Blog 204: Part I: Dig beneath all the trade wars and the arguments to the effect that the USA should not permit China to achieve economic and technological superiority, or even parity, and you find the real reason behind the conflict. China is seen as challenging the West’s ideology of democratic neo-liberal capitalism. China, with […]
Blog No.203 It is a long time since NZ had such a popular and charismatic leader. Jacinda’s popularity is not only a national phenomenon. The respect she has generated overseas would give NZ a significant advantage were it to attempt any of the international diplomatic initiatives of which the global community is in such desperate […]
Blog No. 202 This blog with a preface from the Editor appeared in a recent Scoop newsletter. Scoop The Dig recently contained a most timely item by Robert Patman on the foreign policy challenge facing New Zealand’s new government. Patman advocates New Zealand adding its diplomatic voice to those nations wishing to revise the status […]
Blog 201: A previous blog proposed the establishment of a NZ Strategic Policy Institute (NZSPI.) NZ Think Tank This would be a think-tank modelled on Australia’s ASPI, but with a huge difference. The Australian think tank is funded by governments actively involved in confrontation with China and by major defence corporations that benefit from that […]
Blog 201: Part II In the light of global governments’ incompetence in creating and coping with the crises of nuclear war, pandemic and climate/environment, improved outcomes from governmental decision-making are urgently required. Perhaps nations should consider arranging constitutional conventions. It is notable that a country high on the ‘Goodness Index’ is Ireland Ireland It stands […]
Blog No: 201. New Zealand’s new, Labour government has no shortage of domestic policy questions requiring urgent attention. However, while dealing to these pressing matters it has also to be taking note of matters overseas. There are multiple problems besetting the international community. These, in their turn, will beset NZ. Such problems, originating in other […]
The war advocate most recognisable as the MIC’s public face is former head of the CIA and currently Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo. (My reading is that Trump, though Pompeo’s boss, is less committed to war-mongering confrontation but, like his probable successor, has little choice but to sing to the MIC’s song-sheet.) This article gives […]
There is now open, but not yet kinetic, confrontation. In the red corner we have the Eurasian alliance of China and Russia. In the blue, we have the Western alliance of NATO, the other Five Eyes countries (including NZ) and sundry subordinated states. With the MIC having invested so heavily in the US election, there […]
Blog No. 200: Part III : The growing Peril. Recently, a former NZ Minister of Defence wrote in the NZ International Review, a journal with a defence establishment, diplomatic and academic readership interested in foreign affairs, “Nuclear war and the fears it gave rise to are now much less likely.” It is alarming that someone […]
The MIC (aka ‘Deep State.’) This is the Military-Industrial complex that, so long ago, Eisenhower warned was in danger of usurping the US government. In the interim, it has done so and has used its vast cash-flow to suborn the Congress. According to Christian Sorensen, in his just published ‘Understanding the War Industry’ War Industry […]
