Leaders & Followers

A war host at their back: The anti-mining march up Auckland's Queen Street on May Day, in terms of providing powerful images, was much more effective than the photographs of "Warrior John" Key in Afghanistan.

JOHN KEY in body-armour. Thirty-thousand protesters marching up Queen Street. What are these images saying to us? Both events were deliberately contrived to convey a powerful message. So, what was it, in the language of symbols, that the image-makers were hoping to communicate – and to whom?

The first image, of "Warrior John", is all about the leader facing danger. Here is a man who, in his own words, is "not prepared to send people to a destination [that] I am not prepared to come to myself."

In propaganda terms it’s an old trick. As long ago as the First World War government publicists realised the value of having the nation’s leaders photographed in solemn (and potentially dangerous) communion with the troops. King George V did it. Prime Minister Lloyd George did it. Even New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Bill Massey, did it. Wartime presidents and prime ministers have been doing it ever since.

Symbolically speaking, the image taps into the deepest wells of human memory. Since men combined to bring down woolly mammoths one hundred millennia ago, leadership and danger have, conceptually-speaking, marched hand-in-hand. At its most basic level, leadership is about persuading people to trust you with their lives.

War-correspondent, Dexter Filkins, writes about leadership in The Forever War. With the US Marines "Bravo Company" in Falluja, he shadowed Captain Read Omohundro:

"It was an odd thing about leadership; people talked about it and CEOs wrote books about it. But there was nothing like facing death to feel it in the flesh. It was as if Omohundro wore a mask, and with that mask he gave everyone more courage than they knew they had."

Anyone who has seen combat says the same. Leaders are the people other people follow.

Will the image of Key in body armour encourage us to go on following him?

Probably not. New Zealanders no longer look upon the conflict in Afghanistan as their fight. In fact, polling suggests that a majority of voters would like to see, at the very least, the combat elements of New Zealand’s contribution withdrawn. Why? Because, to put it bluntly, the Taliban is not regarded as an existential threat.

In the aftermath of 9/11, with the images of the twin towers falling still vivid in their minds, New Zealanders were more than willing to throw in their lot with the aggrieved Americans. They were not alone. A visceral desire to avenge the victims of Al Qaeda’s devastating terrorist attack send military contingents flying towards Afghanistan from all over the world.

But that was eight years ago. Al Qaeda survives. Osama Bin Laden still lives. The Taliban have not been defeated. The democracy we promised to bring to the Afghan people has not materialised. And, according to The Sunday Star Times’ Jon Stephenson, 64 percent of the people we’ve supposedly been "assisting" in Bamiyan province don’t think very highly of our efforts.

In an existential struggle – like the Second World War – images of the leader at the front are extremely effective. That’s because, in an existential war, the troops on the ground are, literally, the nation’s children in arms, and the leader is there representing their parents and siblings back home. When they see him reach out to shake the hand of a soldier, it is their son or daughter, their brother or sister, that he is touching. His hand is their hand. The identification is deeply emotional and unequivocal: perfect propaganda.

In the case of Afghanistan, however, the emotional connection is weak, and the level of equivocation high. Instead of coming across as heroic, Key in body armour looks faintly ridiculous. As a consequence, most New Zealanders are going to decode the official images with their heads, not their hearts. His meeting with the troops will be perceived for what it actually was: a photo opportunity.

The contrast with the May-day anti-mining demonstration up Queen Street could hardly be more telling.

Here, too, the imagery stirs memories lodged deep into what Carl Jung called "the collective unconscious". For all humans, the sight of a large body of people moving purposefully towards them is invariably registered as a threat. What they see is a war-host – someone’s enemies on the march. And the first question they ask themselves is: "Who are they marching against? Is it me – or someone else?"

The protest demonstration is, thus, a double-edged weapon. It’s intended to frighten and intimidate those whose actions it opposes, while inspiring and encouraging those who share the demonstrators’ views.

