The outcome of the latest Greek election is not surprising. When faced with uncertainty and dire predictions of collective and individual doom in the event that radical change occurs, voters often tend to go with the status quo or what is already in place. Confronted with the “valley of transition” to an unknown future, voters rationally calculate that their interests are best served by staying with what is known rather than leap into the unknown. Add to that the orchestrated litany of woes predicted by bankers, capitalist-oriented politicians, and lender nations, who pretty much predicted the end of the world as we know it if Greece were to default on its debts and withdraw from the Eurozone currency market, and it is easy to see why a plurality of Greeks decided to stay with the hand that they have been dealt with.

The trouble is that hand, in the form of a New Democracy/PASOK coalition (the so-called “bailout coalition”) is exactly the hand that got Greece into the debt crisis in the first place. It was first New Democracy, then PASOK governments that set new records of corruption, clientalism, patronage and nepotism while running up the public debt on state-centered labor absorption and entitlement projects that did nothing for productivity or the revitalization of the Greek private sector (which remains fragmented and dominated by oligarchic interests in the few globally viable Greek industries such as shipping). It is to this pro-Euro political cabal that the responsibility for “rescuing” Greece is entrusted. That is not going to happen.

True, the terms of the bailout will be relaxed even further now that a pro-Euro government can be formed. That much is clear given that Andrea Merkel has hinted that the repayment terms can be “softened.” The hard truth is that repayment can be softened because what is being repaid in Greece is the compound interest on the foreign loans. The logic is that of the credit card: the issuer of the card would prefer for users to not pay off their total debt on a monthly basis and instead accumulate interest-accruing cumulative debt while paying off less than the total owed. If the user reachers a credit limit with interest debt accruing, the limit is raised. If the user defaults on the debt after a series of credit limit raises, measures are taken to seize assets of worth comparable to the outstanding amount.

States are different than individual credit card users because as sovereign entities they can avoid asset seizure on home soil even while bankrupt. As Argentina proved in 2000, they can default and renegotiate the terms of debt repayment according to local conditions (after Argentina defaulted on its foreign debts it was eventually able to negotiate a repayment to creditors of US 36 cents on every dollar owed. The creditors took the deal, then began lending again, albeit more cautiously. The devalued Argentine peso sparked an export boom of agricultural commodities that led to post-default growth rates unseen for 50 years). The short-term impact of default can be painful (witness the run on Greek banks as people try to cash in and export Euros), but measures can be taken to curtail capital flight and to mitigate the deleterious effects of moving to a devalued currency (the Argentines did this by placing stringent limits on currency transfers abroad in the first months after they de-coupled the Argentine peso from the US dollar while at the same time issuing interest-bearing government bonds to dollar holders in the amount valid at the exchange rate of the day before the de-coupling). Greece has not adopted any of these measures as of yet, but that is because a pro-Euro caretaker government, as well as the PASOK government that preceded it, wanted to heighten the sense of doom should an anti-Euro coalition look to be winning majority support.

That scenario emerged in the form of Syriza. Although it is formally known as the Coalition of the Radical Left it is anything but “radical” (no matter how many times the corporate media tries to emphasize that point). Instead, it is a coalition of Socialists, Social Democrats, Greens, Trotskyites, Maoists and independents not associated with the Greek Communist Party (KKE). It has an agenda that includes a possible default, and will now be the largest opposition bloc in the Greek parliament. Contrary to the perception that it came out of nowhere in this year’s elections, Syriza has been steadily building a popular voting base since 2004, increasing its electoral percentage significantly in 2007, 2009 and May 2012. Although it has had splits and defections (which are endemic in Greek politics, particularly on the Left), Syriza was the second largest vote-getter in the May 2012 elections and its margin of loss to New Democracy in the second-round elections held last weekend is less than it was in May. The bailout coalition may have a narrow majority, but Syriza and other Left minority parties will prove to be a formidable parliamentary obstacle to the implementation of  its pro-Euro agenda.

That is why the new Greek “bailout” government will not be successful even if it renegotiates the terms of the bailout along more favorable lines than in previous iterations. It will be forced to deal with the combined pressures of Syriza opposition in parliament and the angry–and I reckon increasingly violent–opposition of the non-parliamentary Left in the street. Greece has a long tradition of student and union militancy and urban guerrilla warfare. Even during the best of times militant groups have used irregular violence to make their points about Greek capitalism and its ties to Western imperialism. They have burned and they have killed (including a CIA station chief, a British embassy official and various Greek security officers) during the decades after the Colonel’s dictatorship fell in 1973. These militant strands have not gone away and instead have been reinforced as the debt crisis drags on and the impact of austerity measures take their toll on the average (and increasingly unemployed) wage-earner. With unemployment at 20 percent and youth unemployment at 50 percent, the recruitment pool for Greek militants has grown exponentially.

