Between A Rock And A Hard Place.

Difficult Decisions Ahead: New Zealand cannot endorse Obama’s gunboat diplomacy in the South China Sea without antagonising its largest trading partner. Hence, Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee’s description of China as a “true strategic partner”, and his announcement that Kiwi troops will train alongside the Peoples Liberation Army. This both-sides-against-the-middle approach to building strategic security may end up dwarfing the consequences of the anti-nuclear policy.

 

MANY NEW ZEALANDERS would be surprised to learn that their government considers the Peoples Republic of China a “true strategic partner”.  Most of us have come to terms with the fact that China is our largest trading partner – but a “true strategic partner”? Strategic partnerships are the stuff of geopolitics: they’re about the nation’s fundamental interests; its oldest loyalties. When something’s wrong in your neighbourhood, who ya gonna call?

 

Up until the Japanese sinking of the British warships Repulse and Prince of Wales in 1941, New Zealand’s “true strategic partner” had been Britain. New Zealand had been a British colony since 1840, and a Dominion since 1907. At the outbreak of war in 1939, New Zealand’s foreign policy was memorably summed-up by Prime Minister, Michael Joseph Savage, when he stated simply: “Where Britain stands, we stand. Where she goes, we go.”

 

And go we did. Not even the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and her armies lightning advance into the Pacific and South-East Asia was sufficient to persuade the New Zealand Government to bring her only effective military forces home from North Africa. The Australians were not so selfless. With Darwin in flames, and Emperor Hirohito’s forces advancing across New Guinea, Prime Minister Curtin recalled his troops to defend the Australian continent. He, at least, understood that, in geopolitical terms, Australasia’s “true strategic partner” was no longer Britain, but the United States of America.

 

By 1951 that partnership had taken the form of the Australian, New Zealand, United States (ANZUS) Agreement. Diplomatically and militarily, the ANZUS alliance spoke eloquently of the new strategic realities inside the Pacific rim. While sentiment, and London’s fading dreams of empire, may have persuaded many Kiwis to persist in calling Britain “home”, it was to Washington that her senior soldiers and diplomats turned – not only for protection, but also for guidance.

 

And that was the way the story went for the best part of thirty years, until, as we all know, it fell apart amidst New Zealanders’ determination to make, and keep, their country nuclear-free. Needless to say it wasn’t an outcome with which the country’s senior defence force personnel, diplomats and public servants were at all comfortable. As far as they were concerned, New Zealand’s need for a “true strategic partner” had grown more, not less, acute. The Chinese giant was waking up. South America was outgrowing its dictators. Absent her true strategic partners, New Zealand was extremely vulnerable.

 

Their problem was that, in the eyes of those partners, New Zealand’s anti-nuclear policy constituted a massive rock in the road to a full restoration of the strategic relationship. And that wouldn’t happen, said Washington and Canberra, until the obstacle was removed. In vain did the NZ defence Force and MFAT protest that removing the obstacle was politically impossible. With both the Labour and National parties committed to a nuclear-free New Zealand, that wretched rock wasn’t going anywhere.

 

New Zealand diplomats had no other option except to come up with their own solution to the problem of how to restore the Washington, Canberra, Wellington relationship. In the end, MFAT and the NZDF decided that if they couldn’t remove the rock, or go through the rock, then they would simply have to go around the rock.

 

As a way out of the impasse it was nothing short of brilliant. By quietly cutting a narrow track on both sides of the rock, and then widening it, laying down shingle, and, finally, sealing it over, the rock was gradually reduced to one of those landmarks that everybody passes by without really noticing. Washington and Canberra hadn’t changed their position on the undesirability of the rock, but now, with the encouragement of successive New Zealand governments, they were simply invited to ignore it. The signing of the Wellington Declaration in November 2010, while not formally restoring New Zealand to the status of an American “ally”, did describe her as the United States’ “partner” in the Pacific. It was a remarkable diplomatic breakthrough.

 

Rapprochement with the USA did not, however, leave New Zealand suddenly bereft of rocks in the road. Determined to check the Peoples Republic’s rising global influence, President Barack Obama “pivoted” away from the Middle East and back towards the Pacific, where he’s currently flexing American muscle in the South China Sea. America’s Pacific “partners” will be expected to join in.

