How to handle China’s ‘big stick’ diplomacy on Aukus
Chinese ambassador Wang Xiaolong’s decision to insert himself into NZ’s Aukus debate makes it clear we are now in the regional power politics game, Nicholas Khoo writes
I’m not sure people comprehend what a challenging decision by China this was.
This new Government’s sudden lurch into the lap of America is going to have an impact on our trading relationship with China and the moment Winston or Judith sign us up to Pillar 2, there will be a sudden move against our trade with China by China.
I don’t sense in China’s 5000 odd year history the sense of expansionist Empire that America represents.
I just can’t see China launching a legitimate invasion of Taiwan proper, although I certainly think they would want a symbolic victory of taking over one of Taiwan’s small islands.
It doesn’t make sense for China to use its military when Greyzone warfare and China’s economic muscle can gain it what it wants without military violence.
That’s not too say China’s authoritarian Communist Regime hasn’t abused their own people with an Orwellian censorship and mass surveillance, but we shouldn’t allow American interests to dictate our relationship with China.
That sound you can hear is David Lange rolling in his grave at the loss of our independent foreign policy – Helen Clark has righteously called on us to flex our diplomatic muscle rather than military virtue signals.
Why Winston is making insinuations about Bob Carr and China when his very own Prime Minister is best mates with John Key who seems to be Beijing’s Ceremonial Ambassador to NZ, is all a bit beyond me.
Why the Christ we are signing up to America’s latest military profit margin campaign is an unanswerable as to why we enslaved ourselves to our new Chinese Economic overlords in the first place.
AUKUS represents a dozen nuclear subs that if armed with hypersonic missiles, can sit off the coast of China and hit them before China knew they were hit. AUKUS is a first strike platform, why wouldn’t the Chinese view this as a major destabilizer and convince hawks inside Xi’s regime that the window for military action is now before these subs are put into commission.
Winston is getting us sucked into this vortex.
Every military analyst argues that bombing the Houthies will only empower the Houthies. We are helping target drone strikes against the Houthie and did so again last month – why are NZ taxpayers paying to bomb the poorest country in the Middle East in a tactic experts argue won’t work?
While this is happening, as of this month right now China has specially embedded police units inside the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tonga and Kiribati to the many complaints of Americans and Australians.
In Kiribati, the nation’s parliament suspended foreign-born judges that serve the nation’s highest courts in a move that many suspect is Chinese driven.
The Solomon Islands election is still in dispute with the pro Chinese Government yet to be confirmed and Papua New Guinea has seen enormous drug busts that are suspected to be Chinese Government backed Grey Zone actions.
Throughout the Pacific an insidious Chinese influence is replacing the insidious American influence – we are naive to think China is not acting aggressively in the Grey Zone, but why tie ourselves to America if Trump wins in November?
That would be madness!
We must seriously reconsider what our obligations and responsibilities are and they should be the protection of the Realm of NZ.
We should also reject American encroachment into the Cook Islands and Niue as a matter of principle FFS.
We should look to increase our Military spending especially with looming catastrophic climate change requiring civil defence responses.
Pillar 2 shouldn’t be an integration into the American Military Industrial Complex, it should be for the development and manufacture of local made drones specifically used for surveillance and protecting our economic zone and dependencies.
We can not pretend that the planet is stabilising when it is unravelling, the need to project force to defend our neighbourhood and enable civil defence responses is only going to increase, not decrease in the immediate and near future.
Entering a military pact that specifically targets China, our largest economic trading partner, seems pretty fucking stupid and why would we want to enable the next American Military Industrial Complex Profit Campaign?
Part of the latest American War Budget recently passed has earmarked billions for new naval bases throughout the Pacific.
Let’s be very clear.
We will NOT let the Americans have a military naval base here.
Right?
We need to refocus and modernise the intent and purpose of our military while building our own capacity to build and manufacture our own drones for the NZ Military.
Friend to all, enemy to none must still be our diplomatic stance and values, but we need to be able to protect our own home and our own interests and modernising and repurposing our Military for the immediate challenges ahead demands our attention.
Climbing into bed with America to start friction with China shouldn’t be our purpose, neither should we become so economically dependent upon China that we are subservient to them and their Authoritarian regime.
I want a New Zealand that is run by Wellington, not Washington and not Beijing.
“Friend to all, enemy to none must still be our diplomatic stance and values”
I have never understood this statement. To me it reads as “it doesn’t matter what horrific acts you commit as a nation we’re still going to be your friend”.
And despite what Helen Clark says it’s easy to be independent when you know that if you did get into trouble someone else would be there to bail you out.
