ONE OFFICIAL ERRUPTION of imperialistic bile in 72 hours could be dismissed as coincidence; two looks like a plan. The first spewed from the mouth of Gavin Williamson, the United Kingdom’s Secretary of Defence, on Monday (11/2/19). The second came today (13/2/19) from Admiral Phil Davidson, Commander of the newly minted United States Indo-Pacific Command. Williamson was delivering a speech to the Royal United Services Club. Davidson was testifying before the US Senate’s Armed Services Committee. The principal target of both men was the Peoples Republic of China.
The United States, at least, has the excuse of bordering the Pacific Ocean. Williamson’s excuse amounted to little more than imperial nostalgia. Although, at 42, he is too young to have any personal memories of the days when Britannia ruled the waves (and 25 percent of the Earth’s land surface!) Williamson clearly believes that the British Empire was a-very-good-thing. So, too, it seems, would be its resurrection in the twenty-first century. This is what he told his fellow militarists:
“Brexit has brought us to a great moment in our history. A moment when we must strengthen our global presence, enhance our lethality and increase our mass.”
What that means in practical terms, Williamson went on to inform his audience, is that when the UK’s new aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth II, is ready for active service, in 2021, she and her squadron of F-35 fighter aircraft, will be sent to carry the Union Jack proudly back to the Pacific Ocean. The warship’s presence there, on behalf of what he calls “The Anglosphere” will signal to all those who believe they can “flout international law” with impunity (a.k.a the Chinese) that the old imperial gang is back in the neighbourhood – and it’s packing heat.
Now, if this sounds completely daft to you, then you’re not alone. The Guardian’s Simon Jenkins responded to Williamson’s speech by accusing the Defence Secretary’s brain of being “absent without leave”, and pithily dismissed his ideas as “the pompous rantings of a 1950s Tory on the make”.
That it was actually something more serious than simply another example of the Brexit-induced lunacy of the British Conservative Party, only became clear two days later, when Admiral Davidson testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“China represents our greatest long-term strategic threat to a free and open Indo-Pacific and to the United States,” Davidson told the Committee. “Those who believe this is reflective of an intensifying competition between an established power in the United States and a rising power in China are not seeing the whole picture.”
China, he warned, is responsible for unleashing a “fundamental divergence in values” across the region. Two incompatible visions of the future are, thus, in fierce competition. “Through fear and coercion, Beijing is working to expand its form of ideology in order to bend, break and replace the existing rules-based international order,” the Admiral warned. “In its place, Beijing seeks to create a new order, one with Chinese characteristics led by China, an outcome that displaces the stability and peace of the Indo-Pacific that has endured for over 70 years.”
This is, of course, dangerous nonsense. But, then, ‘dangerous nonsense’ is a pretty apt summation of US foreign and defence policy under Donald Trump.
Chinese policy under President Xi Jinping, on the other hand, is entirely consistent with that of any great continental power anxious to both protect and extend its economic relationships with the rest of the world. In other words, Xi is following in the footsteps of every Chinese leader fortunate enough to exercise power in a period of rising national prosperity and expanding trade.
Does this mean that the Chinese state is now committed to securing the sea lanes immediately adjacent to its shores from the arbitrary military interference of hostile powers? Of course it does – and not without cause. The Royal Navy which today talks about enhancing its “lethality” and taking action against countries that “flout international law”, is the very same Royal Navy which, around the time Aotearoa’s Maori chiefs were signing the Treaty of Waitangi, was bombarding Chinese ports on behalf of the drug lords of the British East India Company. Talk about “bending, breaking and replacing” an international order!
One wonders, too, what Admiral Davidson would make of a Chinese aircraft carrier and its accompanying task force of heavily-armed warships steaming up and down the Gulf of Mexico, or the eastern seaboard of the United States. Would Chinese protestations that they were simply there to preserve the “peace and stability” of the Western Hemisphere be meekly received by the American government? Or, would Washington tell Beijing to do what it has told every great power to do since the Presidency of James Monroe (1817-1825): Get the hell out of America’s back yard!
This is what New Zealand is up against in 2019: Madcap Tory nostalgia for Britain’s imperial past and the manifold hypocrisies of American exceptionalism. Bad enough by themselves, but in addition to accepting the current irrationality of the UK’s and the USA foreign and defence policies, we are also expected to join in the diplomatic brown-nosing of the Canadians and the Australians.
