Written By:
Mike Smith - Date published:
9:41 pm, December 19th, 2018 - 37 comments
Categories: Africa, China, nz first, us politics, winston peters -
Tags:
In Washington last week Winston Peters urged America to involve itself more in the Pacific, in a speech the Prime Minister was apparently unaware of. Referring to Africa, John Bolton outlined what that involvement would mean – American interests first and only. Dangerous with the neocons in charge of the playpen.
Bolton’s speech on Trump’s foreign policy was made at the right wing Heritage Foundation. He said among other things:
Our new foreign assistance strategy will ensure that all U.S. foreign aid, in every corner of the globe, advances U.S. interests. Our goal is to move recipient states toward self-reliance, and prevent long-term dependency.
Structural reforms will likely be critical, including practicing fiscal responsibility, promoting fair and reciprocal trade, deregulating economies, and supporting the private sector.
In addition, we should target resources toward areas where we have the most impact to ensure efficient use of taxpayer dollars. Countries that repeatedly vote against the United States in international forums, or take action counter to U.S. interests, should not receive generous American foreign aid.
He makes no bones about the fact that advancing American interests means countering Russia and China.
Great power competitors, namely China and Russia, are rapidly expanding their financial and political influence across Africa. They are deliberately and aggressively targeting their investments in the region to gain a competitive advantage over the United States.
Pepe Escobar summarises the options for Africa in his piece “It’s Africa’s choice: AFRICOM or the New Silk Roads” – US military bases or Chinese infrastructure investment. He quotes a speech from Xi Jinping:
Apart from letting the numbers speak for themselves, Xi deftly counter-punched the current, massive BRI demonization campaign: “Only the people of China and Africa have the right to comment on whether China-Africa cooperation is doing well … No one should deny the significant achievement of China-Africa cooperation based on their assumptions and speculation.”
And once again Xi felt the need to stress the factor that does seduce, Africa-wide – Chinese non-politicization of investments, and Chinese non-interference in the internal affairs of African nations.
So far America’s involvement in the Pacific has been a major military base in northern Australia and an unwelcome proposal to build another in one of Papua New Guinea’s offshore islands.
Militarisation of the Pacific is the last thing we need. In my opinion Winston Peters should not be pushing his own agenda on our behalf.
The current rise of populism challenges the way we think about people’s relationship to the economy.We seem to be entering an era of populism, in which leadership in a democracy is based on preferences of the population which do not seem entirely rational nor serving their longer interests. ...
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Leveraging opposition to China’s tactic of hegemony through debt bondage to realise greater American/Australian/New Zealand foreign aid in the Pacific is a good thing for those in the Pacific.
You miss the point SPC. I suspect it is because you automatically think “USA good – China bad”. I hope you might reconsider this in light of what American hegemony has detrimentally done to so many countries.
America is not a force for good, it is quite the opposite. Rapacious greed and subservience.
No you missed the point.
Peters want more foreign aid to the Pacific. The increase in foreign aid to the Pacific in our budget was his doing. He wants the US, EU Oz and Japan to be doing more as well.
Placing this in the America is bad, so more foreign aid from them in the Pacific is bad is simply stupid. And from that inferring those who do not agree, are simply pro American, is well deranged.
Rapacious greed… …sorry.. …but so is Nz, it’s called capitalism. Subservience, really, you kissing up at the moment. Any diplomat can walk around the US easy, the commonwealth nations for a start, the eu, the west isn’t a U.S. lapdog. Sure they are monolithic, but its not like they do Nuance well.
More PRC crap
America built NZ into its sphere of economic influence in the 1800’s with its sealers and whalers.
Kiwis understand very clearly who are our friends and who are our enemy’s
The Americans are our freinds always have been always will be
Have a nice Xmas then p…..ss off back to China
Are the terms of Chinese loans any more onerous than those made by the US and other Western countries?
Would be good to clarify exactly what you mean, or are you just getting your information from Mike Pence?
In the experience of most people around the world, the US has traditionally been far more forceful and into “twisting the arms” of states which “don’t do what we need them to do,” (Barack Obama), than China ever has been.
By traditionally, you mean nations which have held greater power have had the greater opportunity to be a…….
You are not aware that nations that have been unable to pay back the loans have been asked to provide use of territorial assets such as ports ….
The EU and USA are not known for lending large amounts of money to nations, nor of using debt as leverage. They do offer aid and have been known to tie this up with strings – up front (sometimes human rights and democracy shock horror).
Whereas operating like loan sharks to exploit need and then follow up with control over assets is more like racketeering.
