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.

The “Whys?” And “What Nows?” Of The Samoan Crisis.

FAST Mover: The whole explanation for the FAST Party’s existence lies in the way Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi used his Human Rights Protection Party’s near complete control of the legislature to undermine the Samoan constitution. Crucial aspects of Samoan economic and social life – most especially the laws surrounding land ownership and the perquisites of chiefly status – were thrown into doubt. Curbs on the constitutional authority of the Judiciary were also mooted. To Fiame Naomi Mata’afa (above) and her supporters, it seemed as though cultural and legal obstacles were being cleared away for the benefit of entities that may, or may not, have Samoa’s best interests at heart.

THE QUESTION challenging both Samoans and Non-Samoans is “Why?” Surely, after more than two decades as Samoa’s prime minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, has earned a respite from the cares of office? Obviously, that’s not how he sees it. Why then, at the first signs of Tuilaepa’s unwillingness to surrender power voluntarily, didn’t the Prime Minister’s colleagues, especially his Attorney-General, counsel him sternly against the folly of resistance? Why didn’t Tuimalealiifano Va’aletoa Sualauvi II, Samoa’s Head of Government, fulfil his constitutional duty to gently edge his old friend into retirement? These are the questions Samoa’s friends and allies are asking themselves. Why is Tuilaepa making such a fight of it?

The most obvious response is also the most troubling. Because Tuilaepa simply cannot afford to lose the protection of his office. Something he has done: some enterprise in which he and his colleagues have become entangled; must, at all costs, be kept hidden. Nobody, least of all Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, former Deputy-Prime Minister and now the triumphant leader of the Fa’atuatua i le Atua Samoa ua Tasi Party (FAST) can be allowed free access to information that absolutely must remain secret.

What could that secret possibly be? Perhaps the best place to go looking for an answer is among the publicly declared motives of Tuilaepa’s political opponents. What was it that caused so many prominent Samoans to abandon the sleepy traditions of their country’s electoral politics – the traditions behind the Human Rights Protection Party’s (HRPP) 47 year reign – and campaign so openly, forcefully, and successfully against it?

The answer to this question is not in doubt. Indeed, it constitutes the whole explanation for the FAST’s existence. Tuilaepa had used his party’s near complete control of the Samoan legislature to undermine the constitution. Crucial aspects of Samoan economic and social life – most especially the laws surrounding land ownership and the perquisites of chiefly status – were thrown into doubt. Curbs on the constitutional authority of the Judiciary were also mooted. To Fiame and her supporters, it seemed as though cultural and legal obstacles were being cleared away for the benefit of entities that may, or may not, have Samoa’s best interests at heart.

One does not have to look very hard to locate the prime suspect in this case. The catalyst for the present crisis was the agreement signed between the Samoan and Chinese governments to invest $100 million in upgrading and expanding the port of Apia. Already indebted to the Chinese to the tune of $200 million, what could tiny Samoa possibly want with a refurbished port grossly disproportionate to its needs? That’s what Fiame and FAST wanted to find out. And, since they could get no sensible answers from the HRPP Government, that is why they set out to take the reins of power themselves.

If you think that the success of the FAST Party both astonished and dismayed Tuilaepa and the HRPP, just imagine what a shock it must have been for his “friends” in Beijing. After all, Samoa – like China – gave every appearance of being a one party state, ruled over by one of the longest-serving leaders on the planet. If the Chinese had long-term plans for Samoa: plans that required a re-writing of the laws regulating the ownership of land, the traditions of village government, and the independence of the Judiciary; then what risk could there be in taking steps to ensure that everybody who mattered in the Samoan Establishment remained firmly “on side”?

The precise nature of those “steps”, and their principal beneficiaries, may yet prove to be the explanation for the solid wall of resistance that has been thrown up to prevent Fiame and FAST from assuming office.

Of course, the next question, after “Why?” is: “What happens now?”

That rather depends upon how determined Washington, Canberra and Wellington are to head off China at the Samoan pass. The strength of their determination may well be indicated by the unexpected success of FAST. Certainly, in the aftermath of Tuilaepa’s incautious attack on Canberra’s aggressive posture towards China, Australia had every incentive to “assist” a changing of the guard in Apia.

