To the extent New Zealand has an implicit American security guarantee through our military alliance with Australia and Five Eyes, it is now as worthless as any other international agreement involving the US.
Moreover, the return of the Monroe Doctrine implies the US no longer much cares what other great powers might get up to in Southeast Asia, Australasia and the South Pacific.
If the US, China and Russia aren’t going to follow or enforce international law, then there’s no such thing as international law.
Luxon has not yet commented on this week’s events, leaving Peters to issue the obligatory statement calling on “all parties” – none of which he named – “to act in accordance with international law”.
Fair enough. There’s no point New Zealand distinguishing itself from the pack and risking higher beef tariffs or other US retaliation. Nor should Peters unilaterally rewrite New Zealand’s standard talking points while the Prime Minister remains on holiday. But we should not mistake them for reality.
In the new realist world, by far New Zealand’s greatest assets are the stopping power of water and assured food security. Physical invasion and occupation of New Zealand would stretch the capability even of the US, whose Venezuela operation suggests it has learned its lesson in Iraq and Afghanistan. China rightly respects the 160km Taiwan Strait as a barrier to forcefully resuming its exercise of sovereignty over the island. Russia has no history of projecting naval power. If a global conflagration threatened international trade, we’d be more at risk of getting fat than of starving.
In a world divided into spheres of influence rather than governed by global rules, protecting our moat should be our main strategic goal. It calls for much greater independent defence capability to surveil it, for an even closer defence relationship with Australia and our friends in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), and for keeping great powers out of the South Pacific, whatever the cost.
The Daily Blog has been arguing for some time that ‘defend the moat’ would become our new ‘build the wall’, that the inevitable realities of climate change would force an exacerbation of the downfall of the rules based order and would compel us to embark upon a truly independent foreign policy.
Hooton is acknowledging that moment.
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.
Researchers find NZ is the most likely country to survive war, famine or Trump – but forget to put us on the map
Aotearoa is among the top countries in the world for self sufficiency in the event of war, natural disaster or Trump’s tariffs, says a new international scientific study, which hints we are also the safest in the world against an invasion, as the Land of the Long White Cloud has disappeared from the world map.
Comrades, the Climate Crisis is happening far faster than feared…
World’s oceans, greenhouse gasses at highest levels in 800,000 years, climate report warns
“Alarming year for extremes”: 2021 saw record-high greenhouse gas, ocean heat and sea levels rise, new report finds
Major sea-level rise caused by melting of Greenland ice cap is ‘now inevitable’
…the speed and extreme nature of the heatwaves and floods that are destroying the planet in real time are damaging the ability for the economy to function…
Cars. Batteries. Solar panels. Food. Global shortages and soaring prices are almost certain as China’s seemingly never-ending heatwave sears on.
It’s the most extreme heat event ever recorded in world history. For more than 70 days, the intense heat has blasted China’s population, factories and fields. Lakes and rivers have dried up. Crops have been killed. Factories have been closed.
More than 900 million people across 17 Chinese provinces are subjected to record-breaking conditions. From Sichuan in the southwest to Shanghai in the east, temperatures have been topping 40C.
…and remember, this only gets worse and worse and worse.
We aren’t doing anything meaningful on climate change, each country passes the buck to the next country, and the future is actually far more dangerous than we are currently anticipating…
‘We’re going to pay in a big way’: a shocking new book on the climate crisis
In An Inconvenient Apocalypse, authors Wes Jackson and Robert Jensen write that society needs to be better prepared for an inevitable collapse
…the scale of the geopolitical shockwaves coming our way will be enormous…
Increasingly dysfunctional society and climate catastrophe leading humanity to ‘cliff edge’
Spiralling wealth inequality is leading to dysfunctional societies unable to cope with existential threats such as the climate crisis, experts have warned.
A two-year research project examining different future scenarios indicates that at present, societies around the world are at growing risk of “extreme political destabilisation”, with declines in public trust, while the climate crisis intensifies.
…I’ve been following the IPCC reports on climate change from the beginning, and the criticism made against the IPCC was that due to its strict need for only unilaterally agreed science to make the official report, it was always underplaying the urgency and severity of the climate crisis.
There was always a section in each report where the science was presented that wasn’t universally accepted but included to show the reach and scope of debate.
Increasingly over the years, the worst case scenarios in the IPCC are playing out in real time.
The scientists were wrong, but only in their optimism.
You understand that each year that passes now will get worse or remain as starkly bad as they are now right?
You get that it doesn’t go back to normal after this right?
