DIY Defence Of Human Rights: Imagine a highly-trained ready-reaction force combining elements of the army, navy and air-force specifically trained and equipped to project New Zealand military power independently across the South Pacific. Such a force would be capable of restoring ousted democratic governments in a matter of days.
WHEN THE LEFT-WING Fijian government of Timoci Bavadra was
overthrown in May of 1987, I was outraged. At an executive meeting of the
Labour Party’s Otago Regional Council, I asked my MP, Michael Cullen, what he
and his government colleagues intended to do about this blatant attack on
democracy in the South Pacific – New Zealand’s supposed “backyard”. Cullen was
bemused. “What do you think we should do?”, he demanded. “Do our armed forces
not have the capacity to intervene?”, I inquired. “What’s this? The ‘Trotter
Doctrine’?”, Cullen chortled. The idea that New Zealand could intervene unilaterally
in the South Pacific was dismissed as fanciful.
Interestingly, I was not the only member of the Labour Party
who considered military intervention in Fiji an appropriate response to
Sitiveni Rabuka’s coup d’etat. New
Zealand’s prime minister, David Lange, had requested action from the NZ Armed
Forces in response to the seizure of an Air New Zealand passenger plane, only
to be informed by his departmental advisers that prime ministers lacked the
requisite authority to order troops into action unilaterally. It was also made
clear to Lange that the NZ Defence Force, as then constituted, would struggle
to defeat the Fijian military in a full-on stoush.
That a democratically-elected, multi-ethnic, Labour-led
coalition government could be overthrown in the name of reactionary
indigeneity, while the Labour governments of New Zealand and Australia sat on
their hands, struck a great many democratic socialists in the labour movements
of both countries as outrageous. At a more personal level, the revelation that
New Zealand’s armed forces could only respond to crises in the South Pacific by
becoming an appendage to some much larger military operation struck me as
appalling.
The genteel resistance encountered by Lange, coupled with
the absurd configuration of New Zealand’s armed forces, confirmed what I had
long suspected. This country operates on the assumption that it will not be
permitted to act independently of its “friends” – Australia and the United
States – and its armed forces have been organised and equipped in accordance
with that assumption.
It gets worse. When the Labour-Alliance Government
(1999-2002) determined to make New Zealand less dependent on its friends
militarily, announced a radical re-configuration of the NZ Defence Force, there
followed a series of disastrous equipment purchases which, to a cynical pair of
eyes, looked suspiciously like sabotage. As if the “top-brass” were determined
to de-rail and/or delay any and every reform which might render New Zealand capable
of projecting its military power independently.
The election of the John Key-led National Government in 2008
locked-in the ill-effects of this military incapacity by starving the NZ
Defence Force of the funding necessary to raise it above “appendage” status.
When required, New Zealand can offer a very limited menu of services to the
armed forces of Australia and the United States – but practically nothing else.
In foreign affairs and defence terms, this leaves New Zealanders absolutely
dependent upon the kindness of, if not strangers, then, at least, a couple of
often quite disreputable “friends”.
Nowhere is that disreputability more in evidence than on the
tiny island of Nauru. The Australians have deliberately subverted Nauruan
democracy in order to facilitate their appalling “Pacific Solution” to the
“problem” of seaborne refugees seeking asylum in the Lucky Country. New Zealand
has had no option but to stand by helplessly while these friendless men, women
and children have been subjected to treatment which is in clear breach of
international law and Australia’s own undertakings. The New Zealand Government
has repeatedly offered to take at least 150 of the refugees marooned on Nauru.
The Australians have brushed aside all such offers with sneering contempt.
After all, what can the Kiwis do about it?
What can the Kiwis
do about it? Nothing. What could the
Kiwis do about it with a radically re-configured and re-equipped NZDF? Plenty.
Imagine a highly-trained ready-reaction force combining
elements of the army, navy and air-force and specifically trained and equipped to
project New Zealand power both tactically and strategically. Such a force would
be capable of securing airfields and harbours anywhere in the South Pacific.
Deploying a combination of special forces and regular infantry units, the likes
of Sitiveni Rabuka could be stopped in their tracks and ousted democratic
governments restored to power in a matter of days.
In the case of Nauru, the ready-reaction force would be able
to place the authoritarian regime under house arrest, disarm and detain its
police force and Aussie jailers (just like Barbara Dreaver) and take the desperate
refugees on board the air-force’s new C-130J Hercules transports. The detainees
would be safe in New Zealand before the Aussies could even rub the sleep out of
their eyes and demand to know “What the hell is going on!”
Wellington’s insouciant answer to Canberra would be that New
Zealand was merely fulfilling its moral obligation to uphold international law.
Over howls of Aussie rage, the government would then go on to quietly explain
that this was the first – but hopefully not the last –demonstration of “The
Kiwi Doctrine”.
This essay was
originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Thursday, 6 September 2018.
