Politics and the economy
United Kingdom? Ukraine? Either? Or both?
So many questions for a PM.
In Britain for the Coronation, Chris Hipkins’s genteel republicanism was rewarded with a plate of leftover sausage rolls.
Nor was his muted positivism out of tune with the contemporary London vibe of springtime celebration after winter mourning. Republicans here have so far been lying low, not gluing themselves to gun carriages.
Australia’s move to strengthen its defence capability with five nuclear-powered attack submarines underlines how relatively defenceless New Zealand is in the Pacific.
Kiwis may gasp that the Labor government in Australia recognises it must outlay $400bn on the nuclear subs, but this ensures that Australia is not exposed to any marauding raid.
Part of the deal under the Aukus umbrella (embracing Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States) is that Australia will regularly host US nuclear-powered submarines beginning within five years, and embedding its military personnel with the US and UK navies, as it begins the process of establishing its own industry.
US President Joe Biden has stressed that the submarines, provided under the trilateral security pact would be “nuclear-powered, not nuclear-armed”. Continue reading “Australia buys nuclear-powered subs – would NZ be concerned if we came under attack and they were defending us?”
Earlier this week Point of Order carried a post by Geoffrey Miller on how Japan under a new security blueprint is doubling its defence spending. The plans see Japan buying up advanced weaponry – including long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US – and spending more on developing hypersonic and cybersecurity technology.
Miller writes that Japan’s new National Security Strategy (NSS) openly calls out China, describing Beijing a ‘matter of serious concern for Japan’ and the ‘greatest strategic challenge’ to the country’s security.
The NSS also alleges China is developing its ‘strategic ties’ with Russia and is seeking to ‘challenge the international order’.
Meanwhile The Economist offers insights into what it defines as “Reinventing the Indo-Pacific”. Continue reading “In the face of China’s “coercive tendencies”, is it time for NZ to shape its own “Indo-Pacific strategy”?”
The disclosure that 92 missions flown by RNZAF P3 Orions have been intercepted by the jets of foreign powers is sending shock waves through the broader defence community.
Details of the incidents, including the identity of the foreign powers and the exact locations of the interceptions, were withheld on national security grounds under the Official Information Act.
The NZ Herald broke the story after it had been withheld on national security grounds.
What is alarming is that the public is left unaware of the risks which are routinely carried by defence personnel as they fly these missions. It also points to the need for greater defence spending to ensure the RNZAF, and other defence services, have the resources they need for the complex tasks they are expected to undertake.
Defence chief of staff Air Commodore A. J. Woods told the NZ Herald the 92 intercepts of the P-3K2 Orion maritime patrol planes happened across 234 missions since 2015. Continue reading “Secrecy shrouds details of RNZAF planes being intercepted while flying on missions overseas”
As the Kremlin’s spokesman tells us – somewhat improbably – that regime change was never Vladimir Putin’s goal, the debate on whether Russia and Ukraine should be negotiating gets another bounce.
Depressing – but necessary – to bear in mind that a settlement will rest more on power than on justice.
Some other lessons from the conflict also seem to be getting neglected.
Facing what they say is a growing threat to regional security, Defence Minister Peeni Henare and his Australian counterpart, Richard Marles, (who is also Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister) have agreed to explore strengthening the “joint operational capabilities of our forces”.
For NZ, trying to rebuild its defence forces which were run down during the Covid pandemic, and now losing personnel, this is particularly significant.
Australia and NZ already have what the ministers believe to be a “uniquely close relationship”. But with the unspoken threat from China in the Pacific (the ministers call it an “increasingly complex security environment”, it is vital that NZ steps up the pace of recruiting new personnel to each of its three armed services. Continue reading “NZ-Aust defence agreement draws attention to the need for strengthening our military capabilities”
It’s hard to believe Colin Thubron, writer, is more than eighty years old. In his latest epic – ‘The Amur River: Between Russia and China’ – we can wince as he describes carrying fractured ankle and ribs for several thousand miles from the swamps of Mongolia through Russian detention.
Thubron is really a historian of sorts. His longevity (personal and professional) and his absorption in the contested Eurasian borderlands allows him to interpret his interlocutors’ most painful memories.
Mikhail Gorbachev – who died yesterday – was another student of Russian history. Google has no record of the esteemed travel writer’s meeting the last supreme leader of the USSR (Thubron’s breakthrough work ‘Among the Russians’ was published in 1983) but one imagines he would have been uniquely equipped to distil the inherited memories of the Russian-Ukrainian family’s suffering during the Stalin famine.
Assuming that the politician would let him do so.
Gorbachev leaned on history to create a vision for a greater Russian state. But – like his predecessor Kerensky – he found neither state nor people would respond to his plan in a coherent fashion.
Odd you might think, because when the – perhaps inevitable – civil war broke out in August 1991, the old order vapourized in a few skirmishes. And despite being on the winning side (wasn’t everybody then), there was no following – or place – for Gorbachev in the new order.
Vladimir Putin also has a keen interest in Russian history. Indeed it’s the basis of his vision for the country’s future.
As news comes through that there is still no place for Gorbachev in the new order (the Kremlin won’t give him a state funeral), it’s ironical to consider that Putin is the Soviet leader who has managed to achieve a reformulation of the USSR. Gorbachev’s dream – now as nightmare.
