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8:33 am, July 21st, 2026 - 17 comments
Categories: australian politics, China, Chris Penk, defence, Diplomacy, Disarmament, International, military, nuclear war, nuclear-free, Pacific, Peace, Peace, sport -
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Gordon Campbell @ Werewolf
Well, the football World Cup is over and the good guys won, geo-politically speaking. Meaning: Spain was the first European country to officially join the case that South Africa brought before the International Court of Justice over Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza. Spain has also refused to let America use its military bases in Spain for its illegal war on Iran. Recently Spain significantly expanded the access of undocumented migrants (especially children) to residency in Spain etc. In response, a petulant Donald Trump has threatened a total trade boycott of Spain.
In stark contrast, the social experiment in libertarian extremism that Javier Milei has inflicted on Argentina has resulted in Milei repeatedly asking Donald Trump to bail out his government, both politically and economically. Trump has personally intervened in local elections to rally public support for Milei, and (incredibly) the Trump administration has thrown Argentina a $20 billion lifeline to keep its economy afloat.
Domestically, Milei has brought down inflation… but only by taking a chainsaw to the welfare safety net, and by halving state spending on education and science. Even as the social damage is becoming more apparent, Milei is becoming more authoritarian. In a show of support, billionaire crackpot Peter Thiel has temporarily relocated his family to Argentina, where his wealth will insulate the Thiels and their ilk from the social harms caused by Milei’s excesses.
Phew. Thanks to that goal scored in the 113th minute by Spain’s Ferran Torres, the world has been saved from the spectacle of Donald Trump and Javier Milei lording it over everyone else.
Footnote: Trump did do his best to foul the entire tournament. Lest we forget, the US denied entry to a Somali referee, repeatedly harassed the team from Iran, gloated over their defeat, and successfully pressured a compliant FIFA boss Gianni Infantino to re-instate a red-carded American player who – since his parents are naturalised immigrants from Nigeria – would never have been able to play for the US if Trump’s racist immigration policies had been in force at the time.
A fortnight ago, this column cited the dates and mission objectives of the three US nuclear ballistic missiles launched into the Pacific from US military bases over the past 12 months. One of those three ICBMs carried dummy multiple warheads that, as the Pentagon put it, are intended to “overwhelm “[enemy] defences” – a capability that risks undermining the principle of mutual nuclear deterrence. None of this moved New Zealand to voice the slightest bit of concern.
Yet when China fired a test missile a few weeks ago, it was as if the sky had fallen in. Foreign Minister Winston Peters whipped up a lather of concern about China launching a ballistic missile test into international waters in the Pacific, even though this was only the second time this has happened in 40 years. (To repeat: the US carries out several such tests, annually.)
When briefly queried about the double standard on TVNZ’s Q& A programme yesterday, Defence Minister Chris Penk made a feeble distinction that the US has an agreement with the Marshall Islands to carry out its tests. (So if China won a similar go-ahead from the Solomon Islands or from French Polynesia to host an ICBM test range nearby, then would that make it OK by us? Not likely.)
Unfortunately… if our alleged goal is to prevent the Pacific from becoming a theatre of nuclear escalation, that horse bolted many decades ago. For the past 80 years, US has been using the Pacific as its nuclear test range. Between 1946 and 1958 the US exploded 67 nuclear bombs on local atolls in the Marshall Islands. This has left a poisonous legacy, and has stoked lasting local resentment of the US military presence.
For Penk to claim that the Marshall Islands has an “agreement” with the US is misleading. It discounts the displacement of thousands of local Marshallese and ignores the ongoing effects of the nuclear contamination of (a) their ancestral homelands and (b) the fishing stocks on which their livelihoods depend: not to mention the significant erosion of the Kwajalein Atoll into which the US continues to fire its test missiles. By comparison, the impacts of China’s missile launches into the Pacific are trivial to non-existent.
Penk also justified his concern about the China missile test on the grounds that it is an “outsider” to the region. Maybe someone needs to give Penk a map. In reality, China has a vast, 18,000 kilometre long coastline on the Pacific Ocean. Just like the US, China is also a global and economic superpower. Even if China was not faced with massive US military bases situated nearby in the Pacific – and it is – China’s status as a global superpower means that it, too, has a legitimate military presence in the region. After all, the US has claimed for decades that its role as a global policeman has entitled it to a military presence in Asia, Africa, Europe etc.
For Penk to claim that – in effect – the Pacific is an American lake to which no other military power has any right of entry, is provocative and highly dangerous. It precludes us from the option of engaging positively with China on defence/security issues in future, in exactly the same way that we already do on trade. The schizoid way that we treat China as a vital friend on trade and economic issues, but a deadly foe on defence/security matters is deeply irrational.
