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4:04 pm, October 24th, 2025 - 90 comments
Categories: australian politics, China, defence, Diplomacy, Disarmament, FiveEyes, Judith Collins, nuclear war, nuclear-free, Peace, us politics, war -
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Lauded at the CIA and lectured at the Department of War, Judith Collins last week got her marching orders – prepare New Zealanders to join the next US war against China.
And while the pictures of her submissiveness were out in the open, as here at CIA headquarters in Langley, our media were shut out at the last minute at the start of the meeting at the Pentagon. No chance for even any of the usual patsy questions.
At the newly-named US Department of War, she was met by undersecretary Eldridge Colby. Recently, he has authored a report outlining preparations for war against China. According to Wikipedia:
He advocates for a “strategy of denial” to deny regional hegemony to China and stopping or defeating a potential invasion of Taiwan. He believes an attack on Taiwan would lead to a “limited war” which would seek to cause the least upheaval in the region, with no motivation on either side to escalate; he calls on the U.S. to prepare for this scenario. He further calls for an “anti-hegemonic coalition” made up of U.S. allies in Asia to stop China from taking over Taiwan; he believes that if the coalition failed to stop a takeover of Taiwan, China could seize the Philippines and Vietnam next. Colby also advocates for an end to U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan.
That last statement as far as China is concerned is war talk.
Collins did finally get to meet Pete Hegseth, the Secretary for War, whose bellicosity I have outlined in a previous post. And its not personal: in my opinion in these matters names mean something, and we are meant to take them seriously. Quite simply, the United States is preparing for war against China, intends to go to war with China, and thinks it can win it. Madness, in my view.
And we are expected to follow along. The present government clearly does not have an independent foreign policy.
When she finally did get to talk to the press back in New Zealand, she boasted how pleased the Trump administration is with little ‘ol New Zealand. We are “stepping up,” – shades of WW1 trenches into the firing line – increasing our defence budget to 2% of GDP which is now a floor not a ceiling according to Collins.
It is now absolutely clear that this government has totally succumbed to the Trump-led United States’ hegemonic embrace. Its no longer a matter of the “coalition of the willing,” which thanks to Helen Clark we avoid in Iraq. This government is making us a “coalition of the eager:”
Collins said the purpose of her trip was to meet her counterparts across her defence, intelligence, and attorney-general roles to discuss the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing relationship, let the administration know New Zealand wanted to expand its defence industry, and talk about being a reliable partner.
Like all the other Western nations we are marching headlong into military Keynesianism as the solution to our economic future. The opportunity cost to our social fabric is massive.
Glorious images of goose steeping done well in groups, with subsequent future individual regret over aberrant northern regime compliant behaviour.
(see 1 and 4 here)
https://apnews.com/article/9b574b566f2d45318d68aec8f31aaf49
Is Collins as compliant as those journalists allowed to be in the building with 8 faces to watch the man who struts around offices to lick spying nanobots off the walls then spit them out?
The Americans spend on AI and data centres etc (and demand investment in America chip making etc) and everyone is supposed to buy more of their military tech.
Buying into the plan of the grandson of William (Colby not Wild Bill Donovan). No relation of (to the Yalu and back behind the liberate South Korea parallel) MacArthur.
A new domino theory, based on old fashioned empire building aka Japan?
There was a time when Enzed would have stood apart from this and promoted diplomatic resolution.
Lauded by who in the CIA? Whose left there now after the purges. The intellectual equals of those in charge at the Quantico school graduate building.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2019002817/how-the-cia-is-faring-under-don
The ones to talk to were those who were now working with foreign allies to defend democracy in the USA and elsewhere.
Can we agree that, given China is ruled by a totalitarian dictatorship, to "deny regional hegemony to China and stopping or defeating a potential invasion of Taiwan" is inherently a Good Thing?
And so you're all on board with the US , even though they're ruled by a dictatorship hellbent on destroying democracy and international law?
No thanks, but you're welcome to join up
Whatabout whatabout. It was a simple question.
The post was exactly about the folly of joining the US in its coming war on China
Your response is the whatabout
Do you get ownership papers with that burn?
Well said, PM was obviously offering a distraction.
There is an element of Hobson's choice to this. The trajectory of the US isn't flash. The highlights are the marginal wrestling back of a small amount of manufacturing. This is probably magnified by our US influenced media here.
Big political divide, government struggling to pay it's bills…
Chomsky, 20 years ago outlined this in Failed States.
