Let’s talk more about Aukus - Heather du Plessis-Allan

Britain's Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (right), meets with US President Joe Biden and Prime Minister of Australia Anthony Albanese (left), at Point Loma naval base in San Diego, US, on March 13, 2023, as part of Aukus, a trilateral security pact between Australia, the UK, and the US. Photo / AP

OPINION

At least we’re talking about Aukus.

We don’t normally talk much about international affairs in New Zealand. That is a peculiarity of our country.

It’s probably because of our isolation. That isolation brings us relative safety. And because we’re pretty safe and not much threatened by what goes on in the rest of the world, we don’t really care all that much what happens out there.

But we’ve been breaking our habit by talking about Aukus a lot lately.

Mostly we’ve got Helen Clark and Don Brash to thank for that. They’re making a pretty good fist of voicing their concerns.

So has Richard Prebble recently.

And so has the Labour Party, by bringing former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr over this week to call it “fragrant, methane-wrapped bullshit”.

The trouble with the Labour Party though is that they have no credibility opposing Aukus now that they’re out of power when this time last year they were “willing to explore” joining it.

They really are feeble on this stuff. Aukus is basically the reverse of the u-turn they pulled on the TPPA when they had multiple MPs turning up to rallies hating on it while they were in Opposition, only for them to sign it when they were in power.

Still, Labour Party opportunism aside, at least they’re encouraging the debate about Aukus.

The truth is, the case for New Zealand signing up to Aukus hasn’t been made.

Former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr, flanked by former prime minister Helen Clark and Labour MP David Parker, during the public panel discussion about Pillar II of the AUKUS security partnership, Parliament, Wellington. Photo / Mark Mitchell

If we’re keen on joining - and we clearly are - why are we keen on joining? What do we get out of it? And so far, it sounds like not a lot.

Given that it’s a military partnership, what we’d probably want is a guarantee of protection, so that if the bad guys attack us, all the other countries signed up to Aukus promise to come help us. Geopolitical analyst Geoffrey Miller’s taken a look at Aukus and reckons it wouldn’t give us that.

As far as we can tell, it just gives us potential trouble. The biggest risk is that it pisses off China, our biggest trading partner.

So far, we’ve managed to get away with a fair bit with China. We’ve tried a few things on, including just a few weeks ago accusing Chinese state-backed hackers of breaking into our parliamentary system. China has waved it through. But there must be a point at which China won’t wave it through anymore, and it would be incredibly damaging to our economy to discover what that point is.

Winston Peters seems very keen on us joining Aukus. It sounded like a fait accompli after his meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week. The pair released a joint statement saying they both “see powerful reasons for New Zealand engaging practically with” Aukus.

Given the usual diplomatic secrecy around stuff like this, it’s hard to know what his attraction to Aukus is.

It seems based on the worst-case possibility of the West going to war with China, given it’s something of an open secret that Aukus aims to contain China.

It’s not as if New Zealand joining Aukus will prevent China acting up. We’re just not important enough for China to change its strategy based on what we do. So it can’t be that.

In which case, the attraction to us joining must be in preparation for China acting up. Which means the possibility of war.

But do we want to go to war?

That is a choice. We don’t have to. We could sit it out. We would obviously be on the side of the West because we could never take China’s side and fight against the West. But we don’t have to actually go to war.

If we sign up to Aukus though it’s a no-brainer that it increases the chances that we end up going to war in this hypothetical, dystopian future.

If that is the reason Winston is discussing Aukus - if that’s what Winston is worried about - then it’s a damned good thing we’re talking about it.