China’s recent launch of a nuclear-capable missile into the Pacific was greeted with howls of protest from the US and its allies. "We are living in a region that is proudly nuclear free. We don't want to see increasing militarisation in our region," New Zealand PM Christopher Luxon said. It came on the heels of his Defence minister suggesting a national conversation was needed about nuclear propulsion because Australia is committed to acquiring nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS pact. 

“RIMPAC is representative of the militarization of our islands. There's always this claim that it is for our benefit, for our protection and for the security of Hawaii and the region, but beginning with the military-backed overthrow of the kingdom, the military has always been there for America's imperial interests.”

As a dress rehearsal for the coming war on China, RIMPAC is a big deal. This year's event is billed as bringing together global naval forces to address ‘the current threat China is posing in the Indo-Pacific region’. Every two years the US Pacific Fleet/Indo-Pacific Command at Pearl Harbor, Hawai’i, hosts the Rim of the Pacific exercise, the world's largest international maritime exercise.  RIMPAC gathers the US and its allies together for a show of force and a building of interoperability, cementing relationships and ensuring countries like Australia and New Zealand are increasingly integrated into weapons procurement and US war plans so they can act as  “force multipliers” for the United States.

Intelligence from New Zealand and their own automated systems had detected a violation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2397 – a centrepiece of the American campaign to bring down North Korea's nuclear and ballistic weapons programme. Someone was transferring money to the North Koreans, a breach of the US Treasury’s Destination Country and Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list.  Someone was violating US enforcement of sanctions on North Korea. Someone was going to pay for it. 

It’s time to stop this Medieval siege. UN Security Council Resolution 2397 has already killed thousands of North Korean civilians. As long as it remains in force, hundreds of thousands of innocent people remain at risk in a country that is suffering dire food insecurity. New Zealand, Australia and the US have played a major role in inflicting foreseeable lethal consequences on North Korean civilians. Sanctions against the North’s weapons programme have achieved nothing but human misery.

Is the future of Australia and New Zealand really as NATO forts, armed to the teeth glaring menacingly at an ever-rising China?  Are we risking what we cannot afford to lose by failing to see the world around us is changing rapidly and that we may be backing the wrong horse?  Our instinctive allegiance to a US hell-bent on escalation to maintain primacy risks the people of Down Under getting a Come Uppance of terrible proportions.

Immediately after murdering Fernando Pereira and blowing up Greenpeace’s ship the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, several of the French agents went on a ski holiday in New Zealand’s South Island to celebrate.  Such was the contempt the French had for the Kiwis and the abilities of our police to pursue them.  How wrong they were.

If Iran falls, war in our region – intended or unintended – becomes vastly more likely. Mainstream New Zealanders and Australians suffer from an understandable complacency: war is what happens to other, mainly darker people or Slavs. “Tomorrow”, people in this part of the world naively think, “will always be like yesterday”.

The U.S. is seemingly hell-bent on war with China. It is, however, increasingly likely the U.S. will lose such a war for two reasons: advanced computer chips and total production capacity.  For reasons of self-interest alone neither Australia nor New Zealand should join a US-led alliance against China.  

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. 

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.

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?

The Government and the mainstream media have gone ballistic (thankfully not literally just yet) over the move by the small Pacific nation to sign a strategic partnership with China in Beijing this week. It is the latest in a string of island nations that have signalled a closer relationship with China, something that rattles nerves and sabres in Wellington and Canberra.

History didn’t start on October 7th. True that. To get a deeper sense of why the shocking destruction in Gaza is happening we have to revive the forgotten war that the US waged against North Korea in the 1950s.  In many ways, it was the template for all that followed.

Ordinary New Zealanders and Australians have little idea about the momentous changes coming our way. For a couple of centuries we have been outposts of a Western empire that is losing its dominance of the region. Instead of having open national discussions about how our countries should respond to the rise of China, India and Indonesia – just part of the coming Asian Century – our leaders are shuttering our minds and framing public discourse in ways that hinder rather than help.  Our media and many leading members of the commentariat are keeping our collective minds in thrall to a US-Western world view.  If we wish to survive and thrive in this region – and in the emerging multipolar world – we may need to free ourselves from this form of mental slavery.

Very few people have tuned into the fact that what is happening isn't “NATO” moving into the Asia Pacific region – it’s actually far bigger than that. The US is creating a super-bloc, a super-alliance of client states that includes both the EU and NATO, the AP4 (its key Asia Pacific partners Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan) and other partners like the Philippines (now the Marcos dynasty is back at the helm).

Before New Zealand decides, by joining AUKUS Pillar 2, that we want to be America’s Friend with Benefits (cyber warfare tools, missiles, etc), we should at least pause for a moment and consider who we are getting into bed with. Australia also has time to reconsider its hasty AUKUS tryst.