"Noam Chomsky turns the tables, showing how the United States itself shares features with other failed states—suffering from a severe “democratic deficit,” eschewing domestic and international law, and adopting policies that increasingly endanger its own citizens and the world. Exploring the latest developments in U.S. foreign and domestic policy, Chomsky reveals Washington’s plans to further militarize the planet, greatly increasing the risks of nuclear war. "
https://americanempireproject.com/failed-states/
China's trajectory is the opposite of the weakness shown by the US. Manufacturing, technology and economically strong.
But hey, if that paragon of virtue, Judith Collins says it's all good, I must have missed something./sarc
It was a question directly related to the OP, which you didn't and presumably won't answer.
China has the manufacturing, the people and the technology, as well as currently being a major trading partner with the balance of trade in our favour.
War with China is absolutely bonkers. Even if it wasn't following the current absolutely bonkers US leadership.
War with China would be absolutely bonkers, yes. However, "deny regional hegemony" doesn't necessarily involve war. Also, we may not be interested in war but war may be interested in us.
You mean.
The USA will start one on "our behalf"?
Or. Are you thinking of joining in to invading Venezuela?
Depends what "start one" means. If the USA were to attack China, any NZ government that wanted to be re-elected would be making sure neither the CCP nor the UN considered us a party to the attack. However, there are people on the left who think Ukraine "started" a war with Russia, so we can assume some would claim any conflict between China and the US was "started" by the US, regardless of the circumstances (not implying you're one of those people, just pointing out they exist).
@ Psycho Milt No we can't agree on that. China is ruled by a single-party government, the Chinese Communist party, with 90million members. It is a merit-based organisation, with a focus on delivering results for all of the people, and a constant awareness that if it fails in that it will not continue. Its leadership is selected on performance in delivering to that objective. It is currently formulating its latest five-year plan. Rather that an trying to compare forms of government, it is much better in my opinion to look at outcomes for the population as a whole.
Most of the world agrees that Taiwan is part of China. The big lie here is. that China desires regional hegemony. That is to assume that China thinks like American neocons. Foreign interference to promote secession is a casus belli and foolish to the point of cretinism in my opinion.
That description of China's government is true, but it would also serve as a description of Stalin or Hitler's governments. Still, if you're confident Xi Jinping's government has no interest in regional hegemony, it doesn't matter if the liberal democracies deny it regional hegemony, does it?
First rule of writing: never use three words when one will do. Dictatorship instead of “single-party government” works just fine.
But literary criticism aside, I do love how you try to turn the fundamental insecurity of autocracies into a virtue.
Of course the CPC must keep up the illusion of perpetual prosperity. Because once that cracks, all that’s left is a paranoid police state that censors thought, vanishes critics, and whose masters congratulate themselves for their “meritocracy” while running forced labour camps.
That is, of course, assuming they survive the purges and remember never to criticise Xi Jinping.
Apart from the handful of “malcontents” who’ve been executed, exiled, imprisoned, tortured, or displaced since 1949? A few million deaths is a small price to pay, apparently, in the service of making the East red.
I’m not saying the Guomindang (or any alternate regime) would have been benevolent. But at least they wouldn’t have the gall to lie about it.
It's a good question. My instinct is to say that "deny[ing] regional hegemony" to anyone at all (including China) is a Good Thing. But that sparks off lots of questions that I have no idea how to answer such as:
There are probably heaps of other questions as well.
Agree re the list of questions. Denying Japan regional hegemony came at a huge cost, and the countries that denied it hegemony (including NZ) had been quite happy for the UK and France to control large parts of the region so there are integrity issues as well.
Apparently not, PM.
You see, Chinese imperialism isn’t American imperialism. So it’s much better. One might even call it anti-imperial.
Once you break free of the shackles of Western hegemony and grasp the subtleties of Chinese anti-imperial imperialism, everything suddenly makes perfect sense.
There’s an uncanny resemblance between Judith and Jack Nicholson as “ The Joker” don’t you think?
The irony of the Coalition of Cockups, selling the country as fast as they can to "overseas investors" especially China, then wanting to support the USA, in a war against them.
Further to the restriction on TV1 covering Judith Collins' visit to Pentagon https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/10/pro-trump-propagandists-take-over-pentagon-press-corps-after-signing-loyalty-pledge/
What is the cost of denial of capability of hegemony?
Is it more than just spending more on defence, but buying into American leadership of that effort?
Did that effort begin with the American fleet being between the mainland and Taiwan in 1949. Or when MacArthur's forces approached the Yalu River? Or when he asked Truman to use nukes on China while in full retreat afterwards? Or with the invention of the domino theory – where communist governments all act like Japan pre 1945, or the USSR in occupation of Eastern Europe after 1945.
Why did Peter Fraser oppose the UNSC veto? Why did Kirk and the Lange governments do what they did? Why did we not join the coalition of the willingly stupid in 2003?