 

New Zealand cannot, however, endorse Obama’s gunboat diplomacy without antagonising its largest trading partner. Hence, Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee’s description of China as a “true strategic partner”, and his announcement that Kiwi troops will train alongside the Peoples Liberation Army. This both-sides-against-the-middle approach to building strategic security threatens to dwarf the consequences of the anti-nuclear policy.

 

Somehow, New Zealand has to avoid catching itself between this latest rock in the road and a very hard place indeed.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 3 November 2015.

The Kindness Of Friends

Who? How? and With What? The Defence White Paper currently being drafted will attempt to answer the most basic questions about New Zealand's military posture. Who should do our fighting? How should they fight? What sort of weapons should they use? And, how much are we willing to pay? Historically, that last question has been crucial.

 

RIGHT NOW a hand-picked group of worthy citizens are hard at work spending $26 million of our money. They are doing so at the behest of the Prime Minister, John Key, who decided, a few years back, that what New Zealand really needed was a new flag. At the same time, but a lot further back in the decision-making machinery of state, a diverse collection of top-ranking military officers, senior bureaucrats and politicians are engaged in producing the 2015 Defence White Paper. As part of the flag-changing exercise, New Zealanders are being asked what they stand for. The much lower-key consultative exercise for the Defence White Paper needs to know what they’ll fight for – and how.

 

It’s a great shame that the same quantum of resources currently being poured into the flag-changing exercise have not been devoted to determining what goes into the Defence White Paper. Certainly a country’s flag is (or should be) a powerful symbol of national identity. As many old soldiers are quick to remind us, it’s the object under which tens-of-thousands of young New Zealanders marched off to war in 1939. And it’s still the object we drape over the caskets of the fallen as we pipe them off our ageing Hercules transport aircraft and into the care of their grieving families. It would, however, be foolish to equate the symbolism of war with war itself. Deciding how our nation should be defended, and by whom, is surely as worthy of intense public debate as the colour of the flag they fight under?

 

A Government “White Paper” is, as its name suggests, an attempt to come at important public policy from first principles. It should be a statement of fundamental intent: the starting point from which we collectively determine to set forth. What then, are the first principles of a New Zealand strategy for national defence?

 

The first big question to ask must surely be: Who will defend us?

 

This is not as naïve as it sounds, because if your answer to that first question is: “a defence force made up of New Zealanders”, then you’re immediately faced with a whole host of other questions. Should that defence force be large and conscripted, or small and professional? Should it operate on the assumption that New Zealand will be fighting its enemies alone, or as part of coalitions of allied forces? And, if it’s the latter, then how much of our national sovereignty are we willing to forfeit in return for the military assistance of larger, richer and more militarily formidable nation states?

 

The second big question to answer is: How shall we fight?

 

Should we attempt to equip ourselves with the most sophisticated and effective military technology in order to repel enemies attacking us from any quarter – land, sea or air? Or, should we build military proficiency in only a limited number of areas, relying, once again, on more powerful allies to supply the full array of military options?

 

The acquisition of full-spectrum military capability would entail the reconstitution of the RNZAF’s fighter-bomber squadrons, along with medium- and short-range surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missiles, a submarine force and naval vessels at least equal to the task of apprehending Patagonian Tooth-Fishers.

 

The other alternative is to build a resistance-style defence force, based upon a universal people’s militia, ferociously schooled in the strategy and tactics of twenty-first century asymmetric warfare.

 

The latter option would be by far the cheapest option – a not unimportant consideration. Indeed, the third big question is: How much are we willing to pay?

 

The answer, historically, is “not very much”. Certainly, a defence force capable of defending New Zealand unaided, using conventional military weapons, would be eye-wateringly expensive. Taxes would rise and our welfare state would shrink. In the absence of a slavering, swivel-eyed existential threat, it is, therefore, very difficult to see the average Kiwi voter ponying-up for a Swiss or Israeli-style defence force. Equally unlikely is the prospect of New Zealanders suddenly becoming the South Pacific’s answer to the Viet Cong or Islamic State.

 

All of which leaves us in the position of Blanche DuBois in Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire. Blanche relied upon “the kindness of strangers”, New Zealand’s security depends on the kindness of her “friends”.

 

Bluntly speaking: once a colony, always a colony – with or without a new flag.

 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 26 June 2015.

