Why NZ Should Stay Out of the AUKUS Suicide Pact

Earlier this week, Newsroom published a pro-AUKUS opinion piece, by Dr Reuben Steff of the University of Waikato. The limp case put forward by Steff - the kind of expert who informs foreign and defence ministers - can be refuted by a non-expert and a few quick google searches. Here’s what that looks like, tackling each of Steff’s paragraph’s one at a time.

When Andrew Little announced he wanted to get to second base with nuclear submarines, NZ’s potential role in AUKUS was described as the “sharing of advanced military technologies, including quantum computing and artificial intelligence.” Little was then quoted, clarifying that AUKUS membership “would be about the kind of technology … needed to protect defence personnel… Usually domain awareness [explained fully here], so surveillance technology, and radio technology that allows us to do that.”

Dr Reuben Steff’s position piece presents a very different description of what joining ‘pillar two’ of the AUKUS military pact would entail. Straight out the gates, he provides a revealing list of the ‘advanced military technologies’ we would share as part of AUKUS.

Steff’s list includes ‘hypersonic weaponry’ - as in weapons that travel between five and twenty-five times the speed of sound. This class of weapons includes ballistic missiles that are shot into space and reach hypersonic speeds on reentry (kia ora Wikipedia). So in case any of us were thinking that ‘pillar two’ of AUKUS would be restricted to information sharing - a sort of ‘Five Eyes 2.0’, if that wasn’t bad enough - Steff describes how AUKUS is a weapons pact.

Steff’s second paragraph calls for “robust and systematic debate that weighs up the pros and cons of New Zealand joining the deal.” On this point, I couldn't agree more.

Steff thinks it is the responsibility of the public to consider how the government feels about joining AUKUS. The exact opposite is true. Our government must listen to the people. Most of us (save for those building careers in the techno-military-academic complex) have no desire to be stuck in the middle of a war between nuclear powers.

Yet no robust debate has occurred because the public are intentionally excluded from foreign policy decision making. During his AUKUS announcement, “Little said foreign or local voices against the deal would not be a factor in potential membership.” This arrogance must end.

Steff then states AUKUS places us between a rock and a hard place because of our military ties with Australia and the US. Once again, I can agree. AUKUS compels NZ to disentangle ourselves from US, UK, and Australian militarism, and develop international relations from a position of principled independence.

The issue of trade is then introduced. Steff notes “over 30 percent of our exports go to China”, and “our economic dependence has increased during the Covid pandemic”. Here he’s suggesting that putting all our eggs in one basket is inadvisable. Chaining ourselves to a sinking ship is also not ideal. We’re watching EU leaders tank their economies in real time, to stay in-line with US foreign policy objectives. EU leaders are justified in opposing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But US actions have not prioritised avoiding war, negotiating peace, or minimising the economic impacts on their allies. New Zealand should take heed. AUKUS equals economic destruction.

Steff then helpfully makes explicit the real reason AUKUS exists. No doubt, we will be asked to believe the US must respond to ‘Chinese military expansion’, or ‘aggression on Taiwan’, or human rights abuses, or ‘foreign interference’, or worse. As has occurred elsewhere, ‘evidence’ of these threats will probably be ‘leaked’, by anonymous sources in intelligence agencies, that very conveniently cannot be scrutinised. But Steff exposes the real basis of US beef with China: the US simply cannot abide China’s growing economic power.

As Steff states, “the US expects its allies and friends - including New Zealand - to help contain China’s growing power, while Beijing’s economic power incentivises its own ‘strategic partners’ (New Zealand included) to steer a middle path.” Given the trumped-up accusations levied at China by the US to justify militarism and maintain economic dominance, rejecting AUKUS and steering a middle path is a great foreign policy option for NZ.

Steff then pulls out the big guns, by cherry-picking military data to suggest China is the biggest baddie on the block. So let’s enlist the support of Google and go round for round with our military expert, on each of his points.

Expert: China’s shipyards built lots of naval vessels.

Google: China builds ships for its own and other navies in the region. In 1960, the US had 110 shipyards. Today, that’s down to four. About one quarter of the closures occurred in the early 1980s because the US navy had declining ship demand, and because South Korea and Japan could “build the same commercial ship twice as fast as any American shipyard at half the cost.” The US remains salty because the “shipbuilding industry in the United States has become isolated from the world market.” China has a 36 percent share of the global market on new orders (by gross tonnage) behind South Korea (at 40 percent).

Expert: China has 200 nuclear weapons and aims to increase that to 1,000 by 2030.

Google: The US reached 5,428 nuclear weapons in 2020.

Expert: China’s military spending between 1990 and 2020 increased 10-fold.

Google: China’s GDP between 1990 and 2020 increased 40-fold (from 360.9 billion to 14.7 trillion USD).

Expert: …

Google: China’s military spending in 2021 was 1.7 percent of GDP, while the US spent 3.5 percent. And China’s military spending in 2023 totalled US$252 billion, while the US spent $778 billion.

Expert: Beijing accounts for over half of all military expenditure in Asia

Google: China accounts for almost half of all GDP in Asia (45.80 percent).

Expert: China has the largest navy, by number of ships.

Google: China has the largest population on the planet (shrugs).