Do you not have different levels of friendship depending on the person? As a country we could have limited activity with countries that have human rights issues while not doing anything to deliberately hurt them.
No. If I see someone deciding to attack someone else because they’re smaller and weaker and have something they want to take I’m not going to be there friend.
I’ll stand up with the person being picked on.
“We will NOT let the Americans have a military naval base here.
Right?”
Why does that look like the text for a 4 panel meme featuring Anakin & Padmé?
They already have what would be called a ‘ballistic missile launch site’ on the Mahia peninsula if it was in the DPRK.
Not to mention spy bases used to provide intelligence to the ‘israelis’ on high value targets like schoolteachers, babies, nurses and paramedics.
USA naval base in Whangarei harbour masquarading as a dry dock
China is exercising their soft power inviting the Arab leaders to china for regional and economic talks. Even Egypt ruler Sisi needs to contemplate his continued relationship with the US and his zionist handlers. This far-right climate denying racist govt is flirting with superpowers playing a game that could land us in hot water either way we can’t remain neutral because these superpowers are telling us to pick sides and guess what side this govt is gonna choose?
Pretty sure we already host the U.S. Nazy out of Christchurch airport, have done since the 50s.
AUKUS is a limp dick Alliance of Warmongering imbeciles consisting mainly of Australia, Sth Korea, Philippines & Japan etc, they are the South Pacific version of NATO that the Yanks want to use as sacrificial lambs & canon fodder to wage what would be a losing War against China while the Americans would sit back like cowards & watch others do the fighting & dying on their behalf like what they are doing in Ukraine? And Submarines & Blue Water Navy’s are old WW2 Technology’s that are useless in Today’s modern Military age, you only need to see how ineffective they are by seeing what’s happening in the Red Sea with the Houthis shutdown of Shipping & the impotence & humiliating inability of the US Navy & it’s Allies to stop the Houthis attacks, Yemen doesn’t even possess a Navy! America or its Military Organisations like NATO & AUKUS still don’t possess Hypersonic missile Technology despite America spending over a Trillion dollars to try & build a working prototype, they have failed utterly to build one, only China & Russia have that Tech especially the Russians who have fired them off in Ukraine! But you are correct in one respect, we must keep out of big power Geopolitics, while Elephants are stomping around in the jungle, the smaller game must get out of the way or risk getting trampled in the melee?
Emperor Xi has a grand vision for a new world order.
And it looks suspiciously similar to the inside of a concentration camp.
Name an American politician- or one from the ‘National’ party here- who shouldn’t be in a prison camp for their crimes against humanity.
Welcome to the dangerous inter regnum at the end of unipolarity.
The majority of the world’s people will continue to act in their immediate economic interests, that is selling the commodities they produce with their labour to those who still manufactures stuff, and for currency swaps and not the $US. This means the unipolarity of the US becomes a bi-polarity of the US and China. We just have to stop the crazy Anglo-American white supremacists from dragging us into a crazy interegnum of another world war before the working masses take over and turn the bi-polarity into a genuine multipolarity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b40qNkWqGuM
I wondered about bipolarity but I’m not sure that China will push for it. Her associates Russia and Iran have the energy resources China needs and they wish multipolarity. China gains more in trade from multipolarity than the cost of being a bipolar power. Better for them to share the cost of facing the dying imperium with everybody else.
But if unipolarity (US hegemony) is dying because its capital is not growing as it is destroying the forces of production, and the other pole (China) is capital that is growing because it is developing the forces of production, then as the US pole is decentred and the China pole centred then the system would no longer be one of opposing poles and become multipolar or just a system, say socialism.
“I want a New Zealand that is run by Wellington, not Washington and not Beijing.’
Well said Martyn, that is one of a very small number of your opinions I 100% agree with. Epictetus said, “No man is free who is not master of himself.” I guess that applies to nations too. However, to get that freedom NZ needs money to buy what it needs but cannot manufacture for itself. If we could get better prices from other nations than China, we would do it. That’s not “economic enslavement” that’s business, if we don’t trade with China, we would be less free, not more.
War and cruelty seem to be a regular thing in human society. We seem to discuss it in a matter of fact way. Our education does not seem to get to the coalface of human behaviours and I pass on some examples I have read about in my random reading to keep in mind so we can be aware of the normalisation process we have gone though to accept it and not be shocked as we should be when news of bad deeds reach us. Like turning the volume down on music we don’t like. They tried music in Wellington on the protesters when the gummint should have taken steps to consider their motives for travelling so far, and so long to be there.
