The repeal of Roe vs Wade by the US Supreme Court is part of a broader “New Conservative” agenda financed by reactionary billionaires like Peter Thiel, Elon Mush, the Kochs and Murdochs (and others), organised by agitators like Steve Bannon and Rodger Stone and legally weaponised by Conservative (often Catholic) judges who are Federalist Society members. The agenda, as Clarence Thomas openly (but partially) stated, is to roll back the rights of women, ethnic and sexual minorities as part of an attempt to re-impose a heteronormative patriarchal Judeo-Christian social order in the US.
Worse, the influence of these forces radiates outwards from the US into places like NZ, where the rhetoric, tactics and funding of rightwing groups increasingly mirrors that of their US counterparts. Although NZ is not as institutionally fragile as the US, such foreign influences are corrosive of basic NZ social values because of their illiberal and inegalitarian beliefs. In fact, they are deliberately seditious in nature and subversive in intent. Thus, if we worry about the impact of PRC influence operations in Aotearoa, then we need to worry equally about these.
In fact, of the two types of foreign interference, the New Conservative threat is more immediate and prone to inciting anti-State and sectarian violence. Having now been established in NZ under the mantle of anti-vax/mask/mandate/”free speech” resistance, it is the 5th Column that needs the most scrutiny by our security authorities.
Selwyn Manning and I discussed the upcoming NATO Leader’s summit (to which NZ Prime Minister Ardern is invited), the rival BRICS Leader’s summit and what they could mean for the Ruso-Ukrainian Wa and beyond.
In the latest episode of AVFA Selwyn Manning and I discuss the evolution of Latin American politics and macroeconomic policy since the 1970s as well as US-Latin American relations during that time period. We use recent elections and the 2022 Summit of the Americas as anchor points.
Coming on the heels of the recently signed Solomon Islands-PRC bilateral economic and security agreement, the whirlwind tour of the Southwestern Pacific undertaken by PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi has generated much concern in Canberra, Washington DC and Wellington as well as in other Western capitals. Wang and the PRC delegation came to the Southwestern Pacific bearing gifts in the form of offers of developmental assistance and aid, capacity building (including cyber infrastructure), trade opportunities, economic resource management, scholarships and security assistance, something that, as in the case of the Solomons-PRC bilateral agreement, caught the “traditional” Western patrons by surprise. With multiple stops in Kiribati, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, PNG, Vanuatu and East Timor and video conferencing with other island states, Wang’s visit represents a bold outreach to the Pacific Island Forum community.
A couple of days ago I did a TV interview about the trip and its implications. Although I posted a link to the interview, I thought that I would flesh out was what unsaid in the interview both in terms of broader context as well as some of the specific issues canvassed during the junket. First, in order to understand the backdrop to recent developments, we must address some key concepts. Be forewarned: this is long.
China on the Rise and Transitional Conflict.
For the last three decades the PRC has been a nation on the ascent. Great in size, it is now a Great Power with global ambitions. It has the second largest economy in the world and the largest active duty military, including the largest navy in terms of ships afloat. It has a sophisticated space program and is a high tech world leader. It is the epicenter of consumer non-durable production and one of the largest consumers of raw materials and primary goods in the world. Its GDP growth during that time period has been phenomenal and even after the Covid-induced contraction, it has averaged well over 7 percent yearly growth in the decade since 2011.
The list of measures of its rise are many so will not be elaborated upon here. The hard fact is that the PRC is a Great Power and as such is behaving on the world stage in self-conscious recognition of that fact. In parallel, the US is a former superpower that has now descended to Great Power status. It is divided domestically and diminished when it comes to its influence abroad. Some analysts inside and outside both countries believe that the PRC will eventually supplant the US as the world’s superpower or hegemon. Whether that proves true or not, the period of transition between one international status quo (unipolar, bipolar or multipolar) is characterised by competition and often conflict between ascendent and descendent Great Powers as the contours of the new world order are thrashed out. In fact, conflict is the systems regulator during times of transition. Conflict may be diplomatic, economic or military, including war. As noted in previous posts, wars during moments of international transition are often started by descendent powers clinging or attempting a return to the former status quo. Most recently, Russia fits the pattern of a Great Power in decline starting a war to regain its former glory and, most importantly, stave off its eclipse. We shall see how that turns out.
Spheres of Influence.
More immediate to our concerns, the contest between ascendent and descendent Great Powers is seen in the evolution of their spheres of influence. Spheres of influence are territorially demarcated areas in which a State has dominant political, economic, diplomatic and military sway. That does not mean that the areas in question are as subservient as colonies (although they may include former colonies) or that this influence is not contested by local or external actors. It simply means at any given moment some States—most often Great Powers—have distinct and recognized geopolitical spheres of influence in which they have primacy of interest and operate as the dominant regional actor.
In many instances spheres of influence are the object of conquest by an ascendent power over a descendent power. Historic US dominance of the Western Hemisphere (and the Philippines) came at the direct expense of a Spanish Empire in decline. The rise of the British Empire came at the expense of the French and Portuguese Empires, and was seen in its appropriation of spheres of influence that used to be those of its diminished competitors. The British and Dutch spheres of influence in East Asia and Southeast Asia were supplanted by the Japanese by force, who in turn was forced in defeat to relinquish regional dominance to the US. Now the PRC has made its entrance into the West Pacific region as a direct peer competitor to the US.
Peripheral, Shatter and Contested Zones.
Not all spheres of influence have equal value, depending on the perspective of individual States. In geopolitical terms the world is divided into peripheral zones, shatter zones and zones of contestation. Peripheral zones are areas of the world where Great Power interests are either not in play or are not contested. Examples would be the South Pacific for most of its modern history, North Africa before the discovery of oil, the Andean region before mineral and nitrate extraction became feasible or Sub-Saharan Africa until recently. In the modern era spheres of influence involving peripheral zones tend to involve colonial legacies without signifiant economic value.