Ghosts That Walk In The Dark

Turbans and Kalashnikovs: The mental image most New Zealanders hold of the Taliban is of Taliban 1.0 - the religious student army that won the Afghan civil war back in 1996. But the new Taliban - Taliban 2.0 - is as likely to be kitted-out in business suits and carry lap-tops. According to Kiwi war correspondent, Jon Stephenson, Taliban 2.0 are "ghosts that walk in the dark" - guerrilla fighters against an army of occupation. And because the soil they walk on is their own, they will not be beaten.

 

WHEN WE HEAR the word “Taliban” most of us think of turbans and Kalashnikovs. In our mind’s eye we see an embittered Pashtun tribesman, his lungee as black as his bristling beard, squatting in the mouth of a mountain cave. Such fighters still exist, of course, but this mental picture much more closely resembles the Mujahedeen who drove out the occupying Soviet forces back in the 1980s. The word talib means, simply, a student of the Koran, and it was an army of such holy scholars – taliban – that ended the Afghan civil war in 1996. Think, Salvation Army – with machine-guns.

 

The first Taliban administration – let’s call it Taliban 1.0 – entered into the complexities of government with very little experience. Raised and educated in the deeply conservative religious schools (madrassas) of Pakistan’s tribal territories, many of its fighters were the sons of refugees who had fled the Soviets’ murderous attack helicopters. Hardly more than teenagers, the Taliban relied almost exclusively upon their religious teachers (mullahs) for political and legal guidance. Under the Taliban, Afghanistan became an Islamic Emirate, governed according to Sharia law.

 

That was the Taliban the West defeated in the aftermath of 9/11.

The insurgent force which has grown up in Afghanistan during the occupation of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) is, however, very different from the first Taliban army. Let’s call it Taliban 2.0.

 

The guerrillas of Taliban 2.0 are as likely to be dressed in a Western suit and carry a lap-top as they are to wear a turban or tote a Kalashnikov. They are highly skilled, highly motivated and highly dangerous. Like the French Resistance and the Viet-Cong, the new Taliban’s strategic and tactical objectives are brutally simple: wear down the occupiers’ will; sap his morale; undermine his faith in the “mission”; cause him to fear and mistrust the local population. In short, make him want to leave.

 

The New Zealand war correspondent, Jon Stephenson, based in Kabul, warns that this “fighting-season” the insurgency and its insurgents “are everywhere”. With typical bluntness, he says that were he to set out alone from the Afghan capital and drive for twenty-five minutes in any direction: “I’d be dead.” His description of Taliban 2.0 is chilling. They are, says Jon: “Ghosts that walk in the dark”.

 

And they’ve been walking our way.

 

Because the Hungarian Government’s rules of engagement do not permit its ISAF contingent to do any more than escort and protect its aid workers, a tactical window has opened in the south of Baghlan province. Unharried by regular forward patrols, the Taliban appears to have established a base of operations from which its fighters sally forth into neighbouring Bamiyan Province to attack the Afghan National Police and install deadly Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) along roadsides patrolled by ISAF troops from New Zealand. In less than a month, the Taliban have killed five Kiwi soldiers – three of them by means of a massive IED.

 

Their tactics have already borne fruit. According to a report in The New York Times: “New Zealand announced Monday that it would probably withdraw its small troop contingent from Afghanistan months ahead of schedule, aiming for early 2013 rather than October of that year.”

 

This is, of course, exactly what the Taliban wanted to hear. The more ISAF members who bring forward the date of their withdrawal, the less tenable the whole occupation becomes.

 

The Graveyard Of Empires: An American GI whistles nervously past the cemetery of previous occupiers' hopes.

 

As the Times report points out: “New Zealand now follows France, a much bigger coalition partner, which in January announced it was accelerating its troop withdrawal.”

 

Prime Minister John Key’s decision to move up New Zealand’s withdrawal date is a wise one. Had he attempted to “tough it out”, it’s highly probable the Taliban would have continued to seek out and kill New Zealand soldiers. The public announcement of this country’s early departure from Afghanistan is, however, almost certain to satisfy the Taliban’s strategic ambitions vis-a-vis New Zealand. Their tactical priority now will be to melt back into the population before ISAF Special Forces (including, most likely, members of the New Zealand SAS) locate and destroy the unit responsible for the latest deadly attacks.