They don’t hold wars as heroically as they once did. That is a sardonic line but we need to take it all as if a vicious disease. Have a look at wikipedia on syphilis – there is a treatment for it. Is there a treatment vaccinating us against the callousness and cruelty that comes on leaders when choosing war, or those people who will join cruel groups like the USA Ku Klux Klan or, not to pick on just whites, there were the Indian thugs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee
The practices of thuggee cruelty were passed down the generations.
The leadership of many of the groups tended to be hereditary with family members sometimes serving together in the same band. Such Thugs were known as aseel. Not all thugs were trained by their family but rather by experienced thugs called ‘guru’. While they usually kept their acts a secret, female thugs also existed and were called baronee in Ramasee, while an important male Thug was called baroo.
Thugs considered themselves to be the children of Kali, having been created from her sweat. However, many of the Thugs who were captured and convicted by the British were Muslims.
There were many wars in Europe, and at one time the British had coloured uniforms with particular designs to suit the regiment. Horses were used for transport and unwittingly provided a style and nobility to the unlovely pursuit. Women as battleground nurses and medics with Florence Nightingale and the Red Cross attempted some higher humanity. Then war weaponry developed gas and took the morality further out of it. Now there are drones and missiles and space and people may fight from a keyboard miles away from the ‘theatre of war’ or ‘killing fields’.
It really is hard to hold onto rationality while discussing war and this constant position of one country putting pressure on another, often because they have something the other side wants. Then there were religious wars, one being the 30 years war in Europe.
The Thirty Years War began as a religious war, fought between Roman Catholics and Protestants in Germany. It developed into a political struggle between the Catholic Habsburgs of the Holy Roman Empire (Austria, most of the German princes and occasionally Spain).
Thirty Years War (1618-48) – Military Maps
Royal Collection Trust https://militarymaps.rct.uk › thirty-years-war-1618-48
And I have just read about the religious, burning heretics alive: The Treasure of Montsegur :
A Novel of the Cathars by Sophy Burnham
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism
The Cathar vision of the universe was dualist: light and the spirit (good) confronted matter and darkness (evil). This belief led them to follow an ascetic way of life. Considered as heretics, the Cathars were decimated (the Albigensian crusade, initiated by Pope Innocent III).
Fires in history: the cathar heresy, the inquisition and brulology
National Institutes of Health (NIH) (.gov)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov › articles › PMC4883611
There is a ‘shadow’ crossing the world and a willingness to hurt each other and excuse it because…could Jung’s shadow explain partly?
What is shadow according to Jung?
Enter the Shadow. This is the part of our unconscious mind that Jung believed to hold all the things about ourselves that we repress, whether because they are evil, socially unacceptable, harmful to others, or detrimental to our own health.
The Jungian Shadow and Self-Acceptance
tamug.edu https://www.tamug.edu › nautilus › articles
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology)
According to Jung, the shadow sometimes overwhelms a person’s actions; for example, when the conscious mind is shocked, confused, or paralyzed by indecision. “A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps…
The “Shadow” in Jungian psychology and its potential …
Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com › topic › show › 20874241…
19 Nov 2019 — “The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without
(One comment from a discussion ‘Underground Knowledge’ on this link:)
I always remember hearing a quote from somewhere or other that always stuck with me: ‘The more moralistic a society becomes, the more immoral its citizens will be.’
Seeking balance – is that what we need to do?
When working in the Central Pacific, I witness some Chinese naval ships docking at a port where the fishing vessels I was working on were also docking. These docks were made by the Chinese, under the guise of improving local infrastructure, and were made deep enough to accept Chinese naval vessels. Years ago stuff and NZ Herald were reporting on how the Chinese were releasing weather balloons off South Island Chinese owned dairy farms to “improve their South Pacific ballistic missile technology.”
The fact that China are threatening to pull economic levers to try and force NZ to manoeuvre away from a stronger relationship with the US is the very reason we need a stronger relationship with the US. China is expansionist and, while they may not start a war, they are manoeuvring themselves to take advantage of any future instability. They are not our friends, NZ is being used as their pawn.
LOL, and don’t the Americans, and French have more than a few warships in the Pacific?
The Chinese are very successful at buying countries.
Avoiding that process will cause economic pain
The question is how much pain can we cope with. The Nz Chinese diaspora being controlled from Chinese police stations is probably the point we should say no
Tyrannies need to expand to keep their legitimacy at home. At least big ones. Yeah, America is the worst interferer in history. What China is doing in the South China Sea is just strange.
They remember being bullied.
They need to leave Tibet and East Turkestan.
They’re not the worst but we need to do less trade with them. A tyranny bleeds into democracies. And the rich have already undermined ours quite a lot.
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