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.

Sucking Up and Kicking Down: The NZ Media Covers the Queenstown Summit.

Steady-On, Cobber: After the vicious attack on New Zealand’s prime minister and foreign policy, broadcast on Channel Nine’s “60 Minutes” programme, during which this country was accused of selling its soul and abandoning its Australian “mate” for a mess of Chinese pottage, most Kiwis would have greeted the Aussie media pack with hackles raised and teeth bared. Not our journalists, or, at least, not where anyone could see them.

THE NEW ZEALAND NEWS MEDIA’S coverage of the regular get-together of the Australian and New Zealand prime ministers was appalling. Like their reporting of New Zealand politics generally, most of the journalists’ effort was devoted to seeking-out story-lines with which to embarrass the Labour Government of Jacinda Ardern. In many cases, this involved openly talking-up the Australians’ book at their own country’s expense. Confirmed, yet again, is the unhealthily large number of “suck-up, kick-down” personalities currently at large in New Zealand’s Fourth Estate.

So many contemporary journalists appear to be in the job for trophies. Not the sort of trophies one displays on the mantelpiece (although they like them too) but the sort of trophies big-game hunters hang on their walls. The current Press Gallery’s definition of a good political journalist would appear to be based on how many politician’s they have “bagged”. As if stuffing someone’s career is something to be proud of.

Never has the British Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin’s (1867-1947) crushing condemnation of the news media been more apt: “What [it] is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.”

After the vicious attack on New Zealand’s foreign policy, broadcast on Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes programme, during which this country was accused of selling its soul and abandoning its Australian “mate” for a mess of Chinese pottage, most Kiwis would have greeted the Aussie media pack with hackles raised and teeth bared. Not our journalists, or, at least, not where anyone could see them.

Rather than respond in kind to the “60 Minutes” onslaught, with questions about the Australian Defence Minister courting Armageddon over Taiwan and the South China Sea, our scribes were more keen to know how fast Jacinda planned to skulk back, like a whipped puppy, to her kennel in Canberra’s back yard.

Certainly there was no one there in Queenstown with the wit to object, when Scott Morrison blathered on about not letting hostile forces divide the Anzac partners, that, since the man in charge of Channel Nine was his old mate and Liberal Party colleague, Peter Costello, he might like to pick up the phone and ask him to stop calling New Zealand a Chinese puppet.

But that’s the problem, isn’t it. The hacks and hackettes of the New Zealand Press Gallery just don’t know stuff like that. All they know is what the smooth operators at the Australian High Commission, the British High Commission and the American Embassy whisper in their shell-like ears at receptions and cocktail parties arranged for just such a purpose.

One is reminded of the famous scene in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four when the “orator” on the platform is handed a note informing him that Oceania is no longer at war with Eurasia, it is now at war with Eastasia:

The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried on to the platform and a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker’s hand. He unrolled and read it without pausing in his speech. Nothing altered in his voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein had been at work! There was a riotous interlude while posters were ripped from the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled underfoot. The Spies performed prodigies of activity in clambering over the rooftops and cutting the streamers that fluttered from the chimneys. But within two or three minutes it was all over. The orator, still gripping the neck of the microphone, his shoulders hunched forward, his free hand clawing at the air, had gone straight on with his speech. One minute more, and the feral roars of rage were again bursting from the crowd. The Hate continued exactly as before, except that the target had been changed.

For nearly 40 years, New Zealand’s diplomatic stance has reflected its location in the Asia-Pacific region of the world. Its relationships with other nations are based on the indisputable reality of New Zealand being a small, economically vulnerable, trading nation situated in the south of the South Pacific. It’s a stance that has the merit of being both expedient and ethical. Other nations know exactly where we stand and what we want – which is, essentially, to be everybody’s friend and trading partner. For decades now, New Zealand diplomacy has possessed the added advantage of in no way contradicting the general strategic posture of the region’s major military actors – the USA and Australia. We were focused on the Asia-Pacific. They were focused on the Asia-Pacific.

Except, they’re not – not any longer. The USA’s and Australia’s strategic perspective has shifted abruptly from the Asia-Pacific theatre to the Indo-Pacific theatre. From an essentially defensive stance, aimed at preserving the regional status-quo, New Zealand’s former ANZUS allies (with Japan and India in tow) have adopted a clearly aggressive posture aimed at containing, weakening, and ultimately breaking, the Peoples Republic of China. (In exactly the same way the USA and Nato contained, weakened and ultimately broke the Soviet Union.) And New Zealand, like the orator in Orwell’s novel, is supposed to accept the change without missing a beat. “Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.”

Significantly, the Press Gallery – bless their hawkish little hearts – has fallen into line without a murmur. China is New Zealand’s enemy. China has always been New Zealand’s enemy. Canberra says so. Washington says so. Even London says so. (Although what business it is of theirs God alone knows!)