According to Peters and Penk, New Zealand is still considering whether to join the “Ocean of Peace” mutual defence alliance that Fiji and Australia have recently signed. Indeed, caution would be advisable. For starters, how on earth can the “Ocean of Peace” concept pretend that it is about keeping the Pacific nuclear free and de-militarised, when one of its foundation members (Australia) seems hellbent on acquiring a fleet of nuclear capable, nuclear-submarines?
These are submarines that the Aussies themselves have said will significantly extend their “force projection” strike capabilities much further into the Pacific. In the process, Australia will not only be sailing their nuclear powered craft through Pacific waters, but will be taking up threatening positions adjacent to the maritime trade routes that traverse the South China Sea.
Does that stance of aggression sound like something that’s consistent with claims to be creating an “Ocean of Peace?” Hardly. Australia, in its customary role as a US proxy, is actively militarising the Pacific, and bringing the threat of nuclear war – either on purpose or by accident – into the heart of the region.
This development should be being resisted by New Zealand. If New Zealand were to join the “Ocean of Peace” alliance (or its big brother, AUKUS) our anti-nuclear legislation could not possibly survive in its current form. With AUKUS, we would become an interoperable/interchangeable cog within a nuclear armed/nuclear powered alliance.
Moreover, as part of the “Ocean of Peace” alliance wouldn’t we be required to allow our Aussie partners to dock their nuclear powered, nuclear capable submarines at our ports? What kind of defence partner would we be, if we refused them entry? To be clear, the second-hand Virginia class submarines that the Australians are acquiring from the US will be nuclear capable. Before we allow these subs to dock in New Zealand ports, do we plan on simply taking Canberra’s word that they are not nuclear armed? Those kind of assurances haven’t been good enough for us in the past.
So far, neither Peters nor Penk have spoken about the negative implications that the “Ocean of Peace” alliance or the troubled AUKUS pact would have for our anti-nuclear legislation. Ironically, Penk has previously called for a national “debate” on whether we should maintain our ban on nuclear powered vessels. Yet Penk pointedly refused to engage in this debate when asked some relevant questions on the matter by Jack Tame yesterday, on Q&A.
These are basic questions to be asked here. In future, would nuclear powered, nuclear capable Aussie submarines be allowed, under any conditions, to dock at New Zealand ports? Do we think that Australia sailing its nuclear submarines through the Pacific would mark an escalation in the militarisation of the region? As a global economic power, does China have as much right as the US to a military presence in the Pacific – and if not, why not?
Lets hope that someone asks such questions of the government, before the November election.
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Gordon makes his case well. The penkster could plead timing though: a public debate ought to be done in style, so you need staging. Someone must organise that. Who??
Jack was probably too Tame. "Hey, you slippery bugger, answer the goddam question!" The lure & the hook make great psychodrama, yet the inertial effect of no nukes persists.
The notion of right of way within the Pacific could also make readers imagine a slippery fish – or several, including a Han Chinese variant. Anyway, next time a Chinese vessel drifts past while firing random rockets the govt could try some sophisticated diplomacy.
"We can sell you guys plastic fence-posts. Just the thing for ethnic concentration camps! Inmates gather to gaze in awe. Has a transformative effect on mass consciousness!"
Another moronic weak post from the moist left.
There were 0 days between China firing a missile near Fiji and Australia and Fiji signing their new defence pact, as both events occurred on the exact same day: Monday, July 6, 2026.
If New Zealand had in 1951 signed a defence pact with China instead of Australia, and also in 1991 signed a deep defence operational pact with China of Australia instead in 1992, and then the United States fired a missile near Fiji ON THE SAME DAY as the defence pact was signed, then sure I would start to be concerned for my ally China.
We are instead an ally of Australia. And it is the only one we really have.
Gordon Campbell should stop this bullshit wet bleating and figure out who will defend us. It ain't China FFS.
Missile test and pact signing on the same day is just a coincidence.
Someone's pissed off Spain won the FIFA World Cup.
I think moronic is being overly generous
This. I can't work out why we pray to the alter of trade with China yet treat them so badly with respect to regional security.
Oh, I can work it out. It's our own MAGA, NZF, National Party duplicitous numpties speaking from both sides of their lying mouths.
Stoking fear about China in the Pacific is the most dangerous policy for regional security, but it appeases the current US admin who are determined to pursue global hegemony, security expansion, and the defence of US commercial interests at seemingly any cost.
What I cannot work out is how some tired former lefties sign up to this shit.
David Farrar, taking a momentary break from Māori bashing yesterday, posted an interesting poll about how people view China vs the US:
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2026/07/15/people-in-many-countries-now-view-china-more-positively-than-the-u-s/
When you consider US military action in the Middle East on behalf of expansionist Israel, and the expansionist desires of the US itself on Greenland and Venezuela, I know which superpower I trust to respect international law and order, and it is not the United States of America.