Expert: ...

Google: China has 3,260 aircraft in its military fleet, while the US has 13,232.

Expert: China has one of the world’s largest ballistic missile forces.

Google: China has one of the world’s largest intermediate range ballistic missile forces. Almost all of China’s missiles are not capable of reaching the continental US, but could reach some US military bases and allies in the Pacific. Good reasons for the US to chill, and for NZ to stay out of AUKUS.

Expert: …

Google: Military spending per capita in 2021 was (USD): US = $2,405.03, Australia = $1,231.34, New Zealand = $697.36, China = $203.12. Just saying.

Steff then brings our attention to ‘Taiwan as a potential flashpoint’. He notes that “the US and Australia have not ruled out ‘coming to Taiwan’s defence should it be attacked.” In fact, President Biden made that a promise. Communication between the US and China has already crumbled. Taiwan is not a flashpoint but a trigger that can be squeezed by either side, at any moment. Almost inevitably, joining AUKUS would drag NZ into (cold, hot, or nuclear) war with China. That’s its raison d'être.

Paragraph eight asks, “Should New Zealand break its independence and go all-in with the Aukus nations?” Thank you for asking Steff. The answer is no. We definitely shouldn’t join AUKUS.

Having tried to convince us, a few paragraphs ago, that military strength makes China bad, Steff then argues military strength makes the US good. “Geography” he says, “has long dictated that we side with the world’s most powerful navy that protects global trade (that remains the US).” We’re now expected to forget what he said about China having “the largest navy by number of ships.”

Steff states the “combined power of the US and its allies remains far larger than China and its partners like Russia and Iran.” New Zealand’s defence capability is negligible in comparison. If the US wants war with China they don’t need our help. New Zealand should stay out of AUKUS.

Many of Steff’s pro-AUKUS arguments are hyperbolic, but in paragraph 10, he states the “American side is the defender of the existing status quo and the rules-based system that has delivered immense benefits to New Zealand, and to a good chunk of the world, since 1945.”

Now he’s getting to the real issues: the status quo (global apartheid), the rules-based system (American hegemony), and its winners (a small minority in the global North). He doesn’t mention those most exploited in this system. Reading his view, it’s as if the vast majority of humanity doesn’t even exist.

The US understands the uncompromising maintenance of their world order will deepen global disaster. Environmental destruction, massive death tolls, even nuclear fallout are of secondary significance to maintaining US hegemony. AUKUS is a genocidal bargain. Quit the spin. If you’re horny for war with China, just admit you like fucking the global south.

Steff reminds us Te Pāti Māori suggested New Zealand could become the ‘Switzerland of the South Pacific’. Instead of engaging this idea in earnest, and considering what non-alignment could mean in our context, with our nearest neighbour over 4,000 km away, Steff spends five paragraphs constructing a straw man, so he can reveal that New Zealand is not, in fact, Switzerland.

The patronising tone here is that of a TV dad who doesn’t want to tell his kid, “No, you can’t have a puppy” so instead says, “It’s a big responsibility. You’ll have to feed it, walk it everyday, and pick up it’s poop…” 

Steff doesn’t seem to notice the double irony in his conclusion: New Zealand can’t be neutral, because we don’t like conscription, and at this time we just can’t afford it. Or in other words, we should join a military pact and prepare for war because: (1) we don’t like the military, and (2) we’re broke because of a global recession… caused by another war prepared earlier.

In his final paragraph, Steff describes New Zealand’s position as precarious. He warns that “Our region is militarising”, and urges us to close our eyes and think of Australia, the US and England.

Steff’s closing statements are that: “We in New Zealand need to get a debate over these issues fully out into the open and to start considering things to their fullest conclusions. The New Zealand people deserve to know what’s going on and what is at stake.”

Despite this sound advice, nowhere in Steff’s opinion piece does he grapple with the ‘fullest conclusions’ of getting into bed with AUKUS, and ‘what is at stake’. AUKUS escalates military tension. As W. E. B. Dubois wrote in Darkwater one hundred years ago, reflecting on the lead up to the Great War, “The cause of war is preparation for war.”

War between nuclear powers spells disaster for New Zealand, the Pacific, and our planet as a whole. In the words of Samoan historian Dr Marco de Jong, “we all know there’s no winning this war. It will be the complete annihilation of any Pacific future worth saving.”

The infamous, oft-quoted warning of former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger echoes loudly: “it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal.”  AUKUS is a suicide pact.

Government officials and military experts like Steff so often demonstrate an extreme poverty of imagination. They march in lockstep toward nuclear apocalypse without considering the potentials of diplomacy and disarmament.

Rather than being drowned in the Pacific by the death throes of the republic, we must draw a line in the sand. The Treaty of Rarotonga reminds us of the power of public pressure to force progressive foreign policy. It is now our generation’s duty to make our voices heard. No AUKUS. No war with China. Demilitarise the Pacific.

Arama Rata (Taranaki, Ngāruahine, Ngāti Maniapoto) is an independent researcher, and steering committee member of Te Kuaka @nzalternative

Acknowledgements: Nā Dr Marco de Jong rāua ko Kyle Church tēnei kōrero i tautoko.