Picking Sides.

Time To Choose: Like it or not, the Kiwis are either going into AUKUS’s  “Pillar 2” – or they are going to China.

HAD ZHENG HE’S FLEET sailed east, not west, in the early Fifteenth Century, how different our world would be. There is little reason to suppose that the sea-going junks of the Ming Dynasty, among the largest and most sophisticated sailing vessels ever constructed, would have failed to make landfall on the Pacific coast of North America half-a-century before Columbus. The colonisation of the Americas, from West to East, would have consolidated China’s global hegemony irreversibly. The cramped and fratricidal states of the European peninsula would have remained minor players in a Chinese world.

In the worst geopolitical nightmares of the United States and its Pacific allies, a China grown as powerful as the empire which sent forth Zheng He’s mighty fleet, threatens to transform the Pacific into a Chinese lake.

Technologically and militarily superior to the internally-riven United States, this China of the future regularly stations elements of its fleet off the Californian coast – in much the same spirit as the United States Navy currently navigates the waters of the South China Sea.

In a diplomatic reversal of the USA’s “island-hopping” strategy of the Second World War, an expansionist China will already have brought the tiny nations of the Pacific under its sway. The naval and air bases located on the territory of Beijing’s new “friends” will have extended its strategic reach alarmingly.

Completing this American nightmare would be the transformation of New Zealand into China’s unsinkable aircraft carrier and nuclear submarine base. Handily located off Australia’s eastern seaboard, China’s military resources would have strategically neutralised Australia’s eye-wateringly expensive fleet of Virgina-class nuclear submarines.

Beijing’s heavy investment in New Zealand’s failing infrastructure, coupled with her role as the principal consumer of its exports, made Wellington’s detachment from the West a much easier project than would have been the case if Washington’s “Indo-Pacific Strategy” had run to offering the Kiwis a generous free trade deal to replace their economically-critical FTA with China.

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IT IS ONE OF THE KEY DISADVANTAGES of always being on the winning side of history’s great encounters: not being able to grasp the sheer contingency of such victories.

Had America’s carriers not been at sea on Sunday, 7 December 1941, and gone down in Pearl Harbour alongside her battleships; and had Japan’s bombers eliminated the USA’s Hawaiian-based fuel supplies; then an enemy fleet off the Californian coast would not have been the stuff of strategic nightmares; it could, very easily, have been the reality.

Certainly, with America’s fleet either destroyed or out of action, there could have been no Battle of the Coral Sea, no Battle of Midway, to save Australia and New Zealand from Japanese invasion and occupation.

Preventing the Pacific Ocean from becoming a Japanese lake in the 1940s required the expenditure of an awful lot of blood and treasure – and an awful lot of luck. Had things turned out differently, the Americans, desperate to secure their eastern flank, may have been forced to let the Pacific go. And, if J. Robert Oppenheimer had been run over by a Los Alamos bus in January 1942, then they may never have got it back.

What we New Zealanders need to grasp is that America can no more allow the Pacific to be dominated by China in the 2040s than it could allow it to be dominated by Japan in the 1940s. Global hegemony is a zero-sum game. For every step America takes back, its rival/s will take a step forward.

While China was content to remain the world’s factory, all was well. But, the moment Xi Jinping committed his country to building a blue-water navy to rival Zheng He’s great fleet; the moment his Belt & Road project threatened to link the Global South inextricably to Chinese capital and technology; all bets were off.

That brief geopolitical respite, when the Russians were on their knees, and the Chinese were still getting up off theirs, was squandered by Washington in a profoundly compromising series of adventures in the Middle East. Twenty years of “forever war” in Iraq and Afghanistan has left America’s armed forces physically and morally exhausted, and its ruling class dangerously lacking in fortitude. What better symbol of America’s decline could there be than two old men swinging ineffectually at each other for the custody of an angry and divided nation?

The USA’s weakness at the top notwithstanding, the dice of geopolitical hazard cannot remain uncast indefinitely.

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THE NEW CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE for the rebuilding of the USA’s global strength is its Indo-Pacific Strategy. To understand the theatre-shift, from “Asia” to “Indo”, one has only to study the actual voyages that Admiral Zheng He undertook in the early decades of the Fifteenth Century.