Some of this has been siphoned off my neo-fascist parties like Golden Dawn. But the bulk of popular rage has been channeled by the Left, divided into the institutional vehicles of Syriza and the KKE (and various off-shoots), and the direct action, non-institutionalized vehicles comprised by the likes of Revolutionary Sect (who favor political assassinations) or Conspiracy of Fire Nuclei (who appropriately enough favor arson), that follow a long line of militant groups with a penchant for violence such as the N-17 and Revolutionary Struggle (and may in fact include former members of the latter), to say nothing of various anarchist cells.

These militant groups are not going stay quiet. Instead, I foresee a rising and relentless tide of irregular violence coupled with acts of passive resistance and civil disobedience so long as the political elite continues to play by the Euro rules of the  game. Every Greek knows that the solution to the crisis is political rather than economic because the bankers have made more than enough profit on their loans and it is now time for them to draw down or write off the remaining interest owed. A softened bailout package only goes halfway towards easing the collective burden of debt, and the continued imposition of fiscal austerity deepens the stresses on Greek society (urban crime has ramped up significantly this year, and it already was pretty bad when I lived in Athens in 2010). Instead of continuing to cater to banks, the political decision palatable to most (non-elite) Greeks is not a softened bailout package, now into its fourth iteration. It is a complete re-structuring, with or without default, of the economic apparatus so that national rather than foreign interests prevail on matters of employment, income and production. This may require a retrenchment and drop in standards of living over the short-term, but it at least gives Greeks a voice in the economic decisions that heretofore and presently are made by Euro-focused elites more attuned to the preferences and interests of European finance capital than they are to those of their own people.

If there is a domino effect in other countries in the event that Greece eventually (I would say inevitably) defaults, then so be it simply because that is the risk that bankers and their host governments assumed when they lent to PASOK and New Democracy governments in the past. Perhaps it is time for bankers to pay the piper as well. After all, although their profit margins may fall as a result of the Greek default, they have already insured against the eventuality (the write-off of Greek debt by large financial institutions in the US, UK and Europe is the story that never gets mentioned by the corporate media). Moreover, and most importantly, the banks can accept the default and take their losses on projected interest as a means of keeping Greece in the Eurozone market, thereby avoiding the contagion effect so widely predicted at the moment. Default does not have to mean leaving the Euro currency market. Greece can default and stay in the Eurozone so long as the banks accept that it is in their long-term interest to shoulder the diminished profits (not real losses) that a default will bring.

Again, the economic decisions about Greece had already been made by the European banks, and they are now simply waiting, while claiming gloom and doom, for the political decision to terminate their interest-based revenue streams. The PASOK/New Democracy bailout coalition only delays that political inevitability, and Syriza and the militant Left will ensure that the next bailout is just another stopgap on the road to default and regeneration along more sustainable lines.

Whatever happens, it looks to be another long hot summer in the Peloponnese. Expect a lot of wildfires.

Bashar Assad has likened the civil war in Syria to a surgeon performing messy emergency surgery. Much blood is spilled but it is in the best interest of the patient’s survival that it do so. In this case the patient is purportedly Syria (but in actuality the Alawite regime), and the surgery is required because of the gangrenous actions of foreign-backed “terrorists” and extremists.

That comment brought back some unhappy memories. On March 24, 1976 the military dictatorship known as the “Proceso de Reorganizacion Nacional” (Process of National Reorganization) was installed in Argentina. Over the next seven years it killed over 30,000 people and tortured, imprisoned and exiled at least that many more. It refined the concept of “disappearing” people without a trace (although it was later revealed that many of the disappeared were sedated and dumped from aircraft over the South Atlantic). It was a very bad moment in Argentine history, and the psychological and social scars of that sorry time are still evident to this day.

