Asia Pacific Report
Speakers at a pro-Palestine rally in central Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau today were highly critical of the erosion of New Zealand’s once proud nuclear-free and independent foreign policy.
They also warned against being tied into a United States that is pivoting a hostile policy towards China, New Zealand’s major trading partner.
Ironically, just hours after the rally ended news broke of the unprovoked and illegal attack by Israel and the US against Iran barely eight months after a 12-day war last year.
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With a theme posing the question “Is New Zealand a peace loving nation or a cog in the US war machine,” the speakers concluded at Te Komititanga Square that indeed the Pacific country was a “US war machine cog”.
Physicist Dr Peter Wills, a long-time activist and advocate for peace and a nuclear-free Pacific, focused on New Zealand’s role in the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing alliance.
He said the Five Eyes relationship has superseded ANZUS “or anything else”, saying while the pact formalised in 1946 used to be intelligence, now it was the name of a five-nation military grouping.
“That’s the Anglo-Saxon countries,” he said. “Us good English-speaking people, you know, the white imperialists and colonialists of the world – the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and little old New Zealand.
“We’re all a part of it.
Eavesdropping on countries
“It used to be an intelligence agreement because they would talk about what they have listened to with other countries by eavesdropping on their radio communications and so on.
“But now everything has become so integrated, they have become the centre of war fighting.”
Explaining further, Dr Wills said: “And so they have this thing that they call C-5, which is command control for communications, computers and cyber.”
He said a top priority project was to make up a globally integrated “all domain” command and control system, which was hoped to be in place for next year.
The project had been discussed in Portsmouth, UK, in May 2024. Its purpose was to track friendly and enemy forces and send orders for attack.
“All domains – navy, land, air and space forces,” said Dr Wills, an honorary professor.
Globally integrated intelligence and military actions could be launched and directed anywhere in the world.
Countering China
It was electronic infrastructure for a superpower confrontation – to “develop a credible and effective combined all-domain command and control capability for operations to counter China”.
For Five Eyes officers overseeing these new digital and AI war-fighting systems at the Portsmouth meeting, a key objective was building the capability for confrontation with China.
“This means NZ following the US into military conflict with China,” Dr Wills said.
“We are involved in GIDE – Global Information Dominance Experiments, a new one is prepared every three months.
“And we will align with whatever is chosen by Five Eyes, either British or American.”
From an American point of view, said Dr Wills, New Zealand was a US ally, eager to play a role, “however small we are, to supporting the US around the globe”.
They also wanted NZ to get rid of its anti-nuclear legislation and return to ANZUS. This was the view of senior military officers and senior foreign affairs and intelligence officials
US ‘instability and bullying’
However, the majority of New Zealanders saw the US as a “source of instability and bullying” of New Zealand over its nuclear stand.
Dr Wills said New Zealand was influenced by the Anglo-American alliance today on many fronts, such as:
- NZ Navy ships transiting “provocatively” through the South China Sea;
- Being pressured to double military spending,;
- Being pressured to join the “anti-China” AUKUS alliance;
- The recent opening of a US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) office in Wellington; and
- New Zealand playing an increasing role in space warfare.
But Dr Wills warned people “don’t give up – they haven’t won, not even with their arguments”.
He also called on people to become better informed, such as reading Nicky Hager’s 2011 book Other People’s Wars.
NZ’s nuclear-free stance
Other speakers included nuclear-free New Zealand historian and activist Maire Leadbeater, who outlined the early trajectory of the country’s opposition to French nuclear tests in the Pacific by dispatching a frigate to Moruroa, and the campaign to declare New Zealand nuclear-free.
She said New Zealand had led the way in the 1970s and 1980s and could take a principled independent foreign policy stand again.
The rally also invoked the spirit of Kia Ora Gaza co-founder and campaigner Roger Fowler, who died last Saturday and who was farewelled at a “celebration of life” ceremony at Ngā Tapuwae Community Centre in Mangere East on Wednesday.
Veteran Polynesian Panther Tigilau Ness and his grandson on the saxophone played a rousing rendition of the popular song “We Are All Palestinians”, created by Fowler, and South African-born activist Achmat Esau read out his poem, “Roger, I Did Not Know” in tribute.
