From independent nuclear-free Pacific nation to part of the US “kill chain” How did we get to this?

The “Anglosphere” - military allies in Five Eyes (UK, USA, Canada, Australia & NZ) and AUKUS (UK, USA, Australia) (Credit: Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons)

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 – 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 has for years enabled 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 New Zealand’s governments, under both 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 been considering joining NATO.

How did our tiny, remote, nuclear-free Pacific nation find ourselves here?

Basic facts every NZ citizen should know about NZ’s military pacts

This blog aims to bring together some basic facts about New Zealand’s current military alliances that we think every NZ 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 NGOs such as Peace Movement Aotearoa (PMA), Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC), Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA), Disarmament and Security Centre (DSC), by independent journalists like Nicky Hager and Murray Horton, and by Marco de Jong, Rheive Grey, Arama Rata 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 is part of one of the world’s biggest spy networks

As Murray Horton observed, New Zealand’s 70-year membership of the Five Eyes spy network is key to the rest of this story and how it may unfold in the future.

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 USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (see map above) 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 main spy bases run by the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). Tangimoana near Palmerston North intercepts radio and satellite communications both locally and further afield, and Waihopai near Blenheim monitors internet traffic on the Southern Cross Cable.

Our spy bases sweep up Big Data from home and abroad

Tangimoana and Waihopai routinely 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 in the Pacific region.

As with any mass dataset (such as hospital admissions), tight protocols exist to prevent the data being used to pinpoint individuals. But the technical capability 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 US whistleblower Edward Snowden)

Five Eyes’ lack of accountability to the NZ government was revealed recently:

“How closely New Zealand's intelligence and security sector aligns its interests with the country's Five Eyes partners was newly demonstrated in last week's revelations about secret foreign spy operations hosted for years by the GCSB in Wellington, without the government knowing.” (Phil Pennington, RNZ March 2024)

New Zealand is an integral part of the US global “kill chain”

Smoothly linked IT systems are increasingly important in modern warfare – from long-distance targeted drone strikes to building capability for warfare in space.

To this end, NZ’s involvement in Five Eyes has deepened since 2010. USA has encouraged “interoperability” among its allies, offering IT technology upgrades to our military and involvement in regular joint military exercises. Phil Pennington (Radio NZ Aug 2024) 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, an F35 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 upgrades’ disguises the reality that NZ has become bound ever more tightly to the military aims and activity of the United States.

This has been happening for over a decade 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 hiatus starting in 1985 when:

“… the US suspended New Zealand from the ANZUS defence treaty. Th[is] 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.” (Te Ara Encyclopaedia of NZ)

However, by 2010 US/NZ relations were thawing and in 2012 the Key government and USA

“… signed the Washington Declaration, strengthening military cooperation and defence relations, for the first time in more than 30 years.” (Te Ara Encyclopaedia of NZ)

Since then, NZ has attended every RIMPAC alongside the USA and other US allies. Some of which are currently engaged in or supporting violence that many New Zealanders not want to be aligned with, such as US, Israel and Indonesia.

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 and 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 create a NZ aerospace industry. A launch site was built at Mahia Peninsula, another planned for Kaitorete Spit, 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 in fact used and by whom. As Phil Pennington describes (his links):

“The [US] missile defence command told Congress that in the face of growing threats, it was "making every effort to help streamline and accelerate ... integrated kill chain capabilities" 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 2021 tells the human story of Rocket Lab’s convoluted path from local hero to facing NZ public outcry at its rockets carrying military payloads.

Both Neas and Murray Horton document the caginess of officials, politicians and business owners about Rocket Lab’s connections and activity, a reluctance based (realistically) on their fear of public outcry and the possibility of protest action disrupting the launch site.

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.

AUKUS - “Join a nuclear-capable military pact against China”

How many of us know what AUKUS is? Probably not many, given the limited public debate in mainstream media 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, Feb 2024)

“Pillar one” of the pact covers the mobilisation of nuclear military weaponry, such as Australia’s purchase of nuclear-powered submarines, the stationing of nuclear-armed bombers in Australia and maintenance of US nuclear-armed submarines in Australian ports.

“Pillar two” covers non-nuclear military resources, including information, spy-bases, drones etc.

Phil Pennington’s reports for Radio NZ and Murray Horton’s articles in ABC, PMA and CAFCA can be explored for detail about AUKUS, the nature of the alliance and the history of the negotiations.

