Category Archives: PRC

Redrawing the lines.

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Early this year I was asked by a media outlet to appear and offer predictions on what will happen in world affairs in 2022. That was a nice gesture but I wound up not doing the show. However, as readers may remember from previous commentary about the time and effort put into (most often unpaid) media preparation, I engaged in some focused reading on international relations and comparative foreign policy before I decided to pull the plug on the interview. Rather than let that research go to waste I figured that I would briefly outline my thoughts about that may happen this year. They are not so much predictions as they are informal futures forecasting over the near term horizon.

The year is going to see an intensification of the competition over the nature of the framework governing International relations. If not dead, the liberal institutional order that dominated global affairs for the better part of the post-Cold War period is under severe stress. New and resurgent great powers like the PRC and Russia are asserting their anti-liberal preferences and authoritarian middle powers such as Turkey, North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Iran are defying long-held conventions and norms in order to assert their interests on the regional and world stages. The liberal democratic world, in whose image the liberal international order was ostensibly made, is in decline and disarray. In this the US leads by example, polarized and fractured at home and a weakened, retreating, shrinking presence on the world stage. It is not alone, as European democracies all have versions of this malaise, but it is a shining example of what happens when a superpower over-extends itself abroad while treating domestic politics as a centrifugal zero sum game.

While democracies have weakened from within, modern authoritarians have adapted to the advanced telecommunications and social media age and modified their style of rule (such as holding legitimating elections that are neither fair or free and re-writing constitutions that perpetuate their political control) while keeping the repressive essence of it. They challenge or manipulate the rule of law and muscle their way into consolidating power and influence at home and abroad. In a number of countries democratically elected leaders have turned increasingly authoritarian. Viktor Orban In Hungary, Recep Erdogan in Turkey, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and Narendra Modi in India (whose Hindutva vision of India as an ethno-State poses serious risks for ethnic and religious minorities), all evidence the pathology of authoritarianism “from within.”

Abroad, authoritarians are on the move. China continues its aggressive maritime expansion in the East and South China Seas and into the Pacific while pushing its land borders outwards, including annexing territory in the Kingdom of Bhutan and clashing with Indian troops for territorial control on the Indian side of their Himalayan border. Along with military interventions in Syria, Libya and recently Kazakstan, Russia has annexed parts of Georgia and the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine, taken control of Crimea, and is now massing troops on the Ukrainian border while it demands concessions from NATO with regard to what the Russians consider to be unacceptable military activity in the post-Soviet buffer zone on its Western flank. The short term objective of the latest move is to promote fractures within NATO over its collective response, including the separation of US security interests from those of its continental partners. The long term intention is to “Findlandize” countries like Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania so that they remain neutral, or at least neutralized, in the event of major conflict between Russia and Western Europe. As Churchill is quoted as saying, but now applied to Vladimir Putin, “he may not want war. He just wants the fruits of war.”

>>Aside about Russia’s threat to the Ukraine: The Russians are now in full threat mode but not in immediate invasion mode. To do that they need to position water and fuel tankers up front among the armoured columns that will be needed to overcome Ukrainian defences, and the 150,000 Russian troops massed on the eastern Ukrainian border are not sufficient to occupy the entire country for any length of time given Ukrainian resistance capabilities, including fighting a protracted guerrilla war on home soil (at least outside Russian ethnic dominant areas in eastern Ukraine). The Russians know that they are being watched, and satellite imagery shows no forward positioning of the logistical assets needs to seize and hold Ukrainian territory for any length of time. Paratroops and light infantry cannot do that, and while the Russians can rapidly deploy support for the heavier forces that can seize and hold hostile territory, this Russian threat appears to be directed, at best, at a limited incursion into Russian-friendly (read ethnic) parts of eastern Ukraine. That gives the Ukrainians and their international supporters room for negotiation and military response, both of which may be essential to deter Russian ambitions vis a vis the fundamental structure and logic of European security.<<

Rather than detail all the ways in which authoritarians are ascendent and democrats descendent in world affairs, let us look at the systemic dynamics at play. What is occurring is a shift in the global balance of power. That balance is more than the rise and decline of great powers and the constellations aggregated around them. It is more than about uni-, bi-, and multipolarity. It refers to the institutional frameworks, norms, practices and laws that govern the contest of States and other international actors. That arrangement—the liberal international order–is what is now under siege. The redrawing of lines now underway is not one of maps but of mores.

The liberal international order was essentially a post-colonial creation made by and for Western imperialist states after the war- and Depression-marked interregnum of the early 20th century. It did not take full hold until the collapse of the Soviet Union, as Cold War logics led to a tight bipolar international system in which the supposed advantages of free trade and liberal democracy were subordinated to the military deterrence imperatives of the times. This led to misadventures and aberrations like the domino theory and support for rightwing dictators on the part of Western Powers and the crushing of domestic political uprisings by the Soviets in Eastern Europe, none of which were remotely “liberal” in origin or intent.

After the Cold War liberal internationalists rose to positions of prominence in many national capitals and international organizations. Bound together by elite schooling and shared perspectives gained thereof, these foreign policy-makers saw in the combination of democracy and markets the best possible political-economic combine. They consequently framed much of their decision-making around promoting the twin pillars of liberal internationalism in the form of political democratization at the national level and trade opening on a global scale via the erection of a latticework of bi- and multilateral “free” trade agreements (complete with reductions in tariffs and taxes on goods and services but mostly focused on investor guarantee clauses) around the world.

The belief in liberal internationalism was such that it was widely assumed that inviting the PRC, Russia and other authoritarian regimes into the community of nations via trade linkages would lead to their eventual democratization once domestic polities began to experience the material advantages of free market capitalism on their soil. This was the same erroneous assumption made by Western modernization theorists in the 1950s, who saw the rising middle classes as “carriers” of democratic values even in countries with no historical or cultural experience with that political regime type or the egalitarian principles underbidding it. Apparently unwilling to read the literature on why modernization theory did not work in practice, in the 1990s neo-modernization theorists re-invented the wheel under the guise of the Washington Consensus and other such pro-market institutional arrangements regulating international commerce.

Like the military-bureaucratic authoritarians of the 1960s and 1970s who embraced and benefited from the application of modernization theory to their local circumstances (including sub-sets such as the Chicago School of macroeconomics that posited that finance capital should be the leader of national investment decisions in an economic environment being restructured via the privatization of public assets), in the 1990s the PRC and Russia welcomed Western investment and expansion of trade without engaging in the parallel path of liberalizing, then democratizing their internal politics. In fact, the opposite has occurred: as both countries became more capitalistic they became increasingly authoritarian even if they differ in their specifics (Russia is a oligopolistic kleptocracy whereas the PRC is a one party authoritarian, state capitalist system). Similarly, Turkey has enjoyed the fruits of capitalism while dismantling the post-Kemalist legacy of democratic secularism, and the Sunni Arab petroleum oligarchies have modernized out of pre-capitalist fossil fuel extraction enclaves into diversified service hubs without significantly liberalizing their forms of rule. A number of countries such as Brazil, South Africa and the Philippines have backslid at a political level when compared to the 1990s while deepening their ties to international capital. Likewise, after a period of optimism bracketed by events like the the move to majority rule in South Africa and the “Arab Spring,” both Saharan and Sub-Saharan Africa have in large measure reverted to the rule of strongmen and despots.

As it turns out, as the critics of modernisation theory noted long ago, capitalism has no elective affinity for democracy as a political form (based on historical experience one might argue to the contrary) and democracy is no guarantee that capitalism will moderate its profit orientation in the interest of the common good.