That’s why estimates of the true size of an obviously large demonstration are so contentious. Those targeted are naturally concerned to minimise its significance. If they can make the march smaller, it not only becomes less threatening to people on their own side, but also less inspiring to their opponents.

It’s one of the first things protest organisers learn: never put a figure on the expected turn-out. Failure to meet a stated target will invariably be represented by the news media as proof that the organisers’ have inaccurately gauged public opinion. Further proof, perhaps, of the political demonstration’s double-edged character: "Suppose they organised a protest march – and nobody came."

But that certainly wasn’t the case on May-day in Queen Street.

The Government and its supporters were quite clearly shocked by its size, its energy, and even more importantly by the broad cross-section of the electorate represented in its ranks.

For Greenpeace and Forest & Bird – the demonstration’s organisers – the goal of intimidating and frightening their pro-mining opponents was achieved with stunning effectiveness. Even more stunning, however, was the environmental lobby’s success in inspiring and encouraging its supporters.

Crucial to that success was their choice of Lucy Lawless and Robyn Malcolm as the "faces" of the protest. Lawless is, of course, "Xena – The Warrior Princess", and Malcolm, in her role as Outrageous Fortune’s gutsy matriarch, Cheryl West, represents the quintessential "Waitakere Woman" – the precise demographic National cannot afford to lose if it is to win a second term.

In a curious way, therefore, the two images we have been discussing blur and merge. "Warrior John" turns out to have no more substance, in reality, than Princess Xena or Outrageous Cheryl.

The crucial political difference, however, is that while Key had a camera in his face, Lawless and Malcolm had a war-host at their back.

This essay was originally published in The Independent of Thursday, 13 May 2010.

Scraps of Evidence

The Burke River in Mt Aspiring National Park. Since 1990, mineralogists have known that deposits of "Baotite", a carbonatite rock containing the "strategic mineral" Niobium, exist in and around the Haast Pass area. Niobium is crucial to the maintenance of the United States' global air superiority.

ON 23 FEBRUARY, Foreign Affairs Minister, Murray McCully, was forced to relinquish (if anyone would have them) his 184 shares in Widespread Portfolios Ltd.

"Murray McCully has shares in a company that stands to benefit directly from National’s mining policy", thundered the Labour-friendly blogsite, The Standard. "As a member of Cabinet deciding this policy McCully has a significant conflict of interest."

McCully’s holdings in Widespread Portfolios – a New Zealand-owned investment company specialising in mineral and oil exploration – was hardly a secret. The Standard’s story was based on information which the Minister himself had provided for the parliamentary Register of Pecuniary Interests in January 2009.

But, like Caesar’s Wife, our Cabinet Ministers must be above suspicion. Accordingly, McCully announced his intention to divest himself of the offending shares (worth a princely $NZ31.63) at the earliest opportunity.

End of story?

In most respects it was. But, in one crucial respect, the story rolled on.

The revelation of McCully’s shareholding in Widespread Portfolios – like the revelation of the Prime Minister’s tiny stake in the Australian-owned Jackson Mining company a few days earlier – had whetted their political opponents’ appetite for even the smallest scrap of evidence linking the policies of the National-led Government to the needs of the mining industry.

A "scrap" like Inner Mongolia.

The link was tenuous, to say the least: Widespread Portfolios Ltd had invested in an outfit called King Solomon’s Mines Ltd, a prospecting company searching for gold on the windswept plains of the Chinese Autonomous Region of Inner Mongolia. But what could this remote part of the world possibly have to contribute to our understanding of the New Zealand Government’s proposal to permit mining in its national parks?

Enter the Daily Mail.

On 10 January 2010, Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper ran an exclusive story entitled "Inside China’s Secret, Toxic Unobtanium Mine". The Mail’s Richard Jones had somehow made it all the way to the heart of Inner Mongolia and been smuggled in to Baiyun Obo, a vast, open-cast mine off-limits to foreigners.