Assad’s surgical analogy struck an unpleasant chord with me because that is exactly the language used by the “Proceso” to justify its actions. In one of its first proclamations the Junta spoke of the need to rid Argentina of the “malignancies” of subversion, economic instability, social disorder and moral decay, and that in order to do so it would have to “extirpate without anesthesia” the cancers afflicting the Argentine body politic (on this see “Acta fijando el proposito y los objectivos basicos para el Proceso de Reorganizacion Nacional,” Republica Argentina, Boletin Oficial, 29 March 1976 and Republica Argentina, Documentos basicos y bases politicas de las fuerzas armadas para el Proceso de Reorganizacion Nacional. Buenos Aires: Junta Militar de la Nacion, 1980). It seems that when it comes to “organic” parallels between the state and society, Arab and Argentine dictators think alike.

It might behoove Mr. Assad to remember the fate of his Argentine counterparts. Their regime collapsed under the double-barreled weight of popular unrest and foreign conflict (the Falklands/Malvinas War, which was staged by the Junta as a diversion from its internal problems). The generals who commanded that regime were all eventually tried and convicted of crimes against humanity and sentenced to lengthy prison terms, where several have died. Argentine justice certainly was not swift or completely fair, but in the end the self-professed “surgeons” were found guilty of homicidal malpractice rather than lauded as the triage medics of the country.

Assad has that double-barreled weight now resting upon his regime. His conflict is internal rather than external, but the involvement of external actors is substantial and not limited to UN proclamations, jihadist infiltration or covert military assistance to the Syrian Free Army. He is therefore well on the path to following his Argentine counterparts down the road to collapse and overthrow, and it is now more a question of whether he will die in a prison cell or on the street rather than if he will fall. After all, once the dictator starts talking about emergency surgery on the body politic, it may be the case that he is the worst tumor of them all.

New Zealand has received tacit US endorsement of its bid for a non-permanent member seat on the UN Security Council in 2015-16.  That may not be an entirely good thing, especially given the mix of players and circumstances involved.

So let’s get this straight: North Korea attempts to launch a ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and the international community goes ballistic, claiming it is a serious provocation that has grave consequences for regional and world peace. The UN condemns the launch and humanitarian assistance is suspended in retaliation for it. The North Koreans, who have twice tried to detonate an underground nuclear device with only partial success, fail yet again with their missile test (the booster misfired three minutes into the test flight and fell harmlessly into the Yellow Sea where it undoubtably is the object of foreign salvage efforts). In doing so they confirm that they are a considerable ways off from posing a nuclear-armed ballistic missile threat to anyone. That does not mean that they are not paranoid, bellicose and dangerous, but if that is the criteria by which states are measured than pretty much anytime the US has a Republican president it should be subject to UN sanctions and international boycotts.

A week after the North Koreans embarrassed themselves with that fizzle launch (the best technical term for the mishap that I have read is “projectile dysfunction”), the Indians did it right. They successful tested a ballistic missile with a range of 5000 kilometers that is designed to carry a nuclear warhead. The range of the missile means that it can strike targets in Europe and Central China. It is, in a phrase, a full-fledged Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM). The Indians, of course, are already a nuclear capable state, having successfully conducted dozens of tests both above and below ground. Like the North Koreans, India shares a “hot” border with a long-term adversary, Pakistan, that is also nuclear-equipped (the North Koreans are confronted by nuclear-armed US troops as well as South Korean conventional forces). It has fought conventional wars with Pakistan and border skirmishes are fairly common. And yet the international community has remained placidly silent about what is a clear message of aggressive intent on the part of the Indians.

Why the hypocrisy? If the international community is really serious about nuclear non-proliferation its should be condemning ALL ballistic missile testing. If that seems unreasonable given that the boosters can also be used to launch satellites, then it is patently unreasonable to froth about the North Korean test and ignore the Indian one (and the latter was not construed as anything but a military application). The hard truth is that the Non-Proliferation Treaty is a porous joke that is enforced–and I use that word very loosely– selectively against a few pariah states such as Iran and North Korea but not against others. Nor does it do anything to disarm nuclear-capable states. What reductions in nuclear arsenals have occurred have happened as the result of bilateral negotiations rather than within the framework of the NPT.

I am not a fan of the Kim regime in North Korea. I cannot say I am too enthused about Iran acquiring a nuke. But I understand fully why they attempt to do so. Nuclear weapons are designed to be deterrents, and if that fails to be used as a response to aggression by military superior forces or in the face of imminent conventional defeat. Given their circumstances and the balance of forces in with they operate, North Korea and Iran are eminently rational in their pursuit of that deterrent, as is India even if its threat environment is not as dire (after all, ongoing low-level cross-border clashes with Pakistan cannot be considered to be in the same league as having hostile US carrier task forces and large ground-based contingents just off-shore and across the border) .