I don’t know.. The IMF , a western institution, seems to be the kiss of death with its onerous conditions…mass privatisations, dismantling laws that prevent foreign ownership, preferential treatment for foreign corporations, in general a total capitulation to neo liberal principles
As far as humanitarian tit for tat goes, Ukraine’s failure to deal to corruption(,in fact IMF money has found its way in to private banks in Cyprus) and increasing reliance on far right support has not prevented tranches of IMF payments
https://off-guardian.org/2015/09/01/how-kolomoyskyi-siphoned-off-1-8-billion-of-imfs-rescue-money-for-ukraine/
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-s-got-a-real-problem-with-far-right-violence-and-no-rt-didn-t-write-this-headlinehttps://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/ukraine-anti-semitism-racism-and-the-far-right
The World Bank input is the development aid … the IMF is a neo-liberal outfit that believes that its economic assistance will work best given its preferred policy settings … it’s contribution to good governance is that no sane nation now wants to be in the position of needing IMF help …
There is the classic case of Malaysia deciding to withdraw from IMF help back in the late 1990’s and superceding its neighbours by getting out of a regional recession the fastest.
So as far as the Pacific goes, where is the AIIB (which we’re signed up to , and was initiated by China)in all of this?
Its widely seen as an alternative to the IMF and World Bank
https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/No-debt-trap-with-AIIB-president-vows
The EU and USA are not known for lending large amounts of money to nations, nor of using debt as leverage.
WTF? That’s not even worth answering.
The West also sends bomb the shit out of countries that don’t do as they are told and send the troops in. China has never done any ‘arm twisting’. Indeed it is the leaders of many countries who are desperate for and seek economic ties, including loans, with China. This includes NZ. If the countries don’t want anything to do with China that is their choice.
As Samoa’s prime minister said: “Pacific Island states only have themselves to blame if they fall into debt problems and criticism of China’s surging lending in the region by rival powers has been patronizing, Samoa’s Prime Minister said on Thursday. “
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pacific-debt-samoa/lenders-not-to-blame-for-ballooning-pacific-debts-samoa-pm-idUSKCN1LF1BP
“They do offer aid and have been known to tie this up with strings – up front (sometimes human rights and democracy shock horror)”
Disgustingly racist patronising nonsense. No country has a right to dictate to others how to run their internal affairs. Period.
It was you who wrote.
“Are the terms of Chinese loans any more onerous than those made by the US and other Western countries?”
If you do not want a question answered, don’t ask it.
Your claim that taxpayer funded aid is racist and patronising, when by western nations is noted. Your lack of respect for human rights and democracy is as well.
If you thing behaving like a loan shark – lending to those who cannot afford to pay it back and then taking over assets is a higher standard, that is your call.
Each individual has the sovereign right to be totally wrong.
Yeah, like the West brings such great things to the Pacific:
*testing nuclear weapons over the homes of Pacific islanders, who have “endured burns that reached to the bone, forced relocation, nightmarish birth defects, cancers in the short and long term”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2015/11/27/a-ground-zero-forgotten/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.327c4b1e00a7
* Blackbirding: “Indigenous persons of nearby Pacific islands or northern Queensland were recruited or coerced by blackbirding colonial Europeans. In the early days of the pearling industry in Western Australia at Nickol Bay and Broome, local Aborigines were blackbirded from the surrounding areas”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbirding
*How NZ took influenza to Samoa, killing a fifth of its population
https://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/375404/how-nz-took-influenza-to-samoa-killing-a-fifth-of-its-population
*Terrorism: Rainbow Warrior
*Tyrannical rule of Niue
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nelson-mail/opinion/102876570/murder-of-new-zealand-commissioner-on-niue-revealed-colonial-flaws
China has done none of the above. And has not compelled any country whatsoever to do what it does not want to do.
Just as with the poor who take loans they cannot repay, nations choosing to take loans they cannot pay back should know the risk (why Malaysia pulled out of Chinese loan funded developments) what can happen, and they could well reap the consequences.
If loan financed projects realised the return, there would be commercial loan finance.
Loans for development projects should have been financed by either nation to nation aid or the World Bank, or now via the new Asian Bank. That they are via debt to China suggests the motive is not altruistic.
Dependence on aid, or unrepayable loans, is dependence on continued goodwill. There is a possible/likely loss of sovereignty. Which is in keeping with Chinese third tier ambition to have hegemony in the western Pacific.
SPC at 9:40 pm.
Completely wrong. One word – Greece.
The topic was loans to developing nations.
The Greek debts were not to the EU, the EU bailed out Greece because they could not pay their debts to banks (the EU helping keep the banks solvent, more than Greece – as the Greeks well know).
I’m afraid they are.