Has anyone asked Beijing whether atolls into islands and rejection of UNCLOS is permanent strategy, or a tactic – as to building a negotiating position (Cuba and Turkey missiles or 1980's Russian and American missiles in Europe)(a military advantage should they blockade Taiwan).
Why does no one consider talks with China about both Korea (cease-fire to peace) and Taiwan – its future governance arrangements?
Given it appears to be plan to expended so much to contain China – would not knowing what there is to contain be a reasonable first course?
Probably lower than the cost of being subjugated into it.
Because China won’t accept any outcome other than “reunification” on its own terms. Spare us the “one country, two systems” fantasy.
We’ve all seen how that worked out in Hong Kong.
As for Korea, any kind of unified state would be unstable at best for generations, and from Beijing’s perspective, risks putting U.S. bases right on its border. Better, then, to prop up a dangerous, embarrassing, dysfunctional puppet state than to gamble on an unpredictable democratic neighbour. Or worse, an unpredictable dictatorship with the economic strength and technological parity to actually pose a threat.
Your supposition that China desires the subjugation of other nations is fantasy, peddled by the 21st C version of the Cold War hawks.
It says more about the intolerance of both supremacist Western Christendom and private sector (Atlas Network agenda) capitalism for alternative cultural regimes and economic systems. When will this God and mammon imperialism end?
Hong Kong's was not set up to be a democracy in 1997, but for separate governance until 2047. Americans supporting a democratic movement (colour revolution) there made it worse for locals.
The same Americans seem to support Taiwan remaining independent of China and being supplied its arms. And arming the wider region to contain China.
The world recognises that Taiwan is part of China but it seems the Americans do not want to allow it in practice.
How is Taiwan being part of China a threat of it then becoming a regional hegemon?
The real issue is of course a certain manufacturer of chips being in Taiwan – the American effort to restrict supply of the advanced chips to China.
That will be discussed, if not resolved, in talks in Seoul in Oct 30. China has rare earth minerals etc.
For mine terms Taiwan would get, would be easier now in the decades ahead.
First play
1.ask for continued full independence until 1949.
2.inclusion as an autonomous region after 2049. Negotiations beginning now on this.
And see what China counters with.
Yes, and?
They see China as their rival, and China sees the U.S. the same way. Why wouldn’t both engage in policies designed to weaken their adversaries and strengthen their allies? That’s what great powers do.
As for Taiwan, I don’t think the Taiwanese have much interest in being just another province of the PRC, no matter what Beijing might say. Or is self-determination only acceptable when the people in question are under a Western yoke?
Ditto with South Korea and Japan. They both have their reasons (history and, ahem, war crimes, respectively) to be wary of a revanchist Chinese superpower and to act accordingly.
So you reject international law.
1. American fleet action of 1949 made permanent? Without China's consent.
Is it only members on the UNSC that can carve areas off nations.
2.Golan Heights off Syria. East Jerusalem off Palestine. By USA for Israel.
What next?
3.Crimea, Donbas and parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhya off Ukraine?
4.South Sea Islands to China, regardless of UNCLOS.
But why negotiate when you can instead ally with the world’s biggest superpower and arm yourself well enough to deter your putative cousins?
I think your assumption that Taiwan’s integration with China is inevitable is deeply flawed. History isn’t destiny. Especially when a nation has both the will and the means to resist.
You are simply an apologist for rule by empire and are attached to it being the one that
1.outed itself as a Christian Nation in breach of its own constitution.
2.is trying to disrupt world trade to advantage itself.
3.is also determined to advantage itself by requiring other nations to spend more on defence or be punished with (tariff) sanctions.
Going along with this is not a sound strategy.
What is would be to work with others to establish a rules based trading order sans USA.
And otherwise a framework to manage unilateral USA (being less dependent on its military and tech).
Bold decision-making not pandering to the worst administration in US history.
You’re confusing realism with apology. The only rule I'll accept is one in which New Zealand is sovereign, at peace, and prosperous.
I’m unconcerned with quibbling over the establishment clause of the U.S. Constitution, although I personally find the idea of a nation being "Christian" (other than the Vatican City) faintly nauseating.
Nor do I see the United States’ attempt to reshape the global economy as unique. Empires have sought to tilt the system in their favour since time immemorial. Such is the prerogative of great powers.
Recognising power dynamics isn’t endorsing them. The alternative to engaging the United States isn’t independence. It’s sakoku: self-imposed isolation. And we are not 17th century Japan.
Our task is to use collective leverage to shape the order we actually have, not retreat into fantasies about one we wish existed.
Even North Korea negotiates with Washington. Because disengagement is not a strategy.
So by all means, keep raging at your own straw man.
Tell that to the people of Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam or the Philippines. The supposition that non-western countries are immune from imperial or hegemonic ambitions is the fantasy here.
