Hooton continues to write some of the best columns in NZ Politics…
Winston Peters in Washington: Defence spending and diplomacy crucial for NZ – Matthew Hooton
THREE KEY FACTS
- Winston Peters faces a crucial meeting in Washington this week as governments across the world adjust to Donald Trump 2.0.
- Nicola Willis plans to amend procurement rules to favour local businesses, a shift from previous policies.
- There is pressure on New Zealand to increase defence spending to meet the 2% GDP target to maintain alliances.
If you’ve ever wondered about the point of Winston Peters’ long career, the answer is to lead us safely through the transition to Donald Trump’s new world order.
In 50 days, Trump has largely disestablished the old order carefully built by his predecessors since 1945.
Based on rules agreed through consensus but ultimately underwritten by US military might, that system delivered the longest period of great-power peace, fastest improvements in living standards and biggest reductions in poverty in human history.
But nothing lasts forever, and so it is, after 80 years, for the post-World War Two era.
…Hooton is right about many things in this column, but he’s wrong in a a couple of crucial points.
Firstly Willis changing procurement rules is aimed at watering down conditions for the poorest staff contracted to work for the Government, that’s not a response to external geopolitical pressures, that’s just National being arseholes.
Secondly, he’s wrong about Trump.
Trump is a fascist, and this is a truth no one wants to acknowledge.
This isn’t just a blip, this is America becoming fascist.
We can’t allow our Chinese Economic Overlords to dominate us any more than we can allow  the mad Orange King to rule over us!
We need a real and true Independent New Zealand, but in doing so, we have to understand it is going to cost us.
NZ needs to lift its Military, Aid and Diplomacy to 5% GDP
New Zealand spends  0.3% of its gross national income on official development assistance.
Our diplomatic arm is even less than that with a cost annually of around $500million.
Our military spend is 1.2%.
I believe we have four choices confronting our new geopolitical reality as a friction point between America and China.
1 – We capitulate to our Chinese Economic Overlords.
2 – We capitulate to our American Political Masters.
3 – We freeze in terror and make no decisions and allow both of them to molest us until one of them wins and takes us over as a vassal State.
4 – We get off our knees, stand on our two feet, acknowledge the reality of climate change and decide to properly fund (via taxing the wealthy elite) an Independent Foreign Policy.
I have no interest in the first three options.
I believe we need to lean into our strengths and we must lift our Military, Diplomacy and AID budgets up collectively to 5%.
1% AID
1% to our Diplomacy arm.
3% to our military.
AID
We have an obligation as a first world country to provide an AID budget that is free of political considerations and is focused on actual welfare of people. We need a far kinder and more generous Aid budget with none of the attached strings other countries try to push. It’s this no strings attached generosity that wins hearts and minds as opposed to the fish hooks of great nations.
We need to stop exploiting Pacific people for fruit labouring and instead pay them properly and house them properly.
We need to look to Universal Union Membership for all migrant workers to stop exploitation.
Diplomacy
Enemy to none, friend to all should be our mantra. We need to lean into NZs reputation as Independent and we need to bulk up our embassies and diplomacy and use the strengths of our culture and pacifism to stand for universal human rights and the rule based order.
We must spend aid money on basic infrastructure while acknowledging  China can out spend us, so how can NZ maintain its influence in the Pacific while desperately countering the outrageous level of corruption China and America promotes and so many Pacific Governments revel in?
Auckland is the largest Pacific Island City and we do little to celebrate or leverage off that. We need to look at offering fundamental migration opportunities for Tuvalu, Tokelau and Kiribati who face the worst impacts of climate change but we also need to think outside the square in terms of not only countering Chinese influence but beating it.
I think two ways NZ could uniquely promote its interests into the Pacific against China could be via Rugby Diplomacy and Journalism.
The All Blacks doing a tour of the South Pacific would actually be of huge cultural and sporting importance and something the Government should sponsor with taxpayer dollars to help subsidise the costs to the All Blacks as a sign of respect to the sporting and cultural contribution Pacific Island nations have provided NZ.
