By Phil Goff

Like many others, I was appalled and astounded by the dishonest comments made about the situation in Ukraine by the Trump Administration.

As one untruthful statement followed another like something out of a George Orwell novel, I increasingly felt that the lies needed to be called out.

I found it bizarre to hear President Trump publicly label Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator. Everyone knew that Zelenskyy had been democratically elected and while Trump claimed his support in the polls had fallen to 4 percent it was pointed out that his actual support was around 57 percent.

Trump made no similar remarks or criticism of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and never does. Yet Putin’s regime imprisons and murders his opponents and suppresses democratic rights in Russia.

Then Trump made the patently false accusation that Ukraine started the war with Russia. How could he make such a claim when the world had witnessed Russia as the aggressor which invaded its smaller neighbour, killing thousands of civilians, committing war crimes and destroying cities and infrastructure?

That President Trump could lie so blatantly is perhaps explained by his taking offence at Zelenskyy’s refusal to comply with unreasonable and self-serving demands such as ceding control of Ukraine’s mineral wealth to the US. What was also clear was that Trump was intent on pressuring Ukraine to capitulate to Russian demands for a one sided “peace settlement” which would result in neither a fair nor sustainable peace.

It is astonishing that the US voted with Russia and North Korea in the United Nations against Ukraine and in opposition to the views of democratic countries the US is normally aligned with, including New Zealand.

Withdrew satellite imaging
It then withdrew satellite imaging services Ukraine needed for its self defence in an attempt to further pressure Zelenskyy to agree to a ceasefire. No equivalent pressure has yet been placed on Russia even while it has continued its illegal attacks on Ukraine.

Trump and Vance’s disgraceful bullying of Zelenskyy in the White House as he struggled in his third language to explain the plight of his nation was as remarkable as it was appalling.
What Trump was doing and saying was wrong and a betrayal of Ukraine’s struggle to defend its freedom and nationhood.

Democratic leaders around the world knew his comments to be unfair and untrue, yet few countries have dared to criticise Trump for making them.

Like the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, everyone knew that the emperor had no clothes but were fearful of the consequences of speaking out to tell the truth.

As New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, I had on a number of occasions met and talked with Ukrainian soldiers being trained by New Zealanders in Britain. It was an emotionally intense experience knowing that many of the men I met with would soon face death on the front line defending their country’s freedom and nationhood.

They were extremely grateful of New Zealand’s unwavering support. Yet the Trump Administration seemed to care little for that country’s cause and sacrifice in defending the values that a few months earlier had seemed so important to the United States.

The diplomatic community in London privately shared their dismay at Trump’s treatment of Ukraine. The spouse of one of my High Commissioner colleagues who had been a teacher drew a parallel with what she had witnessed in the playground. The bully would abuse a victim while all the other kids looked on and were too intimidated to intervene. The majority thus became the enablers of the bully’s actions.

Silence condoning Trump
By saying nothing, New Zealand — and many other countries — was effectively condoning and being complicit in what Trump was doing.

It was in this context, at the Chatham House meeting, that I asked a serious and important question about whether President Trump understood the lessons of history. It was a question on the minds of many. I framed it using language that was reasonable.

The lesson of history, going back to the Munich Conference in 1938, when British Prime Minister Chamberlain and his French counterpart Daladier ceded the Sudetenland part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, was clear.

Far from satisfying or placating an aggressor, appeasement only increases their demands. That’s always the case with bullies. They respect strength, not weakness.

Czechoslovakia could have been part of the Allied defence against Hitler’s expansionism but instead it and the Czech armaments industry was passed over to Hitler. He went on to take over the rest of Czechoslovakia and then invaded Poland.

As Churchill told Chamberlain, “You had the choice between dishonour and war. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”

The question needed to be asked because Trump was using talking points which followed closely those used by the Kremlin itself and was clearly setting out to appease and favour Russia.

A career diplomat, trained as a public servant to be cautious, might have not have asked it. I was appointed, with bipartisan support, not as a career diplomat but on the basis of political experience including nine years as Foreign, Trade and Defence Minister.

Question central to validity, ethics
“The question is central to the validity as well as the ethics of the United States’ approach to Ukraine. It is also a question that trusted allies, who have made sacrifices for and with each other over the past century, have a right and duty to ask.

