Defending What? Against Whom?

Are Armed Forces A Necessary Evil? Conservatives assert that government’s highest priority is, and must remain, the protection of its people from armed assault by foreign and/or domestic enemies. A state that can neither defend its borders, nor protect its citizens, is hardly worthy of the name. But, if national defence does not mean ensuring the basic welfare (Health, Education, Housing, Employment) of every citizen – then what does it mean?

 

IF POLITICS is the language of priorities, then we have been left in no doubt as to how this government ranks the importance of housing and defence. Twenty billion dollars, over the next 15 years, will be spent on weapons of war. Though the outcry against homelessness grows louder every day, hardly a voice has been raised in protest at this monstrous outlay on the NZ Defence Force.

 

How to explain this reluctance to compare the Government’s willingness to expend more than a billion additional dollars every year, for 15 years, on new and improved weaponry, with its unwillingness to expend a similar sum on the construction of homes for New Zealand’s poorest citizens?

No doubt conservatives would respond by asserting that government’s highest priority is, and must remain, the protection of its people from armed assault by foreign and/or domestic enemies. A state that can neither defend its borders, nor protect its citizens, is hardly worthy of the name.

 

Conservatives would further insist that, since a small nation like New Zealand will forever be dependent on the willingness of larger powers to come to its defence, it must be prepared to “pull its weight” military expenditure-wise. Expecting our friends to pour out their blood and treasure in our defence, when we are unwilling to do the same, is not only unrealistic – it’s morally indefensible.

 

But this romantic – almost chivalric – understanding of national defence bears little resemblance to the brute historical realities of international conflict. Blood and treasure are almost never poured out for purposes unrelated to either expanding the borders, or defending the interests, of the state/s doing the pouring.

 

If the only arguments in favour of military intervention are moral arguments, then it is most unlikely to happen. How many nations with the military capability to do so intervened in time to prevent the Rwandan genocide? None. Contrast that fatal inaction with the number of New Zealand’s “friends” who joined in the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a ruined nation which posed no threat to its neighbours – let alone its aggressors.

 

The eminent Jewish scientist and historian, Jacob Bronowski, described war as “organised theft”. How many equally wise scientists and historians would be prepared to argue that war is organised morality? (Acknowledging that nearly all American politicians, and an alarming number of their British and Australian counterparts, believe that war and morality go together like apple and pie!)

 

A more realistic assessment of New Zealand’s national security (or lack of it) would take as its starting point our extraordinary geographical isolation. So far away are we from the rest of the world that only a major military power could hope to assail our shores. That being the case, we need to ask ourselves what other major power would be willing to prevent such an assault – and why? The blunt answer is that any intervention on our behalf would be undertaken solely on strategic grounds. If the subjugation of New Zealand was deemed inimical to the interests of the United States and Australia, then they would hasten to our defence. If not, they wouldn’t. The capability and readiness of our miniscule armed forces would not materially alter their calculations. Although, it’s at least arguable that the weaker we are, the quicker they’ll come.

 

Perhaps, therefore, we should follow the example of Costa Rica and abolish our armed forces altogether. On 1 December 1948, following a bloody civil war, the President of Costa Rica announced the abolition of that country’s armed forces. His decision was confirmed the following year in Article 12 of the Costa Rican constitution. The monies previously spent on the military were reallocated to education and culture. The maintenance of internal security was left to the Police.

 

Why not do the same? We already have the SIS to warn us of terrorist attack. Protecting our fisheries could become the task of a specialised division of the Ministry of Primary Industries. Defence against cyber-attacks could, similarly, become the responsibility of a special unit within the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management.

 

Imagine the number of state houses and affordable apartments this country could build over the next 15 years with even half the $20 billion currently promised to the NZ Defence Force. Surely, in a democratic state, it is the adequate provision of health, education, housing and employment that should take priority over the vast sums required to purchase the most up-to-date weapons of war? If national defence does not mean ensuring the basic welfare of every citizen – then what does it mean?

 

As the Costa Rican President realised 68 years ago, if you maintain a body of armed men, then they will forever be searching for opportunities to use their weapons. If not provided with foreign foes to fight, they will start looking for enemies at home.

 

This essay was originally posted on the Stuff website on Monday, 13 June, and published in The Press of Tuesday, 14 June 2016.

The Contagion Of Evil

The Black Prison: The United States new detention facility on Bagram Airbase a few kilometres north of Kabul in Afghanistan. Recent revelations concerning the behaviour of the NZDF in that country - most particularly its use of US surveillance facilities to monitor the activities of freelance war correspondent, Jon Stephenson, raise real fears that the evil represented by Bagram's torture chambers is on the point of infecting New Zealand.