Shatter zones are those areas where Great Power interests meet head to head, and where spheres of influence clash. They involve territory that has high economic, cultural or military value. Central Europe is the classic shatter zone because it has always been an arena for Great Power conflict. The Middle East has emerged as a potential shatter zone, as has East Asia. The basic idea is that these areas are zones in which the threat of direct Great Power conflict (rather than via proxies or surrogates) is real and imminent, if not ongoing. Given the threat of escalation into nuclear war, conflict in shatter zones has the potential to become global in nature. That is a main reason why the Ruso-Ukrainian War has many military strategists worried, because the war is not just about Russia and Ukraine or NATO versus Russian spheres of influence.
In between peripheral and shatter zones lie zones of contestation. Contested zones are areas in which States vie for supremacy in terms of wielding influence, but short of direct conflict. They are often former peripheral zones that, because of the discovery of material riches or technological advancements that enhance their geopolitical value, become objects of dispute between previously disinterested parties. Contested zones can eventually become part of a Great Power’s sphere of influence but they can also become shatter zones when Great Power interests are multiple and mutually disputed to the point of war.
Strategic Balancing.
The interplay of States in and between their spheres of influence or as subjects of Great Power influence-mongering is at the core of what is known as strategic balancing. Strategic balancing is not just about relative military power and its distribution, but involves the full measure of a State’s capabilities, including hard, soft, smart and sharp powers, as it is brought to bear on its international relations.
That is the crux of what is playing out in the South Pacific today. The South Pacific is a former peripheral zone that has long been within Western spheres of influence, be they French, Dutch, British and German in the past and French, US and (as allies and junior partners) Australia and New Zealand today. Japan tried to wrest the West Pacific from Western grasp and ultimately failed. Now the PRC is making its move to do the same, replacing the Western-oriented sphere of influence status quo with a PRC-centric alternative.
The reason for the move is that the Western Pacific, and particularly the Southwestern Pacific has become a contested zone given technological advances and increased geopolitical competition for primary good resource extraction in previously unexploited territories. With small populations dispersed throughout an area ten times the size of the continental US covering major sea lines of communication, trade and exchange and with valuable fisheries and deep water mineral extraction possibilities increasingly accessible, the territory covered by the Pacific Island Forum countries has become a valuable prize for the PRC in its pursuit of regional supremacy. But in order to achieve this objective it must first displace the West as the major extra-regional patron of the Pacific Island community. That is a matter of strategic balancing as a prelude to achieving strategic supremacy.
Three Island Chains and Two Level Games.
The core of the PRC strategy rests in a geopolitical conceptualization known as the “three island chains” This is a power projection perspective based on the PRC eventually gaining control of three imaginary chains of islands off of its East Coast. The first island chain, often referred to those included in the PRC’s “Nine Dash Line” mapping of the region, is bounded by Japan, Northwestern Philippines, Northern Borneo, Malaysia and Vietnam and includes all the waters within it. These are considered to be the PRC’s “inner sea” and its last line of maritime defense. This is a territory that the PRC is now claiming with its island-building projects in the South China Sea and increasingly assertive maritime presence in the East China Sea and the straits connecting them south of Taiwan.
The second island chain extends from Japan to west of Guam and north of New Guinea and Sulawesi in Indonesia, including all of the Philippines, Malaysian and Indonesian Borneo and the island of Palau. The third island chain, more aspirational than achievable at the moment, extends from the Aleutian Islands through Hawaii to New Zealand. It includes all of the Southwestern Pacific island states. It is this territory that is being geopolitically prepared by the PRC as a future sphere of influence, and which turns it into a contested zone.
The PRC approach to the Southwestern Pacific can be seen as a Two Level game. On one level the PRC is attempting to negotiate bilateral economic and security agreements with individual island States that include developmental aid and support, scholarship and cultural exchange programs, resource management and security assistance, including cyber security, police training and emergency security reinforcement in the event of unrest as well as “rest and re-supply” and ”show the flag” port visits by PLAN vessels. The Solomon Island has signed such a deal, and Foreign Minister Wang has made similar proposals to the Samoan and Tongan governments (the PRC already has this type of agreement in place with Fiji). The PRC has signed a number of specific agreements with Kiribati that lay the groundwork for a more comprehensive pact of this type in the future. With visits to Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and East Timor still to come, the approach has been replicated at every stop on Minister Wang’s itinerary. Each proposal is tailored to individual island State needs and idiosyncrasies, but the general blueprint is oriented towards tying development, trade and security into one comprehensive package.
None of this comes as a surprise. For over two decades the PRC has been using its soft power to cultivate friends and influence policy in Pacific Island states. Whether it is called checkbook or debt diplomacy (depending on whether developmental aid and assistance is gifted or purchased), the PRC has had considerable success in swaying island elite views on issues of foreign policy and international affairs. This has helped prepare the political and diplomatic terrain in Pacific Island capitals for the overtures that have been made most recently. That is the thrust of level one of this strategic game.
That opens the second level play. With a number of bilateral economic and security agreements serving as pillars or pilings, the PRC intends to propose a multinational regional agreement modeled on them. The first attempt at this failed a few days ago, when Pacific Island Forum leaders rejected it. They objected to a lack of detailed attention to specific concerns like climate change mitigation but did not exclude the possibility of a region-wide compact sometime in the future. That is exactly what the PRC wanted, because now that it has the feedback to its initial, purposefully vague offer, it can re-draft a regional pact tailored to the specific shared concerns that animate Pacific Island Forum discussions. Even if its rebuffed on second, third or fourth attempts, the PRC is clearly employing a “rinse, revise and repeat” approach to the second level aspect of the strategic game.
An analogy the captures the PRC approach is that of an off-shore oil rig. The bilateral agreements serve as the pilings or legs of the rig, and once a critical mass of these have been constructed, then an overarching regional platform can be erected on top of them, cementing the component parts into a comprehensive whole. In other words, a sphere of influence.
Vietnamese Oil Rig in a contested zone.
