues upon its current diplomatic trajectory its economically vital relationship with China cannot help being put at risk. Certainly, the pressure, both from Canberra and Washington, shows no sign of decreasing. Statement-by-statement, in language that demands much but offers little, Wellington is putting more-and-more distance between itself and Beijing. China is hoping that the hard, cold realities of making its living as a very small nation-state in a very large world will continue to keep New Zealand out of the flash new military leg-irons being fastened around the Indo-Pacific region by the United States.

But, hope is unlikely to be enough. Beijing needs to make New Zealand an offer it can’t refuse if it is to prevent the pinkie-finger of the Anglo-Saxon fist from clenching-up tight alongside its bigger brothers. A change of government in October could be just the opportunity Beijing is looking for.

Faced with mounting infrastructural and climate-related problems, and committed to reducing state spending, what might a National-Act coalition not agree to if presented with Chinese promises of massive investment in transport, housing, and climate adaptation/mitigation projects? Roads of national significance, electrification of the railways, extensive and intensive housing developments, taming rivers and hillsides: China’s done it all before, all over the world. Why not here?

And why stop there. Large-scale investment in renewable energy projects would set New Zealand up for a green re-industrialisation of the economy. Chinese companies will not be the only ones seeking-out nation-states with plentiful, cheap and reliable “clean” energy to offer investors in a post-carbon world.

Too much? Not when one considers that New Zealand 1.0 was built, almost entirely, out of British capital. Why shouldn’t New Zealand 2.0 be the creation of massive Chinese investment? Across the broad sweep of human history, imperialism has always been colour-blind.

Such a shift would, of course, entail a diplomatic revolution greater even that New Zealand declaring itself nuclear-free. Canberra, Washington, London and Ottawa would be livid. Accusations of treachery would be hurled at New Zealand by its former allies and, doubtless, all kinds of clandestine efforts would be set in motion to destabilise – even topple – its wayward government. Outright intervention would, however, be unlikely. It is difficult to persuade the world that China is the greatest threat to peace in the Indo-Pacific, when US Marines are splashing ashore on New Zealand beaches.

In the face of New Zealand’s diplomatic realignment, its South Pacific neighbours might also find it expedient to adopt a new stance vis-a-vis the neo-colonial objectives of the USA and its English-speaking allies. Pacific leaders might feel moved to inquire exactly what the United Kingdom thinks it is doing – again – in this part of the world. Were New Zealand to propose the creation of a South Pacific navy, dedicated to protecting and defending the resources within each member-state’s Exclusive Economic Zone, it might be surprised at the level of interest.

Especially if China offered to supply the patrol vessels.

Such a nightmare scenario could, of course, be easily avoided if the United States was willing to offer what China was ready to negotiate with New Zealand 15 years ago – a Free Trade Agreement. It has always been the easiest and, ultimately, the least costly option for the Americans: agree to take whatever New Zealand can send them – just as Great Britain did for the best part of a century. Just as China is doing right now.

But that would require US Imperialism to do what it has never done before: put the word “give” ahead of the word “take”.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 4 August 2023.

Top Guns.

Imperial Firepower: An RAF Canberra bomber strikes an Egyptian airfield during the Suez Crisis of 1956. In 1958, the Royal New Zealand Air Force adopted the Canberra as its principal strike aircraft. The generation who owed their freedom to the US Navy’s vanquishing of the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Midway understood the importance of forward defence.

THE FARM I GREW UP ON had a paddock called “Canberra”. Not on account of any great regard the farm’s owner, my father, had for Australia’s capital city, but because that was the land he was clearing when a Canberra bomber flew low overhead. Between 1958 and 1970, the English Electric Canberra B.Mk.20 bomber was the Royal New Zealand Air Force’s principal strike aircraft. As I recall my father’s telling of the tale, a single Canberra bomber flew the length of the country to show New Zealanders what their government had purchased for their defence. As a former RNZAF officer, Tony Trotter was sufficiently impressed to name the paddock he was preparing “Canberra” in its honour.

The Canberra bombers of the RNZAF saw active service in the Indonesian-Malaysian Confrontation of the mid-1960s – a military engagement about which New Zealanders know next-to-nothing. In conformity with the New Zealand Government’s determination to contribute as little as it could get away with to the escalating conflict, its Canberra bombers were not deployed in Vietnam. They were replaced in 1971 by the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk.