 

This is the enemy against whom we have deployed our soldiers. He will not be beaten. Because, no matter how many Taliban are slain, the ‘ghosts that walk in the dark” walk upon their own soil. 

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 24 August 2012.

Ten Years Ago This Week: Under America's Shield

Forward defence: A New Zealand soldier on patrol in East Timor circa 1999. The collapse of the Suharto regime in 1998 created a security vacuum in the Indonesian archipelago. It was a sharp reminder to New Zealanders and Australians of their ultimate dependence on American power.

EAST TIMOR poses a fundamental challenge for New Zealand’s strategic thinkers. For the first time since the "year of living dangerously" – 1965 – Australia and New Zealand are confronted with the reality of large-scale organised violence in their immediate neighbourhood. The events of the past fortnight raise issues that go way beyond Fiji’s ethnic power-plays, or the primitive skirmishing on Bouganville and Guadacanal. Indonesia, the fourth most populous state on Earth, sits astride the sea-lanes linking East Asia’s economies with their vital supplies of Middle Eastern oil. For the past 35 years its military forces have provided the United States with a reliable strategic counterweight to the growing power of China. Instability in the Indonesian archipelago is not something the region – or the world – can afford to ignore.

While Indonesia prospered under Suharto, Australians and New Zealanders were able to convince themselves that their governments were free to pursue a "peaceful" foreign policy. The Asian economic crisis of 1997-98 changed all that. As the Indonesian stockmarket and currency went into free fall, General Suharto’s brutal military kleptocracy could no longer conceal its crimes behind a dazzling economic growth-rate, and the old man was driven from office. In the power vacuum created by Suharto’s departure, the global financial community was determined to install a more transparent, honest, and open market economy. But to eliminate "crony capitalism" it was first necessary to establish a viable civil society – one in which basic human and property rights were respected. It was this process of democratic transition which sparked the crisis in East Timor, and now threatens to destabilise the whole of Indonesia.

The status of East Timor became a critical issue the moment democracy entered the Indonesian political equation. Never regarded as an integral part of the Indonesian Republic – the former Portuguese colony is not even mentioned in the 1949 Indonesian constitution which defines the national territory – its acquisition by force in 1974 unleashed a torrent of human rights violations. It is now accepted that at least 200,000 people – more than a third of the East Timorese population – were slaughtered by Jakarta’s troops between 1975 and 1983. While the Cold War raged, the Western powers were prepared to overlook the Indonesian Armed Forces’ (TNI) genocidal conduct. But, in the wake of the 1991 Dili Massacre, Western governments were gradually persuaded to lend their voices to the international clamour for East Timor’s independence. Suharto’s successor, the much under-rated B.J. Habibie, was merely bowing to the inevitable when he announced that the East Timorese people would finally be permitted to decide their own future in a United Nations supervised plebiscite.

But if East Timor was to vote for independence – as Indonesian military intelligence undoubtedly knew that it would – what was to become of the quasi-feudal fiefdom established on its soil? The province’s coffee plantations, hotels, wholesale and retail outlets – were all, in one way or another, linked back to the TNI. Whether through direct ownership or kickbacks, East Timor was worth millions to its military rulers and the rag-tag collection of collaborators and entrepreneurs that fed off them. A sovereign East Timor would leave a dangerous chunk of the TNI seriously out of pocket, and, under the bizarre kleptocracy established by Suharto, their losses would have to be made good from elsewhere in the archipelago. Not surprisingly, few military provincial governors were anxious to make room in their own operations for the displaced officers of East Timor – let alone their battle-hardened troops! The ferocity of the Indonesian military’s anti-independence pogrom is attributable, in part, to its fear of what might happen when the province is finally evacuated. The "knock-on" effects are already plainly visible in West Timor.

The "worst case scenario" for the region’s strategic planners is that the "loss" of East Timor will precipitate an outbreak of warlordism throughout Indonesia’s far-flung provinces. If the generals become convinced that President Habibie’s successful assertion of civilian control is about to put an end to the TNI’s extremely lucrative private operations – the military-owned resort hotels of Bali, for example - then their willingness to go on "protecting" the Indonesian state will be sorely tested.