Western Reaction: Knee-Jerk or Nuanced?
The reaction amongst the traditional patrons has been expectedly negative. Washington and Canberra sent off high level emissaries to Honiara once the Solomon Islands-PRC deal was leaked before signature, in a futile attempt to derail it. The newly elected Australian Labor government has sent its foreign minister, sworn into office under urgency, twice to the Pacific in two weeks (Fiji, Tonga and Samoa) in the wake of Minister Wang’s visits. The US is considering a State visit for Fijian Prime Minister (and former dictator) Frank Baimimarama. The New Zealand government has warned that a PRC military presence in the region could be seriously destabilising and signed on to a joint US-NZ statement at the end of Prime Minister Ardern’s trade and diplomatic junket to the US re-emphasising (and deepening) the two countries’ security ties in the Pacific pursuant to the Wellington and Washington Agreements of a decade ago.
The problem with these approaches is two-fold, one general and one specific. If countries like New Zealand and its partners proclaim their respect for national sovereignty and independence, then why are they so perturbed when a country like the Solomon Islands signs agreements with non-traditional patrons like the PRC? Besides the US history of intervening in other countries militarily and otherwise, and some darker history along those lines involving Australian and New Zealand actions in the South Pacific, when does championing of sovereignty and independence in foreign affairs become more than lip service? Since the PRC has no history of imperialist adventurism in the South Pacific and worked hard to cultivate friends in the region with exceptional displays of material largesse, is it not a bit neo-colonial paternalistic of Australia, NZ and the US to warn Pacific Island states against engagement with it? Can Pacific Island states not find out themselves what is in store for them should they decide to play the Two Level Game?
More specifically, NZ, Australia and the US have different security perspectives regarding the South Pacific. The US has a traditional security focus that emphasises great power competition over spheres of influence, including the Western Pacific Rim. It has openly said that the PRC is a threat to the liberal, rules-based international order (again, the irony abounds) and a growing military threat to the region (or at least US military supremacy in it). As a US mini-me or Deputy Sheriff in the Southern Hemisphere, Australia shares the US’s traditional security perspective and emphasis when it comes to threat assessments, so its strategic outlook dove-tails nicely with its larger 5 Eyes partner.
New Zealand, however, has a non-traditional security perspective on the Pacific that emphasises the threats posed by climate change, environmental degradation, resource depletion, poor governance, criminal enterprise, poverty and involuntary migration. As a small island state, NZ sees itself in a solidarity position with and as a champion of its Pacific Island neighbours when it comes to representing their views in international fora. Yet it is now being pulled by its Anglophone partners into a more traditional security perspective when it comes to the PRC in the Pacific, something that in turn will likely impact on its relations with the Pacific Island community, to say nothing of its delicate relationship with the PRC.
In any event, the Southwestern Pacific is a microcosmic reflection of an international system in transition. The issue is whether the inevitable conflicts that arise as rising and falling Great Powers jockey for position and regional spheres of influence will be resolved via coercive or peaceful means, and how one or the other means of resolution will impact on their allies, partners and strategic objects of attention such as the Pacific Island community.
In the words of the late Donald Rumsfeld, those are the unknown unknowns.
I got up early to do a TV interview about the recent (and ongoing) trip by the PRC foreign minister around the SW Pacific looking to sign bilateral and multilateral agreements. I never got to discuss the concept of “sphere of influence” as it applies to the power play, nor the fact that the territorial size and resource exploitation potential of any potential PRC-Pacific Island community multilateral economic and security agreement would mark a major shift in the Pacific strategic balance of power. But I did get to try and put the recent moves in broader context, which is unusual for a TV talking head. You can see the interview here.
In this week’s “A View from Afar” podcast Selwyn Manning and I speculate on how the Ruso-Ukrainian War will shape future regional security dynamics. We start with NATO and work our way East to the Northern Pacific. It is not comprehensive but we outline some potential ramifications with regard to Western, Russian and even Chinese responses to the war. Bottom line is that no matter what the outcome, Russia comes out of the war diminished on the diplomatic, economic and military fronts, which in turn changes the regional security landscape moving forward. The episode is here.
After a brief hiatus, the “A View from Afar” podcast is back on air with Selwyn Manning leading the Q&A with me. This week is a grab bag of topics: Russian V-Day celebrations, Asian and European elections, and the impact of the PRC-Solomon Islands on the regional strategic balance. Plus a bunch more. Check it out.
For the last three decades the global geopolitical system has been in a state of transition. It first transited from the tight bi-polar arrangement of the Cold War, where two nuclear superpowers with closely integrated alliance systems (NATO and the Warsaw Pact, plus other related networks) strategicaly balanced each other by deterrence through credible counterforce. That is, the threat of nuclear counter-strikes prevented first use of those weapons and limited conflicts to conventional and unconventional wars in regions and theatres that were considered peripheral rather than shatter zones because the threat of escalation into nuclear war in those regions was low. Conversely, conventional wars in places like Central Europe were shatter zones because the possibility of escalation into nuclear war was distinctly feasible.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world transited to a unipolar geopolitical order, where the US reigned supreme (as the “hegemonic” power, in international relations parlance) over all adversaries and allies on both military and economic dimensions. Conflicts became increasingly “small,” meaning that wars tended to involve minor or failed states and/or non-state ideological actors that at best served as proxies for inter-state conflict (say, Iranian clients like Hamas and Hizbollah versus Israel).
What inter-state conflict did occur was limited and short. Irregular conflicts simmered and sputtered but posed no existential threat to either the hegemonic power or its alliance networks. After a period of glasnost (openness and transparency) in its foreign and domestic affairs and perestroika (reconstruction and reform) of its political institutions in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Russians retrenched at home and retreated from major commitments abroad. Several Warsaw Pact states became NATO members, and after the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 the PRC began liberalising under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin. The “new world order” of the 1990s was a time of relative peace under what was then the dominant international relations ideology of the time (at least in the West): liberal internationalism, where the combination of democratic governments and free markets were considered to be the best possible political-economic combination. By analytic extension, the more nation-states adopted that combination, the less likely there would be wars between them. This was construed in foreign policy practice as the Pax Americana, which was theoretically grounded in a liberal internationalist sub-concept known as the democratic peace thesis (I am crudely summarizing here but readers will get the drift).
