Many older people still think of Aotearoa as a proudly nuclear-free independent nation. Many younger people probably don’t think about it much at all - that nuclear stuff was decades ago; the world is smaller now and wars have been far away. Then, suddenly, war started filling our screens most days - Ukraine, then Gaza. AUKUS, RIMPAC, Five Eyes - acronyms have started proliferating.

We find that New Zealand troops joined other US allies in bombing Yemen as part of the Israel/Gaza conflict. That our proudly home-grown Rocket Lab is now mostly based and operated in the United States for military use. That NZ's intelligence gathering enables US armed drones to find their human targets - a process described by a US official, with no apparent unease, as NZ being an integral part of the US alliance's "kill chain".

We find that since 2021 Governments, under Labour and National, have been seriously considering joining AUKUS, a nuclear-capable military alliance led by United States against China, Aotearoa's largest trading partner. And even considering joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). How did our tiny, remote, nuclear-free Pacific nation find ourselves here?

Basic Facts That Every NZ Citizen Should Know About NZ's Military Pacts

This article aims to bring together some basic facts about New Zealand's current military alliances that we think every citizen should know and many of us don't. This doesn't pretend to be in-depth or expert - for this we refer the reader to our sources, including the longstanding, painstaking and publicly available research done by Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC), Peace Movement Aotearoa (PMA), Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA), independent journalists like Nicky Hager and Murray Horton, and by Marco de Jong, Rheive Grey and other Māori and Pasifika voices from Te Kuaka and E Tangata as well as mainstream sources like Wikipedia and Phil Pennington of Radio NZ.

Five Eyes - NZ Belongs To One Of The World's Biggest Spy Networks

As Murray Horton observed, NZ's long-standing membership of the Five Eyes spy network is key to the rest of this story and how it may unfold (Watchdog 159, April 2022, "NZ Becomes Further Enmeshed In US Empire. The Politics & Economics Of Five Eyes"). In an Internet-connected world Aotearoa is far less isolated than we seem and once were. Five Eyes emerged shortly after World War 2 when the "Anglosphere" nations of the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand agreed a multilateral treaty for cooperation on signals intelligence.

Five Eyes is now, according to Wikipedia: "...among the most comprehensive espionage alliances in the world... (and has) ...grown into a robust global surveillance mechanism, adapting to new challenges such as international terrorism, cyber threats, and regional conflicts". New Zealand provides two spy bases run by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), Tangimoana near Palmerston North, and Waihopai near Blenheim.

Our Spy Bases Routinely Sweep Up Big Data From Home And Abroad

They collect mass data from everyday Internet traffic, telecoms, radio signals etc. Not just defence-related or targeted data but data from ordinary citizens in NZ and elsewhere. As with any mass data-set (e.g. hospital admissions), tight protocols exist to prevent the data being used to pinpoint individuals. But the technical capacity is there. In an unstable world shifting to more authoritarian regimes, it's worth being aware that those controlling the Government and the military have this capability. And that Five Eyes has become: "...[o]ver decades and decades some sort of a supra-national intelligence organisation that doesn't answer to the laws of its own countries" (Wikipedia, quoting USA whistleblower Edward Snowden).

NZ Is An Integral Part Of A US Global "Kill Chain"

Smoothly linked IT systems are increasingly important in modern warfare - like long-distance targeting of drone strikes or for building capability for warfare in space. To this end NZ's involvement in Five Eyes deepened from around 2010 as the US encouraged "interoperability" among its allies, offering IT technology upgrades to our military and involvement in regular joint military exercises. Phil Pennington (RNZ, 2/8/24) reports:

"The (NZ) Defence Force has been helping the US military with artificial intelligence-powered weapons to speed up what they call 'kill chains'. US reports show the NZDF is one of a half dozen militaries involved in regular exercises to link American and allied war-fighting technology more closely. The Pentagon has been putting a lot more stress on getting allies on board to counter China".