Someone familiar with the way the USA’s so-called “colour revolutions” have operated in Eastern Europe might be given pause to wonder whether something akin to these has just taken place in the South Pacific. Is it possible that the Five Eyes surveillance network intercepted communications setting forth China’s long-term strategic objectives in Samoa? Could the substance of these communications (quite possibly indicating Beijing’s intention of turning Samoa into a strategic Chinese base) have been conveyed to Samoan leaders untainted by any “inappropriate” connections with Beijing? Were campaign resources and political advice made available to these leaders, enabling them to mount a highly sophisticated “surprise attack” on the HRPP? As an explanation, it has an intriguing plausibility.

What is certain is that one of the first statements made by Fiame and FAST made it clear to her Pacific neighbours that any government she led would be setting aside Samoa’s $100 million port development project with Beijing.

We also know that this coming weekend (29-30 May 2021) the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, will meet with New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern in Queenstown. What better opportunity could there be for both leaders to jointly announce their respective country’s recognition of Fiame and FAST as the sole legitimate government of Samoa? What more compelling signal could there be for US President Joe Biden to follow suit? Certainly, such a move would go a long way towards dispelling any lingering doubts about New Zealand’s commitment to its Five Eyes partners and their Indo-Pacific Strategy.

All that would then be required to restore peace and tranquillity to Samoa would be a solemn, and very private, promise from Fiame to Tuilaepa (and his cronies) that whatever they had done during their time in office would be forgiven, and that they could all look forward to an undisturbed retirement in their home villages – far, far away from Apia, the levers of power, the Chinese, and Samoa’s first female Prime Minister, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 27 May 2021.

A Rainy Afternoon In September.

“I must say it is refreshing to find a person of your years displaying an interest in this part of the world. After all, as Henry Kissinger so crudely put it: ‘Only a handful of people live there Mr President. Nobody cares what happens to them.’”

GEORGE LIFTED HIS HAND in greeting as Martyn entered the bar. At two o’clock on a rainy afternoon in early September the place was virtually empty.

“I took the liberty of ordering you a bottle of cider, dear boy”, said the retired civil servant as Martyn hung his coat over the back of his chair. “Is that right?”

“Is that in my file, George? ‘Drinks cider’?”

Among other things. Although, I have to confess it’s been a while since I actually laid eyes on it. For all I know you may have abandoned your old tipple and embraced the fad for craft beer.”

“No, no. it’s still cider – so, thanks, and your very good health.”

“Don’t mention it, dear boy. It’s the least I can do for the man who winkled me out of my retirement shell on this inclement afternoon. I have to acknowledge that I was more than a little impressed that you had my number.”

“You’re not the only person with informants, George, or files for that matter.”

“Indeed.” George took a thoughtful sip of his single malt and waited for the younger man to speak.

“I’m told that you were, for many years, ‘Our Man in the Pacific’. And that there’s very little you don’t know about New Zealand’s back-yard – and what has gone on there since the Americans drove the Japanese back into a more manageable set of boundaries.”

“A trifle exaggerated, but essentially correct. I did, indeed, hold the South Pacific Desk for a number of years. I must say it is refreshing to find a person of your years displaying an interest in this part of the world. After all, as Henry Kissinger so crudely put it: ‘Only a handful of people live there Mr President. Nobody cares what happens to them.’ Why do you care, Martyn?”

“I care because the Chinese care. I thought you might have some insights as to why.”

George’s face broke into an avuncular grin. “Ah, yes! Our very, very, very good friends the Chinese. Their mission is not so much to show the peoples of the South Pacific how much they care, as it is to find out how much the United States, Australia and New Zealand care about the Pacific’s ‘handful of people’. That’s the way Chinese diplomacy works: they test; judge the target’s response; then test again. If they encounter strong resistance, the Chinese retreat. If they are met with indifference, they advance. If they are welcomed with open arms, they advance very fast.”

“How far would you say China has advanced in the last decade?”

“Quite a long way, dear boy, quite a long way. Of course her task was made easier by the fact that the West had got itself into such a horrible mess in the Middle East. While the fat American cat has been away, the oriental mice have been playing hard for the hearts and minds of our Pasifika brothers and sisters – and even harder for the wallets of their infinitely corruptible leaders. They have yet to discover that the trick with Pacific politicians is not just to buy them, but to persuade them to stay bought. We have slightly more experience in these matters, but the Chinese are nothing if not fast learners.”