That makes the hypocrisy of the international community all the more salient. India is no more and no less rational a state actor than Iran or North Korea. It has interests that it seeks to advance via military capability as well as diplomatic and economic means. Iran and North Korea do not have the diplomatic and economic weight of the Indians–far from it–so they emphasize the military aspect of their defenses. That includes rhetorical broadsides that are designed for domestic consumption and to demonstrate resolve to potential adversaries.

I would think that if the international community was serious about stopping the Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons development programs it would start by moving to enact restrictions on all ballistic missile testing that is not clearly designed for satellite launching purposes. It could also work a bit harder, within the NPT, to reduce extant nuclear arsenals in places like India, Pakistan, Israel and the great powers. Readers will undoubtably think “that is never going to happen,” and they would be right. But is that is the case, then it is unreasonable to expect that Iran and North Korea stop their ambitions with regard to producing an indigenous nuclear deterrent. They may not conform to international standards of behavior as defined (mostly) but the West, but they are eminently justified, on realist-deterrence grounds, to pursue that option.

Interestingly, that champion of nuclear non-proliferation, New Zealand, has been silent about the India ICBM test even though it condemned the North Korean launch. I get the feeling that under the current government NZ righteousness with regard to non-proliferation is inversely proportional to the possibilities of securing or maintaining a trade deal with states engaging in such testing. Thus, with regard to India there is silence. With regard to Iran there are meek pleas for “cooperation” with the IAEA. And with regard to North Korea there is a chorus of boos no doubt in part occasioned by the fact that South Korea enjoys a favored bilateral trade status with NZ whereas North Korea does not.

It is said that diplomacy is the art of disguising hypocrisy and self-interest in moral-ethical appeal. When it comes to the issue of nuclear proliferation, it seems that particular costume has worn threadbare thin even in places like NZ.

PS: And sure enough, true to form, Pakistan responded to the Indian test with one of their own. So there you have it: two nuclear armed states sharing a border that have fought conventional wars with each other and which continue to maintain a simmering territorial dispute that has involved the use of unconventional armed proxies sequentially test multi-stage long range boosters that are clearly designed to carry nuclear warheads. One of the countries is a major source of armed violent extremism and a safe haven to militants of various stripes. The international community remains silent.

All internet architecture has the potential for use as a Signals Intelligence Intercept platform (SIGINT). Data mining already occurs at the mid-range of  IT frameworks, such as when Facebook collects personal information on users for consumer research (or more nefarious) purposes. Cell phones have GPS trackers, which requires software. The range of data-mining already at play in the commercial field is extensive. It therefore should come has no surprise that States also have an interest in data-mining, but for military, diplomatic and intelligence purposes.

If mid-level IT platforms such as FB and numerous other private agents can data-mine extensively with or without the consent of those whose personal information is being accessed, then it stands to reason that providing the basic support infrastructure for IT operations gives the provider even more opportunities at such. In a liberal market environment there are standards of conduct and protocols developed to restrict the unfettered access to private information. But what happens when a state capitalist enterprise is the provider of basic IT infrastructure?

In market capitalist systems the state serves the interests of capitalists by framing the legal and governance frameworks so as to encourage competition on an ostensibly level regulatory playing field. In state capitalist systems capitalists serve the interests of the state above and beyond their particular commercial interests. This is seen in European fascism, Latin American national populism, and in Asian developmentalism such as that of Singapore.

Huawei is the product of a state capitalist system. It was founded by and is led by former PRC intelligence officers. Although Huawei claims to be 100 percent employed owned, that is true only because the one-party authoritarian regime than rules China continues to maintain that it is Communist, which means that all employees are owners. Huawei has been designated as one of the seven national economic treasures that are considered to be essential strategic assets for Chinese power projection, and as such are subject to the strategic dictates of the ruling party. All of this is well known, and having independent local Huawei operators fronted by non-Chinese managers cannot disguise that fact, particularly when all of the components and associated hardware are engineered and made in the PRC.

The US and Australia have decided to bar Huawei from providing IT technologies to strategically important sectors of their IT markets. The US specifically excludes Huawei from any defense or security related contracts, and for that reason Symantec decided to sell its interest in Huawei USA. The Australians feel that their National Broadband Network (NBN) is too precious an asset to be opened to Huawei. They say they have their reasons, and that those reasons have to do with national security.