 

THE BAGRAM DETENTION FACILITY was a dark lake of evil, its opaque depths constantly replenished by a thousand tributaries of officially-sanctioned moral depravity. Behind the razor-wire and watch-towers; beyond the foot patrols and guard-dogs; far away from the searchlight-beams and the constantly turning CCTV cameras; deeds were done in the name of our “very, very, very good friends” that only the sickest kind of sadist could observe with equanimity.

 

To the people of Afghanistan, the innocent as well as the guilty, Bagram became a byword for terror, torture, and the exercise of all the other brutal forms of utterly unaccountable American power.

 

In March of this year the Bagram Detention Facility, located within the sprawling American airbase of the same name, was handed over to the Afghan Government. It is now known as the Afghan National Detention Facility – proof – according to the American commander of the International Security Assistance Force, General Joseph Dunford, of ISAF’s success in building “an increasingly confident, capable and sovereign Afghanistan.”

 

Shortly before the formal handover, however, an undisclosed number of prisoners were allegedly moved to a new US-controlled facility – still located within the perimeter wire of the airbase – and known simply as the “Black Prison”. Former detainees also report that US personnel continue to have “access” to the prisoners (or what’s left of them) being held under Afghanistan’s putative authority.

 

The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) still has military intelligence personnel stationed at Bagram Airbase. A former NZDF resident describes it in terms of a small American town uplifted in its entirety and relocated within sight of the snow-capped peaks of the Hindu Kush. She did not reveal the purpose of her posting.

 

But now, thanks to the extraordinary investigative journalism of Nicky Hager, we all know what at least one of New Zealand’s military and intelligence personnel was doing at Bagram Airbase. He or she was spying on another of this country’s extraordinary investigative journalists (and our only war correspondent worthy of the name) Jon Stephenson.

 

Jon’s stories from Afghanistan, stripped of all their incidental detail, have been about only one thing: the contagion of evil.

 

Over and over again he has revealed how sending good-hearted New Zealand soldiers to Afghanistan, a war that was, most probably, initiated illegally, and which has, most certainly, been conducted immorally, was bound to result in their slow but certain corruption.

 

The most vivid confirmation of evil’s contagious effect came in Jon’s award-winning Metro magazine article, “Eyes Wide Shut”, in which he detailed how New Zealand’s troops had repeatedly been obliged to hand over prisoners to US and Afghan authorities, in whose custody, the Kiwis were reasonably sure, they would be subjected to assault and torture.

 

It was through the increasingly desperate attempts of the NZDF to deny that these events ever happened, and then to discredit the journalist whose detailed and highly accurate reportage constantly undermined those efforts, that some of Bagram’s evil began flowing into the bloodstream of the New Zealand body politic.

 

Nicky Hager’s story reveals an NZDF so rattled by Jon Stephenson’s investigative reporting that its own security manual included “certain investigative journalists” among its most dangerous antagonists. Or, in Mr Hager’s own words, putting probing journalists up there “on the same list as the KGB and al Qaeda.”

 

Both affronted and alarmed by Jon Stephenson’s unrelenting reportage, the NZDF turned to the Americans’ vast intelligence-gathering operation for assistance. They also enlisted the aid of New Zealand’s principal security and intelligence gathering agency, the SIS, to root out the journalist’s contacts and sources.

 

To the NZDF, Stephenson was no longer simply a conscientious journalist attempting to inform his fellow citizens of their government’s actions and hold it to account. He was now regarded as a “subversive”: someone determined to “weaken the military, economic or political strength of a nation by undermining the morale, loyalty or reliability of its citizens.”

 

Here we see the contagion of evil in all its chilling menace.

 

Telling the truth has become a subversive act. Informing the public that their soldiers are at risk of becoming embroiled in acts contrary to international law – to war crimes – is now tantamount to aiding the enemy: to treason.

 

And so, drop by drop, the Bagram poison enters our system. Our Government, determined to avoid further embarrassment by “certain investigative journalists” intends to empower our own Government Communications Security Bureau to assist the NZDF in tracking-down and identifying their sources.

 

As they did in Afghanistan, they will use the latest intelligence-gathering technology to acquire “metadata” – landline and cellphone logs, e-mail and text traffic - to identify the likes of Jon Stephenson’s and Nicky Hager’s friends and associates; contacts and sources.

 

Among them will be my own name and telephone numbers.

 

Bagram will have come home. The contagion of evil will be at my door.

 

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 30 July 2013.