The unipolar world ended on September 11, 2001. It was not the spectacular terrorist attacks on US symbols of power that undermined the “hegemon.” It was its response.
In a classic sucker ploy (where a weaker belligerent provokes an over-reaction from a stronger opponent), Osama bin-Laden and his comrades provoked the US into its own type of Crusade, where not only did it invade Afghanistan in order to hunt down bin-Laden and other al-Qaeda events in that country, but also in order to overthrow and replace the Taliban regime that gave them shelter. Using the ruse of promoting democracy, the US then invaded Iraq under the pretext that it was somehow involved with al-Qaeda (it was not) and also was preparing to launch weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) against Israel and other Western targets (it was not). The US then expanded the scope of anti-jihadist operations world-wide, with special operations forces dispersed throughout the globe looking Islamicists of all stripes.
With that, the W. Bush administration turned liberal internationalism into a form of neo-imperialist hubris whereby it sought to redraw the map of the Middle East by conquering Iraq and turning it into a large US base, which it believed would not only make it easier to project force into Africa and Central Asia but also intimidate Iran and undermine Saudi and Emirati control of world oil supplies once Iraqi oil production resumed under US guidance (it did neither).
Instead, the US was sucked into a 20 year irregular war of a thousand cuts in Afghanistan and a ten year war of occupation in Iraq that gave rise to ISIS out of the ashes of the Iraqi Sunni rebellion (especially in Anbar and Najaf Governorates, where Sunnis were targeted by US forces because of their support for Saddam Hussein). Both turned out to be wars of attrition in which the will and commitment of the US public to them waned rapidly while local insurgents remained steadfast in spite of incalculable losses, which then became a political issue that Donald Trump eventually was able to exploit in his presidential campaign with his commitment to withdrawing troops from both countries (Barak Obama had initiated the process of withdrawals but they were ongoing during the 2016 US presidential election campaign).
During the time that the US pursued these wars of opportunity (since neither involved fighting an existential threat to the US that would have defined them as wars of necessity), its main rivals, Russia and China, politically regrouped, militarily rearmed, economically reintegrated into the global system of production, trade and exchange, and began to project power abroad. The US was able to cajole and coerce friends and allies into supporting the “War on Terror” around the world, but its two main rivals sat those conflicts out and used the window of opportunity to re-establish themselves as the giant’s rivals.
In addition, other powers began to emerge during the early 2000s and 2010s, especially India, Brazil and restored powers like Germany and Japan along with non-democratic states like Turkey and Iran. Under the Obama administration the US tacitly admitted the inevitability of geopolitical change and attempted to accomodate and channel the aspirations of the emerging and reemerging powers. Then, in the political equivalent of the last gasp of a drowning person, Trump reversed course and tried to grasp at one final attempt at global supremacy even while withdrawing from the world stage in order to focus on his domestic national-populist project. He misconstrued military capability and economic nationalism as primary measures of national strength and ignored the concepts of soft and smart power. He turned a relatively straight-forward pandemic mitigation effort into a ideological civil war over masks, mandates and vaccines, further dividing the country in the process. Along with his bullying of allies and his kowtowing and fawning to adversaries, his administration was the straw the broke the hegemon’s back. The world is now a different place and the US is no longer the only hub around which global wheel revolves.
Although the balance between ascendent and descendent states in the merging multipolar system is fluid and as of yet not fully established, what is clear is the the global geopolitical order has moved from a unipolar to a multipolar configuration in which the US is no longer the sole superpower but now one among several great powers. It may not like it, but its internal political and social divisions and over-extension in fruitless wars has exhausted the US capability to maintain its hegemonic status.
There is much more to the transitional dynamics that have marked international relations since 1990, but the gist is clear: we live in a period of transition that is seeing the emergence and consolidation of a new multipolar geopolitical order.
There is good news and bad news in this changing panorama. On the one hand, multipolar systems are considered by international relations scholars to be more stable that unipolar or bipolar systems. That is because a unipolar world breeds resentment and subversion on the part of would-be pretenders to the throne, and bi-polar systems limit state’s independence of action in foreign affairs because they have to chose between two opposing camps. The non-aligned movement (NAM) tried to straddle the fence during the Cold War, but other than India most of those who adhered to geopolitical neutrality wound up being marginalised or eventually forced to chose a side.
A multipolar world, preferably a system dominated by 3, 5 or 7 great powers, is more stable because those powers can balance each other on specific issues and form tactical coalitions to achieve majority outcomes on disputed subjects. Minor powers can ally or align with individual great powers on specific areas of mutual concern, thereby giving diplomatic “depth” or “weight” to those areas in the face of opposition from other great powers (say, on climate change or arms control). The operative premise is that the strategic balance is malleable and contingent: malleable because the specific coalition of great power partners changes over time based on their contingent agreement or disagreement on distinct matters within an overall framework of self-interested, yet collective respect.
The down side of the transition from one international order to another is that the transitional “moment”–which can last decades before being consolidated as a new status quo–is marked by an erosion of international norms and rules, increased violations of them, and by default the use of conflict as a systems regulator. Conflict may be economic, diplomatic, social, military or a combination thereof. It involves clashes between ascendent and descendent powers, that is, powers that are in decline and those that are in international ascendence. In most cases conflicts are initiated by descendent powers attempting to preserve or cling to the extant status quo and their positions within it. The trouble is that by the time a nation-state realises it is in decline and attempts to forestall its eclipse by others, it is too late. Confronted by the spectre of irreversible withering, sclerosis or collapse, descendent powers resort to all that they have left. War. And they lose those wars, which hastens their demise as great powers.
