Double Standards: What’s Evil In Ukraine Is Apparently Good For The Solomon Islands.

Hypocrisy In Arms: The “international rules-based order” has encouraged the rest of the world to declare economic war on the Russian Federation in retaliation for its illegal invasion of Ukraine. Only time will tell whether that very same order will demand the imposition of equally swingeing sanctions on Australia and New Zealand should they decide to intervene in the Solomon Islands.

THERE HAS TO BE something wrong with us. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. Some sickness of mind and spirit that blinds us to our own extraordinary diplomatic hypocrisy. The hypocrisy on display in relation to the Solomon Islands’ proposed security agreement with the Chinese is, however, beyond astounding. Indeed, with the attention of the world focused so intently on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the reaction of our own government, and those of New Zealand’s friends and allies, is scarcely believable.

What is it, after all, that the entire Western World is denouncing in Ukraine? Is it not the idea, expounded by the Russians, that Ukraine is located within the Russian Federation’s sphere of influence, and that its oft-expressed desire to join Nato constitutes a clear and present threat to Russia’s national security?

Have not the Russians repeatedly denounced the extension of Nato’s military reach to the very borders of their Federation? Do they not present this as conclusive evidence of the West’s predatory designs upon the national territory and resources of the Russian state?

And has not the West rejected Russia’s claims? Most particularly, has it not rejected the notion that it is any longer acceptable to speak about nations having “spheres of influence”? Is the West’s vehement condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine not based upon the principle that nation states have an inalienable right to determine their own destinies?

The governments of all the Western powers, including our own, are doing everything within their power, short of actually joining the conflict, to support Ukraine, and to punish the Russian Federation for violating the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of an independent nation state and United Nations member by an act of military aggression.

The Australian Government has been loud in its condemnation of Russia – as has its news media – and yet, just a few days ago, the following opinions were given wide coverage by the Rupert Murdoch-owned News.com.au under the headline: “Australia ‘must ready Solomon Islands invasion’ to stop China security deal”. 

According to David Llewellyn-Smith, publisher of MacroBusiness and former owner of The Diplomat, a journal dedicated to Asia-Pacific affairs, the coming into full effect of the proposed security pact between the Solomon Islands and the Peoples Republic of China would mean “the effective end of [Australia’s] sovereignty and democracy”.

“There is no way that Australia can allow this deal to proceed” wrote Llewellyn-Smith. “If it must, the nation should invade and capture Guadalcanal such that we engineer regime change in Honiara. There are other soft power levers to pull first and we should pull them forcefully. But we should also immediately begin amassing an amphibious invasion force to add pressure.”

If it was put to Llewellyn-Smith that his own reasoning is identical to that of Vladimir Putin, he would, almost certainly, reject the comparison. And yet, he is proposing to engineer regime change in the Solomon Island’s capital, Honiara, by invading and capturing Guadalcanal – the island in which the city is situated. The difference between Llewellyn-Smith’s proposal and Putin’s attempts to engineer regime change by invading Ukraine and capturing its capital city, Kyiv, is extremely difficult to discern.

And, just in case, we feel tempted to dismiss these sentiments as the rantings of yet another bellicose Australian pundit, with which that increasingly belligerent country seems infested, New Zealand’s very own Professor Anne-Marie Brady has told RNZ’s “Mid-Day Report” host, Māni Dunlop, that: “the draft agreement to station military forces on Solomon Islands could see the South Pacific cut off and encircled by Chinese forces.” 

Brady’s interview reveals just how deeply the instincts of Western imperialism are embedded in New Zealand’s foreign affairs community. According to the University of Canterbury professor, the Solomon Islands represent a “failed state”, riddled with corruption and Chinese influence-peddling, problems with which, in spite of 14 years of Australian and New Zealand military occupation in the guise of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) its political class is still plagued. Accordingly, it can only benefit from stepped-up “assistance” from its Australian and New Zealand “friends”.

