The US is not our friend. China is not our enemy. Part Two.
Last month I gave a lecture to Masters students in Politics, Philosophy & Economics at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. This is the second of two articles that shares the lecture with you. The full lecture covered these topics:
We are at a Tipping Point as we enter a multipolar world order
The US is not our friend
China is not our enemy
Lessons for Asia Pacific from the Iran War
Choosing a better path forward/
China is not our enemy
Full disclosure: Tomorrow, I leave for a Chinese-government sponsored visit to China – my first visit to China. For years before this contact, however, my articles framed my analysis very much as you’ll hear it today.
China, despite its rising power and despite the savage exploitation it suffered for over a century from the Westerners and Japanese, has shown itself to be vastly more cautious, peaceful and diplomatic than the US.
Over recent years, I regularly ask people: “When was the last time China used its military to invade another country?” 1979 – in a short war against Vietnam. In the entire post-world war II period from the US nuclear attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima to the present, what year wasn’t the US at war with one or more countries? According to a research paper published this year in The Lancet, the world’s leading medical publication, unilateral sanctions imposed by the US and EU since 1970 are associated with 38 million deaths. Think about that because you can judge people by the friends they keep.
I’m not dewy eyed about any superpower but I think the Chinese operate in a far more mature and strategic way than the other side.
President Xi Jinping has articulated modern Chinese diplomatic policy around five principles or pillars which they largely adhere to:
Sovereign Equality: Upholding state sovereignty and rejecting unilateral interference regardless of a country's size.
Anchoring global governance in the UN Charter
Cooperative dispute resolution and opposition to bloc expansion.
Win-Win Cooperation: Shared economic integration via initiatives like the Belt and Road (BRI).
Non-imposition of political models on other civilizations.
Now, you can reasonably say … sure, talk is cheap. Western leaders including Winston Peters and Christopher Luxon continually bang on about rules-based orders and international law … but they don’t think it applies to the powerful white countries.
China I believe is showing itself to be the adult in the room and that is a view now shared by the global majority. Over the past decade there has been a sea change in global perception of both the US and China.
Three major research studies this year show this remarkable shift in perceptions.
The Pew Research Center Global Attitudes Survey, Gallup's Global Leadership Ratings and Singapore’s Yusof Ishak Institute Report all show the world now trusts China more than the US.
Pew Research surveyed over 40,000 adults across 36 countries and China surpassed the United States in overall global favorability.
Respondents cited U.S. unilateral foreign policy and foreign interference as primary concerns, viewing China as a more predictable and stable economic partner.
However, I’ve noticed an uptick in NZ media stories designed to scare New Zealanders about Chinese behaviour and intentions. I’d call the stories poor journalism if it weren’t for the fact that I believe they are primarily propaganda. What you should be mindful of is the way that the intelligence services, politicians and the media work in coordination to scare populations ahead of major announcements … for example significant new investments in military hardware … The government is planning on buying 2 or 4 frigates each worth about $3 billion … that would be blowing about $12 billion of tax payer money on something the Chinese – if they set their minds to it – could blow up in a few minutes with a few missiles worth a couple of million dollars each.
The Australians’ experience provides a salutary lesson. They were lulled into a false sense of insecurity back in 2021 – the mediascape flooded with Red Alert, China panic stories about imminent war with the rising Asian power.
As a sign of how successful the mainstream media can be in generating fear that precedes major policy shifts: research by Australia’s Institute of International & Security Affairs showed that more Australians thought that China would attack Australia than Taiwanese believed China will attack Taiwan! Incredible!
Once the Australian population was conditioned, they woke one morning in September 2021 with the momentous news that Australia had ditched a $90 billion defence deal with France to build diesel-powered submarines to defend Australia – and the country was now part of a new military alliance called AUKUS that is now committed to $386 billion worth of nuclear submarines … which are ideal to operate in the South China Sea! No prior discussion, no electoral mandate.
Here in New Zealand, both Labour and the National have been considering joining Pillar 2 of AUKUS – a military alliance aimed squarely at China, our biggest trading partner. China receives 27% of our exports, poses no perceivable military threat to our security and has made clear that they see AUKUS as a hostile pact aimed at containing their peaceful rise.
Former Prime Minister Helen Clark told a meeting I attended: “All of these statements made about AUKUS being good for us are highly questionable. What is good about joining a ratcheting up of tensions in a region? Where is the military threat to New Zealand?”
I think those are extremely good questions to ask.
The current prime minister refers to China as New Zealand's strategic competitor and the government has driven New Zealand deepers and deeper into a military and intelligence alliance with the Americans … through Project Arcadia, Five Eyes, bringing US military tech like Palantir into our government departments and even floating the idea that a “conversation” may be needed on the nuclear issue. We have a racist foreign minister can’t stop insulting our greatest trading partner. It’s all bonkers.
Lessons from the Iran War for Asia Pacific
Back in July I wrote an article: “The Iran Lesson: why the US will lose a war with China”. I opened with:
“Despite advice from wiser heads, Trump and Hegseth swallowed the bait from Netanyahu and launched a miserably conceived, poorly executed and catastrophic war on Iran earlier this year. Trump is no FDR and Hegseth is no Carl von Clausewitz (Prussian military theorist); it's more like Dumb and Dumber Went to War. These are the same people New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and the Philippines are betting the family farms on. Weep, my beloved country.”
For people in the Asia-Pacific region, the failure of the US-Israeli war on Iran should seriously bring into question long-standing alignments with the US. I think sticking to this bro-mance with a rogue US is not strategically sound. If they can make a massive strategic blunder like the war on Iran in that region could they do something catastrophic in our own region? If war comes to the Asia-Pacific region the US would not hesitate to throw New Zealand into the wood chipper. And, if the contest between the US and China ever goes kinetic, it is highly likely the US and its allies will be defeated.
That’s not just my assessment: In December 2025 someone in the US establishment leaked to the New York Times "The Overmatch Brief" – a secret Pentagon summary of years of US war-gaming that showed the Chinese outgunned the US in all the areas that will count in a conventional war.God help us all if it goes nuclear.
Down here in the South Pacific we need to draw important lessons from the War on Iran: In its war of choice on Iran the United States has deliberately exposed its Gulf allies to attack from Iran and those countries have suffered hundred of billions of dollars in damage through Iran's long-signalled response to any US aggression against Iran.
If long-besieged Iran – the world's 51st-ranked economy – was able to force the Americans to sue for peace, what are the prospects of the US getting an ass-whopping from a China that has the military and the manufacturing power, the home advantage and, above all, the existential need to see off the Western empire?
Professor Hugh White, one of Australia’s sharpest defence analysts, says the Western preeminence that has framed the political and economic order in Asia for centuries is facing the most severe challenge it has ever faced.
“If the risk of war is high, then the risk of a nuclear war is high,”Professor White said. “This may seem a bit melodramatic, but we cannot avoid a discussion of whether our countries believe we should go to war with China, if necessary, to try to preserve the US-led order in Asia. Because that is the big choice we potentially face.”
Choosing a better path forward
To summarise: I think currently we are going down a road that threatens our own future.
I believe our foreign policy settings have calcified over the years and we have been captured by the US in ways that do not serve New Zealand’s best interests.
We need to recognize that the world is at a Hinge Moment and we would be wise to choose the path of independence, peace, diplomacy and a defence posture that is just about defence not about projection of US power. The US is not our friend. China is not our enemy.
Thank you.