NZ has just signed off on several broadband infrastructure contracts with Huawei. The question is whether those responsible for the decision were aware of the US and Australian position and if so, why they choose to ignore it. The UK and Canada have allowed Huawei civilian IT contracts, which is important because they are part of the Echelon SIGINT and TECHINT network that binds the “5 eyes” parties together (along with the US, Australia and NZ). In the UK Huawei was awarded contracts for civilian IT, but that was followed by the government communications security agency running an extensive and costly forensics accounting of Huawei systems in order to ensure its cyber security, and even then cannot guarantee that the system is safe as far as covert “backdoor” entryways are concerned. This had something to do with the Australian decision.

95 percent of attempted probes into US corporate and security IT systems originate in the PRC. In the PRC all internet access is tightly controlled and monitored. Huawei is a leading provider of the IT systems used in the PRC, to include the firewalls used to censor foreign content and the tracking devices used to monitor internal dissent. Although all of this is circumstantial, this is the non-classified reason why US security agencies have decided that the company serves as a SIGINT front for the PRC. Add to that concerns about Huawei activities in foreign SIGINT gathering, and what you have is a reason to ban it from competing for security related contracts.

Of course, this could all be a corporate driven plot to preserve market share in the face of superior Chinese efficiency. Or, it could be racism. Or it could be part of the Trilateral Commission efforts to extend its world hegemony. I am agnostic on the exact reasons, but whatever they are, I sure do hope that someone in the National government was briefed by the GCSB and/or SIS on what they were. After all, as full intelligence partners with the US and Australia, one would think that these agencies would have received some of the classified details of why the US and OZ have their doubts about Huawei, and that these agencies would have dutifully reported to at least the Minister for Security and Intelligence, John Key, on the nature of these concerns.

Mind you, if the concerns about cyber espionage are true, I do not fault the PRC a bit for doing so. As an emerging great power with global economic interest and no intelligence sharing network such as Echelon on which to rely (unless one thinks that intelligence sharing with North Korea and Burma is a good counterpart to Western intelligence networks), then the PRC must–and I do mean MUST–develop its own human, signal and technical intelligence capabilities in the measure that its global interests grow. That is just the way the game is played in international security affairs.

The major sea lanes of communication between Latin American and Australasian primary good and raw material suppliers and the Chinese mainland pass through the South Pacific. It would therefore be remiss of the PRC not to seek to ensure the security of these vital channels, and one part of doing so is to have a better intelligence “grip” on what goes on in the countries through and in which they are situated. To put it in Brooklyn-ese: they gotta do what they gotta do because no one else is gonna do it for them.

That is why it would be helpful to hear a “please explain” response from Mr. Key on the matter.

Postscript: It turns out that as early as 2008 the concerns of NZ intelligence partners about Huawei were discussed in US embassy cables from Canberra (which were sent to the US embassy in Wellington, among other places). In 2010 the SIS and GCSB informed him that they could not guarantee that the broadband infrastructure would not be compromised if Huawei was awarded the UFB contract. For reasons as of yet unexplained, he choose to ignore the warnings. As it also turns out, India and South Korea have banned Huawei from critical IT infrastructure projects. Thus it seems that concerns about Huawei are not just a Western plot born of anti-Chinese xenophobia and a desire to protect market share for western businesses, but part of a wider conspiracy amongst China-haters of all stripes. Mr Key, however, is not one of those, and his meetings with Huawei executives at the 2010 Shanghai Expo is proof of that. (Note to readers: all of this has been discussed in the NZ mainstream media the past week, and the 2008 embassy cables were published by Wikileaks).

The latest Word from Afar column over at Scoop speculates on New Zealand’s seemingly odd silence on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program.

Although the golden age of imperialism is long past, the early 21st century has seen a resurgence or perhaps a new form of imperialism in the guise of US-led expeditionary wars to “bring democracy” to rogue or failed states. Besides the wars of occupation waged in Iraq and Afghanistan, the not so covert intervention in Libya and ongoing US military activities in places like Somalia, the Sudan, Colombia, the Philippines and Nigeria suggests that far from being an outmoded concept, the notion of neo-imperialist supremacy is alive and well.