The United States has too much at stake in the archipelago to let that happen. Nike has its subcontractors to consider, Freeport McMoRan its mines, and it is doubtful whether Texaco, Chevron or Mobil would take kindly to the loss of their oil concessions. The United States must also be concerned that a "balkanised" Indonesian archipelago would constitute an open invitation for other world powers – most probably China - to set up shop in the region. Chinese power athwart the seal-lanes linking the Pacific and the Indian Oceans is not a strategic outcome Uncle Sam would contemplate with any serenity.

Neither should Australia and New Zealand. By dint of their extreme geographical isolation, both countries have had a tendency to consider themselves immune from the great geopolitical struggles of the world. This is folly, because the very same isolation which "protects" them, also defines their dependence on open sea-lanes and open markets. Australia and New Zealand both rely heavily upon the export of raw commodities to support their sophisticated "first world" economies. Today, nearly all of those exports are absorbed by the nations of the Pacific basin. Instability in Indonesia – either in the form of a military revolt, or an upsurge in extreme nationalism and economic protectionism - poses a direct threat to the national interest of both countries.

The Australians have recognised the strategic implications of the East Timor crisis a great deal faster than the New Zealanders. In much closer proximity to the killing than Wellington, Canberra took the lead in demanding action against the incipient warlordism engulfing East Timor. As the only member of the United Nations to recognise Indonesia’s annexation of the territory, Australia’s newfound commitment to protecting the rights of the East Timorese people was entirely fitting.

Though hesitant at first - it was only a few weeks ago that the American Defence Secretary, William Cohen, was informing the Indonesian Chief of Staff, General Wiranto, that the US was ready to carry out joint exercises with his forces – the United States has clearly resolved to persist with the democratisation of Indonesia. Its crucial backing of a United Nations intervention force – led by the Australians – represents a clear signal to the Indonesians, and their faint-hearted ASEAN allies, that there must be no going back to the bad old days of Suharto.

There could be no clearer demonstration of who is the real guarantor of peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region. Without the pressure brought to bear upon their Indonesian persecutors by the United States, the people of East Timor would have ceased to exist. And, although it may take them sometime to accept the fact, American pressure is the Indonesian people’s best guarantee against a return to the rampant corruption of military rule.

As they prepare to dispatch their soldiers, sailors, and airmen to East Timor, to serve alongside Australian and American peace-making troops, a growing number of New Zealanders may begin to harbour second thoughts about their country’s self-imposed exile from the ANZUS alliance. By a curious historical irony, it was the despised Indonesian régime which provided the regional strategic shield under which New Zealanders – especially left-wing New Zealanders – acted out their dream of a peace-loving, and anti-nuclear, neutrality. Now that the Indonesian shield has rotted away, New Zealand finds itself standing where its culture, its values and its history has always placed it – shoulder to shoulder with the Aussies, under the larger - and infinitely stronger - shield of the Yanks.

This essay was originally published in The Independent of 22 September 1999.

Foreseeing the Unforeseeable

The Battle of Midway

I am reprinting my keynote address to the "Defence - A Debate" symposium, organised by the Centre for Strategic Studies and held at Victoria University of Wellington on 30-31 May 2001, for two reasons. First, because elements of it now seem strangely prophetic, and second, because, with a new National Government and a new Defence Minister, the key elements of that pre-9/11 debate are probably due for a re-airing.

I WOULD like to begin this short address by quoting a few lines from the Australian novelist, Frank Moorhouse’s, Grand Days. The novel is set at the headquarters of the League of Nations in Geneva in the 1920s. The heroine Edith Campbell Berry, a young, idealistic Australian, employed in the Secretariat of the League, is discussing the Kellogg-Briand "Pact of Peace" with Robert Dole, a cynical English journalist:

"Dole leaned over their table. ‘You know that the pact is really France trying to marry America,’ he said. He went on to say that the Kellogg-Briand Pact, if signed, was simply France manipulating America into a military alliance disguised as a peace treaty."

This is too much for Edith who "becomes defensive, arguing in what she called her ill-behaved voice, which rose unpleasantly to just below a shrill."

Later, Edith’s lover, Ambrose, admonishes her: "'Edith, you give it all too much heart.'" But the young Australian won’t admit defeat: "'Please – before we change the subject – you agree, don’t you? … Everyone agrees that since Locarno, and since the proven power of the League to settle conflicts – Germany in the League, and so on – you agree that things have never looked better?’ He smiled. ‘I agree. It is a historical fact. Things have never looked better. But you must also keep a realpolitik view of things Edith.’"