Like a good Kiwi, Brady shies away from Llewellyn-Smith’s call for a return to the gunboat diplomacy of the Nineteenth century. But, quite how the deal with China can be stopped short of resorting to the use of force and/or rampant Anzac influence-peddling and corruption, the professor does not say.

What makes Brady’s intervention even more interesting is her connections with a research-project-cum-think-tank known as SSANSE - “Small States and the New Security Environment”. As The Daily Blog noted back in May 2020, SSANES was/is based in Iceland and was/is at least partially funded by Nato. Brady’s assessment of New Zealand’s strategic predicament back in 2020 was nothing if not dramatic:

The global environment has not been so challenging for New Zealand since 1942 when British forces in Singapore, who were New Zealand’s shield, fell to the advance of the Japanese. New Zealand must now face up to the national security risk of the Covid-19 outbreak. The current situation poses a risk not only to New Zealand, but collectively, for our Pacific, Five Eyes and NATO partners, as well as like-minded states who uphold the international rules-based order.

That “international rules-based order” is, presumably, the same order which has encouraged the rest of the world to declare economic war on the Russian Federation in retaliation for its illegal invasion of Ukraine. Only time will tell whether that order will demand the imposition of equally swingeing sanctions on Australia and New Zealand should they “invade and capture Guadalcanal” in order to secure “regime change in Honiara.” Since neither Canberra nor Wellington would dare contemplate such an action without the endorsement of “our Pacific, Five Eyes and NATO partners”, it is reasonably safe to conclude that it would not.

It might be wise, however, for the likes of Llewellyn-Smith and Brady to ask themselves whether China might not be playing an extremely clever game here. Thinking about it, what better demonstration of Western hypocrisy could there be than a frankly imperialist and racist re-imposition of Five Eyes control in Honiara to protect the English-speaking people’s “sphere of influence” in the Pacific?

How much easier could the West make it for China to convince all those nations on the receiving end of the “international rules-based order” that its rules are meant for “thee” but not for “me”? That while it is an unconscionable violation of international law to invade the territory of people whose skins are white; it is no more than an act of friendship to invade and capture the islands of people whose skins are brown.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday 29 March 2022.

Dances With Elephants.

When elephants dance, the wise mice stick to the wall.  - Swahili Proverb.

IT BEGAN so positively: wreathed in smiles and full of promise; a government of kindness and transformation. It hasn’t lasted. In a depressingly short period of time, the poetry of campaigning was replaced by the harsh prose of governing.

It was clear, from the moment David Parker told us that the Labour-NZF-Green Government would be signing the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, that beneath all the glitter and shine lay the dull gleam of administrative brass. Smiles and Stardust are Jacinda’s brand. Reality is much scarier.

Over the past fortnight New Zealand has played host to gatherings of spies. The first batch arrived from the United Kingdom and the second from the United States. In the midst of these secretive arrivals and departures the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) issued its finding that the Chinese IT giant, Huawei, had failed to pass the “national security” test, and that, as a consequence, its involvement in the roll-out of Spark’s 5G communications network must cease.

Interestingly, the presence of so many foreign spooks was matched by the absence of a select band of journalists. Whisked away to Hawaii by the Orwellian-sounding “Indopacom” (the United States Indo-Pacific Command) they were brought up to speed on what one of the participants described as China’s “expansionist military strategy in the Pacific”.

One of the more accurate and justifiable criticisms of the current Chinese Government is its treatment of its Uighur population. President Xi and his administration have gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent the Muslim Uighurs from embracing the radical Islamicist doctrines so familiar to us now in the West. Human rights groups report that as many as a million Uighurs may have passed through the regime’s “re-education camps”. These are not happy places.

It would seem, however, that the Uighurs are not the only population for whom “re-education” has been deemed necessary. New Zealanders, too, have been singled out for ideological rectification. Seemingly, this country has grown too fond of the Chinese regime and is in urgent need of being re-oriented towards a more reliable combination of “friendly” powers. No less a think tank than the “moderately conservative” Hoover Institution has opined that New Zealand is “particularly vulnerable” to Chinese influence.