“You don’t sound all that enamoured of the South Pacific political class. What ever happened to the ‘Pacific Way’?”

George took another sip of his whiskey and absently pattered his impressive head of silver hair into place.

“‘The Pacific Way’. Ah yes, that was a durable and extremely useful fiction. We turned a blind eye to the small and large scale corruption that dogged every one of the South Pacific’s post-colonial regimes, and, in return, they kept their people safe from the anti-imperialist virus that laid low so many Third World countries in the 1960s and 70s. Their non-viable economies were kept afloat by US, Australian and New Zealand aid, and by the money remitted from the thousands of Pasifika who had taken jobs in the Palangi’s factories and offices. It was the Cold War, Martyn, and we worked on the principle that although practically all of the Pacific leaders were a corrupt pack of bastards, they were, when all was said and done, our corrupt pack of bastards – and not the Chinese’ of the Soviets’ corrupt pack of bastards.”

Martyn stared at the old man, eyebrows raised, and slowly shook his head.

“But the Cold War is over, George.”

“Indeed it is, Martyn, indeed it is. For a few years, relieved of the need to keep the Russian’s out, we told the Pacific leaders that they would have to adapt to George Bush Senior’s ‘New World Order’ of globalisation, free markets and the sudden recovery of blind eyes. Needless to say, all hell broke loose politically in the South Pacific. The days of corrupt-but-stable governments were replaced by the days of corrupt-but-bloody-mad-and-unstable governments. What every leader was looking for was a diplomatic sugar-daddy – and, of course, as China’s economic strength grew by leaps and bounds, Beijing was only too happy to oblige.”

“Or, in the case of Nauru, the Australians.”

George set his glass down on the glass table-top with a loud crack.

“Don’t talk to me about Nauru and the bloody Aussies! That god-forsaken quarry was a condominium in which the Brits, the Aussies and the Kiwis were supposed to have an equal say. Fat chance! Even before their bloody awful ‘Pacific Solution’ came into play, Canberra had decided that Nauru was theirs to do with as they pleased. Something to stash away for a rainy day. Do you know, Martyn, I remember advising Clark, back at the time we signed the FTA with China, to convince our new-found friends that New Zealand could act as the cut-out for a Chinese takeover of Nauruan politics. Remember what I said about Pacific leaders being notorious for not staying bought? We could have left the Aussies high and dry!”

“Imagine the songs they’d be willing to sing for Jacinda if Nauru was a New Zealand-Chinese condominium – instead of an Australian concentration camp!”

“Imagine!”

George rose from his chair and reached out his hand to Martyn.

“That’s enough for one rainy afternoon, dear boy. Plenty to be going on with there.”

“Thanks, George. We must do this again.”

George was already at the door. Wobbling his hand in a farewell salute.

“You’ve got my number.”

This short story was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 7 September 2018.

Balancing Fake American Friends Against Real Chinese Interests.

Interesting Times: Henry Kissinger warned that the United States had no friends – only interests. Attempting to curry America’s friendship at the expense of New Zealand’s vital interest in preserving productive diplomatic and economic relationships with China is exceptionally poor foreign policy.

WHAT HAS CHINA DONE to warrant such a public and insulting shift in the tone of New Zealand diplomacy? Well, according to our foreign and defence ministries, she has outstripped New Zealand and Australia in the delivery of aid and investment to the nations of the South Pacific. A heinous crime, obviously. But that is not all China has done. In the South China Sea she has reclaimed land, constructed an airfield and built other facilities on islands she has long claimed as her own. Outrageous!

It is on account of these “crimes” that New Zealand’s hitherto excellent diplomatic relationship with the Peoples Republic of China has been put at risk. Diplomacy is not, however, the only relationship facing disruption. The Labour-NZF coalition government is also testing the tolerance of New Zealand’s largest trading partner. (That’s China by the way.)

Putting at risk their country’s diplomatic and economic relationship with the rising global power. What (or who) could have persuaded our Acting Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, to behave in so reckless a fashion? Were Federated Farmers, whose members’ primary products are exported mostly to China, consulted prior to the release of New Zealand’s new defence strategy? Were the importers of the goods that make it possible for New Zealand’s notoriously low-paid workers to make ends meet? Were the unions who represent those workers? Doubtful.