According to Jones: "The rare-earths blasted out of rocks here feed more than 77 per cent of global demand for elements such as terbium, which power low-energy lightbulbs; neodymium, which powers wind turbines; and lanthanum, which powers the batteries of hybrid cars such as the Toyota Prius.

"They are also used in mobile phones, computers, iPods, LCD screens, washing machines, digital cameras and X-ray machines, as well as missile guidance systems and even space rockets. Industries reliant on the rare-earths are estimated to be worth an astonishing £3trillion, or five per cent of global GDP."

Rare-earths?

These highly-prized minerals with names mostly ending in "ium" have surfaced again, in documents released to the news media by New Zealand’s Energy & Resource Minister, Gerry Brownlee, on Monday, 22 March.

In a document headed "Maximising our Mineral Potential: Questions & Answers", the Minister explains that:

"Rare earth elements are strategically important. There are very few players in the global market, which is likely to influence their value in the future. They include dysprosium, terbium, erbium and ytterbium, which are fundamental to technologies such as hybrid and electric cars, wind turbines, computer disk drives, fibre-optic telecommunication cables, low-energy light bulbs and military equipment."

Brownlee is quite right to say there are very few players in the global market for rare- earth elements. As Jones notes in his article: "In 2008, China supplied 139,000 tons worldwide, 97 per cent of the world's total rare-earth production."

In other words, China is in the enviable (not to say worrying) position of holding a near monopoly over the minerals which lie at the heart of the emerging "green economy". What’s more, according to Jones, China is steadily reducing the quantity of its rare-earth exports – a policy which will, eventually, require the manufacturers of "green technology" to re-locate their operations on Chinese soil.

Nor are the serious strategic implications of China’s rare-earth monopoly restricted to the realm of economics, for the United States, in particular, the military implications are grave.

"Baotite", for example, nearly all of which comes out of that huge hole in the ground at Baiyun Obo, contains not only a number of rare-earth elements, but also the "strategic mineral" Niobium. Without Niobium the turbine blades of jet engines cannot not be made strong enough for sustained supersonic performance.

At present, the Americans, who have next to no Niobium of their own, get the bulk of what they need from Brazil (along with a tiny fraction from Canada). But no super-power enjoys being dependent on a single supplier – especially one located in the politically volatile continent of South America.

What if Brazil went the same way as Venezuela and Bolivia? Where else, apart from China’s Baiyun Obo mine, could the United States turn for the Baotite/Niobium so vital to the maintenance of its global air superiority?

How about Mt Aspiring National Park?

Since at least 1990, New Zealand mineralogists have known that deposits of Baotite may be found along the South Island’s Haast and Burke Rivers, both of which are located in the Mt Aspiring National Park.

In December 2009, the Green Party informed the news media that the Ngai Tahu iwi had been approached by the Crown for its likely response to the Government’s plan to remove the protected status of up to a fifth of the Park – an area to the north of Lakes Wanaka and Hawea, centred on Haast Pass. Interestingly, this is precisely the location of New Zealand’s Baotite deposits.

Re-enter the Foreign Affairs Minister, Murray McCully.

Long an advocate of the New Zealand pinky-finger being reabsorbed into the Anglo-Saxon Fist (the other "fingers" being the USA, the UK, Canada and Australia) would McCully be likely to refuse an American request to, at least, prepare this country for the day when its Baotite might be needed?

He certainly wouldn’t encounter much in the way of opposition from Messrs Brownlee, Power and Joyce – the other members of Key’s "Kitchen Cabinet". And the Prime Minister’s (and Tourism Minister’s) attitude toward managing the economic/environmental trade-off is, as we have seen over recent days, entirely pragmatic.

Quite how Trade Negotiations Minister, Tim Groser, would react is harder to predict. Certainly, he’d be unlikely to relish the prospect of explaining to the Chinese why New Zealand is undermining their rare-earth monopoly.

This essay was originally published in The Independent of 1 April 2010.