I well recall the Anzac Day flyovers of the Skyhawks. The shriek of their engines, their astonishing speed, the blunt message of brute power they conveyed to all who saw and heard them. Very much a case of “your defence dollars at work”.

Helen Clark’s decision, in May 2001, to eliminate the RNZAF’s strike arm reflected her conviction that New Zealand existed in “a benign strategic environment” which simply did not merit the immense outlay of taxpayers’ funds required to purchase and maintain modern strike aircraft. The decision to reduce the RNZAF to a marine surveillance, transportation and search-and-rescue operation was also seen as an expression of the Fifth Labour Government’s determination to pursue an “independent foreign policy”.

Barely four months later, with the horrors of 9/11 still fresh in their minds, New Zealanders were asking: “What do we have to stop a highjacked airliner heading straight for the heart of our largest city?” The answer turned out to be prayers, since New Zealand no longer had the wings.

Since then, New Zealand’s strategic environment has declined to a condition well short of the word “benign”. Indeed, this country is now confronted with a geopolitical situation alarmingly similar to the one New Zealand confronted ninety years ago. This time, however, the great power flexing its military muscles is not Japan, but China. Like the Japanese imperialists who inflicted so much agony on the peoples of Asia (especially the Chinese) in the 1930s and 40s, the People’s Republic of China seems equally determined to impose its own version of “The Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” all the way to Africa – and beyond.

The strategic response of the United States in the 2020s is essentially the same as its response in the 1930s. It cannot permit a geopolitical competitor to project sufficient military and economic strength across the Pacific and Indian Oceans to threaten American hegemony in those theatres. Most particularly, the United States cannot contemplate in 2023, any more than it could in 1942, the loss of Australia and New Zealand. Stripped of these strategic anchors in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans, the United States ability to project its power would be severely compromised.

Hence the creation of AUKUS, the first step on the journey to JAINZUS – Japan, Australia, India, New Zealand and the United States – which is the most obvious military and economic combination for containing Chinese ambitions. The inclusion of the United Kingdom in the present AUKUS grouping serves sentimental rather than strategic purposes. The UK was too weak to defend its own empire in the 1940s. It’s even weaker now.

That New Zealand will become a member of JAINZUS (or whatever it ends up being called) is inevitable. These islands are too important to be left to their own devices. If we don’t throw in with the Americans and their mates, then we will be forced to throw in with the Chinese. (Not that the Americans will let it get to that point, not while they have the Aussies to keep us in line!)

My father’s generation, having been rescued by the US Navy, understood the importance of forward defence. Which is why whoever is ploughing “Canberra” in 2025 will likely re-name it “F-35A Lightning II”.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 28 April 2023.

The World’s Rapidly-Changing Strategic Environment.

In Mandarin, Taiwan is spelt U-K-R-A-I-N-E: It is all very well for President Joe Biden to pledge his country’s military intervention should China invade Taiwan, the real trick is making Beijing believe him. Why would it, when Washington has been so careful to ensure that its own forces, and those of other Nato members, do not come into contact with Russian military units. After all, China’s nuclear arsenal is no less apocalyptic in its potential than Russia’s. 

“TIME IS SPEEDING UP”, says Wigram Capital Advisors’ principal Rodney Jones. His reference is to the speed at which the geopolitical situation is being transformed by the actions of Russia and China. Specifically, Jones is alluding to the presence of the Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, in the capitals of the South Pacific and the prospect of at least ten of the region’s micro-states being drawn into a “China-Pacific Island Countries Common Development Vision” by Beijing. As Jones forcefully reminds us, the “generally benign strategic environment” in which Prime Minister Helen Clark blithely located New Zealand more than twenty years ago, is long gone.

The Chinese Government, sensing a measure of disarray in US foreign policy, has not lost any time taking advantage of the global confusion and alarm caused by the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine. Looking past the ardent demonstrations of support for the Ukrainian Government’s resolute defence of its territory, Beijing has calculated that this enthusiasm will fade as the economic consequences of the war begin to be felt by the peoples of Europe and North America – not to mention Australians and New Zealanders.