The extreme weather will get worse and worse.
More extreme than these extremes now.
Consider this baseline extreme normal now.
The radical adaptation required to get us ready for what’s coming will splinter the political spectrum whether we like it or not.
Why shouldn’t we have our own basic pharmaceutical industry?
Engineering industry?
Industrial industry?
Free Market Globalisation is dead, hyper regionalism is here. Supply chains in China are no longer safe and must be brought back to friendly supply chains which imports more inflation.
Radical adaptation and communal community resourcing alongside a Big State approach to lynchpin infrastructure for basic self-reliance as an Island country facing enormous economic shockwaves is the only means to build the muscle mass to respond to the ever intensifying external disruption of late stage capitalism.
The need to increase military spending to 3% alongside the new costs for this infrastructure must be funded via new taxes aimed at corporations and banks.
Drones are going toe an essential part of that defence infrastructure…
Could NZ plug into Australian ‘drone wall’ to keep China at bay?
…it’s not just keeping China at bay, we also need to keep bloody America away as well!
A financial transaction tax and windfall profit tax would take the yoke of taxation off working people and place it upon the shoulders of the wealthy.
National and ACT see mass immigration as a means to create fake growth at a time when we should be focused on de-growth.
Climate Crisis is here and adaptation is now.
We need to start rethinking Isolationism as a strength and Think Big as Economic Sovereignty.
The geopolitical shock waves are only getting more intense.
If you think being carbon neutral by 2050 is the solution, you are the problem.
Post growth capitalism with true sustainability calls for Autarky on a burning planet that can’t take anymore globalism.
Wellington must not be controlled by Washington or Beijing!
Climate change is coming whether you believe in it or not.
The rules based order we have benefitted form for 80 years is dying as Trump, Putin and Xi strangle it.
Whether you like it or not, Fortress Aotearoa is coming.
Hooton thinks this country should have a closer military relationship with Australia. This is probably not a good idea.
Though China has an official policy of no first use of nuclear weapons, there is an exception, open source documents reveal that in the event of war between the US and China, the PLA has a ‘red line’ against conventional attacks on Mainland China that permits retaliation with nuclear weapons. No doubt the US has a similar unofficial policy against Chinese conventional weapons attacks on mainland USA, including Hawaii.
On the promise that they might one day get some nuclear subs of their own, the Aussies are letting the the US offshore their Pacific nuclear submarine fleet to Australia.
The Aussies may be comfortable with painting a huge bullseye on their country, but there is no reason that we should join them in this act of self mutilation.
I’m no leftie as you will know, but I must say that Luxon is being a limp dick here! He’s not showing much spine, which is the problem I have with him in general. Maybe he needs to add REM Orange Crush to his playlist..I got my spine I got my Orange Crush….
Jonzie lyrically , Luxon is more
“A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies
Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline
It’s the end of the world as we know it”
This rapacious three, Weakling Luxon, Weasel Seymour and Two-faced Winston, are very, very close to destroying NZ. We are already facing the perils of global warming, plus the ‘Lunatic’ Trump, so it’s pretty rough having to watch decisions being made that topple our country’s economy and its people, enabled by half brain-dead RW voters who simply ‘follow the leader’ like the gormless dummies that they are. However as we all know, climate catastrophes are not going to give a hoot whether you are wealthy or poor. Challenging times coming for ALL so wouldn’t it be better to be governed by parties who actually CARE about New Zealanders so will build funded infrastructure to assist our survival? More mindless immigration is just taking jobs from our home-grown people – it is not a solution, it is another unnecessary, damaging factor we don’t need! FGS NZ read the room.
Winston will think that you are being unfair as he can tell Iran off for their killing of protesters. I guess that he is only blind when Israel is killing protesters.
Israel is defending itself against brutal, sadistic, depraved terrorists. Huge difference, which Winston gets.
bull shit what a sick person you .You must be fucken blind .
gtaby – Correct.
All those terrible depraved brutal sadistic women and children terrorists in Gaza eh FFS
Clive – Hamas terrorists Clive, Hamas terrorists…
Well Nathan it’s a shame the brutal, depraved, and sadistic IDF don’t spend more time targeting actual terrorists.
Why don’t you learn to use a dictionary so you might be able to write something believable for a change?
I remember not that long ago of having to depart from Dunedin AP to Auckland. I arrived to see a bizarre sight. About 8 Gulfstream jets parked up just north of the Airport Terminal buildings.
