GUEST BLOG: Geoff Fischer – “One of the most difficult things”: New Zealand’s changing partners

When New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters sacked Phil Goff as New Zealand High Commissioner to the United Kingdom he declared “It’s seriously regrettable and one of the most difficult things one has had to do in his whole career.”

Goff is a Labour Party professional career politician, one of the breed who trained to be a politician in his youth and has never been anything other than a politician.

He was one of the cabal of Rogernomes in the Fourth Labour government, a one time Labour leader, and Winston Peters’ predecessor as New Zealand’s Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Goff signed the New Zealand-China Free Trade Agreement at a time when Peters was arguing that New Zealand was “being colonised without having any say in the numbers of people coming in and where they are from”, with specific reference to the inflow of immigrants from China.

Goff and Peters come from opposite sides of the political divide (which to be fair is a very small and shallow divide in New Zealand), they were rivals in the foreign affairs and trade space, and they had different views on the ethnic and cultural basis of New Zealand society.

It is also quite possible that Peters would like to assume the High Commission role himself, if or when he retires from active political life in New Zealand.

So was Peters being disingenuous when he claimed that sacking Goff was the hardest thing that he ever had to do in politics? Were these crocodile tears? At the very least political hyberbole?

No, I take Peters comments at face value and so should we all, because they point to a problem that is gripping the New Zealand political establishment and which may tear it apart, just as Peters was personally torn apart by the necessity to sack Phil Goff. Peters’ curious third person wording reveals the genuineness of his regret, and also the fact that it goes beyond the personal.

Winston Peters is expressing the regrets of the coalition government as a whole.

We may think of Peters as being inordinately friendly towards the United States, and in particular tolerantly obliging towards the present US President, Donald Trump.

He is both of those things.

But that is not where Peters has come from.

He was named after the British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

In Maoridom such given names have significance and they can have a marked influence upon the course of one’s life.

At the very least, Peters whanau would have expected to him to share their admiration of Churchill, and even to emulate that last great leader of the British empire.

It is fair to say that Peters will have exceeded his parents’ expectations.

He has been consistently conservative, a British race nationalist, a gifted orator, and, like Churchill, a determined survivor through the many ups and downs of his political career.

Phil Goff may well have understood that in quoting from Winston Churchill while making a criticism of Donald Trump he would evoke conflicting feelings in his boss, Winston Peters.

Whether through chance or cunning, Goff found a way to expose the political tensions that were afflicting the New Zealand political establishment as a whole, and Winston Peters in particular.

That is, the tension between Europe and the United States which has slumbered unremarked through eighty years of the “special relationship” between the US and UK, the Marshall Plan, the establishment of NATO and the cold war with the Soviet Union.

We know that Donald Trump has split that alliance on the issue of the Ukraine war and trade tariffs, but the writing was on the wall during the previous Biden administration.

The sabotage of the Nordstream 2 pipeline and the US demand that Europe use American liquid natural gas in place of the much cheaper Russian gas dealt a severe blow to the German economy and to all of Europe.

Nordstream was a clear sign that the US would put its interests before that of Europe, and Europe acquiesced. Trump and Vance now intend to go a step further.

They are prepared to humiliate Europe, starting with Ukraine, but moving on to all the European states which wish to continue standing with Ukraine, and pride themselves on having sovereign rights of their own.

After all, states such as Britain, France and Germany once possessed great empires, and like the Russian Federation they still glory in the left-over trappings of a grand imperial past.

At the very least they believe that they have the right to national dignity.

The difference is that Russia has reclaimed its national dignity by successfully waging war against its renegade province of Ukraine.

Britain, France and Germany have done nothing but follow dutifully in the footsteps of the US.

This is the situation that is tearing at the heartstrings of Churchill’s namesake, Winston Peters.

Goff came down on the side of Europe and Britain.

The Labour Party in general probably shares Goff’s sentimental attachment to Britain and Europe (as does Peters), but the New Zealand political establishment as a whole sees that if the western strategic alliance collapses and New Zealand has to choose between Europe and the US, then the US is the only viable option.

“NATO in the Pacific” will be a dead duck.

AUKUS will have to become ANZUS if it is to survive at all.

Peters, Luxon and Seymour are in no doubt.

They have to go with Trump.

Therefore Goff had to return from London.

The consequence of going with Trump is not just that New Zealand abandons Ukraine (so far it has chosen to have no part in the “coalition of the willing).

It also means that New Zealand goes up against China.

Again Peters, Luxon and Seymour will take that step, albeit with some reluctance.

They cannot conceive of any alternative to having a colonial relationship to some great power, and to that end the United States is the only game left in town.

However this view is not held unanimously within the political establishment.

There are some, such as previous Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark and previous National Party leader Don Brash, who warn against antagonizing China.