He’s great fleet swept south and west from coastal China, through the Indonesian archipelago, past Sri Lanka, long the coast of India, rounding the Arabian Peninsula, to journey’s end in East Africa – distributing gifts and collecting tribute all along the way. The economic and political logic was as strong for the Chinese then as it is now. Recognising that logic, the Americans have no real choice but to prevent it from unfolding.

There was a time when the USA could have done it all alone, but now it seems that the retention of American hegemony in the Pacific requires the diplomatic mobilisation of the English-speakers who invaded Iraq in 2003 – the US, the UK and Australia. Hence AUKUS – also known as “bringing the old imperialist band back together for one last tour of an ungrateful and increasingly uncooperative world”.

Can New Zealand stay out of AUKUS? Should New Zealand stay out of AUKUS? The answer to the first question, sadly, is: Only if its people are happy to turn their country into a battleground, upon which Beijing and Washington will wage a protracted ideological war for the hearts and minds of the inhabitants of what both superpowers recognise as a critically important piece of strategic real-estate. Which, even more sadly, answers the second question.

Helen Clark may have got away with keeping New Zealand out of the invasion of Iraq, but that was because, in Iraq, only American pride was at stake. In the looming struggle for the Pacific, the option of “sitting this one out” will not be on offer. Washington will insist that blood is thicker than milk, and Beijing will remind us that milk is New Zealand’s life-blood.

Like it or not, the Kiwis are either going into AUKUS’s “Pillar 2” – or they are going to China.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday, 6 May 2024.

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.

Taking Back Our Eyes.

Seeing For Ourselves: If remaining in the Anglo-Saxon alliance means embracing a far-right version of populism already indistinguishable from incipient fascism; if it requires New Zealand to join its “allies” in repeating all the horrors of Anglo-Capitalism’s imperial past; then we must have nothing to do with it.

WHY IS AUSTRALIA so keen to bring the finance ministers of the “Five Eyes” together? Since when did the intelligence gathering and sharing arrangement launched nearly 70 years ago as the UK-USA Agreement start morphing into an economic and military alliance? More importantly, how long has Canberra been anticipating New Zealand’s participation in this transformation? Clearly, the promoters of what is looking more and more like ANZUS 2.0 are not particularly worried that such a policy would jeopardise our relationship with China. Indeed, alienating China from New Zealand may be one of the key objectives of the whole exercise.

Canberra clearly believes that if Beijing is ready to impose a heavy economic cost on  Australia for its unwavering allegiance to the United States, then Wellington, too, should be prepared to endure the lash of Chinese displeasure. And make no mistake, Canberra is paying a price. Its food exports to China are being impeded and the Chinese Government is warning its citizens to avoid visiting Australia on account of its deep-seated racial antagonism towards Asian peoples. This warning will damage not only the Australian tourist industry (already stricken thanks to Covid-19) but it will also choke off the multi-billion-dollar flow of Chinese fee-paying students to Australia’s schools and universities.

These are merely the preliminaries, however, should Australia persist in its determination to be the best deputy-sheriff Uncle Sam has ever had. New Zealanders often express concern at their own country’s growing economic dependence on the Chinese market. Our economic vulnerability pales, however, when set alongside the Australian mining industry’s reliance on China’s apparently insatiable appetite for the Lucky Country’s mineral exports. A full-scale boycott of Australian coal, copper, bauxite and iron-ore would plunge the Australian economy into an even deeper recession.

What reward is Canberra hoping to receive in return for jeopardising its economic future? Why is it so keen to take up such an exposed position in the “New Cold War” which is fast intensifying between the Peoples Republic and the so-called “Quad States” – the USA, Japan, Australia and India? Has the rise and rise of China awakened all the old atavistic Australian fears of the “Yellow Peril”? The existential fears which fuelled the frankly racist “White Australia Policy” which lasted from federation in 1901 until well into the 1970s. And if that is the driving force behind Canberra’s reckless willingness to put at risk Australia’s own vital economic interests, then how does it expect the USA to make good the loss of its Chinese buyers?

The crucial feature of a declining power is its diminishing capacity to offer a credible quid pro quo for its friends’ and allies’ loyalty.