The New Zealand Foreign Minister’s response was that the question did not reflect the view of New Zealand’s Government and that asking it made my position as High Commissioner untenable.

The minister had the prerogative to take the action he did and I am not complaining about that for one moment. For my part, I do not regret asking the question which thanks to the minister’s response subsequently received international attention.

Over the decades New Zealand has earned the respect of the world, from allies and opponents alike, for honestly standing up for the values our country holds dear. The things we are proudest of as a nation in the positions we have taken internationally include our role as one of the founding states of the United Nations in promoting a rules-based international system including our opposition to powerful states exercising a veto.

They include opposing apartheid in South Africa and French nuclear testing in the Pacific. We did not abandon our nuclear free policy to US pressure.

In wars and in peacekeeping we have been there when it counted and have made sacrifices disproportionate to our size.

We have never been afraid to challenge aggressors or to ask questions of our allies. In asking a question about President Trump’s position on Ukraine I am content that my actions will be on the right side of history.

Phil Goff, CNZM, is a New Zealand retired politician and former diplomat. He served as leader of the Labour Party and leader of the Opposition between 11 November 2008 and 13 December 2011. Goff was elected mayor of Auckland in 2016, and served two terms, before retiring in 2022. In 2023, he took up a diplomatic post as High Commissioner of New Zealand to the United Kingdom, which he held until last month when he was sacked by Foreign Minister Winston Peters over his “untenable” comments.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Papua New Guinea’s amended Criminal Code Act will give police the power to deal with what they are calling “domestic terrorists”.

The impetus for the new legislation has been the rash of kidnappings carried out in a remote part of the Southern Highlands.

In Bosavi, gangs of youths have captured at least three groups, held them for ransom, and in the case of 17 teenage girls allegedly raped them.

Police Commissioner David Manning said the kidnappings and ransom demands constituted domestic terrorism.

“The amendments establish clear legal process for the escalated use of up to (sic) lethal force, powers of search and seizure, and detention, for acts of domestic terrorism,” he said.

“It is high time that we call these criminals domestic terrorists, because that is what they are, and we need harsher measures to bring them to justice one way or another.”

Manning, in a statement, went on to say domestic terrorism included the “deliberate use of violence against people and communities to murder, injure and intimidate, including kidnapping and ransoms, and the destruction of properties.

Includes hate crimes
“An accurate definition of domestic terrorism also includes hate crimes, including tribal fights and sorcery-related violence.”

Transparency International Papua New Guinea chair Peter Aitsi said he doubted the new law would be effective.

He said police already had lethal powers.

“I think in terms of changing the act to give them more power, I think they already have it,” he said.

“But I doubt whether it will have any significant improvement in terms of the response to this emerging problem we are having now, of hostage taking and ransom seeking.”

Aiitsi said that in the Highlands there was a proliferation of guns, and government authority had been overwhelmed by one or two individuals with the money and guns to maintain power.

“So in this type of environment you can see the police and authorities, so-called authorities, would be powerless, because it’s these individuals that control these large sections of these communities, that are now well armed, that are the power in these areas.”

Call For a different approach

Cathy Alex was one of a group kidnapped in February, along with a New Zealand-born Australian archaeologist and two others.

She said she had got some insight into the age and temperament of the kidnappers.

“Young boys, 16 and up, a few others,” she said.

“No Tok Pisin, no English. It’s a generation that’s been out there that has had no opportunities.

“What is happening in Bosavi is a glimpse, a dark glimpse, of where our country is heading to.”

She said there was a need for a focus on providing services to the rural areas as soon as possible.

Peter Aitsi said that over the past 20 years PNG had allowed its government system to be undermined with political elites taking control of sub-national services.

He said this had led to “our people really being pushed to the real margins of our development”.

Not engaged in society
“So as a result they are not engaged in the process of society building or even nationhood.”

Aitsi said this results in the lawless conduct.

“Their interest is to serve those who can put food on the table for them, and essentially what they see as people who care about their welfare, but they are just using them for their individual outcomes.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

At the heart of the present geopolitical conflict centred on Ukraine is a divergent set of views as to what constitutes a ‘nation’.

