Eugene Doyle: It’s bigger than NATO and it’s heading our way

APR editor — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 06:41:29 +0000

COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

Australia and New Zealand’s populations must now wake up to the fact that our countries have been drawn into what ForeignPolicy.com called the knitting together of “the United States’ patchwork of different regional security systems into a global security architecture of networked alliances and partnerships”.

Hit pause right there.

Very few people have tuned into the fact that what is happening isn’t “NATO” moving into our region – it’s actually far bigger than that. America is creating a super-bloc, a super-alliance of client states that includes both the EU and NATO, the AP4 (its key Asia Pacific partners Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan) and other partners like the Philippines (now the Marcos dynasty is back at the helm).

READ MORE: Other NZ-China and Luxon reports

It explains why, in the midst of committing genocide in Palestine, Israel still managed to send defence personnel to participate in RIMPAC 2024 naval exercises: they’re part of our team. It is taking the Military Industrial Complex to a global level. Where do you think it will lead us to?

New Zealand is about to sacrifice what it cannot afford to lose for something it doesn’t need: gambling we can keep the strength and security of our trading relationship with China while leaping into the US anti-China military alliance.

The Chinese have noticed. Writing in the South China Morning Post last week, Alex Lo gave an unvarnished Chinese perspective on this. In a piece titled “NATO barbarians are expanding and gathering at the gates of Asia,” he says: “Most regional countries want none of it, but four Trojan horses – South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand – are ready to let them in”.

“Has it crossed Blinken’s mind that most of Asia, including the Indian subcontinent, don’t want NATO militarism to infect their parts of the world like the plague?”

While in Washington for the recent NATO summit, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told The Financial Times that he viewed China as a strategic competitor in the Indo-Pacific. In the next breath he said he wanted New Zealand to continue to develop trade with China and double the country’s overall exports over the next 10 years.

Good luck with that if we join a hostile alliance. And since when has New Zealand declared that China was a strategic competitor? That’s an American position, surely not ours?

New Zealand could “add value” to its security relationships and be a “force multiplier for Australia and the US and other partners”, Luxon said while being hosted in Washington. New Zealand was also “very open” to participating in the second pillar of AUKUS.

Firmly placing New Zealand in the anti-China camp in this way was immediately lambasted by former PM Helen Clark and ex National Party leader Don Brash. What has been abandoned, they argue, without any public consultation, is our relatively independent foreign policy. They sounded a warning about where real danger lies:

“China not only poses no military threat to New Zealand, but it is also by a very substantial margin our biggest export market – more than twice as important as an export market for New Zealand as the US is.

“New Zealand has a huge stake in maintaining a cordial relationship with China. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to maintain such a relationship if the Government continues to align its positioning with that of the United States.”

Prudent players, like most of the ASEAN countries, continue to play a more canny game. Former President of the United Nations Security Council, Kishore Mahbubani, a Singapore statesman with immense experience, offers a study in contrast to Luxon. He says the Pacific has no need of the destructive militaristic culture of the Atlantic alliance.

In a recent article in The Straits Times, Mahbubani said East Asia has developed, with the assistance of ASEAN, a very cautious and pragmatic geopolitical culture.

“In the 30 years since the end of the Cold War, NATO has dropped several thousand bombs on many countries. By contrast, in the same period, no bombs have been dropped anywhere in East Asia.

“The biggest danger we face in NATO expanding its tentacles from the Atlantic to the Pacific: It could end up exporting its disastrous militaristic culture to the relatively peaceful environment we have developed in East Asia,” Mahbubani says.

Clark and Brash are right to sound the alarm: “These statements orient New Zealand towards being a full-fledged military ally of the United States, with the implication that New Zealand will increasingly be dragged into US-China competition, including militarily in the South China Sea.“

The National-led government is also ignoring calls by Pacific leaders to keep the Pacific peaceful. The danger is that a small group of officials in New Zealand’s increasingly militaristic and Americanised foreign affairs establishment are, along with a few politicians, sending the country into dangerous waters.

Glove puppet for Americans
Luxon’s comments are really so close to Pentagon positions and talking points that he is reducing himself to little more than a glove puppet for the Americans.

New Zealand needs to be a beacon of diplomacy, moderation, cooperation and de-escalation or one day we may find out what it’s like to lose both our security and our biggest trading partner.

Kiwis, like the Australians last year, may suddenly discover our paternalistic leaders have put us into AUKUS or some American Anglosophere-plus military alliance designed to maintain US global hegemony.

Eugene Doyle is a community organiser and activist in Wellington, New Zealand. He received an Absolutely Positively Wellingtonian award in 2023 for community service. His first demonstration was at the age of 12 against the Vietnam War. This article was first published at his public policy website Solidarity and is republished here with permission.

New Zealand framing China as ‘the devil’ insincere, says Pacific lecturer

APR editor — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 22:33:19 +0000

An international relations lecturer says New Zealand’s framing of China in the perceived Pacific geopolitical struggle is “disingenuous”.

Victoria University of Wellington’s Nanai Anae Dr Iati Iati said one example was the lack of substance behind the notion that China was militarising the Pacific region.

He said NZ’s National Security Strategy framed Beijing within a “threat” narrative.

READ MORE: Other Pacific geopolitics reports

“There are no angels in geopolitical competition,” he said.

“But to frame one country in particular as the devil, that’s disingenuous, especially because the Pacific island countries know that is not the case,” Dr Iati said.

“So unfortunately, New Zealand is caught within this tension between China on one side, and let’s say the Anglo-American Alliance on the other side.”

Massey University associate professor Dr Anna Powles said Pacific leaders had been calling for cooperation in the region which did not undermine Pacific priorities.

However, she said there were clear examples where China had been a “disruptive actor” in the Pacific security sector, particularly in Solomon Islands.

“At the heart of what the Pacific Islands Forum and Pacific countries and scholars are saying is that geopolitics in general is disruptive.

“Therefore, the solutions need to be Pacific led,” Dr Powles added.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Pacific militarism – Asia Pacific Report

Eugene Doyle: It’s bigger than NATO and it’s heading our way

New Zealand framing China as ‘the devil’ insincere, says Pacific lecturer