The ratcheting up of tension and trade war talk in just a week is a reminder of how trigger happy the geopolitical situation in the Pacific has suddenly become.
Australia’s announcement to purchase a fleet of British designed nuclear submarines with the sudden possibility of an immediate purchase of five Virginia-class submarines from the US changes the calculations in the Pacific immensely.
For the West, the Australian nuclear submarines armed with hypersonic missiles presents a first strike capacity platform against mainland China that the Chinese will find utterly unacceptable.
Hawks within China who have been arguing for a strike against Taiwan before Australia gain the newly built submarines capacity in 2040, will be arguing to strike now before Australia buys the Virginia-class submarines from the US.
As those new calculations are considered in this Chess match between China and America, NZs SIS have outed a possible spy while Chippy was unambiguous that NZ would consider sanctions against China if China resources Russia as part of the Ukrainian war effort, a conflict that China now views as strategically import to back Russia in so as to sap American strength.
Xi visiting Putin as Putin has war crimes levelled against him makes these geopolitical tensions even sharper.
The threat of a trade war between China and NZ occurs as America prepares sanctions and the NZ State secretly discusses moving away from China economically to avoid them having any hold over us if they start a trade war.
On the heels of that, the former US Ambassador says that the US should infill any drop in trade China threats us with.
The constant drum beat for war means we must consider our geopolitical position, and from that point of view, only the Māori Party have engaged meaningfully by suggesting neutrality…
“In 1987 Aotearoa declared that we were nuclear free. Te Pāti Māori now declares that Aotearoa must be militarily neutral, a Switzerland of the South Pacific” said Rawiri Waititi.
“We must asset our Rangatiratanga and Mana Māori Motuhake. In doing that, we must assert our own Foreign Policy and Military requirements. We will no longer have our sovereignty determined by others, whether it is in Canberra, London, Washington, Beijing or Moscow.
“We will no longer be a political football in the wars of imperial powers. We will no longer act as a Pacific spy base for the Five-Eyes Alliance”
…this is an intelligent proposal and alongside our independent foreign policy should be the bindings of a strong national identity.
Let’s be clear, not one of us wants to get tricked by America into fighting China.
We need to increase Military GDP spending to 3%. Interestingly Labour have quietly ratcheted GDP military spending from just over 1% to just under 2%.
I believe that the climate crisis means we need a vastly larger military to cope with civil disasters and if we are attempting to distance ourselves from China and America, we need to make a decision to dramatically lift what we spend on the military for purely defensive capacity.
How would we go about defending the realm of NZ and all our economic exclusive zone?
…Andrew Little is the new Minister now.
He must consider a new Drone industry using Raytheon tech and Rocketlab skills to build NZ drones and service them for the NZ military.
He must consider more special forces, more patrol boats and more Military transport capacity within the Pacific for climate emergency deployment.
Neutrality would allow us the ethical and moral right to build our military.
NZ is no longer in a benign environment and America seems hell bent on starting a conflict with China, a conflict NZ wants no part in.
We don’t want to be controlled economically by Beijing and we don’t want to be controlled politically by Washington.
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Agree with TPM & Martyn’s comments here on neutrality with increased NZ military capacity.
It will require an ongoing extra Parliamentary political campaign-the yanks and deputy dog Australia would not be happy to put it mildly if AO/NZ sidelined 5 Eyes-but hey we did it over Nuke Free NZ.
To mitigate potential US/China blowback there would need to be major outreach to BRICS and other smaller nations for mutually beneficial bilateral trade and cultural agreements.
Neutrality could save us from a whole lot of extra pain, in what is already becoming a world of climate munted instability.
In matters of trade, New Zealand has never been part of “a benign environment” and has always been “controlled economically” by whoever would sign a trade deal the us. While a trade deal might be defined as two, or more, parties agreeing to terms of mutual benefit to each other, the fact is, when one party is selling what can be readily had from elsewhere, it takes what it’s bloody well given. That was the case when Britain took all that we could produce and it’s the case now. And any pretense that it is otherwise is just window-dressing to make our politicians and civil servants appear effective.
We not only take what we are given – we even allow foreign parties to own many of the primary production facilities that produce the goods we sell to them, for Christ’s sake!
If anyone really wants to understand what’s behind Australia’s decision to spend billions on submarines, they should read and listen to what former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating has to say on the matter. https://consortiumnews.com/2023/03/17/a-sane-voice-amidst-the-madness/
Yes in a war with elephants the mice must stay out of range, economically, politically and militarily.
A self-sufficient Aotearoa run as a socialist republic by the working majority to show how small states can defend themselves from domination by joining forces, resisting sanctions, battening down for global warming and building back better from the ground up.
And for that to happen we need a revolution to take the power from the white gentry and their hangers on who would take us all down the road to a bigger bang for a buck.
In reality a “neutral” Aotearoa NZ could only be fought for on an anti capitalist basis because other wise the local rulers and class relations would still prevail.
USA is applying the same playbook to Taiwan and China as it did to Russia and Ukraine.
Conflict is the objective.
We are already controlled politically by Washington. This is why we are not a neutral country and why neutrality is merely a concept rather than a notion due serious consideration. Clearly politics trumps economics given our frosty behaviour towards China despite our economic ties to them.
Point being, why aren’t we discussing this issue of “control”, what our government has control over and what it doesn’t, and why this is how things are, given that there is a high likelihood that polical decisions will be made that go against both our national interests and of what we need, right now, given the current economic climate.
Right now, the Australian government is making multi – billion dollar decisions that their citizens have little say over. How long before we do something similar. This is not democracy – we need to start discussing the issue of control/sovereignty of who really is running our government and of what say, if any, we have in influencing these all important decisions being made in our name.
The geopolitical issue simply raises a bigger issue – who is in control – and what can be done about it.
Last week Paul Keating spelled out exactly (in his own inimitable way) what the Oz Govt has done wrong in abrogating their sovereignty & how the mainstream media have been fully complicit in it (note ~1hr interview) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmgxAoa1n-8
Desperately need Ron Mark back as Minister of Defense. Angry Andy us past his use by date.
Yes, I’ve only just read this lengthy article on Consortium News of the interview https://consortiumnews.com/2023/03/17/a-sane-voice-amidst-the-madness/
I am impressed, so much truth and insight by a former top-level politician in this day and age.
You can take it as read that Australia is a nuclear target.
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