A lesser known aspect of imperialism is the role of servitor imperialists. Servitor imperialist were the colonial troops that deployed and fought for their imperial master. The Scots, Welsh, Australians and New Zealanders all played the servitor role for the British Empire, fighting and dying in places like Gallipoli where none of their core national interests were at risk. Unlike mercenaries, these servitor troops fought out of loyalty to the Crown rather than for money. Today the Gurkhas continue to do the same.

Other former great powers such as the French, Spanish and Portuguese also drew troops from their colonies as they attempted to hold on to their global possessions, albeit with mixed success.

In the 20th century the great wars can be seen as existential threats to the way of life of the servitor former colonies and colonial possessions. The Korean conflict and Vietnam war were less so, but the argument was made the global communism was an existential threat to Western capitalist societies and their allies in the developing world. So the servitor troops stumped up in them as well.

Today, it seems that the role of Imperial hegemon is played by the US, but the twist is that its servitor forces are drawn from allied militaries with UN backing and retain relative command autonomy in the field. Australia and New Zealand again are playing their historic role in fighting in conflicts which, if one removes the idea that the conflicts are about eliminating global terrorism, have little to do with their core national interests (and truth be told, while terrorism is a nasty tactic in an unconventional warfare strategy, it poses no existential threat to any but the most fragile of states, so using the threat of global terrorism as an excuse to join foreign conflicts is a bit of a stretch). Here too, the deployment of servitor imperialist troops is done out of allegiance rather than money: Australia and New Zealand perceive that there is an alliance obligation to help the US in its military adventures, one that may or may not be rewarded not so much in kind (as neither OZ and NZ face physical threats to their territorial integrity) but in other areas of bilateral endeavor such as trade or diplomatic negotiations more central to the servitor’s concerns such as climate change or arms control.

In this era the term “imperialism” is fraught. But just because it has become a dirty word in some circles does not mean that it does not exist, or that the practice of playing servitor imperialists to other great powers is not ongoing. What has changed is the guise in which servitor imperialism occurs, with less Imperial ordering and more multinational cover given to the actions of less powerful countries who send troops to fight in the conflicts instigated by their Great Power allies. It as if there is a cultural disposition in some former colonies to want to serve the Master even if there is no longer a colonial leash tying them together.

Thus, for purposes of definition (there is a good body of scholarly literature on the subject), servitor imperialism is a situation where the natives and descendants of subjugated or colonized nations and sub-national political communities pledge fealty and serve in the wars of their Imperial masters even though no core interest of their homeland is at stake or in jeopardy. In the modern servitor neo-imperialist version, former colonies or subjugated nations send their citizens to fight in wars of the new Imperial hegemon when no core interest is at stake. The difference between this syndrome and a proper military alliance is that in the latter there is a common recognized existential threat that militarily binds countries together, whereas the servitor imperialist approach sees benefit in joining non-essential foreign conflicts instigated and prosecuted by neo-imperialist powers for reasons of their own and without regard to the core interests of the servitors. The syndrome is rooted in a cultural disposition to “serve” the master, whether it be old or new. Leninists might say that is playing the role of useful fool in international security affairs, but whatever the case the syndrome appears alive and well in some parts of the world.

I reflect on this because I have noticed a lot of pro-British chicken hawk rhetoric in rightwing NZ blogs about the current tensions with Argentina over the Malvinas/Falklands islands. For those unaware of the issue, in April we will reach the 30th anniversary of the 6 week war between the UK and Argentina over the islands. Although most Argentines have no interest in renewing hostilities and the Argentine military has made no moves to suggest a desire to retake the islands by force, right-wing Nationalists within Argentina have stepped up their bellicose rhetoric. Even thought the Argentine Right fringe is small, it has influence in some political circles, including with the governing Peronist Party. That has forced the government of Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and some provincial authorities (since Argentina is a federal republic) to attempt to placate that part of the electorate with public and diplomatic complaints about the ongoing UK military presence in the archipelago (since the UK controls the South Georgia islands, also re-taken in the 1982 war). For its part the UK media has jumped on tits own Nationalist bandwagon, seeing such things as the Crown Prince’s search and rescue deployment to the Falklands as a reaffirmation of the glory days of Pax Britannica.

Truth be told, although Argentina was ceded the Malvinas after its independence from Spain in 1810 (as Spain had control of them until then), the British presence extends back to the 1830s when the few Argentine whalers and sealers resident on the islands were forced  off and the territory proclaimed British. British settlers have had a continuous presence since then and their descendants (now into their eighth generation) consider themselves British subjects. Since possession is 9/10th of the law and the “kelpers” as they are called consider themselves to be part of the UK, it is extremely unlikely that the islands will ever be returned to Argentina.

