OPINION: The Aukus alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom and United States has triggered a dangerous line in commentary questioning Aotearoa’s nuclear-free status.
Many of the opinion writers commenting on international and security matters appear to prioritise a militarist worldview above all other perspectives. The latest is Matthew Hooton, who writes that the “long peace among great powers since [World War II] is a historical anomaly sustained only by the nuclear deterrent”. There hasn’t been a long peace, unless you discount people who live outside the nuclear-armed states.
The truth is that the great powers relentlessly attacked each other through proxy wars that killed and injured countless civilians with conventional weapons in Africa, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Hooton describes New Zealand’s anti-nuclear legislation as “extreme” and falsely asserts that no other country has taken up anti-nuclear laws. In fact, more than 80 countries have signed the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and, in ratifying it, several have adjusted their own domestic law to make nuclear weapons illegal.
Similar talking points were offered by Ben Thomas on RNZ Nine to Noon earlier this week, albeit in a more relaxed way, calling NZ’s anti-nuclear policy a “shibboleth” and, like Hooton, suggesting that some people think former prime minister David Lange helped end the Cold War with his speech at the Oxford Union debate. I have never heard anyone say this. I don’t think anyone thinks it.
Stuff political editor Luke Malpass also dismissed New Zealand’s nuclear-free status as a “foundational myth” last week, describing it as “puritanism” and suggesting that nuclear weapons will be more important for our security in the future than they might have been in the Cold War.
What is striking about these comments is that they present the militarist worldview as incontrovertible. This is a long-standing rhetorical device of those who seek to perpetuate militarism. It is presented as “the only way”, and anyone who questions it or suggests an alternative is considered to live in an alternate reality. This is precisely how those representing powerful interests have always sought to prevent progressive change in the past.
The questions we should be asking ourselves are more searching than the benefits of our nuclear-free status, though. We should ask where our security comes from and, given that Aotearoa relies on peace for collective prosperity, how we can encourage a more peaceful world. My pick would be more diplomacy, more capacity to help prevent conflict, and more dedication to the main challenges of our time: climate, equality and nature.
New Zealand rightly rejected nuclear weapons in the 1980s, and we have consistently challenged their existence. Australia simply has not been able to do this in the same way, because it explicitly seeks security benefits from nuclear weapons by embracing the US nuclear umbrella. What that umbrella means is that Australia has received a guarantee from the US that, if a country attacks Australia with nuclear weapons, the US will retaliate with nuclear weapons.
There is a reason why advocates of “nuclear security” do not generally talk about what the weapons actually do. To suggest that New Zealand should be more like Australia on nuclear issues is to embrace this constant threat of mass murder by the vaporisation, blast waves and radiation poisoning caused by the detonation of a nuclear warhead. When you face the humanitarian reality of nuclear weapons, this kind of thinking appears not only morally repugnant, but also seems to abandon any ability to shape a better future.
A big problem with those who see militarism and nuclear weapons as inevitable is an apparent lack of imagination. They seemingly cannot imagine that the world would be safer without thousands of weapons of mass destruction pointed at London, Beijing, Moscow, Washington and Paris, on hair-trigger alert, ready to launch at any moment. They seemingly cannot imagine how to get from so-called nuclear deterrence to a world where it just isn’t normal for countries to constantly threaten each other’s civilians with mass murder.
If we want to enjoy a peaceful future, Aotearoa should do the exact opposite of what Hooton and Malpass suggest. We should forge closer relations with others that share our anti-nuclear values – and there is no shortage of such countries.
We should increase our diplomatic capacity to build relationships and to contribute to conflict prevention and peace. We should focus our international energy on solutions to climate and the urgent transitions we need on energy, food and transport. Instead of focusing our diplomatic and security efforts on the Five Eyes, we should strengthen our relationships in, for example, Asean countries, in Latin America and, of course, in our neighbouring nuclear-free Pacific Islands.
Some will always seek to narrow the vision of what Aotearoa could or should be in the world. There will always be pressure for us to fall into line with the aggressive military power of the US, UK and Australia.
We should resist this. It is not the path to a safe future, it is morally wrong, and it is not inevitable.
Thomas Nash is co-director of independent think tank New Zealand Alternative, and was part of the successful campaign to achieve the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/south-pacific/126487798/aukus-logic-is-morally-wrong-and-new-zealand-must-resist-it