It is all very well for President Joe Biden to pledge his country’s military intervention should China invade Taiwan, the real trick is making Beijing believe him. Why would they, when Washington has been so careful to ensure that its own forces, and those of other Nato members, do not come into contact with Russian military units. After all, China’s nuclear arsenal is no less apocalyptic in its potential than Russia’s. Biden’s monosyllabic tough-talk could only have been a bluff, and the White House’s immediate walking-back of his bellicose pledge into the relative diplomatic safety of “strategic ambiguity” proved it.

Not only that, but Biden’s resort to bluff can only serve to deepen Beijing’s conviction that the United States no longer feels confident that its military strength is equal to the challenge of the emerging Eurasian duumvirate. In this regard, the meeting in Tokyo of “The Quad” (USA, Japan, Australia, India) may not have delivered the geostrategic warning to Beijing that the Americans intended.

Anthony Albanese is not Scott Morrison, and the stance adopted by the new Labor Government of Australia seems likely to be considerably less belligerent than its predecessor. If the global economy continues to weaken, it is also quite likely that the folly of equipping Australia with eight nuclear-powered submarines will be postponed indefinitely.

The announcement of the trilateral AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, United States) Pact in September 2021 is unlikely to have impressed China’s military leadership, most particularly since the US’s most powerful Quad allies, Japan and India, were not persuaded to join. To the Communist Party of China, the Anglophone AUKUS will have all the appearance of an absurd imperial anachronism. Once again, the impression conveyed is of a flailing and failing United States.

Of much more interest to the Chinese will be the reaction of the Indian Government to the Russo-Ukrainian War. India’s ties to Russia are strong, making it a less than vehement supporter of the West’s ruinous sanctions regime. Nor can New Delhi be insensible to the potential strategic challenges arising out of the Sino-Russian “entente” of 4 February 2022.

The Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, will be observing with keen interest President Vladimir Putin’s ability to withstand the economic warfare unleashed upon his country by the West. Should the Russian Federation’s military forces begin to gain the upper-hand in Ukraine, and if China’s financial support renders the sanctions regime bearable, then Modi and India’s political class will have some serious thinking to do.

Does it make sense for a non-European nation like India to be perceived as some sort of Western lap-dog? Especially when it could, instead, become a crucial part of the Eurasian superpower fast emerging as the nemesis of the imperialist West?

If India goes, can the oil-rich nations of the Middle East be far behind?

All too aware of the energy vulnerability of the United States – not to mention the acute sensitivity of the American electorate to ‘rising gasoline prices at the pump’ – some US legislators are already attempting to throw their weight around on the question of how much oil the member states of OPEC should be sucking out of the ground. Threats of passing legislation allowing the United States Government to seize the American-based assets of “uncooperative” OPEC states are unlikely to impress the Saudis or their Arab allies. The defection of key oil producers to “Eurasia”, and the end of the US dollar as a fiat currency, would also spell the end of American/Western hegemony.

Even if Eurasia fails to materialise as the new global hegemon, the continued global dominance of the United States still cannot be taken for granted. Beijing will be paying as much attention as Moscow to the outcome of the 2022 mid-term congressional elections. Most political scientists agree that the chances of the Democratic Party retaining control of the House of Representatives and the Senate are close to zero. But, if the Republicans come surging back, then the potential for serious internal disorder breaking out in the United States is very high. Not only can a house divided against itself not hope to stand, but it also cannot possibly bend the rest of the world to its will.

With all of the above potentialities for Western disaster in play, it is not difficult to understand why, all over the world, the Chinese are actively probing for points of weakness. The South Pacific has clearly been identified by the geopoliticians in Beijing as an area ripe for the insertion of Chinese money and influence.

There will be those in the New Zealand foreign affairs community who respond to this probing with all the flatulent bombast of the pith-helmeted imperialists of yesteryear. These are the armchair warriors who are currently urging the Labour Government to tell the Chinese to “Clear orf out of ‘our’ backyard!” As if, like the Russians, we regard nearby, supposedly independent, nation states as falling within our sphere of influence.