Countries like the PRC, Russia, Turkey and the Arab oligarchies engage in the suppression and even murder of dissidents at home and abroad, flouting international conventions when doing so. But that is a consequence, not a cause of the erosion of the liberal international order. The problem lies in that whatever the lip service paid to it, from a post-colonial perspective liberal internationalism was an elite concept with little trickle down practical effect. With global income inequalities increasing within and between States and the many flaws of the contemporary international trade regime exposed by the structural dislocations caused by Covid, the (neo-)Ricardian notions of comparative and competitive advantage have declined in popularity, replaced by more protectionist or self-sufficient economic doctrines.

Couple this with disenchantment with democracy as an equitable deliverer of social opportunity, justice and freedom in both advanced and newer democratic states, and what has emerged throughout the liberal democratic world is variants of national-populism that stress economic nationalism, ethnocentric homogeneity and traditional cultural values as the main organizing principles of society. The Trumpian slogan “America First” encapsulates the perspective well, but support for Brexit in the UK and the rising popularity of rightwing nationalist parties throughout Europe, some parts of Latin America and even Japan and South Korea indicates that all is not well in the liberal world (Australia and New Zealand remain as exceptions to the general rule).

That is where the redrawing comes in. Led by Russia and the PRC, an authoritarian coalition is slowly coalescing around the belief that the liberal international order is a post-colonial relic that was never intended to benefit the developing world but instead to lock in place an international institutional edifice that benefitted the former colonial/imperialist powers at the expense of the people that they directly subjugated up until 30-40 years ago. What the PRC and Russia propose is a redrawing of the framework in which international relations and foreign affairs is conducted, leading to one that is more bound by realist principles rooted in power and interest rather than hypocritically idealist notions about the perfectibility of humankind. It is the raw understanding of the anarchic nature of the international system that gives the alternative perspective credence in the eyes of the global South.

Phrased differently, there is truth to the claims that the liberal international order was a post-colonial invention that disproportionally benefitted Western powers. Because the PRC and USSR were major supporters of national liberation and revolutionary movements throughout the so-called “Third World” ranging from the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, Central and SE Asia to Central and South America, they have the anti-Western credentials to promote a plausible alternative cloaked not in the mantle of purported multilateral ideals but grounded in self-interested transactions mediated by power relationships. China’s Belt and Road initiative is one example in the economic sphere, and Russian military support for authoritarians in Syria, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela shows that even in times of change it remains steadfast in its pragmatic commitment to its international partners.

With this in mind I believe that 2022 will be a year where the transition from the liberal international order to something else will begin to pick up speed and as a result lead to various types of conflict between the old and new guards. What with hybrid or grey area conflict, disinformation campaigns, electoral meddling and cyberwarfare all now part of the psychological operations mix along with conventional air, land, sea and space-based kinetic military operations involving multi-domain command, control, communications, computing, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and robotics (C4ISR2) systems, the ways in which conflict can be engaged covertly or overtly have multiplied. That technological fact means that it is easier for international actors, or at least some of them, to act as disruptors of the global status quo by using conflict as a systemic re-alignment vehicle.

Absent a hegemonic power or Leviathan, a power vacuum has opened in which the world is open to the machinations of (dare I say it?) “charismatic men of destiny.” Putin, Xi Jingpin and other authoritarians see themselves as such men. Conflict will be the tool with which they attempt to impose their will on international society.

For them, the time is now. With the US divided, weakened and isolated after the Trump presidency and unable to recover quickly because of Covid, supply chain blockages, partisan gridlock and military exhaustion, with Europe also rendered by unprecedented divisions and most of the rest of the world adopting“wait and see” or hedging strategies, the strategic moment is opportune for Russia, China and lesser authoritarian powers to make decisive moves to alter the international status quo and present the liberal democratic world with a fait accompli that is more amenable to their geopolitical interests.

If what I propose is correct, the emerging world system dominated by authoritarian States led by the PRC and Russia will be less regulated (in the sense that power politics will replace norms, rules and laws as the basic framework governing inter-state relations), more fragmented (in that the thrust of foreign policies will be come more bilateral or unilateral rather than multilateral in nature), more coercive and dissuasive in its diplomatic exchanges and increasingly driven by basic calculations about power asymmetries (think “might makes right” and “possession is two thirds of the law”). International organisations and multilateral institutions will continue to exist as covers for State collusion on specific issues or as lip service purveyors of diplomatic platitudes, but in practice will be increasingly neutralised as deliberative, arbitrating-mediating and/or conflict-resolution bodies. Even if not a full descent into international anarchy, there will be a return to a Hobbesian state of nature.

2022 could well be the year that this begins to happen.

Update: For an audio short take on what 20022 may bring, please feel free to listen to the first episode of season three of “A View from Afar,” a podcast that offers a South Pacific perspective on geopolitical and strategic affairs co-hosted by Selwyn Manning and me.

The incremental shift.

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In the build up to the Xmas holidays I was interviewed by two mainstream media outlets about the recently released (December 2021) Defence Assessment Report and last week’s 5 Eyes Communique that included New Zealand as a signatory. The common theme in the two documents was the threat, at least as seen through the eyes of NZ’s security community, that the PRC increasingly poses to international and regional peace and stability. But as always happens, what I tried to explain in hour-long conversations with reporters and producers inevitably was whittled down into truncated pronouncements that skirted over some nuances in my thought about the subject. In the interest of clarification, here is a fuller account of what is now being described as a “shift” in NZ’s stance on the PRC.

Indeed, there has been a shift in NZ diplomatic and security approaches when it comes to the PRC, at least when compared to that which operated when he Labour-led coalition took office in 2017. But rather than sudden, the shift has been signalled incrementally, only hardening (if that is the right term) in the last eighteen months. In July 2020, the the wake of the ill-fated Hong Kong uprising, NZ suspended its extradition treaty with Hong Kong, citing the PRC passage of the Security Law for Hong Kong and its negative impact on judicial independence and the “one country, two systems” principle agreed to in the 1997 Joint UK-PRC Declaration on returning Hong Kong to Chinese control. At the same time NZ changed its sensitive export control regime so that military and “dual use” exports to HK are now treated the same as if they were destined for the mainland. 

In November 2020 NZ co-signed a declaration with its 5 Eyes partners condemning further limits on political voice and rights in HK with the postponment of Legislative elections, arrests of opposition leaders and further extension of provisions of the mainland Security Law to HK. The partners also joined in condemnation of the treatment of Uyghurs in Yinjiang province. In April 2021 Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta gave her “Dragon and Taniwha” speech where she tried to use Maori allegories to describe the bilateral relationship and called for NZ to diversify its trade away from overly concentrated partnerships, using the pandemic supply chain problems as an illustration as to why.

She also said that NZ was uncomfortable with using the 5 Eyes intelligence partnership as a public diplomacy tool. I agree completely with that view, as there are plenty of other diplomatic forums and channels through which to express displeasure or criticism. The speech did not go over well in part because NZ business elites reacted viscerally to a large tattooed Maori woman spinning indigenous yarns to a mainly Chinese and Chinese-friendly audience (and other foreign interlocutors further afield). From a “traditional” (meaning: white male colonial) perspective the speech was a bit odd because it was long on fable and imagery and short on “hard” facts, but if one dug deeper there were plenty of realpolitik nuggets within the fairy dust, with the proper context to the speech being that that Labour has an agenda to introduce Maori governance principles, custom and culture into non-traditional policy areas such as foreign policy. So for me it was the balancing act bookended by the trade diversification and 5 Eyes lines that stood out in that korero.

Less than a month later Prime Minister Ardern spoke to a meeting of the China Business Summit in Auckland and noted that “It will not have escaped the attention of anyone here that as China’s role in the world grows and changes, the differences between our systems – and the interests and values that shape those systems – are becoming harder to reconcile.” That hardly sounds like appeasement or submission to the PRC’s will. Even so, Mahuta and Ardern were loudly condemned by rightwingers in NZ, Australia, the UK and US, with some going so far as to say that New Zealand had become “New Xiland” and that it would be kicked out the 5 Eyes for being soft on the Chinese. As I said at the time, there was more than a whiff of misogyny in those critiques.

