China is coming, can we trust National and no Peace NZ, we need more military not less

China has become our greatest strategic issue in the Pacific and trying to keep an independent foreign policy to stop us getting sucked into another American conflict will take all our skill.

China is coming

The plans China has in the Pacific to integrate Police forces, telecommunications and expand their Fishing Militia bases which have traditionally been used to encroach and take other nations fishing grounds are proof positive that the Cold War in the Pacific is now heating up…

China ‘risks new Cold War’ as it pursues strategic alliances in Pacific

Beijing has been accused of risking a new “Cold War” with the West after it emerged that China’s foreign minister is pursuing a regional deal with almost a dozen Pacific islands including heightened security co-operation.

The five-year plan signals Beijing’s intent to significantly expand its footprint in the Indo-Pacific region. It is set to be discussed by Wang Yi and his Pacific counterparts in Fiji on May 30, as China’s foreign minister embarks on a tour of the region starting on Thursday.

But in a letter sent to 21 Pacific leaders, David Panuelo, the president of the Federated States of Micronesia, said his nation would argue the “pre-determined joint communique” should be rejected because it could prompt a new “Cold War” between China and the West, according to Reuters.

The plan would shift Pacific Islands that hold diplomatic relations with China “very close into Beijing’s orbit, intrinsically tying the whole of our economies and societies to them”, he added.

…so China wants the power over the Pacific that America has had over NZ and Australia since the NSA gained access to all our mass surveillance powers?

Charming.

The difference of course is that America is an imperfect Democracy led by a Military Industrial Complex while China is a ruthless Authoritarian Communist state currently carrying out a cultural genocide on the Tibetan People, the people of Hong Kong and the Uyghurs…

The Xinjiang Police Files: Thousands of photos emerge from China’s secretive Uyghur detention camps

Thousands of leaked police photos have emerged from China’s Xinjiang province, shedding light on the secretive detention camps where more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are believed to be detained.

…China is our Economic Overlord, Australia is our loud mouthed rude neighbour and America is our 5 Eyes Political Master, so to think we will be immune from such volatility between China, Australia and America is delusional.

To date NZ has managed to keep out of any direct confrontation with China because China bought the National Party and the National Party did everything in their decade of power to bend over backwards to China.

Key put all our cows in one Beijing paddock off the back of Helen’s free trade deal, and we’ve been trapped ever since.

China is not a benign force for good, we need to understand that.

It’s funny because of the identity politics dynamics and intersectionist values at play that China gets cuddles rather than denouncement in NZ – remember when Covid first broke out & the woke rampaged against anyone critical of China?

Why do you need a shoot to kill policy at a re-education camp?

Speak up China, the world is listening.

Can we trust National with an aggressive China?

Isn’t this a dangerous escalation of influence by China over our largest Political Party and doesn’t it beg the question, is the National Party just a front for Chinese interests?

Ex National MPs Jenny Shipley, Don Brash, Ruth Richardson and Chris Tremain are Director’s of the China Construction Bank, Judith Collins had interaction with Chinese Officials to help her husbands Chinese Company, Oravida gain more Chinese money  and former MP Maurice Williamson’s love affair with  Donghua Liu saw him become Liu’s personal handyman when doing up Liu’s batch and pressing the Police to drop domestic violence charges. 

Let’s not forget the allegations of Jian Yang being a Chinese spy inside the National Party, or that the the ‘Blue Dragons’ are one of the largest factions now inside the National Party or that a Chinese Businessman recently inquired about getting two Chinese candidates onto the National Party list after making a $100 000 donation.

National’s 9 years in power were built upon selling as much cheap milk powder to China and foreign speculation in the domestic property market, so when National make policy, are they answering to Wellington or Beijing?

No ‘Peace NZ’, we need more military not less

As geopolitical heats the Cold War in the Pacific, ‘Peace Movement Aotearoa’ are calling for us to stop spending money on our military…

Military Spending Increases: Time To #BudgetForPeace

Military spending allocated in the 2022 Wellbeing Budget is $6,077,484,000 – an average of more than $116.8 million every week, and a 10.4% increase on actual spending in 2021. [1]

This year’s increase illustrates yet again that the government remains stuck in the same old thinking about ‘security’, choosing to focus on an outdated narrow concept of military security rather than real security that gives all New Zealanders the chance to flourish. As but one example, the Budget allocation for preventing and eliminating family and sexual violence, which would provide real security to so many vulnerable individuals and families, is equivalent to less than 30 hours of the amount of military spending.

It is shameful that funding for combat-ready armed forces continues to be a spending priority when there are so many other major issues facing Aotearoa: the shocking levels of poverty and social inequality, lack of affordable housing, failing health system and substandard hospital buildings, insufficient action on climate change, and a range of other areas requiring urgent attention. Military spending negatively impacts on all of these by diverting resources that could be put to better use.

Similarly, diplomacy and negotiation are more positive ways for New Zealand to relate to communities in other parts of the world instead of deploying combat-ready armed forces overseas, but the total amount allocated for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (including overseas development assistance) is only 29.4% of the amount of military spending.

For decades successive governments have stated that there is no direct military threat to this country; and even if there was, the New Zealand armed forces are not of a sufficient size to deter any military aggression, yet military spending keeps increasing.

Rather than continuing to focus on outdated narrow military security concepts, we urgently need to transition from maintaining combat-ready armed forces to civilian agencies that meet the wider security needs of all New Zealanders and our Pacific neighbours. Given New Zealand’s comparatively limited resources, the desperate need for substantially increased social funding domestically, as well as the urgent need for climate justice in the Pacific and globally, it simply makes no sense to continue to spend billions on combat equipment and activities.