For a little country, 26 percent of whose exports go a nation accused by the British of “flouting international law”, and whose leaders are, according to an American admiral, determined to “expand its form of ideology in order to bend, break and replace the existing rules-based international order” – this is a bit of a problem.
It would be helpful, therefore, if our government could call upon the New Zealand academic community for assistance. Unfortunately, the latter all appear to be enthralled to the conventional wisdom of the “Anglosphere”. Certainly, there was precious little help to be had from Professor Robert Patman of the University of Otago. Rather than a balanced assessment of the vexed geopolitical issues in which this country has become involuntarily (except for Winston!) enmeshed; or some guidance as to the safest path through the diplomatic bramble-patch in which it finds itself; the good professor decided that what RNZ’s Morning Report listeners needed instead was a generous breakfast portion of Anglospheric propaganda.
Asked to respond to the Chinese tech-giant Huawei’s placement of a full-page ad in the nation’s largest newspapers – an ad which very gently upbraided our government for bowing to the pressures applied on behalf of Huawei’s American competitors by the Trump Administration, Professor Patman responded by delivering a little lecture on how important it was for New Zealand to uphold its “pluralistic” values, and not “appease” an “authoritarian regime” for the sake of a few “economic perks”.
What? Is the good professor telling New Zealand that it must not follow the example of the United States – which appeased Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, the dismemberer of journalists, for the sake of a few billion barrels of Arabian oil?
As if New Zealand wasn’t aware of the authoritarian character of the Chinese political system back in 2008 when its government became the first western nation to sign a free trade agreement with the People’s Republic. As if that privileged and critically important economic relationship entailed no obligation to ‘agree to disagree’ about those core institutions of New Zealand and Chinese society which draw their inspiration from profoundly different moral and political traditions.
Professors of international relations should be made of sterner and more sophisticated stuff!
But, then, so should New Zealand politicians.
So, guess little old New Zealand may want to think about a return of the think big projects and energy independence. Expect for hydro and a few others New Zealand is really exposed as an island nation to naval blockades. And now adays naval blockades don’t even have to be missile destroyers off the coast. Blockades can come in the form of sanctions or economic embargos, same thing really, just with out the convenient excuse of “but muh tyranny of distance.”
I love how people point to Britain and China and ask us to consider how both, one a lion and one a hyena, are equally dangerous, while oblivious to the fact that we are also a lion and from the same litter.
NZ should be friends with all nations including China and the US. But we need to be independent of them economically and socially and just work together with both nations in a cordial and respectful manner not bend over for both in every aspect.
US and China have considerable social problems in their own countries and can hardly be considered to be kind and benevolent leaders!
NZ also should not allow themselves to be bought up by overseas Nationals either as we are in danger of being a breadbasket and dual residency choice of Asia ( with Kiwis supplying the free education and medical and super not available in their countries) with the patsy of the US paying them to run our defence and economic muscles for super rich business not for NZ ends, but their own.
As we see with Rainbow warrior our allies are not exactly our allies and care about terrorism in our own country.
Ironically we were more respected internationally when we stuck to our guns post Rainbow Warrior and that is why we gained international respect as a go between which has now been eroded as NZ has become one of the biggest governments who seem to be obsessed with trade deals that don’t benefit NZ.
NZ has gone from being respected internationally to becoming just another easily bought, suggestible, Pacific nation…
Well we’ve got an FTA with China and the ANZUS treaty with America. That sets out the broad strokes of how we may wish to deal with these pre madonnas in the future. We can’t buy Chinese land but they can buy our land, the upside is we get to sell bulk goods in China with no tariffs.
The treaty with America means we don’t attack each other so we can focus on getting ourselves out of the shit, nothing about joining in on American military expeditions, wouldn’t think it appropriate for NZ to send a frigate on one of them freedoms of navigation exercises close to Chinese land bases.
The big concern is China pinching American military technology. That will just not be tolerated. The intelligence community has always been the gatekeepers of secrets and top secret technologies. It was a strategic mistake to bring freemarket ideology and profit into the realm of the defence force.
the upside is we get to sell bulk goods in China with no tariffs…. sadly our business investments in China seem to lose money… Fonterra in particular. It provides a wonderfully cheap buying opportunity though for Chinese Nationals who now seem to own many farms, water rights, Silver Fern farms, Tegal, Wrightsons… just a few investments… Soon NZ won’t even own it’s own seeds to supply farmers in this country…
the upside is we get to sell bulk goods in China with no tariffs…. sadly our business investments in China seem to lose money… Fonterra in particular.