Fortunately, however, there are also foreign affairs and trade specialists who understand that ‘national security’ is not simply about military force and the ability to project it aggressively. No nation can call itself secure if its economy is falling apart, and it people falling into poverty. As this country’s largest trading partner and key export market, China is not a country New Zealand should be in any hurry to infuriate and/or alienate. And, there are plenty of Australian politicians and businesspeople who feel the same way.

New Zealand’s “generally benign strategic environment” has not been undermined by the Pacific’s rising superpower. History teaches us that it’s the waning superpowers, edged-off the geopolitical stage by more dynamic rivals, that the world’s small and vulnerable states have most reason to fear.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 30 May 2022.

A Coalition Of The Waning.

The Sunset Of Anglo-Saxon Imperialism: To join this “Coalition of the Waning”: this AUKUS pact composed of the three military aggressors of the Iraq War; would not only be folly – it would be criminal folly.

THE FORMATION OF AUKUS, the new military pact linking Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, is a mirage. It’s most important element, the arming of the Australian Navy with 8-12 nuclear-powered attack submarines, will almost certainly never happen. The Chinese Government, against which the agreement is aimed, will not be daunted. Indeed, in a shrewd diplomatic manoeuvre, Beijing has applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) from which the USA remains self-excluded, and of which New Zealand remains the “secretary”. What other word except “mirage” is fit to describe this latest, rather desperate, fantasy of Anglo-Saxon imperialism? Long-term strategic decline cannot be wished away by dreaming up a new acronym.

Not that New Zealand’s foreign affairs and defence “establishment” (FADE) will understand AUKUS in such terms. To the contrary, it is already mounting a full-court press to convince New Zealanders that their country has been slighted and snubbed, and its long-term national security imperilled, because their government has not sung along lustily enough in the new “Indo-Pacific” chorus-line. Over the next few weeks and months FADE will attempt to apply maximum pressure on Jacinda Ardern’s government by wheeling out every academic expert, former military officer, US-aligned politician and journalist at its disposal.

The first of what promises to be a great many of these AUKUS promoters appeared on the Q+A current affairs programme just yesterday morning (19/9/21). Former New Zealand Deputy-Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, with the sparkling waters of the Bay of Islands as his backdrop, was interviewed with uncharacteristic deference by the programme’s presenter, Jack Tame. Absent entirely from this encounter was the hectoring tone usually reserved for the NZ First leader by mainstream journalists. What viewers saw was a senior New Zealand statesman invited to shed light on New Zealand’s disturbing exclusion from this new and important security agreement.

Peters, naturally, did not disappoint. Indeed his performance was excellent – full of gravitas and more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger exasperation at the failings of his former Labour colleagues. He didn’t quite say Si vis pacem, para bellum (he who desires peace, should prepare for war) but that was clearly the message delivered by this antipodean Cincinnatus. Peters also made it plain that words have consequences: a not-so-subtle reminder that while his speeches as Foreign Minister only strengthened this country’s relationship with the United States, the speeches of Nanaia Mahuta have produced the opposite effect.

With the National Party locked in what Matthew Hooton calls a “death spiral”, and Act out of contention as a coalition partner for Labour, NZ First presents the Americans with a tempting prize. Subject to proper nurturing, and the right kind of advice, Peters’ party could once again find itself in a position to dangle the keys to the kingdom in front of a desperate Labour caucus. As the price of opening the castle gates, Peters could demand – and would, almost certainly, be given – both the Foreign Affairs and Defence portfolios. The chances are high that, very soon thereafter, the doors to AUKUS would also swing open.

The next New Zealand General Election is, however, still two years away, and much can change in two years. Beijing has just handed Wellington an extraordinary opportunity to place itself at the head of those Indo-Pacific nations that would much rather expand the opportunities for economic co-operation and trade, than join in ratchetting-up the tensions of a new Cold War. Imagine the diplomatic awkwardness for Canberra if Washington made it clear to “the fella down-under” that he was expected to blackball China from membership in the CPTPP. A China seeking to increase economic opportunities across the Indo-Pacific region would have been frozen-out by an Australian government more interested in the prospects of war than the benefits of peace. The contrast between the policies of Wellington and Canberra could not be rendered more starkly: to New Zealand’s Pacific neighbours, her trading partners, and, not least, to Beijing.