When I checked in I asked ” So…? What’s with all the Gulfstreams parked out there then? ” I was told ” Because Queenstown AP’s full. ” Apparently, the global super duper riche were landing in Dunedin then helicoptering over to Queenstown. I never did find out why for sure but I had inkling’s.
The hyper riche are already here and they’ve been here for years and what we think of as our AO/NZ isn’t that.
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/03/setback-for-billionaire-peter-thiels-plan-to-build-luxury-lodge-in-remote-new-zealand
But wait. There’s more.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-valley-billionaires-are-prepping-for-the-apocalypse-in-new-zealand
It was in 2011 that Thiel declared he’d found “no other country that aligns more with my view of the future than New Zealand”. The claim was made as part of an application for citizenship; the application was swiftly granted, though it remained a secret for a further six years. In 2016, Sam Altman, one of Silicon Valley’s most influential entrepreneurs, revealed to the New Yorker that he had an arrangement with Thiel whereby in the eventuality of some kind of systemic collapse scenario – synthetic virus breakout, rampaging AI, resource war between nuclear-armed states, so forth – they both get on a private jet and fly to a property Thiel owns in New Zealand.
Now-a-days I still sometimes lie on my back on the lawn and gaze at the stars of an evening but these days, unlike my yesterdays, I wonder, is that a new star or is that a hypersonic missle armed stationary satelite looking back at me. I roll over and show it my arse hole, just in case.
If China had even a smidgeon of control over our foreign policy, it would be considerably more supportive of human rights on literally every single issue you mention.
https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2024/10/01/china-has-ties-to-and-supports-hamas-here-is-the-proof/
By the way, who’s building more solar panels than every other nation on earth put together?
yep and we are back tracking on solar and wind because the Orange fuck wit said so .
But Martyn dahling, it will never happen in Remmers or Fendahlton, they’re much too important and also expect us proles to swerve and protect them.
The Guardian
“Why Silicon Valley billionaires are prepping for the apocalypse in New Zealand.”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/feb/15/why-silicon-valley-billionaires-are-prepping-for-the-apocalypse-in-new-zealand
” During my time in New Zealand, Ardern was everywhere: in the papers, on television, in every other conversation. On our way to Queenstown in the South Island, to see for ourselves the site of Thiel’s apocalyptic bolthole, Byrt and I were in the security line at Auckland airport when a woman of about our age, smartly dressed and accompanied by a cluster of serious-looking men, glanced in our direction as she was conveyed quickly along the express lane. She was talking on her phone, but looked towards us and waved at Byrt, smiling broadly in happy recognition.”
“Who was that?” I asked.
“Jacinda,” he said.
“You know her?”
“We know quite a lot of the same people. We met for a drink a couple of times back when she was Labour’s arts spokesperson.”
“Really?”
“Well yeah,” he laughed, “there’s only so many of us.”
We have homeless people living in door ways while lying in their own piss. We have hungry families living in poverty. We have a country 29 thousand square kilometres larger than the UK and our primary industry is agricultural exports which our farmers are particularly good at and yet we’re fucked.
Why is that ? I can tell you. It’s because good people are failing to act.
There is nothing kind that can be said about this Government when it comes to foreign policy. Nothing. Other commentators have already pointed out just how bad, so I won’t elaborate further, except to say that there is nothing remotely original. Nothing brave or otherwise about being too scared to act against the Islamic Republic, stand up to Trumpistan over Venezuela or condemn the I.C.E. war on America and Americans just trying to be decent people.
Admittedly I have not seen any condemnation from Labour, except Dr Duncan Webb, who often supports the Iranian diaspora in Christchurch when they rally against the regime. Nor have I seen anything from the Greens. Are they too scared to speak for Iranians who simply want their women folk, their believers in a better world without the terroristic Islamic Republic and its I.R.G.C. thugs?
Not my experience of the Sepah Pasdaran (IRGC). They were reasonable, humane people and I always felt safe in their presence. Where did you get the idea that they are thugs?
This government has made us a global laughing stock. If America has beclowned the Western world what does that make us, their servile little sycophants? And for what, so we can buy their smartphones at inflated prices? So we can say we were there in the moment to support their genocide and removal of international law? Thank goodness for China and Russia and others, countries that can stand up to these bottom feeders with diplomacy and global order, and with force only as a last resort. Real leaders. We should be seeking closer ties with them, maybe invite them to set up rocket labs or surveillance stations down here, keep an eye on these lunatics and keep us safe.
Ethan I’m concerned for you, please don’t upset yourself so.
This moves me