Should NZ join AUKUS? Why the debate’s been slow to start

The USA, UK and Australia announced the existence of their AUKUS pact in September 2021.

Since then, as recently released 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 self-declared Nuclear-Free Zone since 1987 and an initiator of the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone (Treaty of Rarotonga), join a nuclear-capable military alliance based in the Indo-Pacific?

Why would New Zealand, a signatory of the global Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, join a military pact that’s prompting Australia to buy nuclear-powered submarines and host nuclear-armed US bombers in Australian ports and defence bases? To patrol 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 China, our biggest trading partner?

In what way is China a security risk to NZ? What do we have to do with fights between the US and China over Taiwan or tariffs?

After 30 years of what most of us assumed was an independent and Pacific-focused foreign policy, why have New Zealand politicians, both National and Labour, yet again started following the USA, Australia and UK into their military questionable adventures?

For the past year New Zealanders have watched the USA and UK maintain their arms supply to the genocidal war in Gaza, block UN Security Council majority calls for ceasefire and ignore International Court of Justice rulings. The USA and UK are now seen by much of the world as outlier nations – do we really want to lose our former peace-maker reputation by following them into this new military adventure?

However, from the start officials in the NZ Ministries of Defence and Foreign Affairs and Trade have been enthusiastic about the defence and trade potential of joining AUKUS. This shows in their 2023 briefings for the incoming government – a document that was officially released only after Marco de Jong obtained it under OIA.

When the ministries’ briefing 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 for RNZ 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]…

“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

Ministry officials and politicians gradually over 2023 and 2024 revealed their intentions to pursue AUKUS membership. As this happened, opposition to this has been building. Examples:

Prof Robert Patman in The Conversation (Aug 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 website Covert Action (Jun 2023) puts the AUKUS pact in a global context, and his podcast interview with this website looks at its impact for NZ (Jul 2023).

It is heartening to see that current Labour Opposition leader Chris Hipkins has recently stated

"I've seen nothing to convince me that it would be in New Zealand's best interests to be part of it [AUKUS Pillar 2].”

However, it is easier for any party in opposition to take a stronger public stand than they can or will act on in government. Previous Labour governments since 2021 have walked a fine line among the super-powers.

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 (Lab) “The current NZ govt 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," (Nov 2024)

Jim Bolger (Nat) “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?” (Mar 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.’ (Apr 2024)

Don Brash (Nat/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 New Zealand? (Apr 2024)

John Key (Nat) “the largest trading partner this country owns… is worth fighting for."(Dec 2024)

No wonder the politicians from both sides of parliament who established and maintained that (ostensibly) independent foreign policy are speaking out against AUKUS.

This is what it means for our defence forces on the ground:

“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 war fighting 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 Sep 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.” (Marco de Jong in E Tangata Sep 2024)

Matika Hawaiki: the indigenous challenge to AUKUS

Some of the clearest and strongest challenges to the official narrative on AUKUS come from Pasifika and Māori.

Te Kuaka/NZA has taken a lead in this challenge. Te Kuaka is an independent organisation promoting a progressive role for Aotearoa in the world. Its members publish in E Tangata and other Māori and Pasifika media. Check out E Tangata’s useful AUKUS archives here.

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. The March 2024 ActionStation webinar of the roadshow is a good watch.

Marco de Jong sums it up:

“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.” (From the video transcript)

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 [sic] promotes a different paradigm of security.” (de Jong & Patman, Newsroom Apr 2024)

Te Ao Māori News reported Hawai’ian academic Emalani Case’s short sharp critique of the RIMPAC’s destructive impact on Hawai’i. She calls out its role in training countries (like Israel and Indonesia) in violent colonisation of their indigenous peoples. Watch her 4 minute talk here.

“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 last year’s 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 Nov 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 …; 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 on Earth is the USA prepping for nuclear war?

Isn’t the world linked together by global trade these days and, um, aren’t we facing a huge common planetary crisis of climate/ecosystem breakdown??

And what about the UN treaty in place to ban the proliferation of nuclear weapons?

Didn’t the Cold War end in the 1990s, with the USA ‘winning’ and both the USSR and China going capitalist (albeit in different ways)?

Well, we’ve ended up with a whole new bunch of questions.

Here’s a couple of talks from two thoughtful American academics on why the United States is building up for nuclear confrontation with China.

Firstly, Van Jackson, former Obama staffer now working at Victoria University Wellington. Jackson’s lively half hour talk to NZ Fabians in Sept. 2024 is worth a watch.

