Around the world – for any number of reasons – tensions are rising. Bigger nations are becoming more and more belligerent. Medium size nations are increasing defence spending and philosophically digging in. For New Zealand, a nation that grew strong on the rules based order, this is a worrying sign.
Like it or not, New Zealand needs to accept the fact that we are now in a period of time in global politics where the rules based order that made us strong, is under threat. The broader international environment is starting to take on the feel that I imagine commentators in the 1930’s must have felt. Yet, unlike the 1930s where a vanquished European power was reviving, led by a fanatic who believed he could go down as the greatest German to live, it is an American ideologue who is proving that the threatening rhetoric which other nations took as a joke actually has some strength to it.
New Zealand needs to make some choices in the near future. One of those choices is going to be whether we can afford a vacillating Prime Minister who prefers photo opportunities and long haul junkets overseas to substantive policy making. Can we afford a Prime Minister whose only known language is corporate waffle, who does not like being put on the spot about anything?
Another choice is going to be around a necessary increase in defence spending. In an ideal world we would split it evenly between the three armed services: Royal New Zealand Airforce, Royal New Zealand Navy and the Army. All three badly need a long term increase in defence spending just to make ends meet on their current capacities and training requirement. At 0.7% of G.D.P., we currently spend about 1/3 of what is considered acceptable defence spending among modern nations.
A third decision that will soon need to be made. This is – despite Labour having frozen solid on the idea, and National and A.C.T. believing it to be fiscal blasphemy – a Capital Gains Tax or Land Value Tax to fund the defence spending and other necessary investments.
But it is not just expenditure that is going to have to change. New Zealand is slipping on the world stage because of culture wars being imported by right wing politicians. Many of these politicians are also forgetting what the country stands for, or no long believe it applicable to them. The failure to point blank tell A.C.T. Party leader David Seymour where to shove his inane Treaty Principles Bill, for fear of upsetting the Atlas Network, who actively undermine our politics, tells Maori that decades of progress might be all for nothing. The failure to tell Israel bluntly to go back to its pre-1967 borders is one; not resolutely falling in behind Canada and Europe with regard to the rank stupidity of America’s hegemonic ambitions is another. In the past, I believe we would have politely at least, but certainly firmly let such aggressors as America and Israel know we don’t agree with them.
We need to do better. But until Labour has a revolution and dumps most of its caucus and National and A.C.T. get a hiding at the election – which is in large part contingent on Labour showing they are worthy of high office again – I see this country continuing to slip.
Leftist Kiwi Writes 