Is the future of Australia and New Zealand really as NATO forts, armed to the teeth glaring menacingly at an ever-rising China?

Are we risking what we cannot afford to lose by failing to see the world around us is changing rapidly and that we may be backing the wrong horse? Our instinctive allegiance to a US hell-bent on escalation to maintain primacy risks the people Down Under getting a comeuppance of terrible proportions.

This month, China hosted most of the Eurasian nations at the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation summit in Tianjin. The SCO states: “ Tectonic shifts are underway in global politics, economy, and other spheres of international relations. A fairer multipolar world order is being born.” The sight of so many leaders, including those of Russia, China, Iran, India and Turkiye, was a powerful signal that the Eurasian landmass is emerging from centuries of Western domination to become the powerhouse of global economics and politics for the coming century.

Many of the leaders also attended the eye-popping 80th anniversary military displays a day or two later that reminded the world of China’s enormous sacrifices and crucial role in defeating Japan in World War II. It was also an emphatic message to the West of its status as a global superpower to rival the US.

Disrespecting China is not a strategy, it’s posturing

None of our leaders attended these events but two former New Zealand prime ministers, Helen Clark (Labour) and John Key (National), attended the parades and met President Xi. Former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr attended the event but not the military parade.  All were criticised for doing so by our Pentagon-compliant media but should be commended for keeping alive the notion of diplomacy. There are legitimate concerns about China’s rise and its conduct in the world, but attempting to ostracise the greatest industrial power on the planet — and our most important trading partner — is gormless and futile.

Whilst pledging to continue China’s peaceful development, President Xi said in his address that the world has to choose between peace and war. He called on the nations of the world to “eliminate the root cause of war and prevent historical tragedies from recurring”. Without naming them, Xi was signalling Chinese resistance to Western belligerence and the “pivot to Asia” by the NATO powers.

NATO Down Under

NATO has been transformed from a nominally North Atlantic organisation into a global pact that conducts wars of aggression. Having wrecked Libya and opened the floodgates for refugees to spill into Europe, launched a war against Serbia without UN approval, and butted up against Russia’s borders, it is now increasingly turning its guns on the Asia-Pacific region.

“The People’s Republic of China’s stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values,” NATO says in its 2022 Strategic Concept document, which bristles with belligerent rhetoric and questionable strategic insights. That should worry us.

NATO’s patchy track record on the battlefront, the ship-building capacity of the UK and US versus China’s, the moral and strategic dementia that has derailed the West and the slow but steady binding together of the great nations of Eurasia into the most powerful multipolar alliance (the SCO) the world would have ever seen, suggest it is high time to ask if we have reached a hinge moment in history.

In August, when Australia hosted the UK Defence Secretary David Lammy, the two countries inked a 50-year defence alliance, part of the broader US/NATO/AUKUS project to contain China. It smacked of nostalgia and delusions of fading grandeur.

Do we think we can out-produce China?

Military planners in World War II realised it would be a war won by production and logistics: the side which could get the most “stuff” to the kill zone would win. The assumption has long been that World War III would be determined by technology – who can compute fastest, cyber warfare, hypersonic missiles, lasers etc. Maybe. But I believe the production capacities of the belligerents will still likely be the determining factor unless the conflict goes nuclear.

Given this, who would you bet on to build more missiles, drones, interceptors, fighter jets, ships, submarines, shells and everything else? Let’s look at just one element in the matrix of a war in our region: ship/submarine building.

Australia has committed hundreds of billions of dollars, banking on the shipbuilding capacities of the UK and US to project power into the South China Sea. Seriously?

Good luck seeing an AUKUS sub anytime soon

In tandem with the US Virginia class subs on order, the Aussies have chosen the British-designed SSN AUKUS nuclear attack submarine at a time when the UK can’t even maintain its own fleet. One of its subs spent seven years (!) in dock dealing with a problem with one of its nuclear reactors.

The US builds far less than 2% of global shipping, the UK’s output is negligible. China accounts for about half of all global shipping by tonnage. That translates into better supply chains, huge cost-to-production advantages, more specialised workforces and the deep experience needed for quality production.

US President Donald Trump’s administration launched a review of the AUKUS pact this year and commitments made may well be commitments spurned. Writing for the conservative Australian think-tank, the Lowy Institute, Mathew Mai said: “It is unlikely the US will be able to deliver SSNs within the timeline laid out for AUKUS Pillar I … The General Dynamics Electric Boat shipyard — one of the two shipyards responsible for SSN construction — shed 80% of its workforce between peak demand in the early 1980s to 1998.”

For its part, New Zealand has committed to spending billions on US manufactured weapons, part of a global push by the Trump administration to get its vassals to acquire US weaponry and strengthen US industry. Purchases of US weapons, including a fleet of US-made MH-60R Seahawk helicopters, now accounts for much of New Zealand’s defence spending, putting the Kiwis unequivocally in Team US.

By some estimates, China has 200 times the ship-building capacity of the US and UK. Their surge capacity — converting civilian industry into extensions of the military industrial complex — is staggering, not least because Western countries have been going through a deindustrialisation process.

All of this raises another important point: are the Western elites who are running projects like NATO, AUKUS, etc, out of their minds? The rational response to this imbalance would suggest exhausting all avenues of diplomacy, de-escalation and the avoidance of insulting rhetoric; the opposite is happening.

The West is best-in-class when it comes to committing genocide and beating up African and Middle Eastern people who have third-rate militaries – but has proven inferior to the Russians in what the US admits is a proxy war in Ukraine. China is unproven militarily simply because, unlike the West, it hasn’t spent the past century attacking country after country. Its military, however, is almost certainly beyond the West’s ability to subdue – and that was the biggest point being made in this month’s parade in Beijing.

New Zealand and Australia need to adjust their alliances to address two key issues. Firstly, in a war against China, the US is likely to lose, regardless of how high a price China must pay in blood and treasure to achieve victory. If we join a war against China, we will pay an incalculably high price if the Americans are defeated. America is not our friend. China should not be our enemy. We should pivot to more nuanced defence postures focused on genuine defence, friendship with all, enemies of none.

The second factor that we should finally recognise is that the West, as a project, is the greatest threat to peace and stability on the planet. Only a colonised mind cannot see that the US and its allies have rampaged across the planet killing millions of innocents and destabilising regions for decades. Looking at Gaza and elsewhere, the West is strategically incoherent and morally repellent. You cannot be a participant — as we are — in genocide and still serenade yourselves as the good guys.

The invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and attacks on Yemen over decades place the West firmly alongside the worst regimes in history. It is time to stop polishing the turd of our reputation in the world and start adjusting to the multipolar world that is slowly but surely coming our way. Peace and diplomacy is the cure.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.