In May 2021 the Labour-led government joined opposition parties in unanimously condemning the PRC for its abuse of Uyghur human rights. The motion can be found here.

In July 2021 NZ Minister of Intelligence and Security Andrew Little publicly blamed China-based, state-backed cyber-aggressors for a large scale hacking attack on Microsoft software vulnerabilities in NZ targets. He pointed to intolerable behaviour of such actors and the fact that their operations were confirmed by multiple Western intelligence agencies. He returned to the theme in a November 2021 speech given at Victoria University, where he reiterated his concerns about foreign interference and hacking activities without mentioning the PRC by name as part of a broad review of his remit. Rhetorical diplomatic niceties aside, it was quite clear who he was referring to when he spoke of state-backed cyber criminals (Russia is the other main culprit, but certainly not the only one). You can find the speech here. 

In early December 2021 the Ministry of Defense released its Defense Assessment Report for the first time in six years. In it China is repeatedly mentioned as the major threat to regional and global stability (along with climate change). Again, the issue of incompatible values was noted as part of a surprisingly blunt characterisation of NZ’s threat environment. I should point out that security officials are usually more hawkish than their diplomatic counterparts, and it was the Secretary of Defense, not the Minister who made the strongest statements about China (the Secretary is the senior civil servant in the MoD; the Minister, Peeni Henare, spoke of promoting Maori governance principles based on consensus and respect into the NZDF (“people, infrastructure, Pacifika”), something that may be harder to do than say because of the strictly hierarchical nature of military organisation. At the presser where the Secretary and Minister spoke about the Report, the uniformed brass spoke of “capability building” based on a wish list in the Report. Let’s just say that the wish list is focused on platforms that counter external, mostly maritime, physical threats coming from extra regional actors and factors rather than on matters of internal governance.

Defence-Assessment-2021Download

Then came the joint 5 Eyes statement last week, once again reaffirming opposition to the erosion of Hong Kong’s autonomy and its gradual absorption into the Chinese State. Throughout this period NZ has raised the issue of the Uyghurs with the PRC in bilateral and multilateral forums, albeit in a quietly diplomatic way.

I am not sure what exactly led to NZ’s shift on the PRC but, rather than a sudden move, there has been a cooling, if not hardening trend during the last eighteen months when it comes to the bilateral relationship. The decision to move away from the PRC’s “embrace” is clear, but I have a feeling that something unpleasant may have occurred in the relationship (spying? influence operations? diplomatic or personal blackmail?) that forced NZ to tighten its ties to Western trade and security networks. The recently announced UK-NZ bilateral FTA is one step in that direction. AUKUS is another (because if its spill-over effect on NZ defense strategy and operations).

What that all means is that the PRC will likely retaliate sometime soon and NZ will have to buckle up for some material hardship during the transition to a more balanced and diversified trade portfolio. In other words, it seems likely that the PRC will respond by shifting its approach and engage diplomatic and economic sanctions of varying degrees of severity on NZ, if nothing else to demonstrate the costs of defying it and as a warning to those similarly inclined. That may not be overly burdensome on the diplomatic and security fronts given NZ’s partnerships in those fields, but for NZ actors deeply vested/invested in China (and that means those involved in producing about 30 percent of NZ’s GDP), there is a phrase that best describes their positions: “at risk.” They should plan accordingly.

Along with the New Year, there is the real possibility that, whether it arrives incrementally or suddenly, foreign policy darkness lies on the horizon.

Warnings versus threats in foreign relations.

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Over my years in academia and then as a security official in the US, I came to believe in the importance of analytic, conceptual and terminological precision. I realised that being precise and demanding precision from others when speaking or writing was not just a pedantic obsession. Words have meaning and specific words have significant meaning. Once uttered or written, words have real world implications and consequences, and if they are used carelessly the results are mostly for the worse because imprecision adds elements of confusion or misunderstanding into social discourse. That may or may not be done deliberately, but the potential damage is universal. Consider the following.

Perhaps because political discourse has been “securitized” after 9/11, or perhaps because the number and types of dangers have increased over the last decade, it seems that the use of the word “threat” has become standard practice in discussions of international relations and foreign policy. Social media has added additional channels through which to convey the pervasive sense of darkness on the horizon.

We hear of the threat posed by climate change; the threat of unchecked migration on once-stable liberal democracies; the threat of Chinese/Russian/US/Iranian/Israeli/North Korean aggression; the threat of various types of sub- and non-state ideological terrorism; the threat of drugs; the threat of crime; the threat of non-heteronormative Christian patriarchical lifestyles on “traditional values;” the threat of cyber crime and warfare; the threat of disinformation and direct influence campaigns on domestic politics; the threat of the surveillance and other aspects of the “Deep” State; the threat of species and planetary extinction, and so on. To consume news and current events reporting these days is to consume a multi-variegated diet of threat.

But is the use of the term justified? Could it be that the English-language media are conflating “threat” with “warning,” which is not the same thing? In order to better understand the concepts of “threat,” “threatened” and “threatening” in the discussion of international affairs, this essay will attempt to unpack its conceptual foundations. Among other things, this will allow us to differentiate between warnings, on the one hand, and threats properly construed.

A threat is a danger in the making: imminent, forthcoming or potential. Threats can be physical, material (say, economic), cultural (e.g. to identity), social (to cohesion), psychological and/or spiritual. Threats can be the work of nature, humans or both working consciously or unconsciously in concert (e.g. the impact of carbon emissions on oceanic water temperatures and sea levels or of a human-made virus escaping from a laboratory). They can be existential or circumstantial, They can be immutable, intractable and ever-present or they can be ameliorated, mitigated or eliminated.

When we speak of “threatening” or “threatened” we are referring to future courses of action in which danger materializes and is applied. Again, this danger can come in many guises, from kinetic force to psychological pressure or enforced material deprivation. If consciously applied as an act of human volition, the object is punitive: to place a targeted subject under some form of duress by invoking a danger towards them, where the threat is a signal of intent. Conversely, to be threatened to is to believe and perceive to be in danger. That is not always due to the actions of others—a tornado touching down a half mile away is a mortal threat to those in the vicinity.

This is different than a warning or being warned. A “warning” does not always carry with it the certainty of danger or punitive action and while it may precede a threat, to be warned is not the same as being threatened. A warning is advice about something to be avoided or at least aware of, or of the ramifications of potentially negative course of action, or a caution against further action. To be warned is to be put on notice that failure to respond to or ignore a given activity might or could result in adverse consequences. These may or may not involve the threat of danger. The importance of the distinction is in the implicit punitive action inherent in a threat. One can be warned about an impending threat (say, thunderstorms that start to develop funnel clouds), but warnings can also be advisory or precautionary where danger is not involved (for example, a warning about shaking a fizzy drink bottle before opening it). 

In foreign relations states issue warnings all of the time, both to others as well as their own citizens. States may warn friends and allies as well as adversaries. These warnings may ascend a ladder of punitive sanction into open threats (against others) or legal sanctions (against citizens), but properly understood are at the low end of state advisories. That is why much of what is reported as “threats” and “threatening” on the part of states are in fact no such thing—they are warnings of various sorts.

