Lynda Topp can look after herself. Yet the rejoinder by Paul Goldsmith to her criticism of our irresponsible spending spree on Defence was so patronising it begs for a rebuttal. According to Goldsmith :
“Anybody who thinks being defenceless in the world in which we live in today should probably go and talk to somebody in Ukraine.”
Comparing us to Ukraine? That’s really absurd. Ukraine used to belong to the Soviet Union and shares a border with imperial Russia. Vladimir Putin and his cronies had been threatening to annex it for decades. Ukraine bears no resemblance to New Zealand’s strategic position in the South Pacific.
Moreover, it is rational to query whether it is a good idea to spend billions of dollars to earn a subordinate role within the force configurations and strategic planning of the most erratic, warlike and incompetent American leadership in history. For Goldsmith to equate anyone querying the wisdom of “locking arms and shields” with the Trump administration with a naïve call for total disarmament was just…intellectual laziness. Goldsmith was using only 2% of his brain power.
In the real world, it seems entirely reasonable to query whether we should bow to American demands and spend billions to counter a phantom threat somewhere, sometime in the distant future in the Pacific. Like most New Zealanders Lynda Topp would prefer that we used that money right now to feed the hungry and house the homeless here at home. Sounds good to me.
On purely military terms, Goldsmith was also begging the key question. If and when we spend billions on new frigates and on the high-end weaponry and systems software they will require, would New Zealand security be one iota more secure? Hardly. If a shooting war ever began, those new Magano-class frigates woold be (a) next to useless in defending this country from an invasion and (b) would make military sense only in a purely supportive role within a US-led battle formation, under US operational command, and prioritising US strategic interests, not ours.
Personally, I would feel much less secure if New Zealand’s defence posture is to be shaped in future by needing to be inter-operable with Donald Trump’s next hare-brained military adventure. Especially since it has been made clear that the Pentagon would only come to our assistance if it suited the US (at the time) to do so.
Taiwan is in that position right now. In the Trump era, Taiwan has far less assurance that the US would come to its aid if China sought to invade. Simultaneously, Trump has been denying Taiwan a crucial arms package it needs to be able to better defend itself. Trump has been dangling deferment of that arms package in front of China, to see what trade concessions this deferment might achieve for the United States. Does New Zealand really want to spend billions on Defence so that in future we can be used as a similar bargaining chip by the Americans?
For all of its claims to be the realistic, responsible adult in the room, our government is refusing to acknowledge a crucial inconvenient truth. Namely: the America that used to be a dependable ally and guarantor of regional security no longer exists. In its place is an unstable, unpredictable, unreliable superpower from which we would all be well advised to keep our distance.
Yet that’s not how our thinking on Defence is being developed. We are preferring to act as if we still live in a black and white universe – the West versus the Soviet Union – updated only by swapping in China for the Soviets as the Big Bad. There is no sign that our government – and our Defence Ministry – recognise that the post-war Western alliance no longer exists, and that we should be planning within a multipolar world, for what suits us best. Instead, we seem to be intent on trying desperately to please our traditional military allies, who seem to be more than willing to exploit our naivete.
Like a broken record, we justify our naval spending by saying we are a small trading nation that needs to keep its maritime trade routes open. Yet the war on Iran that damaged those trade routes was launched by the US/Israeli forces that we still insist on treating as allies for planning purposes. Moreover, once fighting did break out, the Hormuz situation has demonstrated that naval power alone won’t keep those precious trade routes open. Cheap drone swarms are rendering obsolete many of the old ideas about naval supremacy.
In sum, in the bygone universe in which our defence thinking still operates, what reciprocal commitment does our government think it can possibly gain from the Americans, after we have bowed obediently to US pressure?
Singapore Slings
Famously, New Zealand got criticised “for freeloading” by US War Secretary Pete Hegseth at a recent security conference in Singapore. Arguably, being yelled at by Pete Hegseth could be taken as a badge of honour by any social democracy worth its salt. During the last two minutes of an hour-long presentation, Hegseth did disparage the New Zealand government’s decision to lift Defence spending to 2% of GDP over the next few years. Not good enough :
I mean if I’m being honest.. 2%’s not enough and so 2% is freeloading but I don’t have anything against New Zealand…I
look forward to working with the new Defence Minister there, and
enhancing those capabilities…
Past friendships, past contributions ? Not relevant.
And we can’t just say, “Oh, we’ve been friends for a long time, so let’s work together.” It’s “we’ve been friends for a long time”, so you better have the same capabilities we do. Because if we don’t, our alliance is meaningless.
If our executive branch had a backbone between them, they should have rejected the “free loading” jibe. New Zealand and the rest of the world are not “ freeloading.” We are all paying a high and mounting price for the reckless, bloody and unnecessary war that the US and Israel initiated so needlessly in February.
Lest anyone suggest this war was required to prevent Iran gaining a nuclear weapon…the world had already dealt with that risk via the negotiated pact with Iran that Trump then tore up on day one of first gaining office. Since the February war began, Iran and the US have been trying to remake something similar to that original deal.
Moreover, Trump has publicly conceded that the whole “nuclear enrichment” rationale for the Iran war has been a PR exercise. This is worth repeating in full, because it reveals so clearly what kind of club our government is willing to spend billions to join:
Fox News host Bret Baier asked Trump whether it might be feasible to retrieve Iran’s enriched uranium. Trump replied that it would be very hard for either the Iranians or U.S. troops to get at the material because his attack last June—a bomber raid on three sites encased inside a mountain—left the “nuclear dust” (as Trump called it) buried under heavy granite rubble. “It was hit so hard,” Trump said, “the mountain literally collapsed on it.”