Served up as a “test case” in a report bearing the interesting title “Chinese Influence & American Interest”, New Zealand is described as “a small state of 4.5 million people with strong trade ties to China.” These have, according to the report, led us to pursue “closer ties with China than many other nations.”

Too close, apparently, for our largest trading partner, Australia, which has, we were informed by an investment specialist interviewed for TVNZ’s “Q+A” programme, come to the view that New Zealand has allowed itself to stray too far from the accepted anti-Chinese/pro-American path laid down by Canberra.

Jacinda Ardern and her Foreign Minister, Winston Peters, have become something of a problem for the Australians. There is a slippery quality to both of them that irritates New Zealand’s oldest friend and ally. Just when they’re convinced that the Kiwis have stepped over the line – by refusing to condemn the Russians fast enough over the Salisbury chemical attack, for example – they somehow manage to skip back over it with dutiful promises of a “Pacific Re-Set”. Time for Wellington to stop playing silly buggers, says Canberra, and not in a nice way.

Hence the influx of hard men from the UK and America. Hence the sudden rise to prominence of Professor Anne-Marie Brady – New Zealand’s very own “international expert” on the diabolical cleverness of Beijing and its “magic weapons”. No coincidence, surely, that the Hoover Institution’s fortuitously timed warning about Chinese influence draws heavily on Professor Brady’s alarming academic research. Her even more alarming personal experiences, involving burglars and deflated car tyres, lends cinematic emphasis to their concern.

Our re-education, from a nation with delusions of independence, to one which knows its place in the geopolitical scheme of things, will proceed apace, although not as rapidly as with our leaders. The Huawei decision signalled to our Five Eyes partners that from now on it is their preferences, not China’s, which will dictate the shape of New Zealand foreign policy.

The Swahili have a proverb: “When elephants dance, the wise mice stick to the wall.” Or, in our case, scamper back onto the American elephant’s back.

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 7 December 2018.

The Case Of The Problematic Professor.

Disturber Of Dragons: Were Professor Brady’s antagonists from any other nation but China the problem confronting Jacinda Ardern and Winston Peters would not exist. Unfortunately the Peoples Republic of China is New Zealand’s largest trading partner after Australia. Pissing-off China could be extremely injurious to this nation’s economic health.

ANNE-MARIE BRADY presents this government with a rather large problem. Her alleged harassment by agents of Chinese national security has all the makings of a cause celebre. Were Professor Brady’s antagonists from any other nation but China the problem confronting Jacinda Ardern and Winston Peters would not exist. One has only to recall Helen Clark’s response to the discovery of an active Israeli spy mission underway on New Zealand soil to appreciate the political capital to be made out of being seen to take the defence of New Zealand sovereignty seriously. Unfortunately for Ardern and Peters, however, the Peoples Republic of China is not Israel – it’s New Zealand’s largest trading partner after Australia. When Israel gets angry it cannot threaten to undermine the New Zealand economy. Pissing-off China, on the other hand, can be extremely injurious to this nation’s economic health.

The latest chapter in the Brady saga, a letter from a group of academics, journalists and activists demanding a more aggressive defence of academic freedom, can hardly have improved the PM’s mood. Her hopes of the whole matter quietly disappearing have been dashed. People want answers – not evasions.

But do “people” have any right to answers in a matter as delicate as this one? Is the public entitled to push aside all the geopolitical and economic factors impinging on their government as if they are of no importance?

Prattling on about being the “critic and conscience” of society is all very well, but when New Zealand’s universities are so dependent on the continuing inflow of international students, is it really all that wise to antagonise one of the largest contributors to this country’s educational export trade? It would be interesting to see how the nation’s vice-chancellors would react if equivalents of Anne-Marie Brady started popping up on their own campuses. Each academic activist launching equally uncompromising attacks against the Peoples Republic. How would all that criticising and conscientising affect their bottom-line I wonder?