"In an exercise in California with six nations in March (2024), an F-35 jet fighter with AI-driven sensors instantly passed targeting data along the 'kill chain' to an unmanned kamikaze drone ...". The bland language of 'interoperability' and 'technology upgrade' masks the reality that NZ is becoming bound ever more tightly to the military aims and activity of the United States. This has been happening with minimal public discussion in New Zealand.

RIMPAC - Regular Wargames On The Rim Of The Pacific

One regular US-led military exercise that NZ attends is Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC), held on and around Hawai'i every two years. "(RIMPAC is) the world's largest international maritime warfare exercise" (Wikipedia). New Zealand has attended RIMPAC since it began in 1971, apart from a 27-year gap starting in 1985 when: "... the US suspended New Zealand from the ANZUS defence treaty. This 1951 agreement pledged military cooperation between the US, New Zealand and Australia. Anti-nuclear protests in New Zealand prompted the new Labour government to ban visits to New Zealand ports by nuclear-armed or -propelled vessels".

However, by 2010 US/NZ relations were thawing and in 2012 the Key government and the US "... signed the Washington Declaration, strengthening military cooperation and defence relations, for the first time in more than 30 years" (Te Ara Encyclopaedia of New Zealand). Since then, NZ has attended every RIMPAC alongside other US allies, including Israel in 2024.

Rocket Lab - Helping The US Military Move Into Space

Smooth, discreet technological integration into the US military is also the story of Rocket Lab. Aotearoa is remote from other land masses, has clear skies, few large population centres and is socially peaceful - a combo that makes this country valuable for space rocket launches. Rocket Lab started in 2006 as a home-grown initiative to build a NZ aerospace industry. A launch site was built at Mahia Peninsula, and an office and assembly plant opened in Auckland.

Like most technology, aerospace tech can be used to benefit people and planet. But the realities of money, ownership and military alliances govern how technology IS actually used and by whom. As Phil Pennington describes: "The (US) missile defence command told Congress that in the face of growing threats, they should respond by shifting sensors, battle management and communications increasingly to space-based platforms..."

Within a few years, Rocket Lab was taking on US military contracts and from 2013 the company's ownership and operations were mostly based in the USA. Ollie Neas in North and South, in 2021, wrote a detailed feature about Rocket Lab's genesis in Mahia.

Both Neas and Murray Horton* document the caginess of ministry officials, politicians and business owners about Rocket Lab's connections and their fear of public outcry and the possibility of protest action disrupting the launch site (*Watchdog 157, August 2021, "Rocket Lab. Campaign Against It Blasts Off").

AUKUS - "Come Join A Nuclear-Capable Military Pact Against China!"

This deliberate strategy by officials and politicians to avoid publicity or debate on the shift in NZ's foreign policy position is also evident in the official narrative around AUKUS. How many of us know what AUKUS is? Probably not many, given the limited mainstream public debate since the pact was announced in 2021. In brief: "AUKUS is a strategic defence partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States. (So, the same Anglosphere nations as Five Eyes, minus NZ and Canada). The pact centres on the Indo-Pacific region. Experts say it aims to combat China's military expansion in the area" (1News, February 2024).

"Pillar one" of the pact covers the mobilisation of nuclear military weaponry, such as Australia's purchase of nuclear-powered (not nuclear-armed) submarines. "Pillar two" covers non-nuclear military resources, including information, spy-bases, drones etc. Phil Pennington's reports for Radio NZ and Murray Horton's for ABC and CAFCA can be explored for detail about AUKUS, the nature of the alliance and the history of the negotiations.

Should We Join AUKUS? Why The Debate Has Been So Slow To Start

The USA, UK and Australia announced their AUKUS pact in September 2021. Since then, as recently declassified Cabinet papers reveal, NZ ministry officials and the leaders of both major parties have been mulling over whether to join and what to tell the public. Discreetly, because they know it will raise a bunch of awkward questions from all sides, like:

Why would NZ, a Nuclear-Free Zone since 1987, join a nuclear-capable military alliance based in the Indo-Pacific? Why would New Zealand, an initiator of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone (Treaty of Rarotonga) and signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty join a military alliance that's getting Australia to buy nuclear-powered submarines? To patrol around a region far from most of the Anglosphere nations and where few other countries want such nuclear proliferation?