What may be speculated upon with considerably more confidence is that the dramatic disruption of New Zealand-Chinese relations has be executed at the behest of the Australians. And, since Canberra does nothing without first seeking the approval of its masters in Washington, this disruption is American-inspired.

Ah, yes, the Americans. The people who have, in the 73 years since the end of World War II, twice dispatched combat troops to the mainland of East Asia (Korea and Vietnam). The people whose military bases extend in a great arc from the Bering Sea to the tiny Pacific island of Guam. Inherited from the Empire of Japan, these bases are situated not hundreds, but thousands, of miles from the continental United States.

Are these island bases stacked high with the most deadly military hardware available to humankind? Of course they are! Much higher than China’s. That being the case, does the Government’s defence white paper raise objections to the USA’s imperialistic power-projection into New Zealand’s Pacific backyard? Does it complain that the East and South China Seas are provocatively patrolled by American aircraft carriers and their accompanying support vessels? No, of course it doesn’t!

And we all know the reason why – don’t we? Because, between 1945 and 1985, New Zealand had been perfectly content to attach itself to the meanest sonofabitch in the imperial valley – the United States. Unsurprising, really, since before World War II we had been the willing colonial accomplices of that other mean imperial sonofabitch, Great Britain. In both instances, our entire defence force was configured to fit seamlessly into our imperial masters’ war machines. New Zealand diplomacy, throughout the period of the Cold War, amounted essentially to asking the Americans exactly how high they would like us to jump.

Then along came David Lange, who took issue with the uranium on America’s breath; and Helen Clark, who looked at China’s expanding middle class and persuaded its government to open China’s borders to the finest agricultural produce on the planet.

And it’s just as well she did. Otherwise, when the global financial crisis struck in 2008, New Zealand’s economy would have suffered much more acutely than it did. Indeed, had the Chinese government not embarked on the most colossal stimulatory spending programme in human history, the entire global economy would probably have collapsed.

That China is being repaid by being vilified and attacked by a faltering American empire and its risible “deputy-sheriff”, Australia, is bad enough. That the New Zealand government is lending its support to this dangerous reassertion of old and bad ideas is unforgiveable. How many tons of milk powder are the Americans offering to take off our hands? How many affordable products can we expect from Uncle Sam’s American-based factories?

Henry Kissinger warned that the United States had no friends – only interests. Attempting to curry America’s friendship at the expense of New Zealand’s vital interest in preserving productive diplomatic and economic relationships with China is exceptionally poor foreign policy.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 20 July 2018.

Dancing With The Devil: How China And India Made Their Elites Richer By Impoverishing Their People.

Diabolical Dealing: At its base, India remains the numberless mass of deeply impoverished and politically marginalised people it has always been. Like their Chinese brothers and sisters, the vast majority of Indians have little reason to thank their neoliberal “liberators”. Their masters – white, yellow or brown – have always danced with the Devil. It’s an entirely inadequate consolation for neoliberalism’s victims that their souls, if nothing else, remain their own.

 

ANYONE WHO HAS SEEN the wonders of modern Chinese architecture might easily be persuaded that “neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics” is a spectacular success. But the skylines of Shanghai and Beijing testify not to the emancipation of the Chinese masses, but to the burgeoning power of the Chinese elites. Like the futuristic skyline of Los Angeles in the sci-fi movie Bladerunner, they are symbols of a deeply dystopic state.

 

For close to forty years the Chinese Communist Party has presided over the economic modernisation of China. From its state of near collapse following the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, the “capitalist roaders” so despised by Chairman Mao have steered their country to its present position as the world’s industrial powerhouse. Step-by-step they have mounted the staircase of economic growth and sophistication, freely borrowing techniques and ideas from the capitalist West, but never permitting modernisation to cross over into the development of a recognizably capitalist class. They called it “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and its extraordinary achievements are the reason why the Communist Party still rules China.

 

It could not have happened had China followed the example of Russia and instituted democratic reforms. The modernisation of China was a strictly top-down affair – albeit one in which the top takes action to head-off the threat of changes driven from below. The Party leaders did this by empowering their counterparts in the regions and municipalities: giving them just enough latitude to enrich themselves, but not enough to threaten the system as a whole.