Here is an example from Sri Lanka.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/china-sri-lanka-port.html
Countries should follow the example of Prime Minister Mahathir Bin Mohamad in Malaysia. Just about the first thing he did when he took office again this year was to scrap Chinese projects that his predecessor had approved.
https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/05/news/economy/malaysia-china-rail-project-suspended/index.html
Are you referring to loans made by the most honourable Chinese Communist Party that’s been busy locking up 85 year old grannies because it’s scared of what they have to say?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/20/the-last-time-i-saw-granny-pu-85-year-old-mother-of-chinese-dissident-seized-by-police
China has just taken over an African port for non payment.
They do predatory capitalism, at least as well as the West.
Did Winston call for militarisation of the Pacific by the US? I doubt it. You seem to assume that will be an inevitable consequence. I’d rather assume he wants targeted economic assistance by the US to counter China’s strategy.
Bribery as foreign policy is as traditional as empire. The trick for small nations is to be not bought and sold. Safety in numbers suggests all small Pacific countries will prosper via a united front: their aid policy ought to solicit aid from interested great powers, while making it subject to annual review on a cost-benefit basis.
If Russia offers too, the choice between the three providers could be rotated regularly so that none of them gets preferential leverage. That’s a suitably non-traditional design. Necessity is the mother of invention. Innovative foreign policy is the way to go. Winston, take note!
I have the feeling the US doesn’t play that game anymore. They’ve been reducing their aid packages and prefer economic and military threats to maintain their hegemony
They will be increasing their military bases and trying to bring every Pacific nation’s military in line with their own..
Winston’s keenness to pursue the FT deal with Russia (hastily abandoned in 2014 after no doubt US pressure over Crimea)was probably to reduce our dependence on China
God knows what manner of “arm twisting” our politicians are subjected to
You are of course quite right about the low level of US foreign aid, but the effort by Peters to leverage fear of “developing nations becoming dependent vassals of China through loan debt” to boost US aid to the Pacific is the right approach.
Nothing else would work in the America first era.
Militarisation in the Pacific is already under way in PNG’s Manus Island https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46247446 and https://eurasiafuture.com/2018/09/20/australias-naval-base-in-papua-new-guinea-is-a-power-play-in-the-south-pacific/. The island’s governor wasn’t consulted and “slams the deal.” https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-21/manus-governor-slams-australia-over-naval-base-plans/10515910
If the outcome really does mean more countries vying to provide the Pacific with development assistance, including loans, that is indeed a good thing.
The Pacific countries then have a choice, if they are actively courted by various cash rich powers. That is a good thing for them.
After the Fijian peacekeepers were captured by Al Nusra while on duty at the Golan Heights in 2014 , it became apparent how lacking in equipment they were
When Russia provided container loads of arms in 2016, at first Key just shrugged, and said “Fiji can have dealings with whoever they like”
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/world/2016/02/russia-sells-19m-in-arms-to-fiji.html
but 2 days later McCully scurried off to Fiji , the first visit since 2014.
NZ sanctions after the coups led Fiji to look “North” to Russia and China.
Good on Bainimarama for playing the field, NZ thought it had Fiji all wrapped up
This an interesting article on Russia’s deal with Fiji
https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/Russian-arms-deal-with-Fiji-prompts-regional-concerns
I find the image of Winston interesting. I remember him saying that he was very possibly related to Taiwanese. He looks in the image, possibly Asian; it is a an apt choice for the post.
There are, apparently, matches in the genes of Maori and the indigenous tribes of Taiwan. They separated about 10,000 years ago.
https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/genetic-link-brings-indigenous-taiwanese-and-maori-together
Most of the Taiwanese population (around 98%) are of course Han Chinese today.
The Polynesians have common female ancestry, linked to some (pre Han) Taiwanese tribes that migrated southward through Micronesia and into Polynesia – they were joined by male lines migrating in from the west.
Winston ratcheted the aid up in the South Pacific because he wanted a stronger New Zealand flavour there. It was not to appease anyone – Beijing, Washington or anyone else.
We do not necessarily need to support either super power. Whilst not being one, we could simply say to both that we will take the lead in the South Pacific, which I think is a good idea. We do not want and for all we know, nor do the island nations, a foreign military build up in our area.
Obsession with race is a bit of a yanker trait greysy. Are you very possibly related to yankers?
‘
US ‘has duty to protect South Pacific interests”
Fiji Times – February 5, 1987
Even if that means fomenting coups and military takeovers.
Loyal poodle thrown into confusion, not knowing what to do, when owner takes off without letting it know..
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/109559083/plans-to-remove-american-soldiers-from-afghanistan-have-not-been-shared-with-nz
Because the Yanks are replacing it’s troops with Mec’s from Blackwater and including its own organic Air Support (Close Air Support) etc . Hence why everyone who is an Allie of US has gone WFT atm and including me as this only to end bad in one way or another when one looks at the Congo and Biafra in the 60’s- 70’s.
This is probably true.
Don’t want to be an American idiot
Winston Peters to rename his party in the new year.
America First