Why was New Zealand (a nation of barely one million in 1914) prepared to sacrifice upwards of 12,000 of its young sons for the greater glory of the British Empire in World War I? The cynical answer: because the primary produce importers on London’s Tooley Street were willing to take everything Britain’s South Seas “farm” could send them. Not to put too fine a point upon it, we traded blood for butter. A Devil’s bargain, no doubt, but a profitable one!

Is Canberra labouring under the illusion that the USA will absorb all its vital mineral exports should China decline to receive them? Does the Australian Government really believe that America’s own mining industry is just going to sit back and let Australian imports flood their markets and drive down their prices? The United States is a mature, almost post-industrial, capitalist economy. It passed through the phase through which China is currently passing more than a century ago. Australia’s much-vaunted “luck” stems from it being handsomely endowed and strategically located to supply the needs of a rapidly industrialising Asia. Overwhelmingly, for the last 40 years, that has meant China. What has Washington told Canberra about the region’s geopolitical future that has made Australian politicians so willing to court the ire of Beijing. What does Scotty Morrison know that we don’t?

The name of the “Quad’s” new geopolitical initiative, the “Indo-Pacific Strategy”, offers a pretty big clue. Simply recall that, until very recently, all the talk among the Five Eyes and their allies was about their “Asia-Pacific Strategy”. The shift in focus, from East to South Asia, from China to India, points to the overall direction of travel of Anglo-Capitalism in the twenty-first century. With China stubbornly refusing to follow the same path as the Soviet Union; with Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan significantly failing to replicate the fates of Ukraine, Georgia, the “stans” and the Baltic states; with Beijing forging ahead to reclaim its historical primacy in the region; the time has apparently arrived for the Five Eyes powers to sink their talons into yet another vast population of peasants. For India, what came around in the seventeenth century is about to come around again.

The politics required for the Five Eyes powers to pull this off isn’t pretty.

Remember the BRIC countries? (Brazil, Russia, India and China) Remember the Anglo-capitalists’ alarm at the emergence of a bloc determined to step out of the shadow of its individual members’ tragic histories? Where are they now? Brazil and India – like the USA and the UK – are (mis)ruled by far-right populists hellbent on leading their people back into the steely embrace of the imperialists. The survivors, China and Russia, are now – according to the Five Eyes powers – Public Enemies 1 and 2.

And so, at last, we can answer the question of why the Australians are so determined to ensure that every last one of the Five Eyes are on the same economic (i.e. ideological) page. Why it is so important that no one (and, yes, they’re looking at you Jacinda and Grant) breaks ranks by declining to see China as an enemy. How vital it is that no member state draw attention to the fact that the planet cannot possibly sustain the massive carbon investment required to turn India into another China.

It was the “Asia-Pacific Strategy” that fouled the lungs of Planet Earth. The “Indo-Pacific Strategy” threatens to bring on a fever that will stop her heart.

We should inform Canberra, Washington, Ottawa and London that we are taking back our eyes – the better to find and follow an independent foreign policy path. If remaining in the Anglo-Saxon alliance means embracing a far-right version of populism already indistinguishable from incipient fascism; if it requires New Zealand to join its “allies” in repeating all the horrors of Anglo-Capitalism’s imperial past; then we must have nothing to do with it.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 11 June 2020.

Dining With A Long Spoon.

Divided Loyalties: Can the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, be relied upon? That’s what the boys and girls at Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon needed to be reassured about. Because, from the perspective of Washington, it’s looking more and more like Jacinda Ardern and her Labour Party comrades are getting ready to sell their souls for a pile of soybeans (or milk-powder!) and forgetting all about their duty to protect the interests of their “very, very, very good friends” – in the United States and Australia.

AT ROUGHLY the same time as the police presence at Ihumatao was suddenly and inexplicably boosted (5/8/19) New Zealand’s Deputy-Prime Minister, Winston Peters, was sitting down to dinner with the US Secretary of Defence, James Esper. This high-level diplomatic tête-à-tête took place at the Deputy-Prime Minister’s home in the swanky Auckland suburb of St Mary’s Bay. It’s a safe bet that Mr Peters’ American guest talked about mustering coercive forces far greater than those then arriving at Ihumatao.