US foreign policy since the end of WW2, Jackson says, has been based on maintaining ‘primacy‘ – or as US officials call it: “US leading the rules-based world order”. Primacy as a strategy is inherently incompatible with peace in a region because it seeks to de-stabilise relationships to gain advantage over any potential rivals.

He sees this as an inappropriate and unnecessary strategy as we move to a multi-polar world where all peoples are connected by ties of trade and facing a common existential planetary crisis.

China doesn’t have the means to compete for primacy, he says, and in fact is not seeking it, since its security (like that of other nations) is bound up in existing capitalist interrelationships – such as 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 (Sep 2024) reveals how little US foreign policy is revealed to or debated by even the American public.

Sachs also identifies ‘primacy’, or what US Dept of Defense (USDoD) calls “full spectrum dominance”, as a major risk for nuclear war.

USDoD believes this dominance is needed for US security. But, Sachs says, that makes the 192 other countries in the world feel less secure since US is one of the most violent countries in the world and has many military bases closely surrounding China and Russia.

(Wikipedia’s entry on “United States Indo-Pacific Command” is an enlightening read for anyone unaware of the extent of USDoD military activity and intentions in this area.)

Within the US, Sachs sees the political system as “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… “

We are already in a multi-polar world – India, Russia, China and US could each start nuclear war and no one of them can defeat any other without such a war –

“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 New Zealand experience.

As NZ aligns more closely to the technology, processes and aims of the US military industrial complex and the technocratic class who manage it, we should expect this problem to grow. As Australian peace activists like Marianne Hanson warn and defence-focused websites confirm, “interoperability” is now sliding smoothly into “inter-changeability” as Australia’s national defence forces increasingly operate as another arm of the US defence Force.

If we don’t want that to happen here, it’s time to be …

Re-energising the peace movement in Aotearoa!

As we saw at the start of this blog, the peace movement in Aotearoa never went away – its lifelong activists have been monitoring and challenging militarism in all its forms, revealing the connections between militarism, human rights abuses in many countries and colonialist capitalism in its endless planet-destroying expansion.

Let’s end with a couple of recent inspiring gatherings that brought people in Aotearoa together with people from the Pacific, the Indo-Pacific and Australia in the fight-back against the militarisation of our region. These are our true allies!

Pacific Peace Forum – connecting to our real allies

IPAN (Independent & Peaceful Australia Network)’s recent webinar, “AUKUS - is it worth dying for?” brought together Pacific Pacific Peace Forum members from South Korea, Japan/Okinawa, Guahan/Guam, Vanuatu, West Papua/Kanaky, Philippines, USA, Australia and Aotearoa.

Each presented graphic information on the increased militarisation in their country by the USA and their own governments. It is worth a watch.

The Whāingaroa Declaration

Kia whakatōmuri te haere whakamua.

We walk backwards into the future with our eyes fixed on our past.

This October 2024 Te Hui Oranga o te Moana nui a Kiwa brought ten representatives from across the Pacific to Aotearoa again to discuss issues affecting our shared ocean.

They produced The Whāingaroa Declaration, calling for renewed solidarity from Aotearoa towards decolonisation, demilitarisation and ecological justice.

The Declaration is a strong statement of an alternative vision to the colonialist, capitalist narrative focused on war and financial gain.

Watch the full Declaration being read out by participants of the hui here (with transcript):

End note

This has been such a hard blog to write. The subject is even more horrifying than ecosystem breakdown because it is deliberate. The webinars often brought me to tears.

Thanks for reading if you got this far. I can understand why people say “I can’t bear to look at that war stuff, I’ll just stick to Tiriti mahi, cruise ship campaign, union work, tree planting …”.

As we work on all this good useful mahi, we are all banging up against the same barriers and the same structures of power, ownership, profit.

Militarism is just the same old colonial capitalism - with its gloves off.

Increasingly people around the world are realising this and coming together.

This blog has perhaps ended up with an answer to the question – who should our allies be? The ordinary people of the world who want to live in peace with one another and nature are our allies – and we are everywhere, embedded in our own dearly loved whenua.

At the Aerospace Summit protest in Ōtautahi this year, a young school strike leader stood to speak, and she described herself as a ‘peace activist’.

The young know how it’s all tied together – climate, war, poverty, capitalism, colonialism, degradation of Te Taiao – and they are moving.