And what about all that Chinese investment in New Zealand’s agricultural sector: all those massive milk treatment plants springing up around the provinces; how keen would the government be to see all that brought to an end? How would Shane Jones respond to the loss of so many well-paying jobs? And David Parker, how would he feel when New Zealand’s perishable exports started piling-up on China’s docks? How would Federated Farmers react to a Chinese freeze-out? Or the Dairy Workers Union, for that matter?

New Zealand lives by its agricultural exports - which is why the New Zealand-China Free Trade Agreement was so important when the Global Financial Crisis struck. Without it, this country would have had significantly less to come and go on. Chinese consumers saved us from the sort of vicious austerity measures that afflicted the people of the United Kingdom and Greece. The nature of the Chinese system has not changed since 2008. If we were happy then to be given access to the huge Chinese market, are we not happy now? What’s changed?

We all know the answer to that question. What has changed is that the United States is no longer prepared to see China assert its “hard” (military and economic) and “soft” (cultural and propagandistic) power unchallenged. In concert with its principal regional allies, Japan and Australia, the US is pushing back against Chinese expansion into the Pacific – once an American lake but now the location of intense great power rivalry. Try as it might (and it tried very hard under John Key and his foreign minister, Murray McCully) New Zealand is finding it increasingly difficult, in the age of Donald Trump, to keep its distance from this looming fight between the Eagle and the Dragon.

Professor Brady is an acknowledged expert on the production and delivery of Chinese soft power – its “magic weapons”. The good professor is not, however, above advancing a little soft power on her own account. Is it no more than a coincidence that she has been called upon to present her ideas to the Australian parliament during the “China Panic”? Or that her academic articles and speeches are followed closely, and receive considerable approbation, in Washington DC? That the name of Anne-Marie Brady started appearing in our news media at exactly the same moment as the rivalry between the USA and China ratcheted-up several notches – was that nothing more than serendipity?

Much has been made of President Trump’s extraordinary statement concerning America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. What made it extraordinary was its brutal honesty. For once naked American self-interest was presented to the world shorn of its hypocritical vestments. “It’s about America first”, said the President, truthfully. He then informed the world that if putting America’s interests first means turning a blind eye to cold-blooded, state-sanctioned murder, then so be it – that’s what his administration (like all its predecessors) will do.

Jacinda can’t really say “It’s about New Zealand First” – that could be misinterpreted, but if she were to say something similar in defence of her continuing silence vis-à-vis Anne-Marie Brady, then she would earn the respect of Beijing and Washington alike. With considerable relief, the advisers to both President Xi and President Trump would be able to tell their bosses: “This New Zealand prime minister, at least she knows how the game of geopolitics is played.”

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 27 November 2018.

A New Zealand Political Dissident.

Dangerous Mind: International interest in Professor Anne-Marie Brady’s research into the growing reach of Chinese "soft power" was sharpened recently by her disclosure of the presence of former Chinese nationals in the caucuses of New Zealand’s two largest political parties; most particularly, the fact that one of those Members of Parliament has historical links with the Chinese intelligence community (if only in a pedagogical capacity).

THAT PROFESSOR ANNE-MARIE BRADY has had her home and office broken into, and her lap-top stolen, is deeply troubling. That the perpetrators were brazen enough to warn her that their attack was imminent, only heightens that concern. The most compelling reason for feeling uneasy about Professor Brady’s misfortunes, however, is their obvious potential to seriously damage Chinese-New Zealand relations.

Professor Brady is a China specialist who has won international acclaim for her research into the methods used by the Chinese government to monitor and, where possible, influence the conduct and opinions of Chinese nationals living abroad; as well as for describing the Communist Party of China’s (CPC) efforts to build maximum support for the “Motherland” among the world-wide Chinese diaspora.