This is one of the shallowest analyses of the strategic situation in the Pacific I've read in a long time. And that is some stiff competition to be sure!
It reduces international relations to a game of spotting apparent hypocrisy, while ignoring the things that actually determine strategic behaviour.
Context matters. Alliances matter. Existing security architecture matters. Intentions matter. Patterns of behaviour matter. Regional perceptions matter.
None of those disappear simply because two countries both launched a missile.
It is entirely possible for New Zealand to seek stronger trading relationships with China while expressing concern about the destabilising effects of its growing military ambitions and its increasing ability to project power well beyond its historical operating area.
At the same time, New Zealand can seek closer security relationships with Australia and the United States because they remain the powers most likely to defend us, our trade routes, and the wider regional order on which we depend. We can do that while still disagreeing with them over nuclear policy, Donald Trump, AUKUS, or aspects of American foreign policy.
That is not hypocrisy. It is foreign policy.
Campbell also wants to have China both ways. At one moment it is a rising global superpower, fully entitled to exercise the military prerogatives of great-power status across the Pacific. At the next, it is a helpless victim of American containment, forced into every escalation by hostile powers surrounding it.
Those arguments are mutually incompatible.
If China is a great power entitled to project military force, then it is also an independent strategic actor responsible for the choices it makes and the consequences those choices create. Its neighbours are equally entitled to respond by strengthening their own defences and alliances.
You cannot invoke China's agency to justify its expansion, then deny that agency whenever anyone reacts to it.
And no matter how loudly certain elements of the tankie left shriek about imperialism, double standards, or the cause du jour, Australia is not acquiring nuclear-powered submarines for fun.
It is doing so because China has spent two decades building a blue-water navy, expanding its military reach, militarising disputed features in the South China Sea, and demonstrating an increasing willingness to project power beyond its coastline. Australia has been entirely explicit that the submarine programme is intended to deter coercion, protect its sea lines of communication, defend the trade routes on which its economy depends, and contribute to maintaining a favourable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific.
The same logic underpins New Zealand's own defence investments. The proposed replacement of the Royal New Zealand Navy's frigates and the acquisition of the P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft are not preparations for some imagined war of aggression. They are responses to the same deteriorating strategic environment: maintaining maritime domain awareness, protecting our exclusive economic zone and sea lines of communication, supporting regional partners, and ensuring that coercion carries an unacceptable cost.
That is not Kremlinology. Canberra and Wellington have both published defence policy documents explaining exactly why they are making these investments. You do not have to agree with those assessments, but pretending these capabilities appeared in a strategic vacuum, or exist simply because of American imperialism, is not serious analysis.
It is also worth making the distinction Gordon Campbell repeatedly glosses over: Australia is acquiring nuclear-powered submarines, not nuclear-armed submarines. Those are not interchangeable terms. Conflating them is either careless or deliberately misleading.
None of this means Australia or the United States is beyond criticism. Both have made serious mistakes, and both deserve scrutiny.
Good foreign-policy analysis asks us to understand the world as it is, however uncomfortable that may be.
This kind of argument asks us to suspend our disbelief. It borrows the language of strategic analysis, but not the discipline. It asks us to mistake moral certainty for geopolitical understanding.
But in the end, it is just apologetics cosplaying as foreign policy.
Certainly the term, neither conform nor deny, is one that only relates to nuclear weapons capable powers.
As for nuclear powered subs coming here, if Oz gets them (this might in the end be seen as cosplay to legitimise a sub base in the island off Perth for use by the USA and UK, with a nearby maintenance port), they would not need to use our ports (their purpose is long periods at sea).
The real issue is Chinese nuclear armed subs in the South Pacific and whether our planes and their subs (longer range) would have a role in detecting them.
Issue, China wants Taiwan by 2049.
Why are we worried about China invading NZ.
They already own us.
We’re not. Nobody serious is fantasising about Chinese tanks rolling down State Highway 1. Although I would pay good money to watch them try tackle Transmission Gully.
The credible concern is much less theatrical: a more belligerent or coercive China developing both the military capability and political willingness to force a confrontation over Taiwan, the South China Sea, or the wider Western Pacific.
Such a conflict would almost certainly place pressure on the United States, Japan, South Korea and Australia, disrupt the sea lanes on which New Zealand depends, and force us to make difficult choices about supporting our closest security partner.
The threat to New Zealand is not Chinese occupation. It is coercion, regional instability, disrupted trade, and the collapse of a security environment from which we benefit enormously.
