by frog
I’ve always thought defence policy should be viewed a little like health policy. With health policy it’s good to have all the hospitals and surgical specialists and so on there if you should need them, but really we should also be spending a lot more time and effort on helping people to stay healthy as well as making them better when they get sick.
Likewise, with a defence policy its useful to be able to defend ourselves on the off change that some calcium-addicted warmonger decides to annex our cows. But we should also include in our defence policy an analysis of what we do as good global citizens to reduce the threat of war in the world generally, and against us specifically. That would include things like what we do as a good global citizen to promote peace and democracy, what we do to reduce global inequality, the independent principled stance we take on foreign policy issues, the respect we show for other cultures and world views and importantly our commitment to peace and disarmament.
From what I can tell from the figures New Zealand has increased its defence spending (adjusted for inflation) from $1.3 billion ten years ago to $1.6 billion in 2007. It’s a shame we are still so woefully short on our 2002 commitment to give 0.7% of Gross National Income to international aid. Currently New Zealand pays 0.27% of its income as aid and only has a goal to increase that to 0.35% by 2010 – that’s half of the commitment we made in 2002.
Published in Justice & Democracy | Society & Culture by frog on Thu, September 4th, 2008
Tags: defence, Frog, frogblog, green party, International Aid, new zealand, security
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
..and 0.27 more than we should be paying in international aid.
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Is the 0.27% purely compulsory aid (government funded), or does it include voluntary aid through donations? That’s the thing of course – there is nothing stopping Green Party members and supporters boosting aid from NZ to poorer countries – but for some reason there is default that the state should force people to do it, not convince people to do so.
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Not even if NZ was giving to the Carter Foundation big bro?
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liberty, that figure is purely governmental – goes to both NGOs and governmental sources.
Chances are that Green members/supporters do give privately too. I agree that a culture change re: giving is huge, as you infer.
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Hmm, libertyscott, would you support the state spending money to convince people to give privately?
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Currently for 2007/08, the New Zealand government’s total reported ODA will be $466 million – or 0.30 percent of GNI. As you point out Stephen, this does not include individual donations which in fact NZ does well in per capita. We have a long way to go with regards to getting it to 0.7%. I think when the Labour came into govt in 1999 the aid levels were 0.23%.
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Stephen, no – if you want to convince people to give privately then YOU spend money convincing them or taking time to do so. The transition should be the state phasing out aid, which parallels lower taxes and encouraging people to take responsibility for what they want to pay for. This will compete with other things people want to pay for.
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I understand that, as Greens, we find it hard to believe that there are nasty people out there. We like to think that “If I’m nice to everyone, then everyone will be nice to me”. Living at the end of the world, with very few direct threats, we can afford such naivety. But the world isn’t always nice, and no matter how good you are, some evil prick with a bunch of heavily armed followers is always roaming around. It would be nice to be ready to meet them when this happens to us. Don’t believe me? Ask your Maori friends just how secure NZ is from foreign attack, stuck in the middle of the Pacific.
After all, it’s not like Peak Oil and Climate Change are going to make the world a more peaceful and secure place. When nations can’t feed their populations anymore (and this is coming), they’re not going to give a rat’s arse who gave them 0.7% of their GDP in aid.
So yeah, we should be good citizens, and help those worse off than ourselves. But as a political party striving to be accepted by many New Zealanders, we need to realise that protection of our people from violence is the first priority of any NZ govt. And that means having a decent military capability.
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Didn’t think so – must’ve misread the last sentence of your first post.
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It is my understanding that libertarian see defence as
on of the few “services” that a gouverment should provide.
This post talks about using more government money as aid
in the intend of preventing/minimizing international conflict.
If it works, This money is spent for the same purpose as defence,
security.
The interesting question is :
Is/How internationnal aid can help to prevent international conflict ?
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Right, that was in response to libertyscott.
Tane, I don’t think it’s so much that ‘people won’t attack us cos we gave them aid’, it’s ‘maybe if their country is stable and prosperous, they won’t feel the need to attack anybody’?
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I’d also like add the token ‘trade not aid’ call too.
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If an entity want to steal from / harm you
- you can defend yourself against the act :
you need to spent way much more money than your antagonist to defend yourself from him. And if he is very dedicated there’s not a lot you can do, if you are not fully focused on him (more spending)
- you can try to act on the reason why this entity wants to steal from / harm you
Maybe we should try this one a little bit more
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StephenR and Presse-puree,
What you say is absolutely right, in theory. But in a resource-constrained post-peak, climate changing world, there won’t be enough to go around. We won’t be able to help the whole world, therefore removing all incentive for them to attack us. NZ will be a lifeboat on the Titanic that is industrial civilisation, and by definition, we can’t carry all of the other passengers and crew.
In addition, there are always greedy, selfish bastards who want more. The Stalins, Hitlers, Julius Caesars. War is a perfectly valid tool to them, and they’ll use it. If that means crushing nice, little New Zealand, they’ll do it in a heartbeat and not even notice the cost. As long as they get what they want. And to many men in impoverished societies (including parts of NZ society), war and conflict are a source of mana, status and wealth. Dangerous yes but often less so than being a peasant farmer, and a lot more rewarding too.