The real issue is of course a certain manufacturer of chips being in Taiwan – the American effort to restrict supply of the advanced chips to China.
If the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company were destroyed during a war over Taiwan it would almost certainly be disastrous for the world economy.
Moving from a cease-fire to a peace does not require political union.
In 1991 North Korea accepted South Korea and it both becoming nation state members of the UN. And
Talks.
The world would want NK to give up its nuclear weapons.
China and NK would want American forces out of SK.
The latter might require China to provide SK with a security guarantee.
SK has demographic issues and has the choice of investment in robots and or use of workers in or from the north.
An interim two state peace (removal of the military impasse) is the one leading to normalisation. NK no longer being a miliatarist state would change the nature of its one party regime.
An appealing theory, but it assumes rational actors where there are entrenched survival mechanisms. North Korea’s militarism (and it's nuclear programme) isn’t a bargaining chip. It’s the foundation of regime legitimacy.
Any peace that removed the external threat would unravel the internal myth on which Kim’s power rests.
Beijing’s calculus is no less self-interested. A divided Korea provides strategic depth and keeps American power one peninsula removed. A unified or genuinely peaceful Korea, especially a democratic one, would be an uncontrollable variable right on China’s border.
“Interim peace” sounds pragmatic, but it’s really just Chinese domination with better branding.
Foreign policy is a little more complicated than choosing between being an American or a Chinese puppet state.
For all its faults: moral cowardice, bureaucratic inertia, general incompetence, and occasional bouts of old-fashioned racism, the current government’s approach to international relations is actually fairly reasonable.
It hasn’t meaningfully deviated from the last government’s position, and it reflects the reality of our geopolitical constraints rather than any sudden ideological surrender.
There’s also a glaring contradiction in the argument being made here: on one hand, we’re told New Zealand has, and should maintain, an “independent foreign policy,” and on the other, that we’re merely an American puppet.
Both can’t be true. Either we have agency, and have chosen our alliances deliberately, or we don’t. Now, there’s a valid debate to be had about whether we’ve chosen the right alliances, but that’s not the same as pissing and moaning that we’re somehow in the pocket of a clique of warmongers.
This idea that every Western democracy has no agency simply because it aligns with the U.S. is not analysis; it’s fatalism dressed up as insight.
In a world defined by competition between two great powers, genuine neutrality is a comforting illusion. Given our economic interdependence, security ties, and values, we don’t really get to sit this one out.
Better, then, to align with the side that still (however imperfectly) shares our democratic principles and commitment to rule of law, rather than the one that openly rejects them.
And I suspect a few of the loudest critics, on both the New Zealand and American sides, would suddenly rediscover the virtue of “partnership” and “engagement” if it were Kamala Harris rather than Donald Trump in the White House.
We’re a small nation, reliant on trade, smart foreign policy, and strong alliances to maintain our place in the world. We can't just ignore reality because it doesn't align with our preconceived views.
We should want to be running the government, not a smug, ranty Marxist bookclub.
“Better, then, to align with the side that still (however imperfectly) shares our democratic principles and commitment to rule of law, rather than the one that openly rejects them.”
RP, despite your (however imperfectly) are you sure the US is democratic state? Next years mid terms might give us a better. Until then, some fence sitting might be in order.
In international affairs, discretion is the better part of valour.
shrug Fair point. Democracy is fast becoming a relative term.
That said, if I had to choose between even a nutjob, MAGA America and China, I’d still pick America. Because I still believe that, over time, the system will prove itself stronger than any one man or movement.
We forget the U.S. has survived the presidency of a racist, norm-breaking septuagenarian before: Andrew Jackson.
It was not an easy period; it left America with constitutional and political scars that still haven’t fully healed. But the republic endured, and the institutions, however battered, outlasted the man.
I say this as someone with a deep and abiding respect for the Chinese people and their extraordinary history; I’ve even learned Mandarin.
I see no issue with China’s rise as an economic and military powerhouse. But the fact remains: it is a brutal police state increasingly willing to use force to impose its will across the Asia–Pacific.
And that poses a direct risk to New Zealand’s strategic interests.
Evidence?
This isn’t just speculative.
As reported by their own state-run sources, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, met with China’s foreign envoys on 29 December 2023 at the Great Hall of the People and urged them to “carry on the fighting spirit … overcome all difficulties and obstacles to achieve new and greater victories.”
Separate coverage notes that Xi explicitly encouraged his diplomats to continue being “wolf warriors,” reinforcing a deliberate shift in China’s foreign posture: from cautious diplomacy to assertive confrontation.
