Where Do We Go? With Whom Do We Stand?

"We took the NZ out of ANZUS, there is no good reason to put it into AUKUS."

NEW ZEALAND’S ENTRY into what would become the First World War was not decided by New Zealanders. Considering the 18,000 young New Zealanders killed in that terrible conflict, the young New Zealanders of today might be forgiven for regarding that as an egregious failure of the country’s political institutions. Explaining their failure is, however, assisted by noting that in 1914 there were no “New Zealanders” – only British “subjects”.

Presumably, that is why the inhabitants of the Dominion of New Zealand made no protest when war was declared by the appointed representative of their King-Emperor. Why would they? When their Prime Minister and their Leader of the Opposition were content to stand loyally to one side while their Governor-General, Lord Liverpool, informed them that they were at war with the German Empire.

A quarter-of-a-century later, in 1939, matters had improved – but only a little. When Great Britain declared war on Germany, for the second time, it was New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Michael Joseph Savage, who declared, loyally:

“Both with gratitude for the past and confidence in the future, we range ourselves without fear beside Britain. Where she goes, we go. Where she stands, we stand. We are only a small and young nation, but we are one and all a band of brothers and we march forward with union of hearts and wills to a common destiny.”

This time the butcher’s bill was only 12,000 young New Zealanders.

There have been some – most notably the distinguished New Zealand historian, Stevan Eldred-Grigg – who have argued that New Zealand could, and should, have declined to sacrifice its citizens (whose number barely topped 2 million) in another war between Great Britain and Germany. Putting to one side the very different moral calculations at work in 1939, the idea that either the New Zealand elites, or the New Zealand people, would have tolerated what pretty much the entire country would have condemned as an act of treachery, is fanciful.

At the heart of this country’s understanding of what its foreign and defence policies should be is the knowledge that its English-speaking citizens inhabit islands a very long way from the two large and powerful English-speaking nations which have, since 1840, protected and defended them. As a colony of Great Britain, the non-Māori inhabitants of New Zealand absorbed, more-or-less completely, the ideas, values, and institutions of the colonising power Lacking the power to defend themselves, New Zealanders not only trusted that Great Britain would protect and defend them, but also accepted that it was their moral and strategic duty to do their utmost to assist the “Mother Country”. Believing that New Zealand could “go it alone” wasn’t just misguided – it was wrong.

The Japanese Navy Air Force’s almost effortless sinking of the British battleships Repulse and Prince of Wales in December 1941 brought home to New Zealanders just how vain their trust and hope in British power had become. For a few terrifying months, the eyes of this tiny nation looked northward in anticipation of a Japanese invasion it could not hope to repel. But then, in June of 1942, the deus ex machina of the American Pacific Fleet swooped in to save the day. As The Who would later sing: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss” – only a lot less stuffy, much, much, richer – and way more fun!

Being on the winning side of World War II presented thoughtful New Zealand politicians and bureaucrats with challenges that threw all the old imperial certainties into doubt. For a start there was the new reality of the USA’s atomic weaponry, closely followed in significance by the seemingly irresistible conventional military might of the Soviet Union. When both of these realities merged into one, following the Soviet acquisition of atomic weaponry in 1949, it became clear to all but the most impenetrable military minds that a global clash of arms involving these new “superpowers” would mean the end of industrial civilisation. But, if New Zealand was to be protected by a superpower whose weapons would inflict as much harm on its friends as its enemies – to the point of sending both back to the Dark Ages, or worse – then what, exactly, was the diplomatic and military utility of such protection?

For the 30 years following the end of World War II, however, posing that question was a surefire way of putting an end to one’s career. If a global “hot” war between the USA and the Soviet Union had become impractical, then any test of their respective strengths, and those of their allies/vassals, would have to take place in the novel circumstances of a Cold War. In New Zealand, and just about everywhere else, this new, inescapably binary and zero-sum power game left absolutely no room for nuance. The whole world found itself reduced to the fratricidal politics of Harlan County, where the only question that mattered was: “Which side are you on?”

Unless you were some sort of Kiwi communist, there was only one correct answer to that question.

Except, the Cold War wasn’t just about signing-on with Uncle Sam (although that was the necessary first step) it was about something much bigger. It was about being one of “the English-speaking peoples” – as Churchill had dubbed them. The peoples who had triumphed over Hitler and Hirohito when all the others (barring the Soviets and the Communist Chinese) had surrendered. In the officers’ mess they talked about the “five fingers of the Anglo-Saxon fist” – USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand – and keeping those fingers clenched was an obligation that transcended all domestic political considerations. So long as New Zealand’s politicians served the Fist, all would be well. Putting anyone else’s interests ahead of the Fist, even one’s own country’s, would be ….. problematic.

Such have been the marching orders for just about every ambitious military officer and career diplomat since the Cold War became the name of the game in 1948. And it didn’t stop when the Cold War was finally won in 1991. If anything, the demise of the Soviet Union only made matters worse. Because, now, the five fingers of the Anglo-Saxon Fist, blood-smeared but unbroken, could be clenched in triumph above the entire planet. Now there was only one side.

Except, that is, for the pinky-finger of the Anglo-Saxon Fist. Except for New Zealand. To the consternation of the rulers of the other English-speaking countries, New Zealand’s elites proved unequal to the task of over-ruling a Labour Party unaccountably and immovably pledged to making New Zealand “nuclear-free”. Uncharacteristically unwilling to bring the hammer down, as they had on Allende in Chile, the Americans contented themselves with letting it be known that their Kiwi “mates” in the military and the diplomatic corps had just one job – to bring the nonsense of an “independent foreign policy” to an end.

Which, 40 years later, they did – but not before Helen Clark, one of the key protagonists of Labour’s nuclear-free policy, and now Prime Minister of New Zealand, became the first leader of a democratic Western nation to sign a Free Trade Agreement with the People’s Republic of China.

Ah, yes, China. While the USA had been wasting blood and treasure it could ill-afford to lose all across the Middle East, China had occupied the power vacuum created by the break-up of the Soviet Union and the gratuitous impoverishment of the Russian Federation. One did not need to be a student of Thucydides to predict which way this new superpower was bound to end up interacting with the old one. No more than Dylan Thomas, is Uncle Sam willing to “go quietly into that good night”. Once more, the global hegemon is calling its dear friends unto the breach, or else to wall up the strategic gap with their English-speaking dead.

No thanks. The days of being called to send our young to die at the behest of king-emperors must surely be at an end. Career-threatening or not, it must be time – this time – for New Zealand’s thoughtful politicians and bureaucrats to stand athwart the path of those ambitious soldiers, diplomats and scholars for whom all roads lead, somehow, to Washington, London, Ottawa and Canberra – but never to Wellington.

We took the NZ out of ANZUS, there is no good reason to put it into AUKUS.

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Chris Trotter is New Zealand’s most provocative leftwing political commentator, with 30 years of experience writing professionally about New Zealand politics. He identifies as a “libertarian socialist” and now writes regularly for the Democracy Project, producing his column “From the Left”.