This is adapted from a speech that I was invited to give, on behalf of the Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC), at the annual Blackball May Day dinner, in May 2025. Some of it is ABC policy, the rest is my personal opinion.

It's appropriate that I'm speaking about foreign policy in Blackball, as it was the only polling booth in all of NZ at the 2023 general election won by New Zealand First, whose Leader, Winston Peters, is, of course, the Minister of Foreign Affairs (and has been that in both National and Labour governments). So, there is obviously keen interest in foreign policy in Blackball. I should mention my attendance at the March 2025 Gaza protest at Peters' State of the Nation address at the Christchurch Town Hall.

That, in turn, reminded me of my previous encounter with Peters at the Christchurch Town Hall, when I shared the speaking platform with him at a 1995 public meeting organised by the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA, the other group for whom I am Organiser). That night he wasn't waging his current "war on woke"; he was on a national speaking tour titled "New Zealand Is Ours", fighting the overseas investment legislation being promoted by the National government (the same one he went on to join). He publicly gave thanks to CAFCA.

Winston Peters reminds me of a couple of cats we used to have at home, who shamelessly and seamlessly moved between our place and the neighbour's, depending on who was offering the biggest dollop of jellimeat. So, if you have a senior moment and can't remember the name of our Minister of Foreign Affairs, the keyword to trigger your memory is jellimeat.

Imperialism & Settlers

Before we get underway, we need to establish the context. This country exists as it is today because of British foreign policy of the 18th and 19th Centuries. We are the product of imperialism and settlers. One of my Australian forebears was an involuntary settler - he was a convict, shipped out, aged 16, for seven years for stealing a coat. When my father learned that, he said: "So there's two criminals in the family".

Imperialism and settlers have defined New Zealand's domestic politics since whites first came to this country but that's not what I am talking about here. New Zealand's foreign policy has always followed those two key factors - imperialism and settlers. We have slavishly fought in any imperial war going, starting with the Boer War (where, by contrast, we had fifty cents each way - we fought for the British imperialists against the Boer settlers). We served the British Empire in two world wars and paid a huge price in lives lost and disrupted - I lost a great uncle who vanished off the face of the earth in WWI and my father was a prisoner of war in WW2.

The imperialist balance of power shifted in the second half of the 20th Century. We fought for the emergent US empire in Korea and Vietnam - the 50th anniversary of the end of that war was in April 2025. The NZ media still loyally refer to that event as the fall of Saigon. The Vietnamese call it Ho Chi Minh City, they call it liberation and they call it the American War, not the Vietnam War. Puts a whole different perspective on it, don't you think. New Zealand shares the shame of that most criminal of wars and the ignominy of the defeat of the US empire and its satellites such as us.

New Zealand's last hurrah for the British Empire was in Malaya in the 1950s. I worked shifting furniture for NZ Railways in the 70s and 80s and our biggest clients were the military. So, I met and talked with a lot of soldiers and airmen, right up to the rank of camp commanding officers, in their own homes inside Army and Air Force bases. NZ had a battalion of soldiers stationed in Singapore for decades. I worked with military veterans who had fought in Malaya and Vietnam, including in special forces. We got on fine, as civilian workmates. In recent years NZ has continued to loyally serve the US empire in Afghanistan and Iraq, and most recently, in the Red Sea and Yemen.

New Zealand has been its own mini-imperialist in the Pacific. For instance, check out the appalling history of NZ colonial rule in what was then called Western Samoa (now just Samoa) between the two world wars. And we have always allied with imperialist and/or settler regimes. Exhibit A: our senior partners in the Five Eyes spy alliance - the US, UK, Canada and Australia.

We defer to the imperialists and settlers in our own Pacific back yard, namely the Americans and the French. For decades we bent over backwards to placate and accommodate the racist white settlers of apartheid South Africa. And we continue to wilfully turn a blind eye to the genocide being waged by Israel, the worst current example by far of both imperialism and settlers.

Ideas For A Sensible Foreign Policy

Having briefly set the scene, let's look at some things that would constitute a sensible foreign policy. Starting with the elephant in the room - NZ should recognise a Palestinian state without delay; actively denounce the genocide in Gaza (join the International Court of Justice action); denounce Israeli terror and imperialism in the Occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and, most recently, Iran.