In international relations, for a threat to be credible and move beyond a mere warning, the author must display the capability, intent, and relative power to punitively apply duress to the subject of the threat. Moreover, the subject must understand the threat as given and be unable to deter or reply in kind. In other words, for a threat to be credible and for a recipient to feel genuinely threatened, there must be a power imbalance between author and subject that the subject cannot counter short of acquiescence. For example, New Zealand may credibly threaten small island neighbors in the South Pacific, assuming that the latter do not have the protection of a larger state. But New Zealand cannot threaten larger states. Conversely, larger states such as the US or China can threaten many entities in many ways given the relative power asymmetries in their favor. Middle powers such as Australia may threaten some states and other actors but not others, again, depending on the power balances involved in each relationship (which are bound to involve inter-connected others as well). The point is that while all states can issue warnings of various sorts, threats are contingent on their credibility, which in turn are dependent on the power relationships underpinning them. Without power asymmetries in their favour, threats are idle at best or bluffs at worst. This can lead to unintended negative consequences for those who play loose with the concept.

Here is a genuine threat: the current Russian military buildup along the Eastern Ukrainian border. This is not merely a drill. Forward placement of fuel trucks amid multi-platform armoured columns, deployment of field artillery and ground attack aircraft and presence of paratroop units signal real intent. Russia has clearly stated that it will not allow Ukraine to join NATO and will use force to do so. It has a proven track record in this regard, as the 2014 annexation of Crimea and occupation of parts of the Kherson Oblast and Donbas regions attest. Similarly, Russia’s invasion of the Transcaucasia region of Georgia and support for separatist government in South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008 was argued along the same lines: Russia would not stand for Georgian integration into NATO because, as is the case with Ukraine today, it is considered a strategically important buffer zone protecting the Russian mainland from Western aggression. Whatever the legitimacy of its rationale, given its proven reputation to use force, its military superiority over Ukraine and the West’s inability to deter it with sanctions and unwillingness to use counter-force to bolster Ukrainian defences, the massing of Russian military units (some 100,000 strong) along Ukraine’s border is very much a threat that will likely lead to action

Russian military forces at staging area near Ukrainian border. Photo: Mazar Technologies.

Now consider this contrasting example: we read and hear about how military aircraft from the PRC regularly enter into Taiwanese airspace in order to convey a threat about a potential future invasion. However, the reality is that Chinese warplanes fly sorties in the Taiwanese Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) that includes part of the mainland provinces of Fujian, Zhejiang and Jiangxi as well as parts of the East China Sea (Sea of Japan) and South China Sea. This is is not Taiwanese territorial airspace and the Taiwanese do not bother to respond to most PLAA flights exercising over the mainland. At most, the PLAA flights in the Taiwanese ADIZ can be construed as warnings about future intent and capabilities, but of themselves are not a threat. That would change if PLAA sorties violate Taiwanese sovereign territorial airspace, at which point the threat should be considered real.

  • Source: Republic of China (Taiwan) Ministry of National Defense.

The image above is of PLAA sorties into the Taiwanese ADIZ in September 2020, including those that cross the so-called median line that divides the Formosa Strait. The PRC has its own ADIZ that includes all of the airspace above Taiwan as well as the entire East China Sea and most of the northern South China Sea, yet does not assert overflight rights in Taiwanese 12-mile territorial airspace. This belies claims that it is engaging in “threatening” behaviour towards Taiwan, at least for the moment.

The problem with misidentifying PLAA exercises in the ADIZ as threats to Taiwan is that this can lead media commentators and nationalist politicians in the PRC, Taiwan and elsewhere to misread what is happening and prepare accordingly. That in turn creates a classic security dilemma whereby policy makers misperceive or misconstrue what is really happening (warnings) for something that it really is not (threats), prepare as if what is misconstrued is real and, hyped by media-driven nationalist fervor, get locked into pre-emptive or preventative war logics that cause them to stumble into armed confrontations that are otherwise avoidable. At that point the escalatory chain to all-out war is unlocked.

This returns us to the original point of the post. There are practical implications to the misconstruing of or confusion between warnings and threats. Media conflation of warnings and threats can lead to miscalculation and unintended negative consequences. For media types, conceptual and semantic precision is often downplayed in favor of attention-grabbing but erroneous statements. This is particularly the case for headline writers in print and audio-visual media, who want to drive eyeballs onto stories in order to generate clicks or views that in turn translate into advertising revenue.

This logic is impeccable in revenue-generating terms, but the media do not have to suffer the consequences of their terminological imprecision. Those are worn by others, and the others are not just security policy makers in contested spaces.

That is why insisting on discursive precision is not just a pedantic concern. Instead, it is the real-world implications that argue best for analytic, conceptual and terminological precision in foreign policy discussions.

Media Link: “A View from Afar” year-end review.

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Selwyn Manning and I wrapped up this year’s “A View from Afar” podcasts with a review of the past year and some speculation about what is to come. We meander a bit but the themes are clear. You can find the show here.

Chinese influence and American hate diffusion.

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Over the last decade concerns have been raised about Chinese “influence operations” in NZ and elsewhere. Run by CCP-controlled “United Front” organisations, influence operations are designed to promote PRC interests and pro-PRC views within the economic and political elites of the targeted country as well as Chinese diaspora communities. The means of doing so is transactional and convertible by cash. United Front organisations put money and operatives into the local political system exploiting loopholes or laxities in political finance laws and candidate selection processes, and buy majority ownership of or board membership in strategically placed local firms. This greases the skids for more “Chinese-friendly” perspectives in economic and political decision-making circles.

In parallel, local Chinese language media (both Mandarin and Cantonese) are purchased and their editorial orientation turned towards the CCP party line. This ensures that dissenting opinions are eliminated from outlets that cater to newer Chinese language immigrants, something that, for example, is evident in the coverage of Hong Kong over the last few years. Along with outright intimidation campaigns directed at critics, dissidents and so-called malcontents, this ensures that what is presented to local native and expat populations about China is what the CCP wants it to be. With large scale (now temporarily suspended due to Covid restrictions) immigration of CCP-approved or affiliated mainlanders on student and business visas and the emergence of ethnic Chinese lobbying groups, this ensures that pro-PRC narratives come to dominate how it is spoken about in targeted countries.

The practical goal is to present homogenous and uniform pro-CCP views among expat communities and to re-orient local elite perspectives and material interests towards a more China-friendly position, both in terms of international affairs as well as Chinese domestic politics. The broader strategy is to use the “Achilles Heel” of liberal democracy–freedoms of expression, association and movement–to subvert democratic societies from within. The approach is top-down and largely elite-focused, but has trickle down effects throughout the targeted society. Most importantly, it works. One only has to look at the wedding of NZ political and economic elite interests to those of Chinese agents and entities to understand why. Think Don Brash, John Key and Jenny Shipley as poster children for that type of unholy union, but Labour has, shall we say, some baggage of its own in this regard.

However, there is another malign foreign influence operating in NZ as well as places like Brazil and Italy. It arrives as a type of cultural or ideological diffusion and it is propagated by US-based non-state political actors like Steve Bannon and his Counterspin media channel as well as the Qanon conspiracy network, Alex Jones and Infowars plus assorted other alt-Right and neo-fascist outlets channeling anti-government and anti- “Deep State” views of the likes of the Proud Boys, Oathkeepers and Three Percenters. Rather than the top-down and elite-centric approach adopted by Chinese influence operators, US cultural-ideological diffusers use “alternative media,” direct marketing (such as by distributing leaflets and cold calling with false information) and social media (including using political blogs, fake websites, plus trolls and bots on large platforms) to exploit pre-existing social fault lines and amplify newer divisions in a targeted society. In doing so they copy and adapt Russian (and now Chinese) psychological operations models of disinformation, misinformation and false-flagging. They prey on gullibility, ignorance and/or hate and their currency is rage: rage born of frustration with life opportunities or personal grievance; rage against institutions and processes (i.e. the “system”), rage against past injustices and/or modern offences or slights; rage against assorted ‘others” challenging status and privilege; outrage at offences big and small–the sources of rage are both individual and collective and with enough coaching and channeling can be marshalled into a powerful force for good or evil. Cultural-Ideological diffusers such as Bannon travel on the dark side.