That posture is visible across the region. Chinese vessels and aircraft have repeatedly conducted dangerous intercepts and close-quarter manoeuvres around Philippine, Japanese, Australian and even Canadian forces, often well outside China’s territorial waters or airspace.
The intent is unmistakable: to normalise coercion as the language of statecraft.
Well I for one was incredibly grateful to Helen Clark for keeping us out of Iraq
That to me was the realist approach .
It was clear to many that war on Iraq was going to bring nothing but trouble
And she was right.
Not out of reflexive anti-Americanism. But based on cold, hard, realistic evaluation of geopolitics.
Me too.
The “coming war with China” has been a refrain for several decades. Its drivers vary – Taiwan, trade, the western frontier, externalisation of internal crises, and so on. There is a realist tradition in US foreign relations that has spent much time asking the question “when?”. “over what?” and “what does the US need to do to win?”. Equally, there have been counter positions that fiercely deny both the need for, and inevitabliity of, such a conflagration.
There can be no doubt that the immense instability created by the Trump regime is fuelling increased fears of aggression. An interesting question is what is Chinese thinking? First, they will go to war if forced to. Of that there is no doubt. Whether Taiwan will be such a trigger is more likely under President Xi than some previous Chinese presidents as he externalises China’s focus. There is in China a deep-rooted, developed sense of China’s role in history, into which Xi is playing. Chinese friends have often suggested that the West doesn’t understand this, nor the impact of the profound shock and anger experienced in China over its temporary eclipse after the 1820s.
Second, despite Xi’s externalisation of Chinese focus, there remains in China a strong current of support for the pre-Xi model of domestic development along a westward-thrusting frontier, designed to bring the benefits of modernisation to ever-larger sections of the Chinese population. China may look monolithic from the outside, but it has myriad forms of domestic political and technical discussion. Xi’s hold on power is indeed great, but he is not omnipotent.
Third, it makes no sense that we should be in any way hitched to the current US position. The current regime in the US is fickle, chaotic, petty, dangerous, untrustworthy. Countries such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, traditionally tied to US defence arrangements, cannot safely attach themselves to the Trump agenda, if indeed they can work out what it is. Such countries find themselves more in tune with Europe and parts of Africa and Latin America as regions adapt to the erosion of the global rule-based system.
You make an excellent point about Xi’s externalisation of China’s focus, and about how deeply China’s historical consciousness shapes its modern strategy.
That sense of destiny and grievance does run deep.
But I don’t think they’ll go to war when they’re forced to. No halfway sane polity does that.
And while the CPC may be institutionally paranoid, they’re far from idiots.
They’ll go to war when they believe they can win, and only after they’ve shaped the economic, political, and strategic conditions to ensure that outcome.
We have to ask ourselves: why else would China be investing so heavily in its naval forces, including aircraft carriers, as well as missiles and drones? Carriers aren’t a defensive weapon; you build them when you intend to project power.
Given the immense prestige tied up in China’s military ambitions, any failure would be fatal to the regime. The Mandate of Heaven never sits easy, and mianzi (面子 — “face”) remains a fundamental political and social force in Chinese culture.
As Sun Zi put it:
That, I think, is the essence of Chinese strategy: patience, preparation, and the ruthless avoidance of uncertainty.
Do not mistake their lack of naked aggression now for a lack of willingness to employ it in the future.
Why did China build a wall and give up its naval development centuries ago to remain insular, if it sees itself as an expansionist power?
As with the Russian Federation, it's useful to think about how this very large country came to be the size it is. There's a reason the emperor of China had the title 'emperor.'
It's useful to pretend that Aigun Treaty and Peking Convention never happened, too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Aigun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_of_Peking
Manchuria began its associations with China by being a ruling dynasty over China.
Its rulers being an imperial dynasty.
Chinese people lived over a large area. They had local/regional rule.
It took a long time for there to be a central rule over all of it.
It also took a long time for the 13 colonies to rule to the current Mexican border and the Pacific Ocean.
British people lived over a large area and had local/regional rule over it too. Let's not go pretending that empires aren't empires if their territory is contiguous.
You are the one pretending that China is an empire, that is expansionist (it expanded to include part of Manchuria only after being ruled over by the Manchu dynasty).
Do the people of China, a member state of the UN, see themselves as an empire?
The title of king, or emperor, is the one the dynastic ruler chooses.
If there is one.
In Britain the Wessex kingship coming to rule over all of England with the title of king of England. The title was a choice. There were other kings in England before that time.
It could have been Emperor.
England still has a prince of the conquered Wales.
A Reform government might send Scotland independent and NI into Ireland. And will not Wales be jealous?
https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2025/10/24/__trashed-37/
"Pretending" lol. I had thought that the people seemingly unaware the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China became the size they are the same way the USA did, the same way the British came to rule half the planet, just hadn't really thought about it, but apparently some at least have thought about it and decided it's different if it isn't 'the West' doing it.