Rival Views of Nationality

Firstly, ‘nation-states’ as we know them today arguably date to the 1645 Peace (or Treaties) of Westphalia, which negotiated the end of the bloody and chaotic Thirty Years War in Europe. Before that there was a mix of overlapping empires, kingdoms, emirates, and principalities. The empires (including caliphates) were often linked to a religion (eg the Holy Roman Empire, and the Ottoman Caliphate) subscribed to by the vast majority of the population; a hegemonic religion (such as in Mughal India; and a key to understanding tensions in India today); or a quasi-religious worldview (eg Confucius), as in the Celestial Empire (China) and the Hermit Kingdom (Korea). And, in the 1600s, there were the semi-secular nationalist republics of Japan (Tokugawa Shogunate) and Netherlands (Dutch United Provinces). Other empires – including emergent global empires – were linked to a hegemon sovereign; especially European kingdoms such as Spain, France and England.

It was in this time – from the 1600s – that national bureaucracies emerged, and with them de factoand de jure international borders. It was World War One – 1914 to 1918 – that, in its wake, ushered in the Wilsonian system of territorial nation states, including many new republics. This new system – named after United States President, Woodrow Wilson – in which territorial borders (rather than nationalities) defined nations, was in its emergent phase just 100 years ago. The Wilsonian ‘territorial’ system soon became sacred, reflecting the increasing dominance of the United States on the world stage. The United States was of course a nation with many resident nationalities, noting that, 100 years ago, a person’s nationality was the most important component of their ‘identity’. After 1918, an Italian American was first and foremost an American; secondmost an Italian (or perhaps secondmost a Sicilian, and thirdmost an Italian). Other important components of identity the were biological ‘sex’, ‘race’ and ‘religion’ (including denomination, such as Catholic or Shia). Within territorial structures, persons’ identity profiles remained a critically important component of their lives.

The forty years after World War Two (1945-1985), represented the heyday of the Wilsonian territorial system, with many new postcolonial nation states emerging – albeit with borders that were somewhat arbitrarily drawn, more reflecting colonial boundaries than local nationalities. ‘Assimilation’ of diverse identities into new territorial nationalities was the byword of the first post-WW2 decades.

The Tyranny of Borders

The new tyranny was a ‘tyranny of the borders’. For many people, their nation’s territorial boundary became a prison wall (a literal wall in the former East Germany). Otherwise, people’s freedom of movement was both increasingly restricted (more bureaucratic controls) and increasingly enhanced (lower travel cost; the development of the tourism industry). Bureaucratic controls initially allowed people to retain relative freedom of movement within the former imperial structures; eg passages were eased for some, based on individual or collective ancestry. By the 1980s and 1990s, economic criteria were largely superseding heritage criteria for immigration; and people from rich nation states were finding it much easier than people from poor ‘countries’ to get tourism permits. (A ‘country’ became the most widely used word for a territorial nation state, reflecting nations being increasingly defined by their countrysides, their landmasses, their territories.)

The Wilsonian system is widely loved by bureaucrats, especially foreign-office bureaucrats, because of the ease it gives to creating rules that form the basis of a ‘rules-based’ political order.

It was the 1980s that saw the first challenge to the Wilsonian system, under the rubric of ‘globalisation’. In the 1980s, finance and neoliberal economics superseded territorial politics. Followed in the 1990s by the communications revolution that was the internet. International borders effectively diminished, as financial capital, traded goods and services, and labour (to a lesser but substantial extent) moved at increasing scale across these borders. Nevertheless, to the foreign office bureaucrats, the national security institutions, and the international economists (who posited a world of trade between territorial nations rather than between businesses and their customers), the Wilsonian territorial world order continued. How else to occupy the machinators of Washington and other federal capitals?

The globalisation process – which some, especially left-wing critics, took to be an anti-state ideology – came to a semi-abrupt halt after the global financial crisis of 2008. Governments got their mojo back. Finance became increasingly subsumed to perceived national interests, and regulations. Territorial public debt reasserted itself as an issue through which national governments could regain control over their domains. And the developing international labour system became increasingly directed by the national immigration bureaucracies. Global ‘pipelines’ of extraterritorial workers flourished, largely but not only managed by the territorial authorities. ‘People-trafficking’ became an issue as two kinds of failed states emerged – those riven by ‘civil’ war or other problems such as ‘terrorism’ that generated a supply of refugees, and those riven by debt and austerity whose people turned to crimes such as people-smuggling and drug-smuggling as a means to provide for their families. With the re-intensification of the border-system, these smuggling operations became more violent, and less-evoking of sympathy.