If Gorbachev was the theorist with the plan, Putin was the pragmatist. Where Gorbachev fragmented the system and gave away both sticks and carrots, Putin – with the attention to needs of the most astute democratic politicians – painstakingly, and with a great deal of trial-and-error, built a durable coalition from old powers like the security services, the military command and ethnic bosses, and new powers, like the oligarchs.
Putin’s power grew as competing forces (including some former allies of convenience, like the oligarchs) were neutralised.
People from prosperous and gentle countries, like New Zealand, can be obtuse in coming to terms with the fact that both peaceful and violent societies need a dedicated cadre of public servants thinking about where to use violence and kill; on whom to inflict it; and by what rules and procedures. Indeed, it can be more complicated at the kinder end of the spectrum (ask our defence officials about their participation in the Russian-killing programme, for example).
Putin is one of those public servants. He joined the KGB, the Soviet institution which quintessentially embodied that responsibility.
While Gorbachev’s actions showed a tremendous desire to avoid the use of force to achieve his goals, it’s hard to say that about Putin. His record suggests an emotional attitude closer to Stalin’s, of whom the poet Osip Mandelstam (also one of his victims) said:
“He rolls the executions on his tongue like berries. / He wishes he could hug them like big friends from home.”
One can imagine a powerpoint presentation in the Kremlin running through the kill-list, with Putin then leading a vigorous discussion on the appropriate toxins, calibrating the suffering to the crime. Personal justice demands personal attention.
But back to Thubron, whose ruminations remind us that sometimes – as with Gorbachev – you just can’t force some things on the Russians, and sometimes – as with Putin, and others – you can.
Thubron’s people are the descendants of camp survivors, war veterans, party torturers; those who endured the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ones born after; and those who just kept their heads down.
By getting into an extended war in the Ukraine, Putin’s ability to force things on Thubron’s people may be slipping. It’s giving them a choice: between an insular and – in some ways – more secure society, and a freer and, in social terms, less stable one. With the price paid in lives.
You can see that China’s General-Secretary Xi might have a keen interest in restricting the scope for choice in Russia and thus be anxious to help Putin redeploy Russian soldiers to the Ukraine from Colin Thubron’s Amur river.
With Ukraine’s attempts to recapture Kherson building up and reports of facilities to re-educate Putin’s ‘liberated’ Ukrainians, we get a step closer to an answer.
When PM Jacinda Ardern announced this week the government had decided to give additional support to Ukraine against Russia’s illegal war, she described the deployment of 120 personnel from the NZ Defence Force to the UK to help train Ukraine soldiers as “significant”.
The decision follows a completed deployment of 30 NZDF personnel who went to Britain in May to train Ukrainian military personnel in operating artillery.
“We know that one of the highest priorities for Ukraine right now, is to train its soldiers, and New Zealand is proud to stand in solidarity alongside a number of other countries to answer that call,” Jacinda Ardern said.
Point of Order has no doubt the NZ contingent will do a very good job. It may even revive the rundown morale among NZ’s armed forces. Continue reading “Deployment to train Ukrainian troops is all very well – but Henare should fix sights on new hardware and lifting NZ army morale”
When a Royal New Zealand Air Force C130 Hercules broke down in Vanuatu this week there was a certain irony in the event. It left Defence Minister Peeni Henare stranded in the Solomon Islands capital, Honiara, where he had been leading a delegation of 30 New Zealanders, including officials from the New Zealand Defence Force and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who were in the country for World War II commemorations.
Henare took over the Defence portfolio after the 2020 election, but so far he has done little to upgrade the rundown state of the country’s defence resources.
Whether his stranding might serve as a wake-up call could be monitored not just by Defence officials but by a wider public becoming alarmed at how defenceless NZ has become, even as threats in the Asia-Pacific region become all too obvious.
This week the ACT party drew attention to how numbers are dropping in the New Zealand Defence Force as personnel are faced with “poor pay, poor dwellings, and poor leadership from the Minister”. Continue reading “ACT goes on attack as Defence Force personnel are found to be sniping at pay, dwellings and leadership”
Australia this week announced it is planning to spend $A3.5bn on long-range strike missiles years ahead of schedule because of growing threats posed by Russia and China, Associated Press has reported..
Defence Minister Peter Dutton said the accelerated re-arming would increase Australia’s deterrence to potential adversaries.
Meanwhile there is no sign of the Ardern government considering increasing defence spending, although Defence Minister Peeni Henare did say this week the government had considered sending weapons – such as the Javelin missile launchers – as part of the government’s support of Ukraine in fighting off the Russian invasion.
“That’s been in front of Cabinet for consideration. To date, Cabinet hasn’t agreed.”
Point of Order would like to think the NZ Defence Force has its own stock of Javelin missiles, but there is little evidence of that. The US has already supplied thousands of the anti-tank missiles and hundreds of launchers to Ukraine’s forces.
A Javelin missile, a modern successor to the Bazooka, costs around $US1m. Continue reading “Missiles that loiter (with intent to do mischief) – Australia is re-arming but NZ is still considering modern munitions”
Point of Order 