You are the one choosing to call nations which historically incorporated areas on their land borders by conquest/migration empires.
Russians (a group native to Eurasia) and European settlers in the Americas did this the most obviously (USA, Canada, Brazil).
One could say the same of Australia (no unity till the settlement era) New Zealand (multiple iwi as well) and also South Africa.
By your definition, Gaul with multiple Celtic areas, before becoming France after its Roman period is one too.
And also England itself is also one (multiple Celtic regions before the union of the various Anglo-Saxon kingships), let alone the UK.
And also India.
All so you can call the nation state of China an expansionist empire.
If you conquer, subjugate and colonise a foreign territory populated by a different ethnic group, you're involved in expansionist empire-building regardless of whether or not you had to build ships to do it. The fact that China's only done it recently to Tibet doesn't necessarily mean it's given up on the practice for good. As we've seen with Russia and as we may be about to see with America, all it takes is a dictator with a "Make X Great Again" obsession to kick things off.
Empires eh – imho, it's useful to think about the roles of human behaviours in NZ history. I thank those behaviours for my opportunities and comforts, but one treaty is enough.
China, you may be full, but please don't copy the United Kingdom just yet.
A HISTORY OF THE AUSTRALASIAN COLONIES
(FROM THEIR FOUNDATION TO THE YEAR 1893)
https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/catalogue_resources/m0033477.pdf
On Great Britain incl the USA (at the point of History to a lesser degree..) it is quite interesting Pres Trumps
sabreaircraft carrier rattling, and the much earlier British/French…US narco pushing to China…Resultant…how China felt/feels ?
Then the fleet between the mainland and Taiwan in 1949, having the government in exile in the UN and MacArthur going to the Yalu River and asking Truman to nuke China.
SPC have you seen this article? I hadnt heard of Marco De Jong…but of of course Helen Clark. A year ago…but has become very relevant. And IMO It just makes sense.(and as always, Newsrooms comment section..)
And why is China building aircraft carriers now? Certainly not to inconvenience the Huns.
Also, the retrenchment after Yongle wasn’t an ideological policy of isolationism. It was driven by factional politics, regency instability, and the diversion of resources to northern defence. When Yongle died, his adolescent grandson ultimately inherited the throne, and the Confucian scholar-officials managing the regency saw the vast maritime apparatus as a costly vanity project of the late emperor and his eunuch allies. Nicola Willis would have loved these guys.
So, they quietly dismantled it. Not out of philosophy, but political expediency. The fleets were defunded, the shipyards fell idle.
They probably cancelled a bunch of contracts with some Korean shipyards too. No record on whether they did it by TXT message, though.
The point is that China didn’t turn inward out of some timeless cultural instinct. It did so because the internal balance of power shifted toward administrators who prioritised austerity and risk-aversion over ambition. When the state felt secure, united and wealthy, it projected power; when it was divided and anxious, it retreated behind walls.
And that’s the same dynamic we’re seeing again today. Only this time, with aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines instead of treasure ships.
"The current regime in the US is fickle, chaotic, petty, dangerous, untrustworthy."
I guess you are not planning a holiday in the USA in the near future?
The ridiculous decaying island nation of new zillund becomes even more irrelevant and backwards by electing fucktards like Collins and Peters and sending them to "represent" us to their preferred regional hegemon
The yanks are currently pretty happy fucking themselves over and blowing up neighbouring countries in South America. But following the Putin & Netanyahu model, Trump could use a bigger foreign war to end democracy at home and make the Epstein files go away.
What a stupid country we are, and hitching ourselves to a donkey that's about to jump off a cliff
@ roblogic, I have thought same. And on that…
No another pretext would be required in the USA.
War is used to block democracy in another country – Putin accuses Kiev of not holding elections while land is occupied. Netanyahu uses the lack of PA elections not to hold peace talks and instead separate PaleStan Area A into multiple parts (no longer contiguous north and south of Jerusalem).
Trump is trying to do a Baghdad and Tripoli on Caracus.
Secular left wing states with oil (Norway and Canada and Greenland being save inside NATO).
It’s a petrodollar thing, here pedrodollar.
I don't really know the current propaganda framing in the US at the moment, Trump has long seen China as a boogeyman, and his movement is full of xenophobic warmongers dreaming of Armageddon.
Oil and money and power, sure. There's some other weird cultural stuff happening too.
He forget to read about rare earth minerals (and high tech dependence on them), so the meeting with Jinping in Seoul on Oct 30 should be a hoot.