The approach is bottom-up and grassroots in orientation, and works along what Gramsci called the trenches of civil society to push a counter-hegemonic notion of “good sense” against the hegemonic conception of “common sense” purveyed by the mainstream (elite-controlled) media. These trenches include social movements as well as social institutions in which historical and contemporary grievances can be combined into a civil resistance front.

In the contemporary NZ context, that means uniting anti-vaccination/mask/lockdown sentiment with anti-tax, anti-environmental, anti-1080, Christian conservative, libertarian, gun-rights and assorted other rightwing views as well as outliers like Maori sovereignty proponents. To cultivate grassroots resistance it uses local activists as well as “Astroturf” entities such as the purportedly farmer-led group known as the “Groundswell Movement,” which in fact is a creation of the urban rightwing (and National Party-aligned) Taxpayers Union. The rhetoric of cultural-ideological diffusion protests is imported to a large extent and at times seemingly at odds with local issues: witness the proliferation of Trump and MAGA-supportive references amongst current anti-government demonstrators. More worryingly, unlike most of the NZ protest movements of the past, the rhetoric and actions of local protestors influenced by cultural-ideological US agitators is tinged with overt hints of violent punishment, retribution and revenge against the government, “liberals,” and even the mainstream media (which if anything has shown itself to be largely uncritical and mild Fourth Estate that is mainly interested in generating clicks or viewership based on controversies-of-the-day and scandal). References to NZ authorities as Nazis deserving of Nuremburg-style trials lend an ominous tone to the recent exercises in civil rights, to which can be added the open displays of racist, misogynist and neo-fascist sentiment among those involved. That may be a more “natural” form of discourse for a deeply polarised country like the US with a long record of political violence, but it has no organic roots in NZ’s otherwise vigorous culture of civil disobedience and public protest.

Less the smorgasbord approach to forming anti-government movements seem hopeless as a political strategy or praxis (and hence dismissible), the key to its success is to use cultural-ideological diffusion tactics to create a temporary coalition of convenience, not a long-term alliance. It’s immediate purpose is to sabotage the government from without, not undermine it from within. It uses contemporary political conflicts such as the debate about pandemic mitigation to sow social and political division while exploring the same Achilles Heel as do the Chinese influence operators (the freedoms of speech and protest in particular). Ultimately, its long-term end is similar: to undermine public faith in the liberal democratic system as given in order to impose a more authoritarian order of some sort. But for the time being, the focus is on the short-term: sow unrest, promote sedition and usurp authority using social media to import US-sourced cultural-ideological framing of “wedge” issues in order to do so.

Gramsci of course wrote thinking about Left political praxis in Mussolini’s Italy, so there is a certain irony in the adoption of his thought by the likes of Steve Bannon. But that is part of why Bannon is an evil genius: he knows what works and does not care from where good strategic ideas come from.

Not surprisingly local security “experts” have jumped up to state the obvious that things might get violent if the anti-government rhetoric continues to escalate along the lines mentioned above. Raising public consciousness of this possibility is a good thing. More helpfully, the NZ intelligence community has warned that a terrorist attack is possible within a year or so and that it will likely come in the form of a “lone wolf” emerging out of the anti-vaxx/mask/lockdown movement (although the process of radicalisation and likely profile of such an individual has not been specified). The media is covering itself as a target of extremists because some of its members have been threatened by anti-government bullies, and politicians, with good reason, are increasingly concerned about their security given the vitriol directed at (some of) them. While it is laudable to focus attention on the security threat angle implicit in recent protests, a deeper understanding of the methodology and mechanics of cross-border non-State cultural-ideological diffusion is in order, especially when it is subversive in intent. Unless one understands what the likes of Bannon want to do when directing their malevolent gaze on Aotearoa and who are the most susceptible to the entreaties of their perverse siren song, then all that can be done is to react to rather than pre-empt whatever harm is headed our way.

Our security authorities need to be cognisant of this fact, but as a stable and largely peaceful society, so do we.

Media Link: “A View from Afar” on supply chain bottlenecks, commodity (over) concentration and the need for post-pandemic structural reform.

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Selwyn Manning and I have created YouTube channels under our respective business names in order to promote the “A View from Afar” podcast series. The latest episode examines recent problems of global supply, production and exchange, using a micro-to-macro lens to discuss the interplay between economics, policy and politics in creating and hopefully ameliorating the failures of the pre-pandemic system of trade. You can find it here.

Media Link: “A View from Afar” on PRC-Taiwan tensions.

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In this week’s podcast Selwyn Manning and I discuss the upsurge in tensions between the PRC and Taiwan and what are the backgrounds to and implications of them. You can check the conversation out here.

9/11, forever wars and the end of liberal internationalism.

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In the years that followed the post 9/11 US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, I wrote several essays about how, wittingly or wittingly, Osama bin Laden had successfully employed the well-known guerrilla tactic known as the “sucker ploy” on a grand scale. The sucker ploy is a tactic by which guerrillas commit an outrage or stage a provocation of some sort that draws a disproportionate response from the military that they are fighting, thereby shifting popular support from the latter to the former. A classic example is for guerrillas to shoot at passing military vehicles or aircraft with small arms fire from a village, then retreat into the surrounding countryside while the military responds by annihilating the village and its occupants. 

When the US stayed in Afghanistan after the Taliban were ousted from government and al-Qaeda was eliminated from its territory (end of 2002), and then invaded and occupied Iraq under the false pretense that Saddam Hussein was an ally of al-Qaeda and was going to use weapons of mass destruction on the West or allow al-Qaeda to do so, it took the sucker’s bait. It embarked on a global “war on terrorism” that saw the US and others expend much blood and treasure in places like the Sahel and Sub-Saharan Africa, Syria and Libya, Mesopotamia down to Mali, Kenya and many more places in between and beyond, stretching to Europe and Australasia. The US expended trillions of dollars and thousands of lives on these “forever” or “endless” wars, feeding a relentless military-industrial complex while spinning off the militarisation of US policing and some sectors of civil society that is creating the conditions for civil war, hints of which have already been seen over the last couple of years.

Whatever goodwill existed towards the US in the immediate wake of 9/11, it gradually dissipated as a result of US foreign policy recklessness and arrogance over the next twenty years. Yet partisan logics of saving face by “staying the course” or, if that is not enough, patriotically respecting the sunk costs invested rather than simply “cutting and running” locked the US into continuing the folly of pursuing forever wars in far-off places with little strategic value or which posed no existential risk to the country. Those wars have not resulted in any significant change favorable to the geopolitical position of US but have contributed to the polarisation of its internal politics.

Meanwhile US adversaries like the PRC and Russia built and rebuilt their military forces into peer competitors of the US and expanded their spheres of influence. Mostly as a result of US bungling, Russia is now the most important extra-regional power in the Levant and North Africa and is poised, however ironically, to become a major interlocutor between the Taliban and the global community. Chinese economic and diplomatic influence is world-wide in scope and its aggressive military presence is now a constant in East and Southeast Asia as well as along its land borders. Other actors such as North Korea, Iran and Turkey have been emboldened by perceived US weakness while traditional US allies fret about the stability of the international order without its central presence as a stabilizing force.

The Great Satan has seemingly turned into a Paper Tiger.