We can’t ‘nice’ our way to security. Yeah, we should offer carrots. But a dirty big stick is essential also.
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We’d be at the end of a very very long supply chain, thankfully. Plus we have stuff all oil to make the supply chain worth it…
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I find it amusing that in the ten years that defence spending has gone up by that sliver, we have lost our air force; our navy has shrunk to almost nothing (and we need a navy to stop things like illegal fishing fleets), and our army has barely kept up.
Let us face it, New Zealand is screwed.
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Presumably, in an oil-constrained world, there won’t be a lot of air battles. warplanes use a lot of oil, and it’s only going to be worth using that much oil if you’re fighting over territory with a lot of oil. Seems to me it makes sense for NZ defence spending to ignore warplanes, as we’ve been doing, and concentrate on army and navy stuff.
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John-ston those figures were inflation adjusted so it’s a bit more than a sliver.
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“John-ston those figures were inflation adjusted so it’s a bit more than a sliver.”
I know that, and my point still stands, it has gone up by next to nothing in reality and in that time, we have lost virtually all our armed forces. Like those Australian ads pointed out, 0% defence force, 100% for the taking.
We really need to get a decent defence force back, so at the very least, we don’t lose our reputation internationally. Since we got rid of the Air Force, we have been a laughing stock.
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Tane, those are great posts. It is good to see a leftie who isn’t fooled by the “let’s be nice and have a group hug” approach. You do need a “dirty big stick” sometimes, unfortunately. And in practice that stick must include a good working relationship at least with Australia, the USA, and the UK, because like it or not we can only afford a little stick ourselves. And if we are to expect them to defend us, we must be equipped to do our bit defending them should the need arise, we can’t do all we can to annoy Uncle Sam then expect him to jump to our aid when we get into difficulty.
If you want some good ideas on how NZ could really defend ourselves, check out The Strategist blog:
http://kotare.typepad.com/thestrategist/
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Absolutely john-ston. What are they spending all that money on? This may well just reflect wage increases for the top brass and the higher price of fuel (higher operating costs), with no actual increase in capacity.
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Well said Tane.
To sit there and say “oh well, its alright no one will want to invade us” is short sighted and naieve in the extreme, given how much the world will change in the next 20 or 30 years.
Multilateral defence agreements, modernising military equipment and increasing the pool of reservists would be a good start.
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I haven’t heard the Greens say we should completely disarm and I do think the priorities are around the wrong way, much like the roading vs public transport funding debate where the amount of funding available and where it comes from grossly favours roading projects over PT at a time when a strategic view requires us to flip things the other way.
Likewise, for me the question is not whether we have a defence force or not, but what else we do that so greatly impacts the amount of strife in the world. By “we”, I don’t just mean NZ and we should resist buying into the US/Oz model as it is not about defence anymore, if it ever was. The US has nearly 800 military bases in foreign countries. These are not to defend the realm, but to ensure control of strategic assets.
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Kahikatea and StephenR are right, we will be at the end of a long supply chain, and combat aircraft will be scarce. So fortunately for us, we don’t need a hyper-modern military, with stealth bombers, cruise missiles and helicopter gunships.
I think we could defend ourselves against all likely threats with a large Territorial Force of light infantry, supported by a small Regular Army for training, development and peacekeeping/peacemaking/low scale warfighting (and warfighting is likely to become more probable over time).
The Navy is unable to fend off modern taskforces, but should still be able to participate in combined operations with other navies (especially Australia’s) if this is in the national interest. Capable patrol vessels are a necessity. Some decent armament on them will likely be necessary.
Not having combat aircraft isn’t such a worry to me, as I think that a generation from now, a squadron of Cessnas with rockets and machine guns could be a major force. Transport, fisheries protection and maritime patrol are the main tasks for the Air Force in my view.
I have a feeling we’re going to end up with something like this anyway. Unless we’re completely wrong about Peak Oil of course…….
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Wow, I agree with Tane about something. Well said.
Yes, we need to be part of ANZUS. Mind you, I do wonder who could possibly defend NZ from, say, China, if it ever came to that.
I strongly suspect we’d just have to roll over.
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China being able to project power that far away is a loooong way off, but never the less, the US seems very willing to put it on the line to defend Taiwan, so for those purposes, what would enable us to get in a similar position to Taiwan?
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BluePeter,
That depends on whether there is a ‘China’ rather than say ‘Mass of Warring States’. They’ve done this before in their history, and under the massive pressures of Peak Oil, Cliimate Change and their own overpopulation, I think that China is going to fly to bits (and sadly, it’s going to be bloody awful when they do).
Some of them might turn their attention our way. But a coherent China striding our way is unlikely I think. It could only happen if the Chinese can gain almost sole access to the oil in the Middle East, pushing the Yanks aside. And I don’t see that happening (the Yanks still control the oceans, and if push comes to shove, will likely nuke the oil fields rather than surrender access).