When I hear the Prime Minister, Helen Clark, dismiss the critics of her defence policies with the airy assertion that New Zealand faces no discernible threat to its security for the foreseeable future, I am reminded of Miss Edith Campbell Berry and her touching Antipodean faith in the efficacy of diplomatic devices, like the ill-fated Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 - which "outlawed war as an instrument of national policy". Like Ambrose, I feel the need to remind her to "keep a realpolitik view of things".

That is not always easy. For there have been moments in history when the prospects for international peace and security have, indeed, "never looked better". Ms Clark’s predecessor, Sir Joseph Ward, surveying the world in May of 1929 would have encountered just such a state of affairs – a beneficent global order which the best brains of the era confidently predicted would continue well into the foreseeable future.

There were many reasons for this sanguine assessment of international relations. Four years earlier, Germany, with France and Great Britain, had signed the Treaty of Locarno by which she guaranteed the existing frontiers of France and Belgium and undertook not to alter her eastern boundaries except by negotiation. In 1926 Germany was admitted to the League of Nations, and in 1928 joined the other peoples of Europe in signing Edith’s ill-starred "Pact of Peace".

In the United States an unparalleled economic boom roared on and on – prompting the newly elected President, Herbert Hoover, to predict that the USA was "in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from the nation". Japan, though racked with internal political difficulties, remained at least nominally democratic. China and Russia, struggling to rise above the vicissitudes of famine and civil war, posed no military threat to anyone.

As a loyal Dominion Prime Minister, Sir Joseph Ward happily left the serious business of international relations and national defence to the British. The Royal Navy provided all that was needed by way of strategic guarantees. New Zealand’s army was tiny, ill-equipped and intended primarily for the maintenance of internal security. As a separate branch of the armed services, the Air Force did not exist.

If asked, Sir Joseph would undoubtedly have had as much difficulty as Ms Clark in identifying any foreseeable military threat to New Zealand’s security.

Ten years later, in May of 1939, the world had changed – changed utterly. The happy dreams of "outlawing" war had disappeared – worldwide economic failure had seen to that. Germany and Japan’s withdrawal from the League of Nations had rendered it powerless to resist aggression, and everywhere re-armament was proceeding at breakneck speed. Japan was engaged in a bloody war of conquest against the Chinese; the Spanish Republic was in its death throes; and Hitler, having swallowed up Austria and Czechoslovakia, was preparing to dismember Poland. All over the world people recalled the horrors of the First World War and despaired. No one bothered to ask if war was coming; the only question in May 1939 was when it would break out.

These sombre observations, as you will no doubt have guessed, place me in the camp of the Robert Doles of this world – rather than the Edith Campbell Berrys. Those bright moments in the historical landscape – such as the 1920s and the 1990s – when world peace seemed possible, were more often than not periods of rest and recuperation following the terrible exertions of war.

The League and its philosophy had its hey-day in the decade following the "war to end all wars". The relative peace of the 1990s followed the aggressive assertion of US power against Saddam Hussein in the Gulf, the final collapse of the Soviet Union, and the ending of the Cold War in 1991.

A prolonged period of international stability should put statesmen – and women - on their guard. As the grizzled cavalry scout always says in the old westerns: "I don’t like it. It’s too quiet."

Should it suddenly get noisy – how is New Zealand placed?

The answer, sadly, is "not well". Most New Zealanders have experienced an enormous feeling of pride at what our troops have accomplished in East Timor. But New Zealand’s professional soldiers are only able to perform so creditably in that theatre (with military equipment inferior to that issued to the Australian territorials!) because of the superb training they have received as part of a fully integrated military force.

By decommissioning the combat wing of the RNZAF, the Labour-Alliance Government has fundamentally compromised the future combat readiness of our defence force. Without the contribution of close-air-support training, the capability of the New Zealand infantryman and woman will rapidly diminish. Our future ability to inject and extract military personnel into and out of combat zones - without sustaining heavy casualties - has been seriously degraded by the Government’s decision to scrap the Skyhawks.

At this point in any dispute over New Zealand’s military posture, someone inevitably throws down the challenge: "So, who is going to attack us? Who should we be preparing to fight?" It is a challenge that politicians, academics, and "responsible" journalists are loath to answer for fear of sparking a diplomatic incident, or being branded that most risible of creatures – a "conspiracy theorist".