This seemed to startle Baier. “Why isn’t that good enough?” the host asked. “If your goal was to set back …”“It is good enough,” Trump replied, “but you know what, it isn’t good enough public-relations-wise.” This wasn’t a one-time gaffe. In a separate Fox interview, Trump said, “We have nine cameras on that site, on those three sites, 24 hours a day. We know exactly what’s happening. Nobody’s even gotten close to it.” If the Iranians did try to dig out the material, Trump could bomb the sites again.
One might infer, as Baier suggested….that Iran’s nuclear ambitions are thus effectively contained. But then Trump went on, “I’d just feel better if I got it, actually”—that is, if he somehow removed, or if Iran agreed to remove, the uranium. Then he added, digging himself into a deeper hole: “But I think it’s more for public relations than it is for anything else.”
So…this is the US leadership that we’re spending billions to appease, so that we can play an ‘inter-operable” role in Trump’s next Looney Tunes military expedition. Instead of pushing back, we’re caving in. Defence Minister Chris Penk has already begun talking about the need for a “debate” about relaxing our decades-long ban on allowing nuclear propelled vessels within our waters.
The timing suggests that Hegseth’s comments were not only welcomed by our government, but may have been solicited. Friday’s Budget poured billions into Defence, with more promised. Barely 24 hours later, Hegseth was saying publicly: “ That’s not enough” and demanding more. The new benchmark is 3.5% of GDP, or else. As Hegseth claimed, that’s the level that will be needed to obtain insider treatment by the US on a variety of military, intelligence sharing, technological and economic fronts.
It looked like a good cop/bad cop routine to soften up the New Zealand public, and deflect criticism. (You don’t like it? Take it up with Washington.) Once upon a time, Pacific nations might have felt they were sheltering under a US umbrella, to mutual benefit. Now, Pacific nations are being pressured to surrender to what looks more like an extortion racket.
Hopefully, it might prove to be more bluster than substance. If New Zealand was looking for an excuse not to make a suicidally wasteful dash to spend 3.5% of our GDP on weaponry, Hegseth himself threw New Zealand (and every other nation at the Singapore conference) a small lifeline. Despite the threats contained elsewhere in his speech, he also offered this small peace signal, at the 15 minutes, 21 seconds mark:
…This is not a “my way or the highway” approach. We are ready to work with all of you where you are based on your own situation, your own geography and your own cultural, political and economic realities, to ensure that a Pacific free of any dominant hegemon is secured.
Right. So, will our “own geography” and “our own cultural, political and economic realities” be taken into consideration, or not? That’s the thing about threats. Sometimes, if the threat is made vaguely enough, the confused target will be left feeling scared enough to over-compensate.
The New Gallipoli
By Hegseth’s usual standards, his Singapore speech was quite nuanced. All of the threats were levelled at US allies, not at China. This time around, Hegseth did not depict China as an imminent threat to Taiwan or to the Pacific region. Far from it. With respect to China, Hegseth’s tone in Singapore was conciliatory, and full of hope for peaceful co-existence. In his uncharacteristically benign view, the US and China could/should/would peacefully pursue their mutually respectful right to a regional presence in the Pacific.
You have to ask: so what’s the big rush then, to boost our Defence spending? Apparently, the US has got it. Along the way though, Hegseth also made it clear that in his view, the Western post-war alliances that have delivered relative peace and economic prosperity for over 60 years are over for good. But what does he think might be replacing them? New Zealanders should be alarmed that Hegseth’s speech consistently harked back to imperial models anchored in the 19th century.
I’m not exaggerating. Hegseth claimed to be re-establishing the Monroe Doctrine (of 1823!) whereby US imperialism claimed the “right” to take unilateral military action anywhere that the US deems its interests to be at stake. More than once, Hegseth cited Theodore Roosevelt’s 1901 adage about using the US military’s “big stick” to achieve compliance:
What the United States delivers is strength that is disciplined, resolve that is steady, and leadership that is confident enough to speak and walk softly while carrying a big stick.
Disciplined. Steady. Confident. Softly spoken. Yep, that’s how the world sees Donald Trump. Everyone, including the hordes of people who turn out every ANZAC Day to commemorate Gallipoli, should be asking…what is New Zealand buying itself into this time? Before we begin spending these billions of dollars we need to know how, where and in what circumstances the new weaponry is being envisaged to be deployed, and for what tangible purposes?
If armed conflict ever did break out in the Pacific – under whose operational command would our forces be deployed ? As things currently stand, we are at risk of volunteering to be the sacrificial victims once again, within the incompetent imperial schemes of our allies. Just as we were at Gallipoli.
Plainly, it is not enough to say that we are a small trading nation with an interest in keeping our maritime trade routes open. Dream on. Currently, the vast American military power that Hegseth was celebrating in lurid terms in Singapore can’t even defeat a third rate military power like Iran, and keep the Strait of Hormuz open.
If that’s the reason we’re spending our billions, then – on current evidence – we’re wasting our money. The age of gunboat diplomacy with a frigate are over. Asymmetrical warfare means that our multi-billion frigate can be taken out by jamming its sensors, and taking it out with a swarm of $200 drones and/or a launcher mounted on a truck.
On principle then as well as on grounds of good sense, we shouldn’t be paying the entry price required to join the club responsible for the deadly fiasco in the Strait of Hormuz. As Lynda Topp indicated, that money can be put to much better uses here at home.
Absolutely nothin’
Nearly 60 years on, this oldie by Edwin Starr still nails it:
War, I despise
‘Cause it means destruction of innocent lives
War means tears to thousands of mother’s eyes
When their sons go off to fight
And lose their lives