WW1 is a good example of this syndrome. The Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires were descendent powers when war broke out. The Axis was defeated by a coalition led by the UK and France (at the height of their powers) belatedly joined by the US. Although the Tsarist regime was on the winning side of the war its Army disintegrated during fighting that left both Russian society and the Tsarists exhausted by the effort (and therefor ripe for revolution). It was overthrown and replaced by the Bolsheviks in 1917-23. As a result of defeat, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was dismembered. The US benefitted from its late arrival to the fray because its military-industrial complex enjoyed its first real Industrial Revolution moment of growth, something that sustained its rise to pre-eminence over the subsequent course of the 20th century (and many wars). As Poulantzas noted, in wars amongst Great Powers, the weak links in the imperialist chain wind up defeated by the stronger ones.
A brief aside here for those academically inclined. Although long time readers will know that I am a realist at heart, having studied under Hans Morgenthau and Henry Kissinger (and Albert Wohlstetter about nuclear strategy!), this analysis conforms to the systems school of international relations theory pioneered by Morton A. Kaplan, who I also studied under. Systems theory is a macro-level theory in the sense that it seeks to explain the workings of an (entire) unit of study in the aggregate rather than as the combined behaviour of its component parts. Realist international theory explains the behaviour of the component parts and the impact of their aggregated interaction, so is a meso-level theory when it comes to foreign policy analysis and international relations scholarship. Study of domestic sources of foreign policy behaviour round out the theoretical whole by focusing on micro-level approaches to international relations theory (the so-called “Second Image”).
There is plenty of reason to use realism, idealism or constructivism to explain the rise and decline of States in a process of international geopolitical transition, but here I have chosen to stick with a systems approach because there are plenty of analyses that explain individual state and multinational behaviour over the short-term.That has been the case with contemporary analyses of the Ruso-Ukrainian war.
Returning to the matter of transitional dynamics and for reasons outlined above, it has long been assumed that the great power in decline that was most inclined to war would be the US. The indicators are all there: social malaise, hyper partisanship, political sclerosis and corruption, economic decay, racial division, public and private unrest and violence, vulgarisation of popular culture, reification of xenophobic militarism and false patriotism. The symptoms are many and indeed the US has been trapped in a cycle of endless wars that mainly serve the interests of the military-industrial complex that profit from them and the politicians who enable and abet them (however the material benefits of war wind up trickling down to shareholders and employees of the complex).
But it turns out that while the US is a relatively young power that has managed to weather (not manage) its decline so far, there is another country whose descent is longer term and irreversible: Russia. That is why it has resorted to invading Ukraine, and that is why it is doomed to fail whether it “wins” or loses.
The Russian Empire once extended across three continents from the Eastern Shores of Siberia and Northern and Central Asia deep into Scandinavia, the Baltics, Caucasus’s, Persian and Ottomon territories and Alaska. It was the third largest Empire to have existed.
Russian Empire, 1866
Since then it has lost territory all along its former borders and, in spite of political reorganisation under the Soviets (into the Soviet Union (USSR)), it has not been able to maintain its once vaunted status in spite of being on the victorious side in WW2 and acquiring nuclear weapons. After the Cold War it has seen former “protectorates” join NATO and/or the EU and faced Islamicist irredentism in areas with significant Muslim populations like Chechnya. It has invaded and annexed territory in Georgia and Ukraine after they flirted with NATO membership. It has propped up the Assad regime in Syria and meddled in post-Gaddafi Libya as a way of demonstrating power projection capability.
After a decade trying to adopt democracy, it returned to personalist autocratic rule under Vladimir Putin, and because of the way perestroika was mismanaged by opportunists in the newly privatised former state enterprise sector in the wake of the USSR’s collapse, it has become a kleptocracy of epic proportions (hence the constant reference to oligarchs who made their money in less than honourable ways).
But there is more to Russian decline than its political and economic criminality. It has a declining birth rate and worsening health indicators. It has absurdly high levels of alcoholism. It has no genuine entrepreneurial sector, including in high technology. The much vaunted Russian hackers use Western technologies to do so, and basic industrial non-durables like tractors, automobiles and aircraft (once staples of Soviet production) are increasingly Western in origin. It has become reliant on fossil fuel exports for the bulk of its GDP. Its black market economies, be they trafficking in drugs, currency, pornography or humans (sometimes together), rival the “real” Russian economy in terms of size and scope.
There is much more to it but the picture should be clear. Russia has been on a long term decline since the early 20th century regardless of pogroms, putches, purges and reforms in and of its institutional bases. Since 1991 that slide has accelerated, ending in Putin’s desperate gamble to invade Ukraine.
The immediate justification for the invasion was that Russian geopolitical perspectives have always emphasised having “buffers” along their borders. Russia has the longest land borders in the world and, since the days of Empire, has always been apprehensive about controlling them. When the USSR collapse it resisted and warned against but could do nothing about NATO expansion up to its Western borders, with Estonia and Latvia becoming NATO members as well as former Warsaw Pact countries such as Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Rumania and Bulgaria. Whatever NATO’s intentions were at the beginning, it is clear that many of the former Warsaw Pact members asked to join NATO precisely because of their experience with the USSR. In retrospect it may have been foolhardy to ignore Russian warnings about the existential nature of the threat posed by NATO on its borders, but whatever the case, when Ukraine pondered the possibility of joining NATO, that became a key precipitant reason why the Russians decided to invade it (remembering that the 2014 invasion of the Dombas and Crimea was done for the exact same reason).
