For decades, the left in New Zealand has operated under the cosy assumption that the country’s relative isolation allows them to indulge their ideological conceits of pacifism and anti-Americanism. Leftist New Zealand politicians since at least Lange have figured that they can safely signal their virtues without incurring any real strategic threat. By pandering to Pacific popinjays besotted with Chinese cash, and cocking snooks at Australia, Jacinda Ardern is merely continuing that childish tradition.
How long they can get away with their silly games, though, is very much up for grabs.
Australian strategic studies academic, Hugh White last night, told a Wellington audience of foreign policy academics, officials from Government Ministries and diplomats that the assumptions on which New Zealand defence policy was built were no longer valid.
White’s central thesis is that the U.S. is both declining as a power and partially withdrawing from the Western Pacific as a consequence.
Instead, China is replacing it as the major economic and military power in the region.
White’s assumption about the US is certainly questionable, though. While it was true enough that the US, and particularly its blue-water fleet, was in decline under Obama and preceding presidents, that’s very much old news. The American economy has surged under Trump, who has very much taken the fight, strategic and economic, to the Chinese. Whether the Trumpian revolution will hold fast, in the long run, is unknown, but Beijing, which had grown entirely used to having its own way, has certainly been shaken.
He said Australia’s defence policy had always been based on the presumption that it could not defend itself.
And that was the same for New Zealand […] even so, New Zealand tended to talk about security differently from Australia.
“Where we tend to answer the question of how to defend Australia, we talk about alliances whereas New Zealand tends to talk much more broadly about international institutions and so on.”
Such thinking has culminated in the globalist conceit of Jacinda Ardern, who imagines that holding hands and singing with Justin and Emmanuel and singing Kumbaya to Greta Thunberg will somehow save the planet. She is blissfully, if not blindly, ignorant of the threat of the dragon in the room.
White said we did not share all of China’s values, and in the future, China might be “willing to use force to compel us to do things we don’t want to do.”
There’s no “might” about it.
So, even if the US doesn’t withdraw from the Pacific – as seems likely – New Zealand, like Australia, needs to get serious about its strategic direction.
White said that Australia had two choices on security policy and whichever one it chose would impact on New Zealand.
It could be a small power and decide not to hold its own against military pressure from a major power, and New Zealand would have little choice but to follow suit.
Or it could decide to be a middle power and New Zealand would face a choice as to whether or how far to support Australia in doing that […] White said that given that New Zealand’s GDP was about 15 per cent of the size of Australia’s total GDP, it would make a significant addition to Australia’s defence capability.
But it would require from New Zealand, as it would require from Australia, a much bigger effort.
politik.co.nz/en/content/foreignaffairs/
For decades, European NATO members figured that they could safely ride on America’s coattails. Trump’s threat to withdraw and leave Europe at the mercy of a resurgent Russia was a cold, hard dose of reality salts for Europe. Shocked EU leaders scrambled to make good on their defence obligations.
Kiwis better hope for some more substantial leadership in the near future, before New Zealand has to make the same choice.