That Secretary Esper was there at all is, in itself, remarkable. The US Senate’s stamp of approval has barely had time to dry and the politician charged with responsibility for the greatest aggregation of military might in the planet’s history is on his way to Australia and New Zealand. Not to the United Kingdom and Europe, it is worth noting, but to Australasia, the crucial pivot-point of the United States’ brand new “Indo-Pacific Strategy”.

The change of  nomenclature – from “Asia-Pacific” to “Indo-Pacific” is important. It betokens a critical shift in emphasis. From the straightforward projection of American power to the farthest reaches of the Pacific Ocean: a constant of US foreign and military policy since the heady days of Teddy Roosevelt and his “Great White Fleet”; to the vastly more ambitious goal of “containing” the growing power and influence of the Peoples Republic of China by asserting American hegemony over both the Pacific and the Indian Oceans.

To make this work, the United States requires the active support and cooperation of Japan, Australia and India. Together, these nations form what to Chinese eyes must look like a profoundly threatening arc of offensive military capability. Japan stands at the arc’s eastward extremity, India at its western end, while Australia, at the arc’s base, straddles the two great oceans that give the strategy its name. With these three powers holding the perimeter, the other powers of the region: the Philippines, Indo-China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma and Thailand have little option but to go along for the ride.

For the geopoliticians in Washington, New Zealand also has a role to play – albeit a negative one. If Australia is going to fulfil its strategic obligations to the north and west, then it cannot afford to have anyone but a friend protecting its crucial eastern and southern flanks. As far as Washington is concerned – that’s us. Under no circumstances can New Zealand be allowed to fall any further under the influence of China. In the memorable phrase of the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, who travelled as far as Australia with Secretary Esper, the nations of the region could either “choose to sell their souls for a pile of soybeans, or protect their country.”

This, I strongly suspect, occupied a large part of the American agenda at St Mary’s Bay. Secretary Esper would have been anxious to know exactly where New Zealand’s loyalties lie: in Washington, or in Beijing?

Not that he entertained the slightest doubt about Mr Peters’ loyalties. His recent speeches, delivered on American soil, have made his feelings about Chinese influence in the South Pacific crystal clear. Nor had it escaped the notice of New Zealand’s ‘Five Eyes’ partners that Mr Peters had retired the outdated formulation “Asia-Pacific” in favour of “Indo-Pacific”. It was great to have New Zealand’s Deputy-Prime Minister and Foreign Minister on board and with the programme.

But what about New Zealand’s Prime Minister? Could she be relied upon? That’s what the boys and girls at Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon needed to be reassured about. Because Secretary Esper may well have suggested to Mr Peters that, from the perspective of Washington, it’s looking more and more like Jacinda Ardern and her Labour Party comrades are getting ready to sell their souls for a pile of soybeans (or milk-powder!) and forgetting all about their duty to protect the interests of their “very, very, very good friends” – in the United States and Australia.

As the desert plates were cleared away at St Mary’s Bay, and the whiskey liberally dispensed, did the US Defence Secretary seek to discover how the Leader of NZ First would react if push came to shove – in Hong Kong, for example – and his coalition partners declined to break-off relations with Beijing? Did the American remind Mr Peters’ that he, uniquely, enjoyed the political privilege of choosing his country’s bosses?

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 9 August 2019.

“Who Are You Calling ‘Mate’, Mate?”

Newspeak? It is Washington’s new “Indo-Pacific” strategy, that is driving the current “Century of Mateship” propaganda exercise out of Canberra. Australia’s foundation and development as a collection of British colonies is being barefacedly elided in favour of the Orwellian contention that: “Australia and the United States are mates. Australia and the United States have been mates for 100 years. Australia and the United States will always be mates.”

NEW ZEALAND’S RELATIONSHIP with Australia is under considerable strain. Though they have yet to state their position openly, Australia’s leaders are clearly less than enthusiastic about the tradition of “automatic entry” for New Zealand’s economic migrants. It is certainly difficult to read the Australian Government’s denial of non-emergency health care, higher education and social welfare benefits to Kiwi citizens as anything other than a pretty strong signal of Australia’s rising impatience with the ANZAC myth of eternal “mateship”.