Argentines know this and except for the Right fringe, accept the verdict of history. In fact, the reason for Argentina’s continued diplomatic protestations about the Malvinas/Falklands is that there are vast oil and natural gas deposits in the seabed around the islands, as well as the fisheries in adjacent waters. Now that technology allows for the exploitation of these resources, Argentines want part of that action. Extending Argentine territorial claims out to the islands (600 nautical miles off shore) allows the Federal Government  to negotiate the commercial aspects of these potentially lucrative resource deposits, and for that to occur Argentina needs diplomatic backing for its claims. Needless to say, the UK has no intention of allowing that to happen.

Thus, while the kelpers are clearly disposed to play the role of servitor imperialists for the UK, it is a bit odd to read all the bluster and anti-Argentine rantings coming out of certain NZ rightwing circles. It is as if they retain their servitor attitudes long after the Empire has faded, something that, with a slight change in orientation, the National government appears to hold as well.

The latest “Word from Afar” column focuses on revelations that New Zealand is part of an effort to curtail Chinese influence in the South Pacific. How it proposes to do so while reducing its work force by a fifth is another matter.

The lunatics have taken over the asylum. Not only has National adopted an incoherent foreign policy in which it attempts to straddle the fence between China and the US by tying its trade fortunes to the former and its security fortunes to the latter (something that it thinks is hedging but which is untenable given the looming strategic conflict between the two great powers). It has now decided that it can dispense with 305 MFAT employees, including diplomatic staff assigned abroad (as it closes embassies and consulates). This, at a time when global interdependence is increasing and the range of international relations is getting more rather than less complex.

Diplomacy and its support infrastructure are good value for money because the service it provides helps NZ’s position in the world. For the cost of diplomatic and home office salaries, travel, conferencing, housing (abroad) and foreign aid programs, NZ can avoid military entanglements (the costs of which are exponentially higher than diplomatic chit chat), engage in negotiations on matters of national interest (for example, non-proliferation, arms control and climate change), and generally steer a safe course in the turbulent seas of the post 9-11 world. To do so requires personnel with varied skill sets, so reducing the complement of personnel dedicated to diplomatic functions reduces NZ’s capacity to engage its foreign interlocutors on a broad range of issues. Numbers do matter here.

The market zealots of the National razor gang want to cut all perceived public sector fat regardless of consequence. This is like choosing a skinny marathoner to run an Antarctic ice race instead of a distance runner with a sturdier (read thicker) constitution: the short term look may seem impressive, but once the choice is placed into real context it is bound to suffer, likely fail and in the end be more costly to maintain. We have already seen the domestic consequences of such logics. Now we will see them in our international affairs.

Add to this the privatization of NZAID programs in which fostering business opportunities is given priority over human developmental assistance, and what you have is foreign policy debacles in the making.

Of course, the National government may be doing this because it already knows that it is going to lose the next election and does not care if it saddles Labour (or more likely a successor Labour/Green government) with the costs of the diplomatic re-build after McCully and co. have reduced NZ’s diplomatic footprint to that of a child in the sand. But that, in a phrase, captures what National is all about when it comes to foreign policy: a child playing an adult’s game without regard to long-term consequence.

Eventual ratification of the much hyped Trans-Pacific Partnership, should it occur, will not save National from its folly and will in fact exacerbate the tensions between the Chinese and the US. That in turn will have very negative consequences for NZ since it is increasingly dependent on China for trade and on the US/OZ for security. This, with less people employing the skills to smooth over the differences between the two contradictory positions.

Couple the above with the erosion of morale and skill sets within the NZDF as a result of similar cost-cutting measures, and what is left is a shell of NZ’s former international presence. Sometimes the bottom line is not measured in monetary terms but in terms of competence, reputation and committed presence. This is particularly true for international relations, where the belief that NZ punches above its weight in international affairs is being put paid to by National’s incompetence and dogmatism.