If we really wanted to send a message to the international outlaw that is Israel, close its embassy in NZ and cut diplomatic ties. There is no reason to feel guilty about this - we're talking about a country that was caught in the act of mounting a covert intelligence operation in New Zealand in the early years of this century. Israeli Mossad agents were sent to prison here. We don't owe Israel any favours.

What should New Zealand's role be in Ukraine? Rather than helping the Ukrainians fight a war, we should adhere to our oft-stated maxim of the "international rules-based order" and actively push for a negotiated peace settlement, and contribute troops to a UN peacekeeping force there, exactly as we have done at numerous other global trouble spots for decades. Do I support Russia? Not a bit but I think the threat is heavily overblown, for the benefit of those in the West who want a justification for massive rearmament. I think that Putin has amply demonstrated that when it comes to mounting an invasion, he couldn't organise a pissup in a brewery.

Of course, it is wrong for one country to invade another but NZ is very selective when it comes to applying that principle. Not a peep about Israel invading whoever it feels like. Or the decades-long horror of what has been correctly called Africa's world war, with millions of people dead, namely the Congo, which is being invaded and eaten alive by neighbouring countries such as Rwanda, a darling of the West, in a grab for land and minerals. What's the difference with the Ukraine situation? The invaders in those cases are on our side and/or are seen to be serving the interests of our side, directly or indirectly.

The "new normal" of our foreign policy is the recent decision to spend up to $12b on the military over the next four years, which perfectly demonstrates the priorities of this Government which is slashing spending across the board in sectors like health and education (school lunches, anyone). Warmongers and their media and academic mouthpieces are salivating at the prospect of this big spend up, with more toys for the boys.

Who Is The Enemy, The Target Of All This New Military Hardware?

Why, it's our old mate the Yellow Peril. That's right, our enemy is also our biggest trading partner. China is undeniably throwing its weight around in the Asia/Pacific region and I am not advocating for China to be the next dominant empire. But there is an eyewatering amount of hypocrisy here - NZ got hysterical about Chinese warships turning up in international waters in the Tasman Sea in 2025. But when NZ sent a warship to join an Australian one to sail through the Taiwan Strait in 2024, that was approvingly described as asserting "the right of freedom of navigation", and "a routine movement".

I grew up on this stuff. The Vietnam War was justified by the domino theory, that if the SE Asian dominoes fell, those Communist bastards would be here in no time, and we'd all have to eat rice. So, how did that work out? Well, the Yanks and their little mates like NZ lost the war. And Vietnam is now a highly prized holiday destination for New Zealanders; a valued trade partner, and I happily eat rice most days of the week. During that war Prime Minister Muldoon commandeered prime time TV to address the nation on the alleged threat posed to us if the Soviet Pacific Fleet got the use of a Vietnamese port.

Vietnam was liberated 50 years ago but we're still waiting for those Russian warships to sail over our horizon. The only Russian vessels to turn up in NZ have been joint venture fishing boats - which were approved by Muldoon during his nine years in power. In fact, we've been waiting a bloody long time for the Russians to invade us. Check out Lyttelton Harbour's Ripapa Island, which was built to hold a "disappearing gun", one of a nationwide network of coastal fortifications built to defend NZ from a non-existent 19th Century Russian invasion threat.

Let's Have A Reality Check

Which superpower has a whole chain of bases, nuclear and conventional, right throughout the Asia/Pacific region and uses its military might to confront and contain the other in close proximity? Spoiler alert - it's not China. The Pacific has been accurately described as an American lake. Even the mythology is bullshit. I grew up being told that "the Yanks saved us at the battle of the Coral Sea" in WW2.

In the early 70s I had the privilege of meeting and interviewing Rewi Alley, China's most famous New Zealander, on his last visit home to NZ. We talked about this very thing. He pointed out that, for China, WW2 started years before 1939 and that what actually saved us was that Japan had a million troops tied up in China during the war. What was the other legacy left by our American "saviours" in WW2? How about the biggest riot in NZ history, in the streets of Wellington, which left several people dead and which was caused by the official American policy of racism, directed at Māori.