Never mind that, by putting our export earnings at risk, the demands of our “allies” pose a direct threat to our national security and wellbeing. Never mind that, like the Soviet Union, China is a nuclear power, which, if cornered, has the power to blow up the world. None of this matters. As far as this country’s senior political journalists are concerned, New Zealand is out of step with the big boys. Ergo, New Zealand must get in step with the big boys. Jacinda needs to hold hands with “ScoMo” and “Sleepy Joe”, and quickly – or run the risk of being “bagged” and having her head hung on the Press Gallery wall.

Unless, of course, our “friends” decide that Oceania is no longer at war with Eastasia. That Oceania has never been at war with Eastasia.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 3 June 2021.

The Kangaroo Encounters The Taniwha.

Uncomfortable: Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne, along with the rest of the Five Eyes Partners, were shocked to hear New Zealand's Foreign Minister, Nanaia Mahuta, tell the New Zealand-China Council: “It’s a matter that we have raised with Five Eyes partners; that we are uncomfortable with expanding the remit of the Five Eyes relationship; that we would much rather prefer looking for multilateral opportunities to express our interests on a number of issues.”

ON WEDNESDAY, when the Australian Foreign Minister, Marise Payne, met with our own, Nanaia Mahuta, diplomatic sparks undoubtedly flew. By then, Payne would have had plenty of time to analyse the content of Mahuta’s ground-shifting speech to the New Zealand-China Council on Monday. If that wasn’t enough to turn her face to flint, then it’s hard to know what could. Australia has made no secret of its desire to see the Kiwis straighten up and fly right for their Five Eyes partners. That Mahuta announced New Zealand’s intention of doing no such thing would certainly have sent sparks flying all over Canberra.

The Australians would’ve been no more interested than the Chinese in all the usual diplomatic ruffage in Mahuta’s speech. The only line that would have made them sit up and take notice was this one:

“It’s a matter that we have raised with Five Eyes partners; that we are uncomfortable with expanding the remit of the Five Eyes relationship; that we would much rather prefer looking for multilateral opportunities to express our interests on a number of issues.”

In plain English:

New Zealand is unwilling to go along with the Five Eyes intelligence gathering operation being expanded into a full-scale diplomatic and military alliance.

That is NOT what the Aussies were expecting, or wanting, to hear. Up until Mahuta’s appointment as foreign minister, New Zealand’s diplomatic (and military) direction of travel had been set by the Five-Eyes-friendly Winston Peters and his Defence Minister sidekick Ron Mark. The idea of New Zealand being welcomed back into the bosom of what Peters’ namesake, Winston Churchill, called “The English-Speaking Peoples” was one that warmed the cockles of the NZ First Leader’s heart.

Reading Peters speeches, it is clear that Canberra (and Washington, London and Ottawa) had allowed itself to hope that not only was Wellington finally prepared to set aside all that 1980s “nuclear-free” nonsense, but that it was also ready to make the key conceptual leap from the old “Asia-Pacific” to the new “Indo-Pacific” diplomatic paradigm.

Aimed directly at the Peoples Republic of China, the Indo-Pacific strategy of containment pits the combined military might of the United States, Japan, India and Australia against the burgeoning capability of the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army. Encouraged by Peters anti-Chinese rhetoric, did New Zealand’s Five Eyes partners indulge the wild surmise that New Zealand was preparing to resume its strategic role as the guardian of Australia’s eastern flank? If so, then Mahuta has dashed their hopes most cruelly.

Contained in her address to the New Zealand-China Council (the venue, alone, should have put the other four “Eyes” on alert) is the outline of a wholly new set of foreign policy objectives. At the heart of Mahuta’s plan is the Pacific nation “Aotearoa”. As the largest of the South Pacific island nations, “Aotearoa” intends to articulate and defend the interests of the region in a proudly indigenous fashion.

“I believe our foreign policy settings can be enhanced by te Tiriti,” said Mahuta. “The principles of partnership, active participation and protection can be called upon to enable equity and tino rangatiratanga (self-determination).”

Mahuta’s title for her address, “The Dragon and the Taniwha”, must have sent the diplomatic corps scurrying for a dictionary of Maori myths and legends. What did she mean?

Given her comments about the predicament of small South Pacific nations currently overburdened by Chinese debt, Beijing might consider mollifying the Taniwha by writing-off these onerous “development” loans. How better to reward Wellington for stepping away from the rapidly solidifying anti-Chinese alliance? How better to signal to the nations of the South Pacific that Aotearoa-New Zealand’s new regional diplomacy deserves their enthusiastic support?

The veteran political journalist, Richard Harman, describes Mahuta’s diplomatic gambit as “arguably one of the most important made by a foreign minister in recent years”. Describing the speech as “subtly and carefully worded”, Harman argues that “with its declaration that we would no longer participate in the Five Eyes alliance’s broader political and security campaigns, it may prove to be as important as the 1984–87 Labour Government’s anti-nuclear speeches which led to New Zealand being expelled from ANZUS.”

Certainly, Bob Hawke resented David Lange’s do-it-yourself diplomacy. At the very least, Marise Payne, will be telling Nanaia to tell her mate, Jacinda, that “Australia’s not happy about this – not happy at all.”

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 23 April 2021.