It is also quite possible that, by 2023, the United States will be embroiled in domestic strife bordering on civil-war. By fair means or foul the Republican Party appears poised to seize back control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate in next year’s mid-term elections. With both the Congress and the Supreme Court under their effective control, the possibility exists that the Republicans will attempt to depose President Biden and replace him with Donald Trump. The Trump-dominated Republican Party is certainly crazy enough to try. The real question, then, will be: who, in a constitutionally compromised United States, possesses both the means – and the will – to stop them? Is the American military prepared to destroy the American republic in order to save it? If it is, then AUKUS will be the last thing on its mind!

As for those nuclear-powered submarines the Americans have promised their Australian “mates”. To employ a popular Australianism: “Tell ‘em they’re dreaming!” The six diesel-powered Collins-class subs the Aussies already possess have been one long pain in the Australian Navy’s arse. Plagued by repeated breakdowns and difficulties in accessing spare parts, the Australian submarine fleet is almost never fully functional.

When it is ready for action, however, the Collins-class submarine is considerably nimbler and harder to detect than its larger, nuclear-powered, counterparts. Having only just learned how to get the best out of their current fleet, the idea that their incredibly hard to recruit submariners will have to master an infinitely more complex boat must be seriously depressing Australia’s naval commanders.

And that’s not even factoring-in the white-hot fury of the French – who have just been stiffed out of $93 billion!

All of which suggests that, upon hearing the news about AUKUS, New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern and Canada’s Justin Trudeau would have both breathed huge sighs of relief. There is something ever-so-slightly bonkers about this supposedly “new” security arrangement. For a start, what, exactly, is new about cobbling together military alliances against surging nation-states threatening to up-end the status quo? Isn’t that the sort of carry-on that led to World War I?

More to the point, how is anyone supposed to take Boris Johnson and his brand new aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth II, seriously? A man so enamoured with the life and times of Winston Churchill surely cannot have forgotten the fate of the HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse – sunk, almost casually, by Japanese bombers in December 1941? Surely, someone has told him about China’s hypersonic, carrier-killing missiles?

And what are the Chinese supposed to make of British warships in the South China Sea? Johnson may have forgotten all about the Opium Wars of the mid-nineteenth century, but Xi Jinping has not.

Surely, it is time for New Zealand to break free of the imperial project in which it has been enmeshed for the past 181 years? Surely, as an independent nation, it is in our long-term interests to recognise Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States for what they are? The three countries which, in March 2003, and in blatant contravention of international law and the United Nations Charter, attacked and invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq. In planning and unleashing aggressive war upon a country which had not attacked them, the leaders of the US, the UK and Australia were guilty of the same war crimes for which the leaders of Nazi Germany were tried and convicted at Nuremburg in 1946. To join this “Coalition of the Waning”: this pact composed of the three military aggressors of the Iraq War; would not only be folly – it would be criminal folly.

The shimmering vision of Imperial Hegemony Regained: the mirage which leads Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison deeper and deeper into a waterless diplomatic desert; will be the ruin of them all.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website of Monday, 20 September 2021.

Keep New Zealand Nuclear-Free – Stay Out of AUKUS!

Playing With The Big Boys' Toys: The US faces an array of enemies it is no longer certain it can beat – not without destroying itself at the same time. Equipping the Aussies with nuclear submarines (and other things) represents the moment in the Western movie when the grizzled old wagon-master reluctantly places a six-gun in the eager hands of a twelve-year-old. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t think of it, but there are “Injuns” out there, and the wagon train needs every gun it’s got.

THANK GOD New Zealand is not a member of the new “AUKUS” alliance. Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States have joined forces in a military pact that has only one purpose: the intimidation and restraint of China. The price of admission to this latest demonstration of Anglo-Saxon hegemony is a willingness to “go nuclear”. Not a problem for the US and the UK, both of which have possessed nuclear weapons and nuclear-powered vessels for decades. It is, however, a very big, and potentially disastrous, step for Australia, which once boasted a nuclear-free movement every bit as noisy (remember Midnight Oil?) as New Zealand’s.

Indeed, had the Australian Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, not been a highly valued CIA asset of long-standing, it is possible – even likely – that both Australia and New Zealand would have ended up declaring themselves “Nuclear Free”.