Why are we jeopardising trade relationships with our biggest trading partner? In what way is China a security risk to NZ? What do we have to do with fights between US and China over Taiwan or tariffs? After 30 years of an independent fairly peaceful Pacific-focused foreign policy, why are we yet again following USA and the Anglosphere nations into their military adventures?

From the start, officials in the New Zealand Ministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs and Trade have been enthusiastic about the defence and trade potential of AUKUS, as shown by their 2023 briefings for the incoming Government that Marco de Jong obtained under the Official Information Act. When their briefing paper to the new Government came out in March 2024, it became clear this enthusiasm is now shared by some politicians such as Judith Collins.

Phil Pennington's summary of this briefing paper is worth reading. "The briefing, while heavily blanked out, gives more clues to what is at stake for New Zealand.... AUKUS aligned with New Zealand's 'national interest' (the briefing said). "How closely New Zealand's intelligence and security sector aligns its interests with the country's Five Eyes partners was newly demonstrated (in the 2024 revelations) about secret foreign spy operations hosted for years by the GCSB in Wellington, without the Government knowing".

"On the economic front, 'Pillar Two may create potential openings for collaboration with the New Zealand defence industry and adjacent technology companies', it said.... "It stresses the economic and political benefits, rather than the costs of signing up to a pact that is central to the US's race with China to deploy advanced military technologies".

Opposition To AUKUS Builds

As ministry officials and politicians have gradually over 2023 and 2024 revealed their intentions to pursue AUKUS membership, opposition to this intention has been building. Examples: Prof Robert Patman in the Conversation (August 2023): "To be sure, Chinese regional and global assertiveness is real. But while those (40 or so) Indo-Pacific states remain wary of China; many do not see themselves as pawns in a global strategic contest between Beijing and the AUKUS partners".

"They question whether the Anglosphere represents a credible security response in a region containing 60% of the world's population, significant economic powers like Japan and South Korea, and fast-growing economies such as Vietnam and India".

Murray Horton's article on US online magazine Covert Action (29/6/23) puts the AUKUS pact in a global context, and his podcast interview with the same publication looks at its impact for NZ (5/7/23).

Former Labour, National & Act Leaders Warn Against AUKUS

Just how far NZ has moved away from the independent foreign policy position of the 1980s to 2010s is vividly shown by this lineup of former party leaders warning against NZ joining AUKUS.

Helen Clark (Labour): "The current NZ government continues to signal clearly an end to nearly four decades of NZ's independent foreign policy - in return for economic insecurity & being led along by the strategic objectives of others" (November 2024).

Jim Bolger (National): "If you can find any Australian official who can explain why they need nuclear-powered submarines, come and tell me... How mad are we getting?" (March 2023).

Richard Prebble (Act): "It is lunacy to join a military alliance aimed at our biggest trading partner. The situation is like pre-WWI ... The treaties obliged countries to come to each other's aid. Instead of preventing war the treaties caused an incident to escalate into a world war that no country wanted" (April 2024).

Don Brash (National/Act) "Singapore's Prime Minister formally stated that it is not an ally of the US, would not conduct military operations on its behalf, and would not seek direct military support from the US. Why wouldn't that work for NZ?" (April 2024).

No wonder the politicians, from Left and Right, who established that independent foreign policy, are speaking out against AUKUS - here's what it means for our defence force: "AUKUS is a nuclear alliance designed to contain China and uphold US primacy in the Pacific. It's a new arms race for next-generation warfighting capabilities...".

"(The officials) make the case that we should transition from being a dual-purpose, civilian-use and low-technology armed force, to a high-tech, interoperable and combat-ready force... For a public used to seeing our armed forces undertaking maritime surveillance, fisheries patrols, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief through our territorial waters and the Pacific, multimillion-dollar investments in drone warfare or hypersonic missiles will be a big change" (Marco de Jong, in E Tangata, September 2024).

And for New Zealand's role in the world: "In this time of heightened geopolitical tensions, we should look to the role that Aotearoa has played in the past - as peace maker, as peace builder. We have invested decades of political capital into an international image of being an honest broker through things like our nuclear free stance, our support for Pacific priorities. To go against that now and join an aggressive nuclear war-fighting pact, to me is unconscionable" (ibid.).