But this must be seen against the backdrop of long-term decline. In July 2021 Putin gave a speech emphasising the Russian origins of all Slavic people and openly mentioned the glory days of the Russian Empire. He and his associates have spoken of a Russian-centric sphere of influence ranging from “Lisbon to Vladivostok.” It is clear that such talk is destined for domestic consumption and part of a propaganda effort to get the Russian people behind Putin’s project of restoring the Motherland’s grandeur. But it is delusional nevertheless. Whether Russia “wins” or loses in Ukraine, that will not resolve and reverse the long-term negative trends that plague the country and may well accelerate them (for example, the exodus of highly educated Russians to the West since the invasion began). Even in the closed world of the Siloviki that surround Putin as a type of Praetorian Guard, there surely is little true belief that the long-term Russian decline can be arrested by a territorial grab of a neighbouring Slavic country with ethnic Russians inhabiting parts of it. As the war has already shown, being ethnic Russian and Russian speaking in the Ukraine does not necessarily translate into love of Mother Russia or support for the invasion. So what do the Russians hope to get out of this venture?
Truth be told Russia will not be any better for this war. It is more isolated, more reviled, demonstrably weaker and militarily exposed by what is clearly a miscalculated over-reach by Putin and the Siloviki. If Russia manages to annex the Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine, it will be a temporary victory at best and instead serve as a stop-gap, finger-in-the-dike last resort attempt to stem the tide of national decline. Eventually it will be exposed for what it is and fail, especially because Ukraine and its Western partners will work hard to make it fail even in the event of annexation. Exposure of the real costs of the invasion in turn will lead to domestic unrest and political in-fighting in the Kremlin, something that will eventually leach out into society at large. The sum total of the events is that Russia will enter into crisis and perhaps retreat into a form of isolationist hibernation while internal forces fight for national political control. It will still have a large military as a deterrent to aggression against the homeland but in an ironic twist it will have returned to what the USSR was at the end of its reign: a military hollow shell protecting a dejected and alienated society.
The precipitants of the Ruso-Ukranian War may be immediate in nature, but its roots lie in long term Russian decline. At systemic level the war will serve as a regulating device that will remove a descendent Russia from the Great Power constellation that will become the new multipolar status quo. Whether it is followed in terminal descent by the US is a matter of conjecture, but as things stand Russia has become the poster child for long-term Imperial decline.
A few weeks ago it emerged that NZ Minister of Defence Peeni Henare had asked cabinet for approval to donate surplus NZDF Light Armoured Vehicles (LAVs) to Ukraine as part of the multilateral efforts to support the Ukrainian defence of its homeland against the Russian invasion that is now into its sixth week. A key to Ukrainian success has been the logistical resupply provided by NATO members, NATO partners (who are not NATO members) such as Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand (which has sent signals/technical intelligence officers, non-lethal military and humanitarian aid and money for weapons purchases to the UK and NATO Headquarters in Brussels for forward deployment). This includes lethal as well as non-lethal military supplies and humanitarian aid for those disposed and dislocated by the war (nearly 6 million Ukrainians have left the country, in the largest refuge flow in Europe since WW2).
Cabinet rejected the request, which presumably had the approval of the NZDF command before it was sent to the Minister’s desk. There has been speculation as to why the request was rejected and true to form, National, ACT and security conservatives criticised the move as more evidence of Labour’s weakness on security and intelligence matters. Conversely, some thought that the current level and mix of aid provided is sufficient. At the time I opined that perhaps Labour was keeping its powder dry for a future reconsideration or as a means of setting itself up as a possible interlocutor in a post-conflict negotiation scenario. Others were, again, less charitable when it comes to either the military or diplomatic logics at play.
Whatever the opinion about the cabinet decision to not send LAVs to Ukraine at this moment, we should think of any offer to contribute to the Ukrainian defence as a form of military diplomacy. As a NATO partner NZ was duty-bound to contribute something, even if as a token gesture of solidarity. Its material contributions amount to around NZ$30million, a figure that is dwarfed by the monetary contributions of the other three NATO partners, which total over NZ$100 million each. Japan and South Korea have not contributed lethal aid, focusing on non-lethal military supplies akin to those sent by the NZDF and humanitarian aid similar to that provided by NZ, but on much larger scale. In addition to its material contributions, NZ has 64 civilian and military personnel deployed in Europe as part of its Ukrainian support effort; Japan and South Korea have none (as far as is known). Australia has sent 20 Bushmaster armoured personnel carriers and military aid worth A$116 million, plus A$65 million in humanitarian aid. The number of Australian personnel sent has not been disclosed.
In this context, it is worth re-examining the question of whether surplus NZDF LAVs should be considered for donation to Ukraine. First, a summary of what they are.
The NZDF LAVs are made in Canada by General Dynamics Land Systems. The NZDF version are LAV IIIs (third generation) that were purchased to replace the old MII3 armoured personnel vehicles. Unlike the MII3s, the LAVs are 8-wheeled rather than tracked, making them unsuitable for sandy, swampy or boggy terrain but ideal for high speed (up to 100KPH) deployment on hard dirt tracks or paved roads. It carries 6-8 troops and a crew of three. It has a turret chain gun and secondary weapons systems, but needs to be up armoured in most combat situations that do not involve high speed incursions behind heavy armour (such as mounted or dismounted infantry rifleman patrols) A contract was let for the purchase of 105 units in 2001 by the 5th Labour Government fronted by its Defense Minister Mark Burton, and the bulk of the purchase were delivered by the end of 2004. Criticism rained in from all sides (including from me) that the LAVs were unsuited for the Pacific Region where they would most likely be deployed, and that the two battalion motorised infantry force envisioned by the Army (that would use all 105 LAVs) was unrealistic at best. Subsequent audits questioned the rational and extent of the purchase, but no action was taken to reverse it.
The NZDF LAVs saw action in Afghanistan as SAS support vehicles and later as infantry patrol vehicles in Bamiyan Province. A total of 8 were deployed, with one being destroyed by an IED. Two were deployed to the Napier police shootings in 2009, two were deployed to a siege in Kawerau in 2016 and several were deployed to Christchurch as post-earthquake security patrol vehicles in 2011. That is the extent of their operational life. The majority of the fleet are stationed/stored at Camp Waiouru, Camp Trentham and Camp Burnham. That brings us to their current status.