Fisheries and resource protection, border control, and maritime search and rescue could be better done by a civilian coastguard with inshore and offshore capabilities, equipped with a range of vehicles, vessels and aircraft that are suitable for our coastline, Antarctica and the Pacific, which – along with equipping civilian agencies for land-based search and rescue, and for humanitarian assistance here and overseas – would be a much cheaper option as none of these require expensive combat hardware. [2]

In addition, that would surely be a more useful contribution than New Zealand continuing to be involved in pointless gunboat diplomacy like joining the UKUS carrier strike to parade the new British aircraft carrier around the Pacific last year; or being involved in destructive full-scale combat assaults on land and sea through military training “exercises” such as RIMPAC that are not only costly, but also harmful to the environment, marine and other life, while increasing New Zealand’s climate-destroying emissions and wasting non-renewable resources.

If there is any lesson to be learnt from the global pandemic and escalating climate emergency, it must be that new thinking about how best to meet our real security needs is essential. Instead of relying on an ideology that focuses on outdated narrow military security concepts, New Zealand could – and should – lead the way. Instead of continuing down the path of spending $20 billion plus (in addition to the annual military budget) over the next decade for increased combat capability, including new military aircraft and warships, this is an opportune time to choose a new and better way forward.

A transition from combat-ready armed forces to civilian agencies, along with increased funding for diplomacy, would ensure New Zealand could make a far more positive contribution to wellbeing and real security for all New Zealanders, and at the regional and global levels, than it can by continuing to maintain and re-arm small but costly armed forces. Only then will we finally see a genuine Wellbeing Budget that enhances human security, resilience, and prosperity.

…Ben Morgan has given a critical analysis of this position and it’s worth reading.

If we are serious about an Independent Foreign Policy, we have to accept it is going to cost us a lot more.

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?

Currently we spend 1.5% of GDP on our entire military, to defend the full realm of NZ and pursue an independent foreign policy, I argue we need to push that up to 3%.

Note – NZ should only build up its military to defend our full territory (NZ islands, EEZ, Ross Dependency, Tokelau, Cook Islands and Niue). Any upgrade of our military is for purely defensive purposes, not for military adventure or invasions.

We can’t pull away from America and China and pretend there is no cost to being Independent.

With the climate crisis looming, we need that debate now.

We also have the geopolitics of it.

With China building a forward military base that could cut America off…

China-Solomon Islands deal: China could cut New Zealand, Australia off from US military support – Professor Anne-Marie Brady

A Chinese politics specialist has called the deal between the Solomon Islands and China a “game-changer” saying New Zealand could be cut-off US military support. 

…the real danger here is the Chinese Fishing Militia that will use it as a base to raid deep into fisheries.

We need to protect our fisheries.

If you are going to recognise the problem, the solution has to be legitimate.

I maintain we must have an independent foreign policy and that our stance must be friend to all, enemy to none, but we will urgently need to protect what is ours and acknowledge how the climate crisis will demand more civil emergency infrastructure and assets.

We need a complete review of our defence force and massive increase in spending.

The great comrade Chris Trotter warns us that Autarky can not be NZs future because we don’t have enough self-sufficiency built into NZs economy.

I agree that’s a problem, but it certainly isn’t an impossible problem to overcome.

Yes we need a basic pharmaceutical industry if we want to be self sufficient.

No I don’t think the collapse of western capitalism will occur fast enough via climate change to require a domestic weapons making facility but yes I believe we urgently need to raise our military spending to 3% of GDP.

Yes Māori we’re able to live here self sufficiently for almost a century but I’m not suggesting a subsistence existence.

The naked truth is that Fortress NZ will be forced upon us whether we are willing or not.

The catastrophic heat via pollution locked into our system goes so beyond what the ice core samples tell us that we are in uncharted territory.

Normally heat like this occurs over hundreds of thousands of years thanks to the angle of the Earth on its axis but we have done that in less than 3 centuries!

When the process occurs naturally over hundreds of thousands of years, the sudden and dramatic flip from burning hot to ice age can occur within decades. Create all that power within centuries and we turbo charge those flipping points in ways far more abrupt and damaging.

The rapid melting of the doomsday glacier in Antarctica and the shut down of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation will trigger irreversible environmental collapse within  decades, not the end of the century.

There is no optimism on the climate front, just consequences now.

With such significant weather catastrophes occurring with ever more whithering destruction, other country’s will move to Autarky, will NZers cheers those planes landing with tourists while burning more climate gases or will they attack the Airports to shut them down?

Look at how every poll in NZ shows over 50% support for a total close of the border from a virus with the low mortality rate of Covid?

The climate crisis destroys environments and makes it more likely and probable that an Alpha virus far more lethal than Covid-19 will emerge – you think Kiwis will

While the globalists infect every political party in NZ, all it takes is one populist spark to breath Fortress NZ into life.

Post growth capitalism with true sustainability calls for Autarky on a burning planet than can’t take anymore globalism.

Muldoon thought big because he believed the oil shocks of the 70s was the future. He was wrong then but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong now.

The US Military Industrial complex simply solved the problem of an Oligopoly by seeding and backing harsh authoritarian regimes with lots of oil so that they could always access cheap petrol making Muldoon’s investment meaningless but The Military Industrial Complex can’t negotiate with the planet as we make it sicker and sicker!

The tyranny of distance has always been our malaise but on a burning planet of constant external shocks the Shire of NZ is looking very good right now.

‘Build that wall’ will soon become ‘defend that moat’.

In 1980, the time between billion dollar climate destruction events was 3 months.

It’s now 18 days.

There is a point where the next destructive weather event strikes before you can rebuild from the last one.

Fortress Aotearoa is coming whether we want it or not.

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