It provides a wonderfully cheap buying opportunity though for Chinese Nationals who now seem to own many former NZ farms, water rights, Silver Fern farms, Tegal, Wrightsons… just a few investments… Soon NZ won’t even own it’s own seeds to supply farmers in this country or have any water left in the aquifer…
A brick bat for the whities there but softly softly on the nation that re educates, imprisons, murderers or organ harvests and militarizes international waters as it expands its influence.
Hypocrisy we signed a FTA with them? For sure, and except for an elite group of the already rich, we are the poorer for it. Helen Clark et al can take the heat for that.
What was your stance on the FTA then Chris?
Think ahead a few years. Who do you want running the country, the Americans or the Chinese? The ideologicaly convenient “ neither” becomes less of an option every day.
Re-education.
Watch CNN, Fox News or any of the propaganda outlet.
“According to businessinsider.com, 90% of the media in the United States is owned and operated by only six companies. This means that GE, News-corp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner, and CBS are literally controlling almost everything we see, hear, read, listen to, and watch. This means that six companies decide what to feed to us. Six companies control what we know, and what we don’t. Six companies determine what is important news, and what is not.”
An guess where does RNZ get its news from.
All this sabre-rattling is making me very nervous. We have an imperialist power facing a new economic power, both nuclear armed, and with a petulant, ignorant manchild in the White House……. what could possibly go wrong??
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lChLpK8kQr4
Foreboding the next Great War, to start in the Pacific, back to the future, or past, or what? Once it was Japan, now it is China, different players, different times, different systems, but military boys like to play with all the nice toys that are being manufactured for them 24/7. Oh those toys must not go to waste, they must be used, at some time, for sure.
Prepare for WAR, friends!
aircraft carriers…expensive floating targets in times of conflict
Thank you Chris for an informed article that gives us insight that few others would provide. I am sure that a number of pro-Americans are wondering how to find fault…
The bequest of WW 2 was an ideal of justice. Our covering for many decades. The self-interests did their things but if they manifestly poked through that ideal of fairness everyone shot them down. They had to trick their way through.
So we’re alone in the south-west Pacific without that cloak, even everyday virtue hollowing away. 75 years from relying on one another for life and death. But we need ideals nationally and internationally. China isn’t that in any way. But if her pursuit of self-interest keeps clear of my values I’m fine, given our ‘allies’ similar pursuits. The nature of power, rather than of China, gives me pause however.
I also thank you Chris for a well thought out and balanced blog. It worries me that many New Zealanders still base their thoughts on the us empire, on the (totally deserved) appreciation of assistance during WW11. That was over seventy years ago, and the empire today with it’s murderous economic and regime change wars is a totally different beast.(thinking of Smedley Butler maybe not) The empire could care less about our tiny military, but value’s the (by now probably undeserved) reputation of the honest little country at the bottom of the world, to bolster the BS coalition of the willing??? Anybody who believes that the us and it’s poodle the uk would come to the assistance of NZ if doing so was not economically expedient is delusional. What happened to the little country that made it’s own decisions and stood by them,(anti nuclear etc.) I hold no particular brief for China, but as stated in someone else’s reply to a previous blog, you cannot expect to sell a large part of your exports to a country while repeatedly poking them in the eye with a sharp stick (5 eyes).
The analogy of Chinese warships sailing up and down the coast of america is apt, that would be seen as a total declaration of war, but the reverse is touted as the brave americans keeping the shipping lanes open,(when were they closed)???
ps.
I also notice our on to it, impartial, investigative, msm are doing a great job keeping us up to date on the inquiry in to the botched “operation burnham”.
I have always advocated for New Zealand to look at foreign policy of the third way.
At the moment one way seems to be to lean towards the U.S. and the other towards China.
How about we lean towards the South Pacific? Make it the core of our aid programme and invest most of our time, resources and effort in terms of foreign policy making and implementation on the South Pacific.
The U.S. is not our backyard and nor is China. The South Pacific is.
and the South pacific is (unfortunately) part of this solitary global biosphere….you may wish to ignore the rest of the world (i know at times I do) but sadly they will not return the favour
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