Mind you, if the Chinese do keep it together, and do come this way, then we are in trouble. I guess we’ll see how it pans out.
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Tane, it is possible that we have large quantities of oil off our south coast, unfortunately it is difficult to access due to heavy seas such as in the North Sea of the Atlantic. We also have excellent agricultural land, ideal for an overpopulated country wishing to ensure security of food supply. A large nation such as China could look in our direction instead of the Middle East, rather than afterwards.
We don’t have the resources for a massive military. But we should at least have decent surface-to-air missiles to defend against aerial attack, and some reasonable sized weaponry on our ships rather than the piddly stuff at present. We could probably afford some small submarines.
Being an island we need to focus on the air force and navy. There are plenty of private guns in this country, if you wanted to pull together a large home guard you could do so easily. The issue would be heavy firepower, which is why the military needs to have enough of this. Infantry aren’t the issue, you can pull them together at short notice if need be. You can’t make ships or planes at short notice.
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stephenR,
US committment to Taiwan is a rather dubious proposition and wouldn’t matter a rats arse if the current KMT government there manage to successfully sell out their country to China anyway. If China does annex/make a deal with Taiwan, then their power projection capacity would increase since they would have much easier access to the open Pacific Ocean and be able to put a serious squeeze upon Japan. As you say though, this depends upon China holding together through their increasingly serious social and environmental problem.
http://michaelturton.blogspot.com/ is a good English language starting point for following Taiwanese politics.
Another unconcious assumption that shouldn’t be made is assuming that any threat to NZ would necessarily be a “formal” military attack by a nation state. I think a somewhat more likely scenario is an increase in heavily armed pirates/refugees, which at the very least would make our overseas trading increasingly difficult.
Ironically the idea of NZ having a Swiss-style territorial army was the policy of the New Zealand Party in 1984, and I still think that it is an option worth pursuing.
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No matter how much we tool up, we’re not going to prevent an invasion. Too much coast, too little money.
Our protection lies with our allies, a patrolling navy, and ground forces. Leave the air capability to Australia. Stay close with Australia. Supply Australias food. If the worst case scenario pans out, and Asia splinters into factional warlords, then this may provide suitable protection.
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Correction: worst case scenario – a together, hostile China – as Tane describes, for which there is no viable defense.
Interesting stuff. Anyone got any further reading on these possible future geopolitical scenarios?
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Dear oh dear boys
You should be ashamed of yourselves squabbling over sticks like this!
What are you afraid of? The yellow peril again is it?
‘if the Chinese do keep it together, and do come this way, then we are in trouble’
That’s quite right – and we should accept that as a fait accompli. We can only hope that they will be enlightened enough to sign a treaty with us that amounts to the same meaning in both languages, and that they subsequently hold to their side of the bargain.
Attempting to build some kind of home-grown war machine, or resorting to a complex and outdated global alliance of Anglophonic countries, to hold sway over the most numerous populace in the world, is frankly madness.
at the Risk of sounding flippant, this is not about war games people, but about the evolution of people.
See you at the bar.
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>>What are you afraid of?
It’s interesting to entertain the effects of forces such as AGW, Peak Oil, etc, doncha think? Personally, I doubt it will come to any of this, as energy is not a difficult problem to solve.
Food is an interesting one….
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With apologies to BigBro..
We need ‘attack sheep’ genetically modified to explode when the filthy hoards happen by.
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Ah, but we’re even running down our sheep numbers. All hope is lost!
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But our defence policy is only limited, right? What about if you subject yourself to surgical procedures like plastic surgery and the reason for going under the knife is because of a freak accident or specifically, you need to take off a few pounds so you can be slimmer and prevent heart attacks or something like that? That’s why, I settle for diet programs instead of surgery but I do prefer surgery to get rid of fats! I’m a lazy person, too lazy to even go jogging! In my opinion, they should try to reconsider or amend these defence policies.
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Bloated dairy cows perhaps?
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jingyang, ta, yeah i’m not up with politics in your area of the world, I just based those comments on the US’s willingness to rattle sabres/aircraft carriers in the Formosa Strait. Don’t know nuthin’ about ’selling out’.
I think a formal attack is more likely than armed pirates/refugees since there isn’t really anywhere for them to base themselves, NZ being the most isolated country in the world, without a maze of islands for people like that to base themselves, like is the case around Indonesia. I still think a formal attack is pretty damn unlikely going on how far away we away we are, the length and resulting cost of a long supply line etc…if someone really had a greivance with us, some sort of enforced military barrier would probably be the best bet.
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Aristophanes,
If you’re not prepared to defend yourself, then you live at the sufferance of the powerful. That goes for your democratic rights here in NZ, as well as defence against a foreign enemy. Would you give up your rights, just because you can’t beat the police in a fight?
As for the racial dimension, I bring up China because it’s the biggest kid on our block. I’d be just as concerned by a million Californian refugees as I would be by a million Chinese ones.
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