 

Thus was established the unholy alliance between party apparatchiks, state owned enterprise bosses, free-wheeling entrepreneurs and organised criminal gangs that made the Chinese “miracle” possible. Driven by a combination of political ambition, personal greed, rampant corruption, extra-legal force and Chinese commercial acumen, the transformation of the Chinese economy and Chinese society proceeded at breakneck speed.

 

But the raw material for all this “progress” was – as it has ever been in human history – the bodies and brains of the great mass of the people. Those who found themselves excluded from the magic circles of power and personal enrichment.

 

Deng Xiaoping began the process by engineering the break-up of the agricultural communes and their associated systems of health, education and welfare. The millions of peasants displaced by these land and economic reforms were to become part of the greatest migration in human history. From China’s vast interior they made their way to the huge new joint-enterprise factories that were opening up along the Chinese coast. Many came with official permits, but many more came without. Living in a state of legal limbo, these “unofficial” migrants took what work they were offered and did as they were told. Like their Nineteenth Century counterparts, the millions of East-European immigrants who poured into the rapidly industrialising United States, they are essential to maintaining the low-cost labour upon which China’s Faustian economic bargain with the West is based.

 

You will not find these sons and daughters of modern China in the new air-conditioned office towers of Shanghai and Beijing. They live where the housing is cheapest, the pollution thickest, and health, education and welfare services non-existent. They are not dressed by Armani or Dior, and they do not holiday in Queenstown. Their workplaces do not put health and safety first, nor are they represented by unions. Attempts to better their conditions are more often than not ended by the bosses’ hired thugs. Complaining to the authorities only earns them a visit from the Police. (“Re-education Through Labour” camps are one of the few Maoist-era institutions that survived Deng’s reforms.) Few now remember, and none dare recall, the bright vision of Tiananmen Square. For them, the distinction between “socialism with Chinese characteristics” and “neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics” is difficult to discern.

 

 

INDIA RESEMBLES CHINA only inasmuch as neoliberals like to claim it as proof of their ideology’s benevolent impact on the peoples of the world. This is entirely delusional. All that India offers us is the same grim evidence of dystopian excess as the grossly unfree and unequal Peoples Republic. The investigative journalist, John Pilger, calls contemporary India: “extreme capitalism’s pact with feudalism”.

 

Mahatma Ghandi’s heroic attempt to construct a new India out of the British Raj: an India without castes and classes, in which all religions and all ideologies would be tolerated and enjoy equal rights; was foundering even before a member of a right-wing Hindu political movement shot him to death in January 1948. Jawaharlal Nehru’s attempt to make India a secular socialist republic fared no better. In the end, India’s ancient caste system outlived them all.

 

It is difficult to imagine a cultural template more suited to the imposition of neoliberalism that India’s rigid caste system. The latter has its origins in the political and economic needs of a society characterised by a grossly unequal distribution of wealth and power. As gross inequality backed by state power is a reasonably good description of the sort of world neoliberals are trying to create, it’s not hard to explain why India struck them as a nation it could do business with.

 

India’s “New Economic Policy” of 1991, like New Zealand’s Rogernomics “reforms” of 1984, was imposed on a nation in the midst of an economic crisis. That the crisis coincided with the fall of the Soviet Union (one of India’s strongest diplomatic, and economic, partners) only reinforced the message from the IMF that, in order to be bailed out of its difficulties, the country would have to embrace the new orthodoxy of open borders and open markets. India also followed the New Zealand model inasmuch as the Prime Minister who rammed through these changes, P V Narasimha Rao, was a member of the Indian National Congress – India’s democratic socialist party.

 

In the years since, India has become the destination for massive amounts of foreign investment, and its elites have taken advantage of their new open economy to enrich themselves beyond the dreams of even the wealthiest of feudal maharajahs.  High tech hubs, like the city of Mumbai, give the impression of a nation rapidly catching up with its Western competitors. But if the inequitably distributed wealth and high-tech industrial development is real, the notion that the Indian masses are being similarly enriched is illusory.