It gets worse. Across the world authoritarianism has replaced democracy as the dominant political form. Rather than embrace democracy as an antidote to the hatreds that produced 9/11, autocrats of all types have taken advantage of the post 9/11 moment to impose their rule. In another irony, this includes the US, which nurtured the conditions that led to the election of a bigoted sociopathic narcissist to the presidency and the unleashing of long pent-up hatreds within the body politic. “America First” in reality means “America in Retreat” into neo-isolationism and xenophobic defenses of borders, Anglo-Saxon Christians within those borders, economic nationalism and, when it comes to foreign relations, coddling of foreign dictators who shared the former president’s biases and/or his transactional view of how politics should be conducted. The Obama interregnum notwithstanding (and even he seriously compromised on the original idealism of his foreign policy perspective, which won him a Nobel Prize), the US continued to cast a blind eye on the misdeeds of “friendly” dictatorships like the Egyptians, Jordanians, Saudis or Emiratis while barking about those in Iran, Cuba, Syria and Venezuela (and even there, with relatively little bite).

US political/diplomatic leadership is on the wane at home and abroad. The truth is inescapable: since 9/11 the US has been in decline, for the most part due to its own ignorance and excesses.

Needless to say, there were other intervening factors and variables that contributed to the slow-moving, partial success of bin-Laden’s strategy. Sure, he was not around to see it come to fruition. Sure, there has not been a global awakening of Islamicism that threatens the socio-economic and political parameters of most established nation-states. Wahhabism and Salafism are not the dominant sects in the Muslim world. So bin-Laden’s strategy failed in that it did not produce the specific results that he desired. But 9/11 did set into action a chain of events that has left the international community very different that what was before, with the US diminished and divided and no longer the undisputed global “hegemon.” That must be acknowledged.

A key result of this decline is the collapse of the concept of liberal internationalism as a guiding foreign policy principle in the US. This principle, which long enjoyed bipartisan support in US foreign policy circles and which is premised on the notion that the combination of market economies and democratic governance is the best political-economic form (regime), was thought to be imposable by external actors—meaning the US and its democratic capitalist allies—on unstable or failed underdeveloped states where extremism was believed to breed and prosper. From that belief came the pursuit of nation-building and regime change as foreign policy objectives, even if the targets of such ambition had no history with democracy, maintained pre-modern economic, cultural and social structures in which notions of consent and compromise (two hallmarks of all democratic social interaction) were absent, and were ill-disposed to have an occupying force impose anything on them other than temporary physical security and material aid.

The futility of military and civilian “capacity-building” in such contexts is summed up by an essay written by a former US Army Green Beret about his time in Afghanistan titled “Throwing Rocks at a Fire.” The essay recounts the story of a fire in an Afghan commando barracks at an outpost outside the capital. The fire was started by a gas burner used to make morning tea, which was set on the floor of the barracks and surrounded by blankets pulled from beds for the commandos to sit on (the preferred to have their tea on the floor rather than on tables when inside due to the cold weather, much as they did in their home villages). One of them inadvertently knocked the gas burner over, which set fire to a blanket. Rather than smother the fire with dirt or water or toss the burner out a window or door, the commandos–the best of the best Afghan soldiers–threw more loose blankets on the fire, which then rapidly spread to the barracks beds and wooden floor and walls (which unlike village huts, were not made from earthen and clay materials). They then ran out of the building. When the SF trooper arrived, he found the commandos throwing rocks at the fire through the front door of the now fully engaged building. It burnt to the ground.

Rather than chalk it up to the actions of ignorant primitives, my reading is that for the Green Beret the moral of the story was the futility of attempting to impose modernity, to include modern concepts of rationality and logic, on deeply rooted pre-modern cultures and societies that were uninterested in the social aspects of so-called modern democratic living. Learning to fight better with modern weapons was one thing, but re-learning basic forms of social engagement was quite another. Their traditions worked fine for them and imposition of other forms of social organization only complicated things and turned out bad in the end. In hindsight, the Green Beret came to understand their view, but by then he was physically, psychologically, occupationally and temporally far away from that outpost.

As it turns out, for all the lip service paid to promoting democracy, the world is now governed by more authoritarians that democrats, and many of the places in which authoritarianism has flourished are those in which the US intervened the most heavily. As for the promotion of market economics, the major consequence has been greater global income inequality within a context of increased concentration of commodity production, demand and exchange. Contrary to what its adherents and proponents claim, market capitalism does not lead to a “rising tide raising all boats” phenomenon and trickle down (supply side) economics does not lead to a watering of the seeds of a budding middle class emerging out of poverty world-wide. Instead, it has baked in a socio-economic landscape of structural disparity and deprivation juxtaposed against and subordinate to a parallel world of opulence and waste.

In sum, there is very little that is politically or economically “liberal” about the world today.

More can be added to this litany of unhappiness but for the moment the point is this: the era of liberal internationalism has come to an end as both a practical objective and a foreign policy theory. It remains to be seen what will emerge in its stead once the repercussions of the pandemic and US decline fully filter throughout the global community. But therein lies a basis for hope, because in a multipolar world in which no one actor can impose its vision of the “proper” order of things and yet the need for international cooperation is more apparent than ever, perhaps the makings of more equitable and balanced global society can be made organically rather than by imposition even in the face of cultural and social difference.

Between appeasement and confrontation.

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The worm has turned when it comes to the relationship between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the West. Something has happened to sour the relationship beyond repair, and the strains are not limited to US-PRC, Australian-PRC or UK-PRC bilateral relations. Other countries, notably in the EU and Southeast Asia and including traditional rival India, have replaced two decades of offering warmth and goodwill with increasingly frosty and suspicious attitudes towards the PRC. That seems to be due to a combination of PRC militarism and belligerence in places like the South China Sea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Line of Control in the Himalayas separating it from India, but also as a result of Chinese sharp power influence operations in liberal democracies, its coercive trade diplomacy, ongoing Chinese cyber espionage, cyber theft and cyber warfare campaigns launched against a swathe of countries (including New Zealand), its dollar and debt diplomacy in Africa and South America where debt for equity swaps are accompanied by the colonisation by Chinese labor of critical infrastructure sites in countries lacking the resources to undertake large scale projects like port modernisation or power generation, and the adoption of “wolf warrior” diplomacy where insults and bullying have become mainstays of PRC diplomatic discourse, particularly but not limited to the issue of human rights and adherence to international norms.

With regards to the latter, in some cases Chinese behaviour is so egregious, such as stationing hundreds of fishing boats outside the marine reserve surrounding the Galapagos Islands or off the southeastern and southwestern coasts of South America and Southern Africa, often using the cover of night to poach in the Exclusive Economic Zones (when not territorial waters) of various countries, that countries otherwise prone to welcome the PRC as an antidote to traditional US or colonial power dominance have started to review their positions with regards to it.

The faith once placed in incorporating the PRC as a good global citizen into the community of advanced nations by admitting it into international organisations such as the World Trade Organisation and giving it leadership roles in others like the World Health Organisation and various UN agencies has not yielded the results that were hoped for. Instead, the errors of so-called modernisation theorists of the 1950s were repeated: rather than encouraging Chinese democracy by exposing it to “Western” values and helping expand its middle class on the back of increased international trade opportunities and the corresponding rise in material opportunities associated with it–something that was thought would lead to a better appreciation by and reproduction of democratic values by those emerging middle classes who would grow to see democracy as the political equivalent of the “free” economic market–under Xi Jinping the PRC has become more authoritarian, more state capitalist, more territorially expansionist, more normatively untrustworthy and more militarily bellicose. Instead of a global good citizen, it is now increasingly seen in the West as a very large bully on the world stage.