What has sharpened international interest in Professor Brady’s work is her disclosure of the presence of former Chinese nationals in the caucuses of New Zealand’s two largest political parties; most particularly, the fact that one of those Members of Parliament has historical links with the Chinese intelligence community (if only in a pedagogical capacity).

Taken together with her itemisation of the appointments of former political leaders of New Zealand to the boards of a number of Chinese financial institutions, the Professor’s revelations were more than sufficient to secure coverage in major media outlets in Australia, the UK and the United States.

The most recent reference to Professor Brady’s research is to be found in the influential US magazine, “Foreign Policy”. Concerned about the links between the Chinese Embassy in Washington and the Chinese Students and Scholars Association operating on the campus of Georgetown University, foreign-policy specialist, Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian, quotes Professor Brady on the information-gathering role of these Chinese Government-supported student groups:

“It’s a deliberate strategy to make sure that the Chinese students and scholars living abroad don’t become a problem.”

That the political and cultural views of young Chinese citizens studying abroad could become a problem for the Chinese Government is readily appreciated. As Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian points out, there are 330,000 Chinese nationals studying in the United States, alone, with scores-of-thousands more at other universities around the world. That’s an awful lot of highly-educated, highly-skilled young people to come home with “problematic” ideas!

This is much more than a theoretical proposition. As an at-least-nominally revolutionary party, the CPC will be well aware of the “Russians in Paris” syndrome.

Following the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815, the armies of the victorious powers – which included the Russian Empire – occupied Paris. Young Russian officers suddenly found themselves in the midst of a free-wheeling culture which prized intellectual and artistic pursuits of all kinds – not least the passionate discussion of political philosophy.

Unsurprisingly, these Imperial Guardsmen returned home to St Petersburg with more than a taste for French cuisine and Parisian coffee. Travelling with them were the core principles of the French Revolution: “Liberty. Equality. Fraternity.” Within ten years, some of them (known as “Decemberists”, after the month in which they rose against the Tsar) were attempting to spark a democratic revolution in Russia.

The last thing the Chinese authorities want is a “Decemberist” revolt of their own. A revolt fuelled by ideas and ideals imported into China from the United States of America in the heads of their best and brightest university graduates. Those among the CPC leadership who had to deal with the consequences of the tragic events of June 1989 will not have forgotten that the symbol of that earlier student revolt was a papier-mâché replica of the Statue of Liberty.

The studied indifference towards Professor Brady’s research (not to mention her personal security) displayed by the New Zealand authorities, speaks to the existence of considerable sympathy within New Zealand’s own ruling circles for the stern measures which the Chinese authorities feel obliged to undertake.

Peoples’ uprisings may be a recurring feature of Chinese history, but they are generally remembered as short-lived periods of chaos and confusion, preparatory to the restoration of order and tranquillity by a centralised, authoritarian government, in whose strong hands the gods have reposed the all-important “Mandate of Heaven”.

It is, clearly, the view of the Ministry of Foreign Relations and Trade, the Ministry for Primary Industries, and Treasury, that an orderly and tranquil China is much to be preferred to a democratic and turbulent China. As a crucial market for its primary production, and an equally important source of foreign direct investment in its industry and infrastructure, China is obviously regarded by the New Zealand Government as an economic partner much too big to rile.

Equally obvious, is Professor Brady’s status as a New Zealand political dissident. Innocent of any crime, but guilty of that most heinous offence – upsetting the apple cart. If she is waiting for the New Zealand authorities to help her, then she will likely be waiting a very long time.

UPDATE: On Monday (19/2/18) came the welcome news that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has asked the Security Intelligence Service to investigate the break-ins to Professor Brady's home and office and the theft of her lap-top computer. Welcome, too, the news that the PM's intervention has breathed new life into the hitherto stalled Police investigation. It is, however, noteworthy that the PM has yet to use the word "China" in relation to Professor Brady's case.

This essay was originally published in The Press of Tuesday, 20 February 2018.