 

Since 1992, inequality in India has increased. With the removal of the protective barriers erected by the Congress Party in the 1950s and 60s, ordinary Indians have seen their economy taken over by all the usual transnational suspects. Coca-Cola, Pizza Hut, Microsoft, Monsanto and many, many more have brought with them the same sense of diminished influence and control that all the re-colonised peoples of the world have experienced.

 

At its base, India remains the numberless mass of deeply impoverished and politically marginalised people it has always been. Like their Chinese brothers and sisters, the vast majority of Indians have little reason to thank their neoliberal “liberators”. Their masters – white, yellow or brown – have always danced with the Devil. It’s an entirely inadequate consolation for neoliberalism’s victims that their souls, if nothing else, remain their own.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 17 February 2016.

Perilous Whites: Labour, China and the Liberal Intelligentsia.

Wiring Problems: What makes it so difficult for the Liberal Intelligentsia to see what is happening to their country; to its people; to its assets; when it is all unfolding before their very eyes? Is it possible that the answer really is, as they insist, racism?

 

THE OUTCRY precipitated by Labour’s critique of overseas Chinese investment in the Auckland housing market is profoundly disturbing. The “Liberal Intelligentsia” (to use Steven Joyce’s term) has reacted to Phil Twyford’s and Rob Salmond’s data as if this is 1915, not 2015.

 

China’s revolutionary self-emancipation and her transformation into a global economic superpower – a process spanning the whole of the twentieth century – appears to have passed the Liberal Intelligentsia by entirely. It’s as though they are still living in the days when most Chinese New Zealanders were green-grocers and market-gardeners. When Pakeha children intoned racist rhymes about “Ching-Chong-Chinaman”, and their parents openly parroted the prejudices of those earlier generations of New Zealanders who had erected a viciously discriminatory legislative cage to contain the “Yellow Peril”.

 

The liberals seem blissfully unaware that the period in which tens-of-thousands of economic refugees poured out of a China in search of safety and the chance to build a better life ended more than half-a-century ago. The Chinese immigrant of today arrives with capital to invest, a factory to build and/or a business to run. And the New Zealand government is only too eager to assist. Indeed, in 2015, it’s the Kiwi exporter heading north who travels in hope of a better deal. And his destination is a hundred years distant from the China laid low by the superior firepower of Western imperialism. We are the supplicants now.

 

Carve Up: In this turn-of-the-19th-Century cartoon, a helpless China protests the imperial powers' carve up of its territory and resources. A century later China's position in the world has changed dramatically.

 

The failure of the liberals’ historical imagination is even more astonishing when one considers how very loudly they have proclaimed their support for tino rangatiratanga. Their outrage at the thought of the indigenous Maori people of New Zealand being relieved of their lands, forests and fisheries by rapacious British colonists was awesome to behold. And it mattered to them not at all that most of these real estate transactions were without legal blemish. How quick the Liberals of the 1970s and 80s were to remind us of the words of the Lakota War Chief, Red Cloud: “The white man made us many promises – more  than I can remember, but he never kept but one: he promised to take our land – and he took it.”

 

All of which raises a very interesting question: what makes it so difficult for the Liberal Intelligentsia to see what is happening to their country; to its people; to its assets; when it is all unfolding before their very eyes? Is it possible that the answer really is, as they insist, racism?

 

If racism is at work in this matter, then it is not in the Labour Party. No, the racism at work here is born of the towering arrogance and ignorance of the Liberal Intelligentsia itself. So sure are these people of their own superiority that they simply cannot accept that in this little corner of the world, at least, the power of the West is waning. That white, well-educated, urban professionals, like themselves, are no longer calling the shots in New Zealand. That, for some time now, the future of this country has been decided thousands of miles from these shores – where New Zealanders don’t get a vote. These blissfully unconscious racists still see Chinese New Zealanders in terms of a helpless minority to which they, with infinite condescension, are duty-bound to extend their protection – as if the “victims” are still green-grocers and market-gardeners. The idea that it might be the Chinese who, increasingly, are calling the shots in New Zealand, is beyond their comprehension.

 

Raybon Kan’s brilliant essay in this morning’s Herald said it all. We Kiwis have become so smug, so insular, so convinced that we have all the answers, that we have failed to notice how very large and dangerous the world has grown. Land will always end up in the hands of those who best appreciate its value. If we are unwilling to assign a credible price to our little paradise at the bottom of the world, then there are millions of other human beings out there who will happily do it for us.