Matika Hawaiki: The Indigenous Challenge To AUKUS In Aotearoa

The clearest challenge to the official narrative on AUKUS is coming from Pasifika and Māori. In 2023 Marco de Jong, Arama Rata and Rheive Grey of Te Kuaka joined Nicky Hager in the Matika Hawaiki roadshow. They travelled the motu, publicising an alternative to the official AUKUS narrative. Te Kuaka NZ is an independent organisation promoting a progressive role for Aotearoa in the world.

They have taken a lead in this challenge. They publish in E Tangata and other Māori and Pasifika media. Check out E Tangata's useful AUKUS archives. Their March 2024 ActionStation Webinar of the updated road show is a good watch.

Marco de Jong sums it up (from the video transcript): "This (decision to join AUKUS) impacts who our friends and enemies are, who we trade with, the shape and priorities of our military, where our aid spend goes, our support for Pacific priorities like climate action or the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone, what uses our intelligence that our spies collect goes to, and most importantly, ... whether we fight".

"AUKUS sets a nuclear proliferation precedent by exploiting loopholes in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to do with ... the nuclear propulsion... and the Treaty of Rarotonga. Australia, a non-nuclear weapon state, is set to receive highly enriched or weapons-grade fissile material ... AUKUS has prompted a series of bilateral agreements that secure market and military access...".

"And it's led to concerns amongst Pacific nations that... these agreements, like the Falepili Union or the US-PNG defence pact or the secret agreement between Australia and Vanuatu, are opaque and one sided. And for New Zealand, this kind of bilateral or circumventing Pacific-led regionalism threatens to displace our Pacific-led engagement and source of influence. New Zealand has invested considerable resources and political capital into the Pacific reset and resilience frameworks".

The Pacific has long been a "sacrifice zone" for Western powers focused on war and there has been no consultation with Pacific nations over the AUKUS pact. "The US response to the wars on Gaza and Ukraine raise serious questions for its allies about its commitment to an international rules-based order over and beyond national self-interest. Pacific Island nations are clear that climate change remains the 'single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific', but AUKUS promotes a different paradigm of security" (de Jong and Patman, Newsroom, April 2024).

RIMPAC And Hawai'i

Hawaiian academic Emalani Case's criticism of RIMPAC 2024 is unsurprising, given the ongoing war in Gaza and global debate on decolonisation: "We've got to think about these colonial nations coming together to train and provide so-called security and safety to the world, while really putting all of us at risk, who have never been deemed human enough to be worthy of that same safety and security".

"It's Disheartening"

At the 2023 South Pacific Forum, both Australia and Fiji undermined Pacific regionalism and moves to strengthen the nuclear-free treaty and to resist further militarisation of the region - a disheartening outcome reported by Marco de Jong and Talei Mangioni (E Tangata, November 2023).

"Come Join NATO". Really?!

Murray Horton has drawn attention to the pressure that NATO is putting on New Zealand governments to get closer to that military alliance too: "By getting more and more deeply involved with NATO, New Zealand gets sucked into a fight with China (our biggest trading partner and a country with whom we have no disputes); we get arm twisted to increase military spending for no reason other than that NATO requires it; and we get told to stop all this nuclear free nonsense and come under NATO's nuclear umbrella".

"None of that sounds like a good deal but it is precisely what we are getting signed up to, with no public discussion or debate. What's more, this getting into bed with NATO only accelerated under the 2017-23 Labour government."

So Why Is USA Prepping For Nuclear War?

Isn't the world linked together by global trade these days and aren't we facing a huge common planetary crisis of climate/ecosystem breakdown? And isn't there a UN treaty in place to ban the proliferation of nuclear weapons? Didn't the Cold War end in the 1990s, with USA winning and both USSR and China going capitalist (albeit in different ways)? Well, we've ended up with a whole new bunch of questions. Let's end with YouTube talks from a couple of thoughtful American academics who throw light on why the United States is building up for nuclear confrontation with China and Russia.