China doesn't need to threaten New Zealand directly. We are simply too small to warrant that level of attention. But nor is it likely to spare New Zealand's trade and communications if they become collateral damage in a wider conflict involving Australia, the United States, Japan or Taiwan.
For an island nation at the end of the world's supply chains, preserving a stable Indo-Pacific isn't optional. It's fundamental to our security and prosperity, which is exactly why we need to take these risks seriously.
The current US-led regional order is far from perfect, and New Zealand has not always agreed with American policy. But on balance it has been relatively stable, has protected freedom of navigation, and has generally aligned with New Zealand's interests as a small trading democracy.
A regional order dominated by a more coercive China is much less obviously in our favour.
85, and counting, forced changes of Government worldwide has hardly been "stability and peace. Not to mention all the US real invasions and bombing of children, "to save the village".
Seems to me that a more unipolar world with USA in check, will likely be more "stable". Have to say, Trump's great contribution to world peace will be making that more likely.
The United States has committed invasions, sponsored coups, interfered in elections and caused enormous harm around the world. Nobody is required to pretend otherwise, and none of that should be beyond criticism.
But listing American crimes does not demonstrate that a regional order dominated by China,or a multipolar contest between several heavily armed great powers, would be more peaceful or more favourable to New Zealand.
More fundamentally, a “unipolar world with the USA in check” is a contradiction in terms. If rival powers can constrain the United States, then the world is becoming less unipolar and more multipolar.
Perhaps that would be better. Perhaps it would not. But it does not follow automatically from the fact that the United States has repeatedly abused its power.
The relevant question for New Zealand is not whether America is innocent. It plainly is not. The question is which plausible regional order is most likely to preserve our sovereignty, keep maritime trade open, constrain coercion and allow small democracies some meaningful freedom of action.
And if this is going to be reduced to a moral accounting exercise, then China cannot be treated as though it has no record of its own. Ask Uyghurs subjected to mass detention, coercive assimilation and pervasive surveillance, or the many Chinese citizens whose speech, religion and political activity are tightly controlled by the state.
Trump may be a feckless authoritarian-minded fool leading a corrupt and often cruel government. But the United States remains a pluralist democracy with competing institutions, an independent civil society, contested elections and at least some capacity to expose, challenge and reverse abuses of power.
China is a one-party authoritarian state in which the government suppresses organised opposition, controls the media, restricts political expression and deploys surveillance as an instrument of social control.
That does not make the United States good. It does mean that “America has done terrible things” is not, by itself, an argument for why Chinese predominance or renewed great-power rivalry would produce a safer or more humane world.
Multi polar. Not unipolar.
The Treaty of Rarotonga was an ocean of peace concept.
The Australian version is of the Cold War containment era.
The problem is the One Belt and Road (China as the one important world economic centre – all roads, rail and ports China facing) concept is first premised on their own Monroe Doctrine.
It is one in common with Russia (end NATO), Iran (end US bases in the ME and Israel) – their own, no US bases on the Asian mainland, or in South East and Eastern Asia, or in their sphere of influence (see ASEAN membership). Eurasia & Asia vs American security for Europe, ME and Oceania (SE Asia & Japan).^^
The Australians see it as akin to the threat posed in WW2 by Japan. This without an American ally and a security vulnerability.
Of course China wants to achieve its goals (lines on a map) without war by declaring its military capacity and then leveraging economic power (as the USA does).
Given we have Australia as our security partner, it is a bit of a problem.
There is
*preserving the Treaty of Rarotonga (despite the base on the island off Perth, just out of the zone?)
*affirming the UNCLOS decision based on recognised borders (the internationally agreed line on a map) as upholding the rights of our trade partners (ASEAN nations) to their economic resources.
(infer the nations should enter into dialogue)
*not being part of AUKUS
(proposing any wider co-operation arrangement be separate from a singular sub deal others have with Oz – the name itself is so lacking in scope)
*not rushing into the military alliance framework design of Australia
(reservation is itself a form of nuance, inferring a preference for diplomacy).
^^
China has yet to provide a security guarantee to South Korea – so this remains a UNSC issue.
https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/south-korea-needs-to-plan-for-a-taiwan-conflict/
We won't mention that the same people who blether on about the necessity of "defending our sea lanes" against China, are the same ones who are ensuring that most of the ships using those sea lanes, are Chinese ships carrying cargo between NZ and China.
Not to mention selling more and more of our infrastructure, farms and industry to Chinese interests.
Why are we worried about China invading NZ.
They already own us.
Not to mention the sheer lunacy in supporting the Orange turd in a standoff with China.
The security issues are
short term
a blockade on Taiwan (to coerce its assimilation or entrap the US fleet).
longer term
capacity to block shipping to and from Japan and South Korea from ASEAN, world and us (to coerce acceptance of their lines on a map and no US bases).