But Clark and Brash do not actually have a strategy beyond urging us not to rock the boat in the face of a massive wave bearing down from the north.

They are not suggesting that New Zealand tie its colours to the mast of a Chinese battle cruiser.

They are not suggesting a neo-colonial relationship to the Peoples Republic of China.

That would not work.

For starters, China will not come to New Zealand’s aid if it was to be attacked by some other power.

It would support New Zealand diplomatically and perhaps economically, as it supports states such as Cuba and Venezuela but it would never intervene to support New Zealand militarily.

This is because China has always had a very strong sense of its place in the world, which from mainland China itself extends to Tibet, Taiwan and other places, such as the South China Sea, which have historically been subject to the Middle Kingdom.

Its recent intrusions into the South Pacific have been based on the same diplomatic premises as its relations with, say, Cuba, Venezuela or Iran.

It is asserting its interests and its sympathies through diplomatic and economic moves.

It will never commit itself to military support of those countries or regimes as the US, Britain and other European nations have intervened militarily to protect friendly regimes far and wide.

The unavoidable conclusion is that the US might lend military support to New Zealand in the event that New Zealand came under attack.

Only “might” because the US did not support New Zealand in any way (not even diplomatically) when it came under attack from France in 1985, and it has not followed through on its promise to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes”.

China on the other hand definitely will not support New Zealand militarily if it was to be faced with the threat of invasion or military force of any kind.

So a truly colonial relationship between New Zealand and China is out of the question.

The one possibility that has not been canvassed by any party in the colonialist political establishment in response to the current crisis is an end to colonialism.

We have those who wish to stay with Britain.

We have those who recognise that alliance with the US is the only viable way forward for New Zealand as a colonial entity.

And we have those who argue that this must not be done at the expense of antagonizing China.

But, and this should come as no surprise, we have no one within the regime to acknowledge that New Zealand colonialism is about to hit a brick wall which will cause massive economic damage and in the worst case a hugely destructive war.

There is a side issue here concerning New Zealand’s military expenditure – the so-called “defence spending”.

The debate over defence spending is putting the cart before the horse.

It ridiculous to try to decide how much should be spent on defence before deciding exactly what it is that you are defending.

Is it European values?

Is it US hegemony in the Pacific?

Is it New Zealand as a geographic entity?

Both the pro-British and pro-US camps want to increase the military budget, not to defend New Zealand as such but to “play a part” in the “defence of the free world”.

That being the case, the sky is the limit as far as spending goes.

Two percent of GDP would not be “enough to do the job”.

Neither would five percent or even one hundred percent.

Rather, it becomes a question of what is needed to satisfy New Zealand’s partners, whether that be Australia, the US or NATO.

One problem for New Zealand is that with its creaking infrastructure, struggling economy, social inequity and accompanying tensions it is not able to afford such arbitrary and effectively limitless expenditure on the military. Another less obvious problem is that any such expenditure can do nothing to defend New Zealand from attack or invasion.

It will not be designed for that purpose and so will not be able to serve such a purpose.

It will be designed to allow New Zealand to “play a part” in a conflict between great powers in the South China Sea, the Korean peninsula or the Strait of Taiwan, or, at a stretch, in Europe or the Middle East.

Putting the horse before the cart means divesting ourselves of colonialism and the colonialist mentality.

After New Zealand has ceased to be as a colonialist entity, after Aotearoa has asserted itself as a a sovereign nation with its own interests, then the question of defence spending will arise anew.

Only then will we know for sure what threats may be present, because geo-political threats are not natural phenomena which arise regardless of our own actions.

In fact they may be attributed entirely to our own acts or omissions.

Cuba is threatened by the United States because its internal policies, its ideology, and its external relations are anathema to the US government.

Ukraine is threatened by Russia and Taiwan is threatened by mainland China for much the same reasons.

Small nations or break-away states have choices which they can make rashly as in the case of Ukraine, boldly as in the case of Cuba, or more prudently as in the case of Taiwan.

When we have taken the final steps towards independence and sovereignty, then we may be able to see what if any threats present themselves to us.

To the extent that we are unable to mitigate the threat, we will have to think about how we may effectively defend ourselves against it.

Only then will the kind of military capability required become clearly evident, and the only thing one can say with certainty is that it will look very different to the current disposition of the New Zealand armed forces.

Meanwhile, the colonialist regime will plough on blindly behind Donald Trump. The voices of Phil Goff, Helen Clark and Don Brash are sounding warnings which will go unheeded.

Winston Peters will understand the consequences, and although troubled, will “do what he has to do”.

Christopher Luxon probably has no idea what he is getting himself into.

In going with Donald Trump’s new order for the western world New Zealand colonialism is failing its most significant test in decades.

But what other option does it have?