"Christian" weirdos, who want to hasten the "Day of Judgement", cynical arms manufacturers who want more profits, "gun toting" fragile masculinity whose sense of self depends on "blowing away some gooks", "Give me freedom or give me death" cultists, common garden, "if you don't want a fight you are a coward", loons, "my country, right or wrong", "if you are not with us, you are against us" etc.
I used to think, until the last few years, that New Zealanders were largely immune from that sort of bonkers. Unfortunately I was wrong. We see it with the, slightly more subtle, dog whistles to jingoism on here.
There is also a Catholic aspect to an imperial western Christendom security right against anything secular left.
Most Christian movements there, since the GOP southern strategy decision in the 1970’have been Catholic and Protestant alliances. The Moral Majority was founded by Paul Weyrich (he also founded Heritage Foundation) to ally with Jerry Falwell of the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Virginia (Southern Baptists). Then came Christian Coalition an outreach to evangelicals (George Weigal turf), then Promise Keepers (patriarchy alliance with pentecostals).
Then came Leonard Leo's Federalist Society – behind the appointment of politicised Justices to SCOTUS by the GOP.
More recently Napa Institute, preparing people to be part of Christian nation leadership.
It is all coherent if one looks at wider security developments in the USA since the 1975 Church Committee and the end of HUAC.
https://religionnews.com/2025/10/20/conservative-young-priests-are-the-future-of-the-american-church/
PS When Joe Biden was young the KKK supported Democratic Party Senators in the South. He went to their funerals. He saw the KKK leaders there talking to the next Senator, a Republican candidate. He became an expert at working the aisle. And became Obama’s VP and defeated Trump the first time around.
OK. I can accept your lazy, vapid takes on China, international relations, and New Zealand’s strategic choices vis-à-vis alliance partners. You’re entitled to your opinions — even if they’re stupid and wrong.
But if you want to accuse Catholics of being part of some grand imperial design for the West, I’m going to have to ask you, respectfully and politely, to stop.
That’s nothing more than an unimaginative reheating of the old anti-Catholic tropes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Or the last vestiges of the anti-Irish racism that drove my forebears to these shores.
I don’t take orders from the Pope. I disagree with plenty of conservative Catholics. And I’m no less a progressive for choosing to stay within the Church. Don’t you dare try to sully what I, and millions of others, sincerely believe, just to make a point built on the prejudices of a tiny, reactionary fringe.
You’ll find that the Church itself has little truck with imperialism, war, or human rights abuses. Even the Pope stands in open tension with the American Catholic right, precisely because he refuses to confuse faith with nationalism or the Gospel with ideology.
So don’t lecture me about imperial Christendom. My faith isn’t a weapon, it's a support structure that challenges me every day to be responsible for my moral conscience.
And I will not let you, or anyone, drag it through the mud for the sake of a half-baked, historically illiterate political theory.
Unfortunately MAGA is already dragging the tattered reputation of the Christian faith through the mud.
I say that as an adherent myself.
Then the job falls to us to reclaim it. Not with words, but with compassion, justice, and service.
Michael Joseph Savage understood that. He was a man of faith who never saw a contradiction between belief and equality.
He didn’t call his programme socialism. He called it applied Christianity.
You do the sneer very well.
It is as if you need to do it, to infer the right to dismiss another's opinion.
I was explaining, that the day of judgement part of American Christianity, is only one part of the GOP's race and religion identity politics.
It is simply an observable fact that the Christian nation ambition is a construct of the Heritage Foundation, as per Project 2025 – which involves an alliance of right wing politicised Catholics and Protestants.
There is plenty of evidence of this.
The idea that mentioning this out loud, is inappropriate, is precious.
It has become part of the politics of a super power.
Your calling my response to a post KJT post, my lecturing you, is another of your grand misrepresentations. Try to be honest at least.
You do the condescending tone better than most.
Shaky Dictatorships and Oligarchies, love a war.
A bit of Keynesian stimulus to jobs and profits. And a distraction from totalitarian or Oligarchic control and repression at home.
Can always relay on support from "patriotic" "Jingo's" to demonise those who oppose the latest "War de jour"!
China is not shaky. They don't need a war. The USA does. Their economy would collapse without having a war somewhere.
The new Japanaese PM, an Abe san, is increasing Japanese defence spending this year, two years ahead of plans.
They can produce most of their own kit – yet Trump is demanding capital be given to him to invest in the USA and also purchase of American military tech
https://www.1news.co.nz/2025/10/25/japans-new-leader-vows-to-boost-defence-spending-amid-regional-tensions/
I'm assuming you mean an Abe stan, right?
To be fair, I think Takaichi Sanae may be even further right-wing than Abe. And is perfectly capable of making up her own mind.