In my opinion National has put ideological partisanship ahead of the national interest. If the proposed cuts are more than a bargaining chip, then the only questions left are who will profit from National’s increased privatization and out-sourcing of the country’s international relations and who will pay the price? I suggest that in response to the latter, all Kiwis will pay a price for this decision, including the private interests who may short term profit from National’s grossly myopic and self-interested approach to foreign affairs staffing. Let us remember: most developed states consider foreign policy making and implementation to be an essential and universal function of government not susceptible to narrow partisan logics, precisely because of the long-term common need for diplomatic continuity in a difficult world.

The double veto cast by Russia and China against the UN Security Resolution condemning the Syrian regime’s repression against unarmed civilians and calling for Bashar Assad to step down in favor of a coalition government harks back to the obstructionist logics of the Cold War. Besides confirming the ingrained authoritarian ethos in both countries (an ethos that does not see human rights as universal values but as contextually constructed), the blocking of the resolution stems from a mix of realist and idealist perceptions.

The idealist perceptions are rooted in the principles of non-interference and sovereignty. Russia and China argue that the UN’s actions amount to externally-forced regime change. That would be true. In their view the right to self-determination, no matter what brutality is evident in a regime’s behavior, is more important than the defense of unarmed populations against the depredations of their rulers. Dating back to the Treaty of Westphalia, sovereignty is the founding principle of the modern nation-state system, and other than as a result of a declared state of war it is illegitimate to attempt to externally impose a political outcome on a sovereign state (exceptions to the rule notwithstanding).

Russia and China are well aware that in recent years the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine has been formalised as part of the UN mandate. R2P states that the international community must act, with force if necessary, to protect vulnerable populations from state violence or in the face of state unwillingness or incapacity to prevent atrocities committed against innocents.  The genocide in Rwanda was the catalyst for the R2P and it has been invoked in the Sudan and Somalia, among other recent cases.

Most importantly, R2P was invoked in UNSC resolution 1973 authorizing the use of external military force in Libya. Starting out under the pretext of protecting Libyan civilians from military assaults by the Gaddafi regime, it morphed from enforcing a no-fly zone to arming and advising anti-Gaddafi forces on the ground in pursuit of regime change. The Russians and Chinese had flagged this surreptitiously planned mission creep from the onset, and had warned that misuse of the R2P to justify armed intervention against a sovereign state government would set a bad precedent.

That is the precedent now being applied to Syria. The Russians and Chinese know full well that external intervention in Syria in pursuit of regime change is on the cards, using R2P as the justification. They also know that military intervention in Syria, should it come, has nothing to do with protecting innocents and all to do with the geopolitical balance in the Levant.

That is where realism enters the equation. China and Russia are partners of Iran. Iran is the Assad’s regime’s closest ally. Under Assad Syria has facilitated the extension of Iranian influence in Lebanon and Gaza by providing land routes for the provision of Iranian weapons, money and advisors to Hezbollah and Hamas. Should the minority Allawite Assad regime fall to a Sunni-majority coalition, then Iran will likely see its influence curtailed significantly, which in turn places Hamas and Hezbollah at greater risk from their enemies (Israel in particular). Moreover, Russia has a military base in Syria and has long been a strong military ally of the Assads. Taken together with Chinese and Russian diplomatic and commercial ties to Tehran, the Assad regime’s forced demise could spell trouble. It will remove a source of Russian influence in the MIddle East. Amid all the sabre-rattling about Iran’s nuclear weapons program, it will leave Iran feeling more vulnerable, at least in its own eyes, to Western machinations and internal subversion at home. This not only increases the risk of war but diminishes China and Russia’s ability to act as negotiators between Tehran and the West. Thus the fall of Assad means a diminution of their respective influence in that part of the world.

Thus, by standing on principle (non-intervention in sovereign states), Moscow and Beijing are protecting their geopolitical interests, and their relationship with Iran in particular. It may seem callous for them to do so in what increasingly looks like a civil war between the Assad regime and its people, but it is also in their short-term interest to do so. By holding their UNSC veto power, they can exercise leverage in pursuit of a more favorable accommodation that, if it does not allow Assad to remain in power, does protect their respective spheres of influence in the Middle East.

That is what is behind the double veto. In the absence of universal values and standards in the global community (due to the so-called anarchic state of nature that all realists perceive as the founding principle of international relations), the matter boils down to national interest and the exercise of power in pursuit of it. As such, Russia and China are just doing what they have to do to ensure an outcome more favorable to their respective interests, and by that logic humanitarian appeals and the invocation of the R2P simply have no place as either genuine concerns or as ruses designed to camouflage external meddling in Syrian affairs.

Sad but true.