NZ Army has +/- 103 LAVs in inventory (besides the destroyed vehicle two are used for parts). It reportedly can crew +/- 40 LAVs max ( a total that includes vehicle operators and specialised mechanics). It has sold 22 to Chile with 8 more on sale. NZ bought the LAVs for +/-NZ$6.22 million/unit and it sold to the Chilean Navy for +/- NZ$902,270/unit. It may keep a further 3 for parts, leaving 70 in inventory. That leaves +/- 30 to spare if my figures are correct. NZDF says it needs all remaining +/-70 LAVs, which is aspirational, not practical, especially since the Army contracted to purchase 43 Australian-made Bushmaster APCs in 2020 that are designed to supplement, then replace the LAVs as they reach retirement age.
That makes the NZDF insistence on retaining 70 LAVs somewhat puzzling. Does it expect to eventually sell off all the long-mothballed and antiquated vehicles (LAVs are now into the fourth and fifth generation configurations) at anything more than pennies for dollars? Given strategic export controls, to whom might the LAVs be sold? Of those who would be acceptable clients (i.e. non-authoritarian human rights-abusing regimes) who would buy used LAVIIIs when newer versions are available that offer better value for money?
With that in mind, practicality would advise the MoD/NZDF to donate them to Ukraine even if, in the interest of diplomatic opacity, the LAVs are sent to a NATO member that can withstand Russian pressure to refuse the donation on behalf of the Ukrainians (say, Poland, Rumania or even Canada, which already has a large LAV fleet). From there the LAVs can be prepared for re-patriation to Ukraine. There can be other creative options explored with like-minded states that could involve equipment swaps or discounted bulk purchases and sales that facilitate the transit of the NZ LAVs to Ukrainian military stores in exchange for supplying NZDF future motorised/armoured requirements. The probabilities may not be infinite but what is practicable may be broader than what seems immediately possible.
Rest assured that the Ukrainians can use the LAVs even if they are +20 years old, need up-armouring and need to be leak-proofed to do serious water crossings (does the Chilean Navy and its Marines know this?). But the main reason for donating them is that the diplomatic benefit of the gift out-weighs its (still significant) military value. That is because NZ will be seen to be fully committed to putting its small but respected weight behind multilateral efforts to reaffirm the norm-based International order rather than just pay lip service to it. To be clear, even if making incremental gains in the Dombas region using scorched earth tactics, the military tide has turned against the Russians. Foreign weapons supplies are a big part of that, so the moment to join extant efforts seems favourable to NZ’s diplomatic image. The saying that diplomacy is cowardice masquerading as righteous principle might apply here but the immediate point is that by stepping up its contribution of “defensive” weapons to Ukraine (as all donated weapons systems are characterised), NZ will reap diplomatic benefits immediately and down the road.
As for the Russians. What can they do about it? Their means of retaliation against NZ are few and far between even if cyber warfare tactics are used against NZ targets. NZ has already levied sanctions against Russian citizens and companies in accordance with other Western democracies, so adding LAVs into the punitive mix is not going to significantly tilt the Russian response into something that NZ cannot withstand.
Given all of this, Cabinet may want to re-consider the NZDF desire to contribute to its NATO partner’s request above what has been offered so far. Unless there are hidden factors at play, gifting surplus LAVs to the defense of Ukrainian independence would be a reasonable way to do so. The practical questions are how to get them there (since RNZAF airlift capability realistically cannot) and how to get them in combat-ready condition in short order so those who can carry them to the war zone can use them immediately. Rather then let them rust in NZ waiting to be called into improbable service or waiting for a sale that is likely to never happen, the possibility of donating LAVs to the Ukrainian cause is worth more thought.
The Solomon Islands and PRC have signed a bilateral security pact. The news of the pact was leaked a month ago and in the last week the governments of both countries have confirmed the deal. However, few details have been released. What we do know is that Chinese police trainers are already working with the Solomons Island police on tactics like crowd control, firearms use, close protection and other operating procedures that have been provided by the Australian and New Zealand police since the end of the RAMSI peace-keeping mission in 2017. More Chinese cops are to come, likely to replace the last remnants of the OZ and NZ police contingents. What is novel is that the agreement allows the PRC to deploy security forces in order to protect Chinese investments and diaspora communities in the event of public unrest. That is understandable because the PRC is the biggest investor in the Solomon Islands (mostly in forestry) and Chinese expats and their properties and businesses have regularly been on the receiving end of mob violence when social and political tensions explode.
Allowing Chinese security forces to protect Chinese economic interests and ex-pats on foreign soil has brought a new twist to the usual security diplomacy boilerplate, one that could be emulated in other Pacific Island states with large Chinese populations. Given the large amounts of PRC economic assistance to Pacific Island states before and during the Belt and Road initiative, which has often been referred to as “dollar,” then “debt” diplomacy because it involves Chinese financing and/or the gifting of large developmental projects to island states in which imported Chinese labor is used and where it is suspected that PRC money was passed to local officials in order to grease the way for contracts to be let, the possibility of this new type of security agreement is now firmly on the diplomatic table.
Also very worth noting is that the SI-PRC agreement gives the Chinese Navy (PLAN) berthing and logistical support rights during port visits, with the Chinese ugrading the port of Honiara in order to accommodate the deep draft grey hulls that it will be sending that way. This has raised fears in Western security circles that the current deal is a precursor to a forward basing agreement like the one the PRC has with Djibouti, with PLA troops and PLAN vessels permanently stationed on a rotating basis on Solomon Islands soil. Given that the Solomon Islands sit astride important sea lanes connecting Australia (and New Zealand) with the Northwestern Pacific Rim as well as waters further East, this is seen as a move that will upset the strategic balance in the Southwest Pacific to the detriment of the Western-dominant status quo that currently exists.
The fear extends to concerns about the PRC inking similar agreements with Fiji (with whom its already has a port visit agreement), Samoa and Tonga. The PRC has invested heavily in all three countries and maintains signals collection facilities at its embassies in Suva and Nuku’alofa. A forward basing agreement with any of them would allow the PLAN to straddle the sea lanes between the Coral Sea and larger Pacific, effectively creating a maritime chokepoint for commercial and naval shipping.