A Return to Identity Nationalism

At the same time, a new threat to the rules-based territorial world order has emerged, especially in the ‘new world’; with Aotearoa New Zealand, Canada, and South American territories leading the way. This process epitomised through television programmes such as Nations Without Borders, on Māori Television. Thus, this new development focusses on indigenous peoples representing themselves as ‘nations’, and as such represents a return to ‘identity’ rather than ‘territory’ as a basis for the way nations are defined. In my memory, this idea of ‘nations within nations’ began in apartheid South Africa, when the ruling race-based minority defined the indigenous majority as a set of semi-independent subject nations. (We may note that, in 2004, then National Party leader Don Brash made his infamous Orewa speech expressed concern about the threat – as he saw it – to New Zealand as a singular territorial nation within a world order of territorial nation-states. Notethis recent [2018] commentary in stuff.co.nz.)

In Aotearoa New Zealand, this is taking an interesting turn, on account of the bi-national Treaty of Waitangi as the national foundational document, and, as such, the basis of an inchoate constitution. The possibility emerges of constitutionally equal co-nations within a single territory. Indeed, such an arrangement clearly fits the present philosophy of the leadership of New Zealand’s governing Labour Party. While the government is absolutely committed to territorial sovereignty – as per the Wilsonian post-WW1 system – it is flexible about internal nation-building based on partnership rather than the apartheid-like subservience of one domestic nation to another.

Further, we can already see how this concept of nationhood based on identity rather than territory may evolve, away from being strictly internal to territorial borders. We may consider the international labour system, which has been compromised but not eliminated by the Covid19 pandemic. This system is predicated on international labour contracts, with limited rights and obligations between contract workers and host nations; last century the labour system had been based much more on emigration/immigration, with eventual rights to permanent residence in host countries.

In New Zealand there is an RSE scheme (recognised seasonal employer), which is essentially a way in which territorial states such as Vanuatu, Fiji and Tonga export services to foreign host countries. These workers cross New Zealand’s territorial border with strictly limited visas, which are completely dependent on the terms of pre-arranged labour contracts. So, within its territorial boundary, New Zealand is moving towards two (or more, if tribally-based) nations with citizenship rights, and denizen enclaves of foreign nations providing labour services to citizens.

In Australia we see similar patterns, although indigenous nationhood there is much less advanced. Australia contains large denizen enclaves which include both indigenous and non-indigenous New Zealanders. The rights of New Zealanders in Australia have diminished since 2001; New Zealanders, in recent years, have been detained in and deported from Australia on various grounds, including ‘bad character’. Thus, the emerging perception is that New Zealanders living in Australia belong to the New Zealand nation, not the Australian nation. This is part of a process whereby ‘people’ are morphing into ‘labour’. In ancient Rome, even former slaves had rights of host citizenship.

Background Understanding of the Geopolitical Crisis centred on Ukraine

The central problem here is, firstly, that the political leader of Russia – and his subjects, by and large – adhere to a pre-WW1 view of nationhood. Clearly Vladimir Putin has pretensions of being an emperor; an emperor of the Slavs, in essence. That does not mean he wants to incorporate all Slavic people into a greater Russian national territory; ie there is no evidence that he wants a return of the ‘Iron Curtain’. But it does suggest that ‘Slavic nations’ seemingly form a natural family of nations, with shared interests through shared identity. This is not a nationalistic view as in the Indian sense (whereby Indian nationals would reserve citizenship only to people of the Hindu faith); it’s fully inclusive of ethnic minorities within both core and peripheral ‘Slavic’ territories.

Secondly, the central problem is that the United States’ federal bureaucrats – as self-appointed custodians of the rules-based system of nations – hold to a purely territorial view of what constitutes a nation. Thus, to them, officially recognised borders – even accidental borders – are sacrosanct, and defensible by military means.

The United States geopolitical strategy – of facilitating, through sanctions, the creation of an “axis of evil” out of countries that refuse to conform with its vision of a territorial rules-based world order – is very twentieth century; is ‘Cold War’ without the explicitly ‘Communist’ bogey. While the Russian imperial worldview is also outdated, it might be slightly more in tune with an emerging twentyfirst concept of nationhood based foremostly – as pre-twentieth century – on identity rather than on the sacrosanctity of national borders.

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Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.