Why shouldn’t we use Rugby as a diplomatic tool to build standing throughout the Pacific? It’s something China couldn’t match and something NZ could excel at. China might build the stadiums, but they will be watching NZ Rugby in them!
Likewise Journalism. AUT run the excellent Pacific Media Centre to promote quality Journalism throughout the Pacific. What if NZ saw the promotion of quality Journalism as a craft throughout the Pacific as a strong way to counter corruption and Chinese influence? Scholarships, Pacific News Media websites, support of local ethical journalism these could be the pillars of promoting corruption free politics and holding those Governments to account.
Dr Robie, formerly founding director of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre and a professor of Pacific journalism has launched an independent news and current affairs website to complement his long-established Asia Pacific Report. His work should be promoted throughout the Pacific!
Rugby diplomacy and promotion of Journalistic standards throughout the Pacific could counter China and promote NZs strategic interests.
We need to look at setting up Peace Camps at Marae where young people from warring zones can come to NZ as a Peace centre.
MilitaryÂ
We can’t pretend we are in a benign environment any longer. We need a military that is focused on peace keeping and defence.
We need a drone manufacturing industry and we need an expansion of drones for patrolling our economic zone and defend the Realm.
We need a better coast guard and more surveillance capacity.
Arguments that we can’t afford huge ships are valid, but drones have shown us that we can hit expensive ships for very little cost, and if the focus is defending NZ and not going on foreign military adventures, we can use NZ as one giant air craft carrier with Drones.
We can’t outspend China or America, but we can play a far smarter game and end up with an Independent Foreign Policy.
If we want to be independent – we need to lift military, Aid and Diplomacy spending to 5% GDP.
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Why are we all of a sudden claiming Winston Peters is the second coming when in reality he is a grumpy old man who sways wherever the wind blows. This foreign minister is a whole load of shit, look how blindsided he was with Rarotonga and China can someone please enlighten me as to what he’s actually done in this portfolio other than travel the world 1st class whenever he feels like. Plus telling other MP’s to go back to Mexico is a real lesson in diplomacy and sacking Phil Goff for a minor misdemeanor because we are feeding into the madman in the white house . Yea na !!!
Agreed on Peters. He’s like some musician that once played stadiums but now plays dodgy piano bars with sleazy old bastards muttering into their drinks.
I think that Fortress Aotearoa is an idea who’s time has come. In the early days no one but Muldoon got it. That makes doing anything today nothing but psychological torture and crushing Maori and workers rights the only thing to do but dwell on the past and all of its associated horrors.
At the very least playing McGiver and Vietconging superpowers with drones and 3d printers on 3week research and development counters will totally fuck 5yearly military build ups and deployments globally. Which should be somewhat healthier.
Sounds good to me BUT we need to spend that aid money right here and fix our own before we spend on other countries .How can we spend off shore while we still have poverty and people living on the streets .? NZ needs to become an independant country but never have a president type of political system .As we have seen more and more presidents become dictators and complete arseholes very quickly .
Developing the entire south pacific is a non negotiable. There can not be an east vs west military build up in the south pacific. The responsibility to underwrite security has to be New Zealands and New Zealands alone if we are to have an independent/neutral or whatever the fuck kind of foreign policy dreamers come up with.
China is already fascist. You think Trump is going to extend presidential term limits like Xi already did?
He wants to do you worry about that .And musk is playing him like a fiddle so he will become the defacto president next election with Trump doing as Musk wants .
1% AID
1% to our Diplomacy arm.
3% to our military.
(0.5% to our neutral merchant shipping fleet)
The first task of our newly minted more muscular diplomatic arm would be to make diplomatic outreach through our embassies to lobby as many countries as possible to officially recognise New Zealand as a ‘Neutral Country” And then approach the United Nations to ratify this country’s neutral status at the UN with a vote in the General Assembly.
To become a neutral country New Zealand would have to meet the internationally recognised requirements for Neutral Countries.
To be able to continue trading we would have to invest in buying our own dedicated merchant marine cargo ships, flagged under our nation’s internationally recognised neutral flag.
We would have to completely restructure our whole military and intelligence forces.