I really dislike this reflex to reduce every non-American actor to a puppet. The world isn’t just Washington and its satellites; other governments have their own interests and internal politics.
In Japan’s case, it’s less about U.S. pressure and more about domestic political culture. The Liberal Democratic Party has long been shaped by ultra-nationalist societies and by an ingrained wariness of outsiders that runs deep in parts of the bureaucracy and defence establishment.
Those forces shape Tokyo’s decisions far more than anything Trump or Washington might demand.
San (san) is an honorific. Part of the Abe family in the LD.
An invention on your part, if in reference to my post.
I simply referred to the agenda of Trump to demand Japan give the USA money for him to invest and spend money on American weapons or risk higher tariffs on their exports. The USA is treating nations that trade with the USA as dependencies that need to take imperial direction.
Just for context: I’m fluent in Japanese, so you can spare me the butchering.
Takaichi might have been aligned with Abe once, but a) he’s dead, and b) her faction in the LDP only partly overlaps with his.
She also seems far more ideologically aligned with Nippon Kaigi than any of her predecessors. Not just in membership, but in conviction. That’s what makes her different from Abe.
His nationalism was performative and strategic, always tempered by the economic establishment. Hers feels theological.
For Takaichi, constitutional revision isn’t just about defence policy; it’s about moral restoration: the belief that post-war Japan has been spiritually adrift under a foreign-imposed order.
That worldview makes her far less predictable than the LDP’s usual brand of conservative pragmatism. But also means she's actually less likely to seek some kind of understanding with Trump, not more.
Your assumption about Abe san was wrong. You knew better, so why do it?
Thanks for agreeing, in your own way, that the USA is pressuring Japan.
Will Japan hand over money to the USA as Trump expects?
It probably will buy some anti-missile tech.
We might know in a week or so.
*shrug* it's up to them. But buying American tech doesn't mean they're an American puppet state.
No. Because Japan wants to have an anti-missile defence (given NK and Chinese missiles).
The trade tariffs imposed by Trump are a major factor.
Just a technical question, how would this war be fought, it seems logistically impossible unless it's just a full on nuclear job, neither side could possibly run a supply line that would work across the pacific ocean.
Distance and A2/AD definitely makes logistics harder, but far from impossible. The United States has decades of experience sustaining global, contested supply lines; it would adapt through distributed basing, stealth transport, and long-range strike. Hard, yes. Impossible, no.
China, meanwhile, would face its own constraints. Its logistics network is built for operations close to home, not for sustaining campaigns across oceans. But that suits Beijing’s aims: coercing or absorbing Taiwan, defanging Japan and South Korea, and consolidating control over the near seas and island chains. It doesn’t need to invade Hawaii; it only needs to dominate its neighbourhood.
In short, both sides could fight. But their fights would look very different.
The United States would project power into a contested theatre; China would fight to keep that theatre inside its defensive perimeter, launching limited carrier sorties into the broader Pacific when opportunity allowed.
Perhaps hoping to bag a U.S. flattop or two for prestige.
“Prestige“? “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” Xi's just jelly of Trump's big ballroom.
The South China Sea Islands move is part of developing the capacity to place a naval blockade on Taiwan.
China has developed the fast missile weaponry to sink any American fleet in the area, doing so would be the equivalent of the Pearl Harbour attack.
China is developing a fleet to protect its own trade from China to the Red Sea/Africa and leave the American fleet in a New World-Europe Atlantic role (a dual global market strategy) – see BlackRock in Panama. There would also be a from Hawaii and onto Japan (South Korea), ASEAN and Australasia (rare earth minerals etc) regional sphere.
The USA is developing an economic relationship with the wealthy Gulf states (petrodollar wealth funds) to maintain a capitalist connection.
China is the world’s biggest importer of food and oil (hence the belt and road project) and its long supply lines are an obvious point that the US would cut. That probably wouldn’t affect the Chinese military much in the short term.
On paper the US military enjoys an advantage in tech and equipment numbers and self sufficiency. But America’s weakness is its internal divisions, widespread poverty, deindustrialisation and dependence on silicon chips from Taiwan
Neither side would win a hot war.
China is patient and playing a long game. Staying calm while the US continues to self destruct. No need to rattle sabres or aircraft carriers
We are dangerously close to this. A China/USA hot war is the last thing this world needs. Highly recommended reading.
Nuclear War: A scenario
https://www.whitcoulls.co.nz/nuclear-war-a-scenario-6881871
Some kinda multi channel attack on infrastructure and comms seems more likely than a head on collision
When even the Rand corporation says taihoa
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA4107-1.html
It is a pity that the Jingo's, some of whose motivations I mentioned above, for example, “fighting against the Godless Communists”, are determined to make war inevitable.