So, it is the US which is the threat in the Asia Pacific. And now that it is headed by the self-described "very stable genius", who is gaily tossing around wishful intentions to annex Greenland, Canada, the Panama Canal, Gaza and bits of Ukraine, it may become a literal threat to us and our neighbours. This is now an age of transactional imperialism. There may be a silver lining in that $12b spend up on the military - should Trump ever decide that he'll make us an offer we can't refuse and wants NZ for a golf course, we may have something with which to defend ourselves against the invading Yanks. I'm being perfectly serious.

NZ Is Part Of The US Empire

We are what used to be called a satellite, when that sneering term was applied to the Soviet Union's Eastern European allies (anyone remember the Warsaw Pact? It went, with the Soviet Union. But not NATO, it just kept on going). Being part of the US empire has bipartisan support - Jacinda Ardern was approvingly described as NZ's most pro-US PM since Piggy Muldoon (which contradicted her constant claim that "NZ has an independent foreign policy").

The most useful thing we could do is to sever our ties to that empire, something we bravely started in the 80s with the nuclear free policy. Get out of US wars, like the one in the Red Sea and Yemen. Get out of the US-dominated Five Eyes spy alliance. Close the Waihopai and Tangimoana spy bases and the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), the NZ agency which runs them. Kick out Rocket Lab, NZ's newest American military base. Demilitarise the US base at Christchurch Airport. Stay out of AUKUS, which is simply building an alliance to fight a war with China.

If we want to see what not to do vis vis foreign policy, we need look no further than Australia, which is so far up Uncle Sam's arse that you can only see the soles of its shoes. Being the most faithful servant of the US Empire is a bipartisan Australian policy, with the Labor Party never having recovered its nerve after being tossed out of Government in a bloodless coup mounted by the US and its local allies in 1975. That Whitlam Labor government had the temerity to advance policies that did not meet with American approval.

Let's look at some of these things in a little more detail. The US base at Christchurch Airport has been there for 70 years (since 1955)! It's a transport and logistics base, not a combat base, and some of its functions are unrelated to its stated role of servicing Antarctica. It's a link in a chain of US bases in the Pacific, which the US considered important enough to keep in NZ right throughout the ANZUS Row, when it punished NZ for our nuclear-free impertinence. It's what the US military calls a contingency asset.

What Use Is The Five Eyes Spy Alliance To Us?

When French State terrorists bombed the Rainbow Warrior in 1985 and murdered a crew member in Auckland Harbour, our Five Eyes allies played no role in detection, prevention or solving the crime. Ditto in 2004 when Israeli intelligence mounted an operation in Auckland to fraudulently obtain an NZ passport. Ditto in 2019 when an Australian fascist terrorist with an extensive electronic footprint staged NZ's worst mass murder at Christchurch mosques.

The first two cases involved crimes in NZ by states that are allies of our big brothers in Five Eyes, so it was not in their interests to help us, their supposed partner. In the case of the mosques' massacre, it was officially revealed that NZ spy agencies were too busy fulfilling the requirements of their big brother agencies in Five Eyes i.e. they were spying on Muslims in NZ, rather on those plotting to murder those very same Muslims.

What Use Is The Waihopai Spy Base To Us?

In 2024 it was officially revealed that it had been covertly used for nearly a decade (and a very recent decade at that, specifically from 2013-20) to run a find and kill programme directed at targets in various countries by US intelligence. Waihopai's stated purpose is to gather intelligence for NZ from our Pacific neighbours. What is one of the biggest regional stories of 2025 so far? The Cook Islands, for which NZ is still partially responsible, signing a deal with China - and NZ complained that it knew nothing about it! So, Waihopai and the GCSB can't even do the spying that they are supposed to be doing "in New Zealand's interests".

As for Rocket Lab, that may have started as a plucky little number 8 wire Kiwi battler, but it sure as hell isn't now. It's now simply the NZ subsidiary of a US private company, one which is currently expanding from launching satellites for the US military and spy agencies to providing rockets for US and UK to test hypersonic missiles. Not only that but other NZ aerospace companies are also getting into bed with the US military.

