There were many reasons that the U.S. and its allies were defeated in Vietnam.  First and foremost they were beaten by an army that was superior in tactics, morale and political will.  The Quiet Mutiny that came close to a full-scale insurrection within the U.S. army in the early 1970s was an important part of the explanation as to why America’s vast over-match in resources, firepower and aerial domination was insufficient to the task.  

Recalling the liberation of Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) on 30 April 1975 is important. What is criminal, however, is that we failed to learn the vital lessons that the U.S. defeat in Vietnam should have taught us all. Sadly much was forgotten and the succeeding half century has witnessed a carnival of slaughter perpetrated by the Western world on hapless South Americans, Africans, Palestinians, Iraqis, Afghans, and many more. It’s time to remember.

Just Defence, a Wellington-based defence policy group, is calling on the government to freeze spending on defence and urgently reassess New Zealand’s place in a rapidly changing world.  This comes as the Government has just announced a massive hike in defence spending as part of the 2025 Defence Capability Plan (DCP) – $12 billion over the next four years, including $9 billion of new money. 

Professor Geoffrey Roberts is one of a growing number of ‘free thinkers’ who are rejecting the standard Western propaganda model that frames Putin and Russia as merchants of evil, instead ascribing to them motives that are both pragmatic and commonplace.  This leaves plenty of room to criticize Putin’s regime and its hardball geopolitics.  These academics, however, have shouldered the intellectual’s role to challenge the dominant narrative and expose underlying untruths – “Russia’s totally unprovoked war”, etc.

As any rookie strategist knows, outcome-focussed policy is based around the alignment of ends, ways and means: what you set as your goals must be matched with a clear strategy and the necessary resources to achieve them. Ukraine as a Western proxy war has proven a massive failure on all three counts.

The nuclear-free campaign, led by Wellington back in the 1980s, is a template worth reviving. 

Wellington became the first city in New Zealand – and the first capital in the world – to declare itself nuclear free in 1982.  It followed the excellent example of Missoula, Montana, USA, the first city in the world to do so, in 1978.

Romania’s ruling elites have just banned the leading candidate in the upcoming Presidential elections. Protesters chanted in Bucharest this week:“The last resort is another revolution”.  People should sit up and pay attention: that sentiment echoes the 1989 overthrow of the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu; it is a call of desperation and defiance a reminder of that era and the sacrifice Romanians made to drive the dictator from power – and to win the right to free and fair elections.

10 Downing Street has dismissed the claims as Russian disinformation but the clinical profiles seem accurate according to sources in Washington, Paris and London who spoke on condition of anonymity.  Dr Freud has been uncontactable since the leaks.  The Palais de l'Élysée has warned that the Tik-Tok “désinformation scandaleuse” is so serious that the next French Presidential elections may have to be postponed indefinitely in order to preserve democracy. 

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has called for the EU to turn Ukraine into a “steel porcupine” and for Europe to undertake a massive rearmament. If successful, the project would convert the EU from a largely political-economic union into a military-industrial superpower. It could also create a debt bomb as well as cluster bombs of social discontent that explode at various points in the future.

Witnessing the extraordinary cage fight this week between Zelensky and Trump in the Oval Office was an eye-popping glimpse into what is normally kept behind closed doors when world leaders meet to nut out matters of great consequence. 

What we seem to be back to is the kind of unequal treaties

The Western media went into overdrive this past week to work the laconic Kiwis into a mild frenzy over three Chinese naval vessels conducting exercises in the Tasman Sea a few thousand kilometres off our shores. What was really behind this orchestrated campaign?