As the coalition government considers joining AUKUS, the military alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, questions are swirling as to just what implications that may have for Aotearoa New Zealand.
To answer these questions, Raio Waatea spoke with Dr Marco de Jong, from Te Kuaka, an independent organisation that promotes a progressive role for Aotearoa in the world, and warns against the militarisation of the Pacific.
What is AUKUS?
“AUKUS is a security pact between Australia, UK and US and its objective is to uphold military primacy and contain China,” the AUT law school lecturer said
De Jong, a Pacific historian, became interested in AUKUS a couple of years ago after being mentored by Hirin Kaa and Damon Salesa, and through close association with Hilda Halkyward-Harawira and other prominent movement elders who contributed towards the vision for a nuclear free and independent Pacific.
He believes AUKUS could compromise not only New Zealand’s independent foreign policy but also a bipartisan nuclear free and Pacific-led foreign policy.
“I call AUKUS a generational foreign policy decision because it will impact virtually all aspects of our defence, diplomacy, and national security. It determines the things like who we relate to, where our aid spend goes, what our spies are up to. Most importantly, if there’s increasing conflict in the pacific it could influence whether we go to fight, so I think we need to be very careful.”
Could joining AUKUS change New Zealand’s nuclear-free stance?
AUKUS is usually described as comprising two pillars. Pillar one established the Australian acquisition of nuclear submarines and set a nuclear proliferation precedent whereby Australia would be the first non-nuclear weapons state to gain highly enriched fissile material – weapons-grade fissile material, de Jong said . Pillar Two was co-operation on advanced military technologies and it aimed to win a next generation arms race that’s was shaped by things like hypersonic missiles, autonomous weapons systems, and new advances in electronic warfare.
“Pillar two is co-operation on advanced military technologies and it aims to win the next generation arms race that’s being shaped by things like hypersonic missiles, autonomous weapons systems and new advances in electronic warfare.”
“AUKUS pillar two technologies are designed to be interoperable with United States forces which raises a lot of questions about information sharing. To date there’s been no assurances that if NZ were to contribute with things like surveillance drones, that the information that they collect will not be fed into nuclear command control and communications infrastructure.”
Those in favour of NZ joining AUKUS have argued that pillar two was non-nuclear and thus Te Ao News raised this with de Jong.
“You know, I laugh when people say “AUKUS pillar two is non-nuclear,” because to my knowledge it was actually New Zealand officials, not AUKUS members that originally described it as so, and we should be clear that any involvement means supporting nuclear deterrence.”
Would this technology benefit New Zealand?
“As part of a broader agenda-setting process, officials have touted the benefits to New Zealand, research sectors in our aerospace industries. I’d like to pour a bit of scrutiny on that.
“The type of jobs that are being presented, seem to be narrowly focused on the tech sector, under Pillar Two they would support the production of things like hypersonic missiles.
“I don’t think that produces good jobs here in Aotearoa. And in research I think we should look closely at what’s happened in Australia where innovation has been tied to subsidising the US military industrial complex.”
Military power at the detriment of Pacific nations
In discussion of AUKUS there has been use of the idea of aligning ‘traditional partners’ to which they meant what de Jong describes as the Anglo-Saxon alliance of AUKUS. However, this Western idea of traditional partners doesn’t align with a Tāngata Moana worldview.
Last week Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters addressed the NZ China Council, emphasising the importance of “our enduring and long-lasting Pacific partnerships” and that engagement in the region should advance Pacific priorities.
“We don’t want to see developments that destabilise institutions and arrangements that have long underpinned our region’s security,” Peters said.
Yet Pacific nations have been clear with where they stand with AUKUS, de Jong said.
“Pacific opposition to AUKUS is based in the belief that its military focus and reliance on nuclear technologies go against Pacific people’s own conceptions of security,” de Jong said and said these ideas were well-articulated in the the Boe declaration, Biketawa declaration and the 2050 Strategy for a Blue Pacific continent.
“They focus on the idea that climate change is the principal security threat to the region and that any security response must come from within the Pacific. AUKUS kind of runs roughshod over this, it focuses on containing China, it focuses on these military technologies, and in doing so and by neglecting the Pacific security vision, it really creates the instability that its professing to address.”
De Jong also questioned whether AUKUS would breach the treaty of Rarotonga.
“Opponents of AUKUS argue it violates the treaty of Rarotonga which establishes a nuclear-free zone in the South Pacific and bans the use, possession, testing, storage, and stationing of nuclear weapons in the zone. New Zealand has taken assurances that it’s in compliance but, with the increased permanent rotation of nuclear capable bombers and submarines through continental Australia, we have to ask if this is actually accurate and if supporting AUKUS based on these technicalities would compromise our own capability to speak out as an international voice for nuclear disarmament.”
What should NZ be doing?
“In this time of heightened geopolitical tensions, we should look to the role that Aotearoa has played in the past - as peace maker, as peace builder. We have invested decades of political capital into an international image of being an honest broker through things like our nuclear free stance, our support for Pacific priorities. To go against that now and join an aggressive nuclear war-fighting pact, to me is unconscionable.”