Since I am none of the above, I have no hesitation in identifying the Peoples Republic of China as the most likely source of military aggression in the Pacific Region.

My reasons for viewing the PRC as a potential military aggressor are probably identical to those of the Pentagon and the US State Department.

The modernisation of the Chinese economy is producing a tidal wave of lay-offs and redundancies as the inefficient plant and machinery of the Maoist era is being upgraded and replaced by much more efficient and less labour intensive technology. Millions of industrial workers, and tens of millions of agricultural labourers, are being tipped out of the labour market into a society whose welfare and housing provision is still intimately bound up with the workplace.

This is a recipe for social and political disaster.

To make matters worse, China’s political institutions are singularly ill-suited to managing the looming social crisis. In essence the Chinese Communist Party leadership has only two options – to democratize the country’s political system, or to divert the grievances of the Chinese people down the channels of aggressive nationalism. With the sobering example of the Soviet Union before them, China’s leaders are unlikely to embrace the democratic option. Nationalism is, therefore, the most likely strategy to be adopted. That can only mean the re-conquest of Taiwan, and that can only mean war with the United States.

This scenario – which anyone involved with strategic studies in Australia will tell you pretty much underpins current US military doctrine – requires the New Zealand Government to make a choice between the two great powers of the region: - the PRC or the USA.

The choice is not as straightforward as it may seem; while our common language, and shared cultural values impel us towards the United States, there are pressing economic reasons for keeping on the right side of the PRC. In fifty years, barring a full-scale military confrontation with the US, China will boast the world’s largest and most dynamic economy, and all of East Asia will move to the rhythms of what will have become a Sino-Japanese condominium. If Australia and New Zealand decide to place themselves outside the strategic and economic perimeters of the Western Hemisphere, then our diplomatic and economic priorities will increasingly be determined in Beijing.

Every political fibre of my being tells me that Australians and New Zealanders will not tolerate a foreign affairs and defence policy which isolates this nation from its cultural, linguistic, historical and ideological allies. We are heirs of the European Enlightenment and Liberty - not of Confucianism and the one party state.

As a Marxist, I consider myself to be a part of the West’s long pursuit of human emancipation, and so my choice is simple. Though the United States has been guilty of many crimes in its brief history as an imperial power, its extraordinarily open society has always proved equal to the task of challenging the delinquency of its leaders. Vietnam was a terrible error of American policy – but it was an error corrected by the robustness of American democracy. The "mistakes" of the PRC’s leadership – be they the 25 million dead of the Great Leap Forward, or the thousands massacred in Tiananmen Square, have never been the subject of popular correction – for the simple reason that the Chinese people are not free. And if the 20th Century taught me nothing else, it is that the freedom which socialism is supposed to deliver can never grow out of the barrel of a gun.

The Australians need no lessons in the superiority of open societies to closed dictatorships. They, like the Americans, have accepted the challenge of foreseeing the unforeseeable, and have glimpsed very similar pictures. They realise, for example, that it would not require a Chinese invasion of the Australian continent to place the Australian people in mortal danger – merely the assertion of Chinese hegemony throughout the Indonesian archipelago.

The Australian Government – unlike our own – has not forgotten that Britain dominated the 19th Century world by controlling the sea, not the land. In the 21st Century that means a tightly integrated air and naval capability - something which both major political parties in Australia have chosen not only to preserve – but to enhance.

At some point in the future – and it may be a lot closer than people think - Helen Clark, Jim Anderton and the Greens are going to face the choice the Aussies have already made. I hope they chose wisely. In a small, under-populated nation, political disagreements should cease at the water’s edge. The secret to preserving our independence, and safeguarding the welfare of our citizens, lies in contributing to the collective strength of our friends – not in relying upon the good-will of our neighbours.

Coming to our cinemas in a few days time is a movie called Pearl Harbour. I hope that the subject matter of the film serves as a wake-up call to young New Zealanders; that it reminds them that last week’s "unrealistic fears" can all-too-easily become this week’s unbelievable headlines. I hope also, that Pearl Harbour reminds them that New Zealand can never isolate itself from the great events of planetary history.

In the weeks after the real Pearl Harbour, before the crucial Battle of Midway, terrified New Zealanders cursed the parsimony and short-sightedness of previous governments; recalling, too late, the ancient Roman adage: He who desires peace – should prepare for war.