 

That is all Labour’s politicians are trying to say. It is a fact of real political importance that the Liberal Intelligentsia can no longer hear them.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Wednesday, 15 July 2015.

An Assad Victory Is Syria’s (And The World’s) Least-Worst Option

The Spoils Of Victory? Syria 2013. Those who cry "Let justice be done - though the heavens fall!", are seldom to be found living amongst the ruins. The World's options in Syria are rapidly narrowing. It can either allow Assad to restore enough order to make meaningful peace talks possible, or, by increasing arms shipments to the rebels, risk the whole of the Middle East erupting in flames.

 

RIGHT UP UNTIL its actions triggered World War I, hardly anyone in New Zealand gave a damn about Serbia. Until very recently, the same was probably true of our relationship with Syria.

 

Even now, with images of Syria’s gruesome civil war nightly smearing the world’s television screens, I find myself reacting to the rapidly rising body-count with a mixture of pity and frustration. As the angry, anguished faces of the slayers and their victims flash before me, I demand to know what could possibly be worth so much suffering?

 

Freedom?

 

Democracy?

 

Observing the “Arab Spring’s” slow descent into its entirely predictable winter of democratically-sanctioned fanaticism, I impotently admonish the opponents of the Syrian dictator, Bashar Al Assad:

 

“Be careful what you wish for!”

 

Freedom and democracy are probably impossible now, anyway, wished for or not. Too much blood has been spilt and too many homicidal sectarian passions aroused, for the ballot to be seen, miraculously, as an acceptable substitute for the bullet. The time for compromise in Syria was at the very beginning of the conflict – and that moment has passed. Neither side can now afford to rest until all their enemies are dead and absolute victory secured.

 

Of all the potential victors of the Syrian civil war, it is of Bashar Al Assad’s Baathist regime that the world has the least reason to be fearful. For all its faults – and they are legion – Assad’s government is now the only armed force in the country still committed to preserving Syria’s territorial integrity and to its continuance as an independent nation state.

 

Assad’s opponents can no longer credibly commit to either of those objectives. Whether its leaders are willing to acknowledge it or not, the Syrian rebellion has taken on the character of a Saudi and Qatar financed Sunni jihad. Victory for the rebels would dissolve the existing boundaries of the Middle East – thereby unleashing a wider and infinitely more dangerous war into which the whole world could be drawn.

 

By upholding Syria’s rights as a nation-state, China and Russia are, contrary to most Western commentary, making the most useful contribution to the preservation of both the regional and the global peace. It is the United Kingdom and France – both major arms exporters to the leading Sunni monarchies and emirates – that have opted to further inflame the Syrian crisis by bullying the European Union into lifting its ban on selling arms to either side of the conflict.

 

If the UK and France end up putting their thumbs on the strategic scales in Syria, the United States will have no choice but to weigh-in alongside them. This would result not only in the Russian Federation stepping-up its arms shipments to the Syrian Government, but also in the Shia republics of Iran and Iraq increasing the size and capability of their own military and paramilitary contingents (including the Lebanon-based Hezbollah Militia) currently fighting alongside the Syrian armed forces.

 

A fiery crescent of conflict, extending from Iran in the east, to Lebanon (and Israel?) in the west, and threatening all of the states to its immediate north and south, will be the inevitable outcome of any strategy which does not take as its starting point the restoration of the political status quo ante in Syria, the disarming of the rebels, a full amnesty for all of Assad’s opponents, and the drawing-up of a new constitution for the Syrian people – to be guaranteed by all five permanent members of the UN Security Council.

 

Whether they be English, American or Spanish, civil wars only end when one side decisively defeats the other. Unless it is the West’s desire to prolong the agony of the Syrian people indefinitely, its best option is to call upon the Sunni monarchs to cease arming the rebels and allow the Syrian armed forces to re-establish something approximating order.

 

That would be the least-worst-case Syrian scenario. The alternative – an oil-fuelled (and quite possibly nuclear) conflagration devouring the entire Middle East – could hardly avoid setting the whole world on fire.

 

This essay was originally published in The Dominion Post, The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 21 June 2013.