This does not absolve the US and various colonial powers of their histories. But it points to the fact that the thirty year period of relative inter-state peace after the end of the Cold War is coming to its conclusion. What lies ahead is unknown but it is likely to be marked by conflict of one sort or another or a combination thereof. The strategic postures of the US, UK, France and Australia all now explicitly identify the PRC as the primary military “peer competitor” (i.e. the enemy) that they must prepare to fight. Even NZ’s defense posture has shifted from unconventional warfare scenarios against irregular non-state actors to involvement in interstate conflicts (although the focus on peacekeeping operations remains). Reflected in defense procurement programs over the next ten years, the shift in war planning is answered by Chinese redoubling of its efforts to expand its fleet and improve the sophistication and size of its land and air-based forces. It also has renewed its bilateral military ties with Russia and courted the alliance of a variety of strategically important authoritarians regimes such as Iran and Turkey. It seems that it is only a matter of time before either by miscalculation, misperception or misadventure it will be involved in an armed engagement with a Western or Western-backed adversary, at which point the escalatory and expansionist potential of such conflict is limited only by the threat of nuclear war.

This puts small states like NZ between a rock and hard place. The diplomatic pressure is being felt in Wellington and Nanaia Mahuta’s speech to the China and New Zealand Business Council reflected the attempts to massage the stresses now apparent in its relationship with the PRC. The question is whether NZ can continue to employ its “softly-softly” approach in the face of the Western turn against the PRC and the latter’s increasingly acerbic responses to criticism of its actions at home and abroad. There can be little doubt that at this juncture if push comes to shove NZ will side with the West as a matter of values and principle. It has signalled as much and, with its commitment to diversifying its trade relations outside of the bilateral ties with the PRC, is setting the pragmatic grounds for doing so even if the short term costs of any deterioration in the relationship with the PRC proves onerous and wide-spread throughout the economy. But so long as the quarrel between Great Powers is limited to podiums and pens, then NZ can hope to finesse the contradictions in its strategic posture.

The answer on how to do so may lay in thinking of NZ’s position in the face of the US/West-PRC rivalry as a strategic balancing act in which the fixed points are appeasement versus confrontation and the slackline between the two is cooperation. The key is to find an equilibrium point along that line given specific issues and changing circumstances. There is plenty of common ground for NZ to serve as a honest broker and fair interlocutor when it comes to PRC-West relations even as it reaffirms its commitment to Western liberal values. Pragmatism and principle will undoubtably factor into the centre of gravity upon which to balance NZ foreign policy in that regard. The goal is to be nimble when demonstrating a desire to cooperate on selected issues given the competing demands by trade and security partners to appease or confront each other. Sometimes the equilibrium point may be closer to the PRC position, sometimes it will tilt in favour of the Western stance. They key to success lies in refraining from entering into broadly binding agreements or commitments and to adopt an issue-by-issue, case by case approach that serves to insulate any particular bilateral decision from the larger geopolitical struggles surrounding it.

That may turn out to not be feasible if the contending Great states do not accept NZ’s “siloed” approach and will not be a permanent foreign policy solution given the apparent inevitability of a Great Power stand-off in the medium term future. But it provides a means of finding the optimal equilibrium point on the diplomatic slackline that is NZs transitional position vis a vis China and the West until the new multipolar world system is firmly established.

Facing facts.

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The critical reaction of some conservative commentators and politicians about Nanaia Mahuta’s “Taniwha and Dragons” speech is focused on the double premise that NZ is “sucking up” to the PRC while it abandons its obligations to its 5 Eyes intelligence partners. Some have suggested that NZ is going to be kicked out of 5 Eyes because of its transgressions, and that the CCP is pulling the strings of the Labour government.

These views are unwarranted and seemingly born of partisan cynicism mixed with Sinophobia, racism and misogyny (because Mahuta is Maori and both Mahuta and PM Ardern are female and therefore singled out for specific types of derision and insult). Beyond the misinterpretations about what was contained in the speech, objections to Mahuta’s invocation of deities and mythological beasts misses the point. Metaphors are intrinsic to Pasifika identity (of which Maori are part) and serve to illustrate basic truths about the human condition, including those involved in international relations. As a wise friend said to me, imagine if a US Secretary of State was an indigenous person (such as Apache, Cherokee, Hopi, Mohican, Navaho, Sioux or Tohono O’odham). It is very possible that s/he would invoke ancestral myths in order to make a point on delicate foreign policy issues.

In any event, this post will clarify a few facts. First, on military and security issues covering the last two decades.

New Zealand has twin bilateral strategic and military agreements with the US, the first signed in 2010 (Wellington Declaration) and the second in 20012 (Washington Declaration). These committed the two countries to partnership in areas of mutual interest, particularly but not exclusively in the South Pacific. New Zealand sent troops to Afghanistan as part of the US-led and UN-mandated occupation after 9/11, a commitment that included NZSAS combat units as well as a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Bamiyan Province that mixed humanitarian projects with infantry patrols. More than 3500 NZDF troops were deployed in Afghanistan, at a cost of ten lives and $300 million.

Similarly, NZ sent troops to Iraq after the US invasion, serving in Basra as combat engineers in the early phase of the occupation, then later as infantry trainers for Iraqi security forces at Camp Taji. More than 1000 NZDF personnel were involved in these deployments, to which can be aded the SAS operators who deployed to fight Saddam Hussein’s forces and then ISIS in Iraq and Syria after its emergence. There are a small number of NZDF personnel serving in various liaison roles in the region as well, to which can be added 26 NZDF serving as peacekeepers in on the Sinai Penninsula (there are slightly more than 200 NZDF personnel serving overseas at the moment). In all of these deployments the NZDF worked with and now serves closely with US, UK and Australian military units. The costs of these deployments are estimated to be well over $150 million.

The NZDF exercises regularly with US, Australian and other allied partners, including the US-led RimPac naval exercises and Australian-led bi- and multilateral air/land/sea exercises such as Talisman Saber. It regularly hosts contingents of allied troops for training in NZ and sends NZDF personnel for field as well as command and general staff training in the US, Australia and UK. RNZN frigates are being upgraded in Canada and have contributed to US-led freedom of navigation exercises in the South China Sea (against PRC maritime territory extension projects) and anti-piracy and international sanctions enforcement missions in the Persian Gulf. Among the equipment purchases undertaken during the last two decades, the NZDF has bought Light Armoured Vehicles, the infamous “LAVs” (or Strykers, as they are known in the US), Bushmaster armoured personnel carriers, C-130J “Hercules” transport aircraft, P-8 “Poseidon” anti-submarine warfare and maritime surveillance aircraft, Javelin anti-tank portable missiles and a range of other weapons from 5 Eyes defence contractors. In fact, the majority of the platforms and equipment used by the NZDF are 5 Eyes country in origin, and in return NZ suppliers (controversially) sell MFAT-approved weapons components to Australia, the US, UK , NATO members, regional partners and some unsavoury Western-leaning regimes in the Middle East.

After the estrangement caused by the dissolution of the ANZUS defence alliance as a result of NZ’s non-nuclear decision in the mid-1980s, a rapprochement with the US began in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The 5th Labour government sought to capitalise on the moment and sent troops into Afghanistan and later Iraq using the cover of UN resolutions to deflect political attacks. That led to improved military-to-military relations between the US and NZ, something that has been deepened over the years by successive NZ governments. The intelligence relationship embodied in the Echelon/5 Eyes agreement was slightly curtailed but never ended even when ANZUS died, and gradually was restored as the main security partnership to which NZ was affiliated. Now the NZDF is considered a small but valued military and intelligence partner of the US and other 5 Eyes states, with the main complaints being (mostly from the Australians) that NZ does not spend enough on “defence’ (currently around 1.5 percent of GDP, up from 1.1 percent under the last National government, as opposed to 2.1 percent in Australia, up from 1.9 percent in 2019) or provide enough of its own strategic lift capability. The purchase of the C-130J’s will help on that score, and current plans are to replace the RNZAF 757 multirole aircraft in or around 2028.