Needless to say, the reaction in Australia, NZ and the US has been predictably negative and sometimes borderline hysterical. For example, recent reports out of Australia claim that Chinese troops could be on the ground in the Solomons within a month. If true and if some Australian/NZ commentators are correct in their assessments, the only implicit options left to reverse the PRC-Solomons security agreement in the diminishing time window before the PRC establishes a firm foothold in Honiara is either by fomenting a coup or by direct military intervention. Opposition (and pro-Taiwan) Malaitan militias might be recruited for either venture (the Solomons switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the PRC in 2019, something that was widely opposed on the island of Malaita). However, PM Sogavare already has PRC police in country and can invoke the new deal to get rapid response PRC units on the ground to quash an uprising or resist foreign military intervention. So the scene is set for a return to the nation-wide violence of two decades ago, but in which contending foreign intervention forces are joined to inter-tribal violence.
The agreement is also a test of NZ and OZ commitments to the principles of national sovereignty and self-determination. Left-leaning pundits see the deal as benign and Western concerns as patronizing, racist and evidence of a post-colonial mentality. Right-leaning mouthpieces see it as the first PRC toe- hold on its way to regional strategic domination (hence the need for pre-emptive action). Both the New Zealand and Australian governments have expressed concerns about the pact but stopped short of threatening coercive diplomacy to get Sogavare to reverse course and rescind the deal. Australia has sent its Minister for Pacific affairs to Honiara to express its concern and the US has sent a fairly high (Assistant Secretary) level delegation to reaffirm its commitment to regional peace and stability. NZ has refrained from sending a crisis diplomatic delegation to Honiara, perhaps because the Prime Minister is on an Asian junket in which the positives of newly signed made and cultural exchanges are being touted and negative developments are being downplayed. But having been involved with such contingency-planning matters in my past, intelligence and military agencies are well into gaming any number of short to medium term scenarios including those involving force, and their contingency planning scenarios may not be driven by respect for norms and principles involving Solomon Islands sovereignty, self-determination and foreign policy independence.
Conspicuous by their absence have been the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) and the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG). The former is the regional diplomatic grouping founded in 1971 and Headquartered in Suva, Fiji. It is comparable to the Organization of American States (OAS), Organization of African Unity (OAU) or Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO). It has several security clauses in its charter, including that 2000 Biketawa Declaration that sets the framework for regional crisis management and conflict resolution and which was invoked to authorise the Regional Assistance Mission for the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) from 2003-2017.
The latter was formally incorporated in 1988 (Fiji was admitted in 1996) as a Melanesian anti-colonial solidarity organization and trade and cultural facilitator involving PNG, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and the Kanak National Liberation Front (FLINKS) in New Caledonia. It subsequently admitted observer missions from Indonesia (now Associate Member), Timor Leste and the United Liberation Movement of West Papua.
Currently headquartered in Port Villa, Vanuatu, under Fiji’s leadership in the late 2000s it attempted to re-position itself as a regional security intervention body for Melanesia, (prompted by the unrest in the Solomons and Papua New Guinea in the early 2000s). That initiative never prospered and the MSG remains as more of a symbolic grouping than one with serious diplomatic weight in spite of the signing of an MSG regional trade agreement in 1996 (revised in 2005) and Fijian Prime Minister Bainimarama’s attempts to make it a vehicle for loftier ambitions.
Neither agency has weighed in at any significant length on the agreement or the response from the traditional Western patrons. That may have something to do with the PRC’s dollar diplomacy shifting regional perspectives on diplomacy and security, or perhaps has to do with long-standing unhappiness with the approaches of “traditional” Western patrons when it comes to broader issues of development and trade (since the PC-SI security deal also includes clauses about “humanitarian” and developmental assistance). The MSG silence is significant because it has the potential to serve as a regional peace-keeping force deployed mainly to deal with ethnic and tribal unrest in member states as well as inter-state conflict, thereby precluding the need for non-Melanesian powers to get involved in domestic or regional security matters. Either way, the absence of the Solomon Island’s closets neighbours in a glaring omission from diplomatic discussions about how to respond to the agreement.
That is a good reason for the PIF and MSG to be engaged in resolving the inevitable disputes that will arise amid the fallout from the PRC-SI security agreement. It could involve setting boundaries for foreign military operations (such as limiting foreign military presences to anti-poaching, anti-smuggling or anti-piracy missions) or limits to foreign military basing and fleet numbers. It could involve negotiating MSG control over domestic public order measures and operations in the event of internal unrest, including those involving the PRC and Western traditional patrons. The main point is that regional organizations take the lead in administering regional security affairs covering the nature and limits of bilateral relations between member states and extra-regional powers (including traditional patrons as well as newer aspirants).
Whatever happens, it might be best to wait until the agreement details are released (and it remains to be seen if they will be) and save the sabre rattling for then should the worst (Western) fears are realized. That sabre rattling scenario includes a refusal to release the full details of the pact or dishonesty in presenting its clauses (especially given PRC track record of misrepresentations regarding its ambitions in the South China Sea and the nature of the island-building projects on reefs claimed by other littoral states bordering it). Of course, if the agreement details are withheld or misrepresented or the PRC makes a pre-emptive move of forces anticipating the OZ/NZ coercive response, then all bets are off as to how things will resolve. The window of diplomatic opportunity to strike an equitable resolution to the issue is therefore short and the possibility of negative consequences in the event that it is not loom large over the Pacific community and beyond.
In other words, it is time for some hard-nosed geopolitical realist cards to be placed on the diplomatic table involving interlocutors big and small, regional and extra-regional, without post-colonial patronizing, anti-imperialist “whataboutism” or yellow fever-style fear-mongering. Because a new strategic balance is clearly in the making, and the only question remaining is whether it will be drafted by lead or on paper.
