Opinion: We don’t know how lucky we are, even in an uncertain world: Ryan Bridge

A woman, wearing a mask, rides a bike past Tiananmen Rostrum in Beijing. Photo / Getty Images

THE FACTS

• Living far from global conflicts, New Zealanders are insulated but not immune to geopolitical threats.
• Winston Peters warns of increasing nuclear risks as nations upgrade their arsenals.
• Christopher Luxon emphasises peace and trade, highlighting the importance of ongoing diplomacy.

Like most Kiwis, I love to travel. In 2014, I found myself living in Beijing, and one of the things I quickly learned to appreciate about home was the fresh, clean air.

While the smog has improved in China’s capital since I last visited, I can still remember the taste and feeling it left in my throat after a day walking the streets of Sanlitun. Blow your nose and the snot would come out black on tissue paper.

The air quality index would regularly hit above 400, which is pretty much apocalypse-level. Winter was the worst with heating systems and factories outside the city burning coal. People used to say a day exposed to Beijing’s thick air was the equivalent of smoking a packet of analogue cigarettes on the lungs.

When the city played host to an Apec summit that year, the skies miraculously turned blue. Rumour had it that the local authorities and central Government ordered factory closures to impress visiting politicians and the international press. So unusual was the sight of clear skies that locals coined the phrase “Apec blue” to describe it.

I’d taken for granted a breath of fresh air before leaving home but have appreciated it ever since leaving China.

I thought about that feeling this week as a newsreader’s broadcast on Iranian state television was interrupted by an Israeli missile exploding in the studio background.

Fighting in the Middle East, with a bloody war in Ukraine and a shifting geopolitical landscape, is cause for concern. But living in New Zealand, at such a distance from it all, insulates us from alarm.

I’m as guilty as the next Kiwi of complaining about the tyranny of distance but the fact is we’re bloody lucky to live far across the ocean and out of harm’s way. We’re at least 10,000km away from the nearest nuclear weapon launch site, whether it’s China’s Jingxian province or the United States’ Pacific coast.

That doesn’t mean we’re immune to threats and fallout from conflict, nor should we ignore them.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters this week remarked he’d never seen such uncertain geostrategic circumstances as the ones we’re currently living in.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute published its yearbook on Monday with a warning that the risk of a nuclear weapon being used is increasing.

Most of the nine nuclear-armed states are either upgrading or replacing their stockpiles. Over the next few years, the institute estimates the rate at which new nuclear warheads replace old ones will accelerate to the point where, for the first time since the Cold War era, we’ll have an overall increase in nuclear weapons.

Like every modern New Zealand Prime Minister before him, Christopher Luxon has been pushing a message of peace and free trade on the global stage, having attended bilateral talks in Beijing and a Nato leaders’ meeting in the Netherlands. It’s important to keep the diplomatic wheels spinning when it comes to trade and conflict, no matter how small our influence may be.

The failure of diplomacy is the cause of conflict but also the solution to it.

No matter how far from the front lines we may be, and how safe we may feel as a consequence, it doesn’t mean we don’t or shouldn’t care about the rest of the world.

We Kiwis love travelling the globe and experiencing all the complexities and differences it has to offer. In doing so, we learn to appreciate our own backyard that wee bit more.

This Matariki weekend, we should all take a moment to be grateful that we’re breathing fresh, clean air and when we look to the night sky, we see stars rather than incoming missiles and drones.