The dispute over US warships visiting NZ because of the “neither confirm or deny” US policy regarding nuclear weapons on board in the face on NZ’s non-nuclear stance was put to rest when the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Sampson (DDG-102) participated in the RNZN 75th anniversary celebrations in November 2016 after an agreement between the then National government and US Department of Defense on assurances that it was not carrying or using nukes as weapons or for propulsion. As if to prove the point of bilateral reconciliation, on the way to the celebrations in Auckland DDG-102 diverted to provide humanitarian support to Kaikura earthquake relief efforts after the tremor of November 14th (the week-long anniversary fleet review involving foreign naval vessels began on on November 17th). A Chinese PLAN warship also participated in the anniversary Fleet Review, so the message conveyed by the first official NZ port visit by a US warship in 30 years was made explicitly clear to the PRC.

The fact is this: the relations between NZ and its 5 Eyes partners in the broader field of military security is excellent, stable and ongoing. That will not change anytime soon.

As for intelligence gathering, NZ is a core part of the 5 Eyes signals intelligence collection and analysis network. Over the years it has moved into the field of military signals intelligence gathering as well as technical and electronic intelligence-gathering more broadly defined. More recently, in light of the emergence of non-state terrorism and cyber warfare/espionage threats, the role of 5 Eyes has been upgraded and expanded to counter them. To that end, in the last decade NZ has received multiple visits from high-ranking intelligence officials from its partners that have dovetailed with technological upgrades across the spectrum of technical and electronic signals intelligence gathering. This includes addressing issues that have commercial and diplomatic sensitivities attached to them, such as the NZ decision to not proceed with Huawei involvement in its 5G broadband rollout after high level consultations with its 5 Eyes partners. More recently, NZ has been integrated into latest generation space-based intelligence collection efforts while the focus of the network returns to more traditional inter-state espionage with great power rivals like China and Russia (we shall leave aside for the moment the benefits that the GCSB and NZDF receive from Rocket Lab launches of US military payloads but we can assume that they are significant).

As routine practice, NZSIS and GCSB officers rotate through the headquarters of 5 Eyes sister agencies for training and to serve as liaison agents. Officers from those agencies do the same in NZ, and signals engineers and technicians from 5 Eyes partners are stationed at the collection stations at Waihopa and Tangimoana. GCSB and SIS personnel also serve overseas alongside 5 Eyes employees in conflict zones like Afghanistan and Iraq. While less standardised then the regular rotations between headquarters, these type of deployments are ongoing.

5 Eyes also maintains a concentric ring of intelligence partners that include France, Germany, Japan, Israel, and Singapore. These first-tier partners in turn use their respective capabilities to direct tactical and strategic intelligence towards 5 Eyes, thereby serving as the intelligence version of a “force multiplier” in areas of common interest. One such area is the PRC, which is now a primary focus of Western intelligence agencies in and outside of the Anglophone world. This common threat perception and futures forecasting orientation is shared by the NZ intelligence community and is not going to change anytime soon unless the PRC changes its behaviour in significant ways.

For its part, the PRC has no such complex and sophisticated intelligence networks with which to avail itself. It has intelligence partners in North Korea, Russia, Iran and other small states, but nothing on the order of 5 Eyes. As a result, it is much more reliant on human intelligence collection than its rivals in the 5 Eyes, something that has become a source of concern for the 5 Eyes community and NZ in particular (as the supposed weak link in the network and because of its economic reliance on China, of which more below). While the PRC (and Russia, Israel and Iran, to name some others) are developing their cyber warfare and espionage capabilities, the fact is that the PRC continues to rely most heavily on old-fashioned covert espionage and influence operations as well as relatively low tech signals intercepts for most of its foreign intelligence gathering. If I read intelligence reports correctly, NZ’s counter-espionage and intelligence efforts are focused on this threat.

In a word: NZ is committed to the 5 Eyes and has a largely Western-centric world view when it comes to intelligence matters even when it professes foreign policy independence on a range of issues. That is accepted by its intelligence partners, so transmission (of intelligence) will continue uninterrupted. It is in this light that Mahuta’s comments about NZ’s reluctance to expand 5 Eyes original remit (as an intelligence network) into a diplomatic coalition must be understood. There are other avenues, multilateral and bilateral, public and private, through which diplomatic signaling and posturing can occur.

That brings up the issue of trade. Rather than “sucking up” to China, the foreign minister was doing the reverse–she was calling for increased economic distance from it. That is because New Zealand is now essentially trade dependent on the PRC. Approximately 30 percent of NZ’s trade is with China, with the value and percentage of trade between the two countries more than tripling since the signing of the bilateral Free Trade Agreement in 2008. In some export industries like logging and crayfish fisheries, more than 75 percent of all exports go to the PRC, while in others (dairy) the figure hovers around 40 percent. The top four types of export from NZ to the PRC are dairy, wood and meat products (primary goods), followed by travel services. To that can be added the international education industry (considered part of the export sector), where Chinese students represent 47 percent of total enrollees (and who are a suspected source of human intelligence gathering along with some PRC business visa holders).

In return, the PRC exports industrial machinery, electronics (cellphones and computers), textiles and plastics to NZ. China accounts for one in five dollars spent on NZ exports and the total amount of NZ exports to China more than doubles that of the next largest recipient (Australia) and is more than the total amount in value exported to the next five countries (Australia, US, Japan, UK and Indonesia) combined. Even with the emergence of the Covid pandemic, the trend of increased Chinese share of NZ’s export markets has continued to date and is expected to do so in the foreseeable future.

Although NZ has attempted to diversify its exports to China and elsewhere, it remains dependent on primary good production for the bulk of export revenues. This commodity concentration, especially when some of the demand for export commodities are for all intents and purposes monopolised by the Chinese market, makes the NZ economy particularly vulnerable to a loss of demand, blockages or supply chain bottlenecks involving these products. Although NZ generates surpluses from the balance of trade with the PRC, its reliance on highly elastic primary export commodities that are dependent on foreign income-led demand (say, for proteins and housing for a growing Chinese middle class) makes it a subordinate player in a global commodity chain dominated by value-added production. That exposes it to political-diplomatic as well as economic shocks not always tied to market competition. Given the reliance of the entire economy on primary good exports (which are destined mainly for Asia and within that region, the PRC), the negative flow-on effects of any disruption to the primary good export sector will have seriously damaging consequences for the entire NZ economy.

That is why the Foreign Minister spoke of diversifying NZ’s exports away from any single market. The only difference from previous governments is that the lip service paid to the “eggs in several baskets” trade mantra has now taken on urgency in light of the realities exposed by the pandemic within the larger geopolitical context.

Nothing that the Labour government has done since it assumed office has either increased subservience to China or distanced NZ from its “traditional” partners. In fact, the first Ardern government had an overtly pro-Western (and US) slant when coalition partners Winston Peters and Ron Mark of NZ First were Foreign Affairs and Defence ministers, respectively. Now that Labour governs alone and NZ First are out of parliament, it has reemphasised its Pacific small state multilateralist approach to international affairs, but without altering its specific approach to Great Power (US-PRC) competition.

The situation addressed by Mahuta’s speech is therefore as follows. NZ has not abandoned its security allies just because it refuses to accept the Trumpian premise that the 5 Eyes be used as a diplomatic blunt instrument rather than a discreet intelligence network (especially on the issue of human rights); and it is heavily dependent on China for its economic well-being, so needs to move away from that position of vulnerability by increasingly diversifying its trade partners as well as the nature of exports originating in Aotearoa. The issue is how to maintain present and future foreign policy independence given these factors.

With those facts in mind, the Taniwha and Dragon speech was neither an abandonment of allies or a genuflection to the Chinese. It was a diplomatic re-equilibration phrased in metaphorical and practical terms.