The consequences of such a double declaration would have been profound. Not to be outdone by these far-flung antipodeans, the Nordic countries may well have followed suit. In time, the whole of the Southern Hemisphere may have rejected the madness of “mutual and assured destruction”. Seeing Reds, the Americans would certainly have had several pink fits. Not enough, though, to prevent the world from taking a slightly different course.

An intriguing counterfactual history, to be sure. What actually happened, of course, is that the Americans, having failed to “secure” David Lange as they had secured Bob Hawke, were taken completely off guard when the New Zealand Labour Party followed the breadcrumbs of sanity out of the nuclear forest. Washington was mightily pissed-off, naturally, but hey – at least it wasn’t Australia!

Certainly, Australia has never wavered in its determination to be the United States “Deputy-Sheriff” in what is now called the “Indo-Pacific” region. Ever since Japanese bombers, in about the same time it took them to get their bomb-bays open, sank HMS Repulse and HMS Prince of Wales – and with them all the illusions of an overstretched British Empire – Canberra has tossed all its diplomatic and military chips into Washington’s pot. It does not intend to be caught out ever again as it was in December 1941. Henceforth, Australia would be right there in the room when the strategic decisions were being made – not 12,000 miles away. When your enemies are close, says Canberra, keep your friends closer.

The only alternative to taking up residence in Uncle Sam’s rectum, as far as the national security boffins and senior military brass were concerned, was for Australia to develop its own atomic bomb. Nuts? Maybe, but for a much longer period than one might have thought possible (1961-1973) the Australian right-wing governments of Robert Menzies and his successors were willing to give it a go. That they never quite managed to build an Aussie bomb was due largely to the refusal of the Brits and the Yanks to supply them with the wherewithal to do so. Anglo-Saxon imperialism may have been pretty crazy, but it wasn’t that crazy!

Fifty years on, and how things have changed. Washington is now willing to lease a dozen or more Los-Angeles-class nuclear-powered submarines to the Australian Navy. Why? Because, almost certainly, the secret protocols of the AUKUS Pact make it clear that, along with the nuclear-powered attack submarines, Australia will be given access to the “technology” it has always craved. Finally, Canberra will have what it takes to wipe the smirks off the faces of the Generals of the Peoples Liberation Army. Very soon America’s Deputy-Sheriff will be packing nuclear pistols.

If all this sounds like one of those paranoid Aussie television series, then it only goes to show that if you want to tell the truth – write fiction. AUKUS is proof positive that the Anglo-Saxon world has lost its nerve. It is the twenty-first century equivalent of circling the wagons against the Native Americans. The US faces an array of enemies it is no longer certain it can beat – not without destroying itself at the same time. Equipping the Aussies with nuclear submarines (and other things) represents the moment in the Western movie when the grizzled old wagon-master reluctantly places a six-gun in the eager hands of a twelve-year-old. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t think of it, but there are “Injuns” out there, and the wagon train needs every gun it’s got.

The New Zealand Government, its Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs especially, will happily stay as far away from this lunacy as possible – and the country’s anti-nuclear legislation gives them the perfect excuse. Moreover, with its paltry team of five million and its disturbing unwillingness to beat the war drum as enthusiastically as its much larger and more co-operative neighbour, New Zealand is dispensable. For the moment, Washington is perfectly happy to have the Kiwis cooling their heels outside the room where the big strategic decisions are being made.

All of New Zealand’s recent history, however, suggests that not being in the room is a situation which the New Zealand Defence Force will deem intolerable. It is also highly likely that a significant number of senior bureaucrats at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade will be equally disturbed by our “no show” at the AUKUS party. They will be worried that Beijing, observing these developments from afar, will see a gap just large enough to accommodate a big, fat Chinese diplomatic lever. The “Deep State” (the military, key players in the state bureaucracy, and the national security apparatus) is unlikely to tolerate New Zealand being separated from its “traditional allies” for too long.

New Zealand’s prime minister, and her nuclear-free team of five million, should fasten their seat-belts: the next few months look set to give them all a very bumpy ride. As if fighting Covid-19 wasn’t enough, Jacinda should prepare for her very own anti-nuclear moment.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 17 September 2021.