Let's Develop A Genuinely Independent Foreign Policy

It's time for this country to pull the plug, to finish the business started in the 1980s which saw NZ both nuclear free and out of ANZUS; and to break the chains - military, intelligence, economic and cultural - that continue to bind us to the American Empire. The Americans are very proud of having won their independence from the British Empire; it's time for us to do the same from the American Empire. Let's deal with the world on our terms, not on those dictated from whichever empire we happen to be a junior member of at the time.

It doesn't mean isolationism. It would mean that New Zealand would pick our allies, our trading partners and our enemies on a case-by-case basis, decided first and foremost by what is in the interests of the New Zealand people, not the interests of foreign governments and/or corporations. It would involve cutting the strings that continue to bind us to the American Empire.

We don't need to replace the US with another Northern Hemisphere Big Brother. Stop the process of getting entangled with NATO. Since when has New Zealand been in the North Atlantic, yet we're deemed to be a "partner" of NATO, which is trying to position itself to be some sort of world policeman, the role hitherto filled by the US. Once again, support for this NATO entanglement is bipartisan. Jacinda Ardern was the first ever NZ PM to attend and address a NATO Summit (followed by Chris Hipkins).

This not just about cutting the ties with the American Empire but also about cutting all vestigial ties with our original Empire, namely dear old Mother England. Get shot of Mother England and Uncle Sam. It's called leaving home and living your own life and it's what all of us do in the much vaunted "real world" that we keep getting told about. It's called being independent. And I do not advocate NZ transferring its allegiance to become a loyal servant of the arising Chinese Empire. Why jump from the frying pan into the fire? Let's stay independent of anyone's empire.

Plenty Of Unfinished Business

Let's talk about concepts like non-alignment and armed neutrality. We could be the Switzerland of the south. A non-aligned Aotearoa would be the opposite of "isolationist". It would pursue an activist foreign policy. There is plenty of unfinished business. Let's proudly spread what was disparagingly called, in the 80s, "the Kiwi disease" and actively work for a nuclear free world, one country or region at a time, if necessary. Let's demand that all the nuclear powers, overt or covert, disarm and dismantle their weapons of mass terror and genocide. Let's speak truth to power and tell countries such as Australia and the US and China what we find abhorrent in areas such as their human rights and race relations practices. Because that's what's friends do.

Regionally, Aotearoa Needs To Be Much More Activist

As a First World capitalist economy we are part of the climate change problem that threatens the whole world and nowhere more imminently than our tiny Pacific neighbours. There is clamour for NZ to take in more refugees and I fully support that - the inhabitants of these doomed atolls need to be at the top of the list. All of them, if necessary - we're only talking thousands of people. This is not a solution to the problem of climate change (that's a whole other, but vitally related, issue, one which Trump is actively making worse) - it is merely a reaction to the problem, a recognition that we have a responsibility to help our neighbours whom we have harmed.

There are other regional issues that Aotearoa should be addressing. Decolonisation of France's Pacific empire is an obvious one. Support the benighted people of West Papua to gain their freedom from Indonesia, in the same way we (very belatedly) supported the East Timorese people. Offer the peace-making skills that we demonstrated so successfully in Bougainville to help the Philippines to find an end to the wars that have wracked it for more than half a century. It is a damning indictment that Norway, a country on the other side of the world, is the one that has regularly hosted Philippine peace negotiations. These are some regional examples of where Aotearoa could offer to help.

NZ loves to talk about the international rules-based order. Step it up a gear. Campaign to get rid of the veto power of the UN Security Council permanent members, thus giving the UN some real teeth. Champion the Paris Agreement to combat climate change, don't backslide from it or ignore it. Demand that major powers sign up to landmark international agreements (e.g. the US has signed up to neither the international law of the sea or the International Criminal Court). Seize the opportunity presented by Trump's unhinged isolationism to find new, and more reliable, trading partners.

Foreign policy does not rank highly in NZ election campaigns (the only one that I can think of was 1987, when National - unsuccessfully - campaigned to mend the rift with the US caused by Labour's nuclear free policy). NZ election campaigns are usually decided on economic issues. But the world is changing rapidly and our 2026 election gives us the opportunity to decide NZ's place in the world - are we a footstool to the mad emperor who currently rules in the US or are we a genuinely independent nation?

Watchdog - 169 August 2025