Today’s Herald editorial says New Zealand ‘wisely’ doesn’t punch above its weight in military activities. That’s not true – I remember sailing around the nuclear-powered USS Truxtun as it entered harbour in a Wellington gale. It was just one of many flotillas campaigning against nuclear weapons and nuclear war that resulted in a knockout – New Zealand’s suspension from the ANZUS alliance on a point of principle.
For many New Zealand officials that withdrawal was a mistake. That attitude persists in current official thinking, where the Herald quotes the recent Defence Assessment as saying re Five Eyes that “the defence aspect is as long-standing and fundamental as the intelligence aspect.’ It should be noted that the Defence assessment is an officials’ paper, not yet government policy. It certainly needs to be thoroughly debated.
New Zealand’s Five Eyes intelligence participation was useful to the other anglophone partners as it collected intelligence from its designated Pacific zone, but the defence relationship turned icy for years and is still under rebuild. Last October the US destroyer USS Howard crept into Wellington harbour with little fanfare and no protest. It was here to meet with defence officials.
The context for the Herald’s discussion is the US China rivalry and where New Zealand positions itself. According to the Defence Ministry paper the rivalry is solely due to the rise of China, which having learnt from the Russian experience didn’t follow the US and become the expected liberal democracy and make its economy available for foreign exploitation.
The US strategy in relation to China is to rebuild its relations with those it considers allies, in order to ‘contain’ China. There is no doubt that the US is pulling our string, and that they do have the support of many in our our defence and diplomatic bureaucracy. As a swing player with good connections in the Pacific and Anglophone we are an important catch for them. We are not joined at the hip to the US as is bi-partisan Australia.
This means we do have a chance to push back, and to punch above our weight. Our interest is that the two major powers stop competing and focus on co-operation for peace. And it is the US that has declared that competition is the name of the game, in its 2018 Defense assessment. China would much prefer co-operation, but it is not going to be a pushover as it was in 1842 when superior British gunnery forced China to take opium in compensation for its silks and ceramics.
Also many Chinese do not believe that American style so-called liberal democracy is necessarily best suited for them. And looking at the current situation with governments on the nose in the US and the UK, not to mention Australia, why would they. Sometimes it seems as though the Five Eyes only have one brain and its ours, which is another reason why we can punch above our weight. At least we can see where we are going.
The Herald points this out itself. “But China did not abandon totalitarian rule as Western democracies expected it would when it acquired a prosperous, educated and enterprising urban population.” Just maybe its not that totalitarian after all, or that the prosperous, educated and enterprising Chinese are happy with the way they live.
The Herald says it is hard to avoid taking sides. But that is what we must do – to continue the metaphor, punch above our weight by cracking heads together in the search for mutual prosperity and peace.
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