Winston tells China to SOV(erign) off: We will buy our guns; please keep buying our butter

The first draft of this article was far too sarcastic even for me. The second draft was not sarcastic enough, while the third was just right.

There was an interesting confluence of events in politics last week that caught my attention that had something to do with China, P8 maritime surveillance planes, Defence commitments, Winston Peters and some nurses going on strike.

Long story short the defense force wants to buy some new planes, expensive ones which will allow them to remain part of the military Big Boys Club to which we keep on aspiring to belong.

Unfortunately in the winter of our political discontent, where public servants, low wage workers, teachers and nurses are going on strike, 3.2 Billion dollars (said like Dr Evil from Austin Powers) is a lot of cheddar cheese to be putting out for three planes.

So, how do you sell these fantastically expensive pieces of equipment to a public clamouring for cheaper housing and increased wages? How do you make a bona fide, fool proof case for spending 3.2 billion dollars on military hardware when that money could go a long long way to addressing issues like the housing hernia and 30 years of stagnant wages.

Answer, you cook up a defence report which specifically names a threat which these, and only these planes, can counter; in this case Chinese submarines, correction, insidious Chinese submarines, prowling through our territorial waters, sowing higher property values and corrupting National party MPs as they go.

Unfortunately there was one small problem which was that China (rightly or wrongly) did not appreciate being labelled a threat by some pip squeak nation which it expects to just shut up and sell its land to so China issued a strongly worded piece of propaganda response demanding that we all just get along in peace and harmony (like China is doing in the South China Seas) and all will be well.

This caused some problems for Gollum Ron Mark who immediately realised that with no manufactured credible threat there would be no rational to buy those expensive planes that the top brass in the Air Force had been telling their Australian and US counterparts they would be buying, so they could go to the Generals Ball.

But wait, whats this, is it a bird, is it a plane (if it’s a P8 it is), no it’s the acting PM, Winston Peters, coming to the rescue with a unconditional reply which stated that it’s the sovereign right of a nation to decide who is a threat and who is not, so there!

Economic Interlude (play this music while reading)

In economic theory the balance between military and civilian spending is called the Guns verses Butter model. It’s not quite an either/or situation but it is supposed to highlight the limited resources a nation state has in a time of competing demands for those resources.

Do you buy guns to defend yourself against the enemy next door or food (the butter) for the people?

Neither answer is correct per se but if posed properly it should force the decision maker to prioritize or even balance competing demands against the strategic environment they operate in.

In New Zealand’s case we don’t have any real military threats to our nation but we seek (some would say sycophantically) to be a part of various western based military and international orders which, both militarily and economically, promote open markets and liberal democracy, so in order to be a part of that order we have to align our interests with those of the bigger actors (both economically and militarily).

Therefore while not subject to a traditional gun versus butter analysis there is still a decision to make regarding the price to pay in remaining part of the economic, political and military order.

And in New Zealand’s case the question is around staving off growing social/political/economic discontent in the general populace against the need to be part of a larger social/political/economic order which, in many cases, is creating and driving the aforementioned discontent at home and then the need to sell our products (and ourselves) to a nation we just named a threat to us.

Interlude ends

So, did NZ make the right choice? Will the Chinese retaliate? Is it worth all this cost to be part of a club which increasingly seems to be only marginally better than the states it opposes?

And why can the government invoke the “sovereignty” option so bloody quickly when it comes to buying some military hardware but not when faced with land and asset sales to foreign interests, spies of foreign powers roaming the halls of the Beehive or where we have hitched a large part of our economic wagon (ie all that butter and milk we sell to China) to the nation we just invoked our sovereignty against that has a social, economic and political system in direct opposition to ours.

And just for those whose perspicacity may be waning, sovereignty, in this context, means the authority of a state to govern itself.

I suppose I should be thankful because under National we would have still gotten the planes but not the cheap catharsis of watching Winston telling China to buzz off, at least when it comes to the findings of the defence report that is. National would have just pandered to China (yes the pun was intended) and maybe asked for another spy to replace Jin Yang.

And there is an argument for NZ having maritime patrol planes, one which I do support but in politics, like music and humor, timing is everything.

Sovereignty in this country has long been a highly abstract concept as when Labour recently ratified the TPPA, citizenship is up for sale to any billionaire who wants it, we still remain a haven for money laundering while tourism and dairy sales are destroying our environment for the short term gain of a small few.

In the end Winston coming out and playing the sovereignty card was merely symbolic so that buying the P-8s can go ahead with the clear conscious of the NZDF and the politicians, who will also be hoping that China will keep on buying our butter and dairy. Let’s hope the Chinese see it that way.