Indeed, if the programmes currently featuring on Sky TV’s “History Channel” are anything to go by, there is a concerted effort underway to attach the “mateship” label to Australia’s relationship with the United States. Under the rubric of “One Hundred Years of Mateship” Australian documentary-makers are advancing the far-from-convincing argument that the Commonwealth of Australia – one of the British Empire’s most important economic and strategic “dominions across the seas” – and the United States of America have been bosom buddies from the moment they clapped eyes on each other across the battlefields of the Western Front in 1918.

It is rare in the English-speaking nations of the twenty-first century to witness such a blatant attempt to re-write history. Up until the Second World War, elite Australia’s attachment to British imperialism was as fervent as it was unquestioning. The Aussie working-class, much of it Irish and Catholic, may have had little cause to love the English and the Scots-Irish Orangemen from Ulster, but its dangerously radical opinions were vigorously rejected by the “respectable” settlers of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. For these sons and daughters of the Empire, “Mother England” was the source of all economic, military and cultural power. The USA and its teeming millions were impertinent upstarts – not “mates”.

That all changed, of course, when a squadron of Japanese navy bombers, almost nonchalantly, sank the two great British battleships, HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, off the Malaysian coast on 10 December 1941 – just three days after Japan’s surprise attack on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour. The fall of “impregnable” Singapore, which followed soon after, on 15 February 1942, brought home to Australians just how far away Mother England really was and forced them to shift their strategic gaze eastward to the United States. Every Australian understood that if the Japanese were going to be defeated, it would not be by the British, who had proved to be a busted-flush, but by the Americans. For most Aussies, therefore, the Yanks were more than their “mates” – they were Australia’s bloody saviours!

Post-World War II, however, the case for US-Australian “mateship” grows progressively stronger. The two countries have fought alongside each other in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. The view from Canberra is unequivocally that of a steadfast ally upon whom Washington can rely without the slightest hesitation or doubt. The Liberal Party Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, confirmed this subaltern status by describing his country as America’s “deputy-sheriff”.

Howard’s Liberal successor, Malcolm Turnbull, has developed this relationship to the point where Australia now sees itself as a geostrategic bridge between the Pacific and Indian oceans. The Australian landmass is thus being presented to Washington as not only an unassailable thoroughfare for American power, but also as a barrier against the further extension of Chinese influence into either ocean.

It is this, Washington’s new “Indo-Pacific” strategy, that is, almost certainly, driving Foxtel’s “100 Years of Mateship” propaganda exercise on the History Channel. Australia’s foundation and development as a collection of British colonies is being barefacedly elided in favour of the Orwellian contention that: “Australia and the United States are mates. Australia and the United States have been mates for 100 years. Australia and the United States will always be mates.”

Which just leaves New Zealand, Australia’s former “mate”, positioned strategically off the lucky country’s eastern seaboard like an unsinkable aircraft carrier which has, unaccountably, pushed all its fighter aircraft into the sea. An unreliable aircraft carrier, whose unreliable crew has, for more than 30 years, been bloody rude to Australia’s best mates – the Americans. A crew which insists on taking shore leave in Brisbane and Sydney and Melbourne where it spreads its downright subversive views about the rights of indigenous people and nuclear disarmament and practical feminism and need to do something big and meaningful about climate change among Australia’s dangerously persuadable citizens.

Right-wing Australia would like nothing more than to close its borders to these damned annoying Kiwis. Unfortunately, that would involve tearing up the Australian-New Zealand Closer Economic Relationship and toppling New Zealand into a full-scale economic and social crisis.

Now, there are some Aussies who’d like to say “tough luck, Kiwi” and walk away. Fortunately for New Zealand, however, there are wiser heads in the discussion who warn that a New Zealand in the grip of a life-or-death struggle for survival might feel it had no choice but to extend the hand of “mateship” to its largest remaining trading partner. That if Australia goes on mistreating Kiwis, then it just might wake up one morning to discover that unsinkable aircraft carrier across the Tasman Sea bristling with Chinese bombers.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 3 August 2018.