Firstly, Van Jackson, former Obama staffer now at Victoria University Wellington. Jackson's lively half hour talk to NZ Fabians in September 2024 is well worth a watch. US foreign policy since the end of WW2, he says, has been based on maintaining primacy - or as officials call it: "liberal hegemony", "US leading the rules-based world order". Primacy as a strategy is incompatible with peace in a region as it seeks to destabilise relationships to gain advantage over any potential rivals.

But it's an inappropriate and unnecessary strategy as we move to a multipolar world where peoples are connected by ties of trade and facing a common existential planetary crisis. China doesn't have the means to compete for primacy and, in fact, is not seeking it, since its security (like that of other countries) is bound up in existing capitalist interrelationships e.g. producing goods for the US market. But the technocratic elites of both countries compete on ethno-nationalist grounds, to the detriment to all their citizens. Jackson sees Trump not as an isolationist but likely to bring in a far-Right, accelerated and unpredictable version of primacy, with more military spending and wars abroad and at home.

Secondly, US academic Jeffrey Sachs, in an interview with Nate Hagens (September 2024). Sachs also identifies primacy, or what US Defense Department (USDD) calls "full spectrum dominance", as a major risk for nuclear war. USDD believes dominance is needed for US security. But it makes the 192 other countries in the world feel insecure, since the US is one of the most violent countries in the world and has many military bases closely surrounding China and Russia.

Within the US, Sachs sees the political system as having been "hacked" by major special interests who determine policy for their area - so: "...the military industrial complex owns foreign policy. The American people have almost no say or even awareness or truth-telling about foreign policy. Foreign policy.... is all under classified information and the lying is nonstop... it's so hard to get basic facts into mainstream discussion... partly because the mainstream media just lost the idea that they are a restraint on Government rather than a handmaiden of Government...".

"We don't have a foreign policy discussion in this country... We are in a newsfeed world where the information comes from Washington where there's one narrative and we don't have a public debate... We have been in the foreign policy domain in a security state... since 1947... with the creation of the CIA...".

Sachs says we are already in a multi-polar world - India, Russia, China and US could all start nuclear war and none can defeat any other without that. "China doesn't threaten the United States unless we stumble into a nuclear war. So, don't provoke a nuclear war, don't press each other's red lines... don't humiliate each other, speak respectfully and look for the mutual areas".

The difficulties that Americans face in accessing information or engaging in open debate on foreign policy mirrors the NZ experience. As NZ aligns itself more closely to the technology, processes and aims of the US military industrial complex and the technocratic elite who manage it, we could expect this problem to grow. It's clearly time to ...

Re-Energise The Peace Movement In Aotearoa!

For 40+ years the organisations of the peace movement in Aotearoa have honoured and kept alive the huge wave of popular anti-war and anti-nuclear feeling that swept through so many communities around the motu in the 1970s and 80s, culminating in the creation of Aotearoa as a Nuclear Free Zone. The Anti-Bases Campaign's yearly gatherings at Waihopai have been a training ground for new young activists, Green Party MPs and more.

Anti-Bases Campaign, Peace Movement Aotearoa, Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa and independent investigative journos have monitored and documented pretty well everything we have mentioned above, for years, with minimal resourcing and often with minimal visibility in the mainstream media.

Now over the past year a lot of people in Aotearoa have been radicalised by a year of the harshest far-Right government New Zealand has ever experienced. We have been getting a sharp education as to the connections between austerity, deregulation, race-baiting, climate inaction, colonialism and endlessly expanding capitalism. We have been energised by the persistent weekly rallies protesting the Palestine genocide, mirrored in similar rallies throughout the world.

We have been galvanised by the swelling resistance of an increasingly unified Māori movement and its leaders, welcoming non-Māori into the shared fight against colonialist capitalism. At the NZ Aerospace Summit protest in Ōtautahi in September 2024, a young school strike for climate leader stood to speak, describing herself as a "peace activist". The young know how it's all tied together - climate, war, capitalism, colonialism - and they are moving.

Watchdog - 167 December 2024