No AUKUS pillar whatever, what so ever..
Extricating ourselves from the 5 eyes international spy web.
Recall our Orion and frigate from the Red Sea
Close the Waihopai spy base
End New Zealand in the biannual RIMPAC war games.
Commercial contracts with all foreign weapons manufacturers would have to ended..
To build a genuinely independent, military and intelligence force able to defend this country. The old Colonel Blimps whose perks include overseas junkets as guests of the Pentagon, would have to moved aside or retire, and a new echelon committed to this country’s independence swiftly promoted to replace them.
The point is this: Without international recognition of our Independent neutral status, no matter how much ‘we’, NZ Aotearoa, spend on this country’s defensive military capability, it would never be enough to militarily defend this country in case of foreign military aggression.
The laws of neutrality were first formulated in two treaties adopted at the Second Hague Peace Conference, October 18, 1907 and have stood for more than a century through two world wars.
These treaties are:
Convention (V)
Respecting the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers on land.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2186561?seq=1
Convention (XIII)
Concerning the Rights and Duties of Neutral Powers on the sea.
https://www.legal-tools.org/doc/727a73/pdf
The 1923 Hague Rules of Air Warfare
The Hague Rules of Air Warfare – articles 39 to 48, and the 2009 Manual on International Law Applicable to Air and Missile Warfare.
https://international-review.icrc.org/sites/default/files/S0020860400071370a.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HPCR_Manual_on_International_Law_Applicable_to_Air_and_Missile_Warfare
Golly.
The NZDF needs to reinstate its fighter wing with at least F16s possibly F35s to integrate with Australia. Even more so if we send troops to Ukraine.
No doubt the Putinists here are gnashing their teeth at the prospect of our army in Ukraine. If they don’t like it they can relocate elsewhere.
So if I don’t give a toss about Ukraine, that is somehow being disloyal to NZ? What a joke
We had a chance to do a thunder run straight into the Kremlin when war first broke out but we blew it and continually blow our luck on these constant strategic repositioning. I mean what the fuck are you?
Do you underwrite European Security from the South Pacific?
Do you have economic interests abroad?
Are your interests domestic only?
Or are you just a gutless whining little internet cunt.
what I don’t get about you lot is how you all down play and disrespect The New Zealand Defence Forces and expect them to build up your insane military theories.
Look I’m pro ACF. I really am. But NZDF have other more urgent priorities. I mean where are you going to get the some 600 extremely highly skilled personal to staff, train and maintain just 14 fighter jet frames from? Like from Seek??? These kids don’t exist. Most of you won’t even let your own kids drive the family car. Come on mate just ease up a little.
If defence spending were to be maintained at 3% for 20 years you “might” get an ACF. Might!
But by then we would have moved on from 4th to 6th generation fighter jets. It’s be like WW1 biplanes in amongst F16s. That’s just another reason why we should make the jump to drones. Drones just fits our culture better.
By the way I’m not just talking about airforce Drones…, but that’s a topic for another time.
By my reckoning 1% of GDP is five times the current MFAT budget. The champagne will be flowing at New Zealand House.
Agree completely.
S.E. and E. Asia are our new solid partners re China. A pretty strong bunch.
We are a part of Five Eyes. We have no diplomacy. We do what our Five Eye overlord, the USA, says, and right now, that means Russia bad, China even worse, increase military spending to five percent, as the figurehead of the USA has been banging on to all its minions to do for near a decade now.
When the school yard boss is weak, its minions must up their game to compensate for this, even though there is no other schoolyard gang on the horizon angling to take over the school. There is just a heck of a lot more students wanting to mind their own business. Still, there is introspection among the minions generating a lot of fearmongering that spreads like wildfire through the schoolyard gossip channels over the possibility of someone new arising from the yard to do to us, what we have always been doing to everybody else. This is where we are at right now, being asked, if not ordered, to dig deeper into our pockets in order to maintain the club, despite its weak and erratic leader, that has always ruled the schoolyard!
Can a school function without a gang – are we even allowed to think this way, let alone ask this question?
Lucky Winston is in office to save us.
Yes.