Over the last week I have subverted the western geo-cultural tropes of ‘Good versus Evil’ and ‘Beautiful versus Ugly’. (Geopolitical Rugby: Bad plays Evil, for the final World Cup 16 Sep 2025 and Lookism11 Sep 2025; both on Scoop and Evening Report.) Here I consider our new version of the former tripolar world; that  tripolar world prevailed from 1945 to 1990. Pole A, essentially the former First World, is now the Western Alliance. Pole B is equivalent to the former Second World; B is, as before, the geopolitical adversary of A. Pole C, the new Third World, is the equivalent of the former non-aligned Third World; yes, that’s the literal meaning of ‘third world’, non-alignment, neutrality.

The emergent new Second World includes the decentralised Muslim world; and has power centres in Beijing and Moscow; thus, its geographical and cultural loci are in Eurasia. The new Second World (pole B) is ‘united’ by comprising the various named enemies of the new First World; with West Europe being the geographical and cultural locus of pole A. West versus East, with substantial nuclear armaments; four nuclear countries in the West, four in the East.

The new Third World is defined neither by its geography nor its economic status. It is the neutral pole; pole C. India – the only nuclear power not in A or B – is potentially the leader of the new Third World, as it was the political leader of the old Third World. India’s future alignment remains the big geopolitical unknown.

Where does Australasia – Australia and New Zealand – fit? Given the geography (literally ‘south of Asia’), the common-sense position would be for Australia and New Zealand to become firm members of the new Third World; strictly non-aligned. But the signs are that Australasia, with only a tiny proportion of the old First World’s population, and on the opposite side of the world from the new First World, will contrive to be a fully aligned far-flung component of the new First World alliance. Though not formal members of Nato.

Nuclear Conflict

The most likely scenario for Nuclear War Two (NW2) would begin with a ‘nuclear attack’ across the present A-B (ie West-East) geopolitical boundary, noting that an important part of that boundary is inside Donetsk province; and also noting that one country – Türkiye – is ambiguously placed and may itself be regarded as a boundary-zone rather than a boundary-line.

(Both the words ‘nuclear’ and ‘attack’ come with some ambiguity. Would a strike on a nuclear power station by conventional weaponry count? Would any breach of airspace or sea-space by a nuclear-armed vehicle count as an attack?)

Any part of the world can be reached by perhaps five countries’ nuclear weapons, either from long-range missiles or launched from naval vessels (especially submarines).

Nuclear calculus is essentially ‘what happens next’, and the associated probabilities of the different scenarios. To keep my argument simple, I will assume that the first strike of NW2 is intentional, targeted, and includes at least one nuclear explosion. Such an explosion may not be on target for a variety of reasons; not least that an attacking missile may be intercepted.

My Scenario One is that of a smallish first strike on the East by the West. As, in my view, the East is more pragmatic than the West, a response would take place, but most likely would be de-escalatory or proportionate in nature; a calculated response, much as the recent responses by Iran to Israel’s provocations. The critical point would then be the next move by the West: escalation or de-escalation. De-escalation should lead to at least a temporary truce.

Escalation by the West would be problematic; presumably, and irrationally, it would target the eastern country which is already involved. Retaliation through nuclear escalation is not rational, in that the expected final outcome would be harmful to all; including harm to the retaliator. Nevertheless, the conventional presumption is that nuclear powers, if subjected to nuclear attack, would to the best of their abilities retaliate through nuclear escalation. The ‘rational’ calculus of the ‘mutually-assured-destruction’ dogma is that attacked countries would respond spitefully rather than rationally; so therefore peace depends on there being no first strike.

My Scenario Two is that of a smallish first strike on the West by one of the East’s nuclear nations. If the West – acting out of contrived fury rather than pragmatism – escalates in response, we are left with essentially the same situation as in Scenario One.

Scenarios Three and Four would be a large-scale first strike, either East on West or West on East. In these scenarios, de-escalation would be seen as capitulation with all the associated consequences of total defeat. Therefore, in these cases the response would almost certainly be proportionate or escalatory.

In all four scenarios we face situations of how to respond to a medium- or large-scale nuclear strike.

If the ‘ball’ is in the West’s court (Scenario Three), then the most likely response I would see would be an equal or larger response onto the Eastern power already involved, in the hope of splitting the East, and achieving a backdown by the East’s belligerent. The East’s non-belligerent powers would at this stage pitch for neutrality; they would ‘align’ with the new non-aligned Third World.

In the other three scenarios, we are faced with the perceived need by the East to respond to the West’s nuclear escalation. The context is the West’s alliances of ‘collective defence’; the legalised geopolitical contract (eg Nato’s Article Five) that an attack on one is an attack on all.

The situation faced by the East when de-escalation is not a realistic option.

There are two other options: escalation or deflection. Escalation, as already noted, is not rational. Its rationale is that of ‘globally-assured-destruction’, given the substantial third-party effects of nuclear warfare.

The other option for a large Asian nuclear superpower would be deflection. Deflection here means a proportionate retaliatory strike on one of the more expendable nations in the Western Alliance. Deflection lessens the probability of continued escalation.

Deflection could mean a significant nuclear strike on a non-nuclear Nato country, with the sense that Nato as-a-whole might renege on its ‘Article Five’ clause. Such a strike might end the war, with both sides preferring to pull-back from the brink; with both sides cutting their losses, so to speak.

A better deflective off-ramp might be a proportionate nuclear strike on a non-nuclear non-Nato country openly allied to Nato. That would further enhance the possibility that the nuclear war would come to an abrupt end. Would it be rational for the United States, United Kingdom, France or Israel to retaliate to a nuclear attack on a small distant non-Nato member of the Western Alliance?

There would be an awareness in all the main nuclear powers’ capital cities that, while distance can no longer prevent a country from being attacked, a nuclear calamity far away from the world’s major population centres would limit global loss of life and limit the impact on global food chains.

The Tyranny of Distance?

In 1966, Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote The Tyranny of Distance. It was about the higher costs of such things as travel, trade and collective defence. Australia – especially White Australia – had a long-lasting neurosis about an East Asian lebensraum. New Zealand was always a bit more relaxed; practically the same distance to western markets and further from any putative East Asian adversary.

Nevertheless, the tyranny of distance did not prevent New Zealand’s ‘second people’ from coming from literally the other side of the world. Maritime geography and geopolitics had its own logic.

The traditional tyranny of distance hypothesis was overstated. In practical terms, in the era of sailing ships and no trains, it was much easier to travel from London to Dunedin than to Vancouver. The costs of long-distance compared to short-distance transport persistently declined. And, from the time of the telegraph coming to Australasia in the 1860s, communication between ‘down-under’ and Europe was hardly any more expensive than over much shorter distances.

But there is a new tyranny of distance for Oceania. We saw it in South Australia in the 1950s with the British nuclear testing at Maralinga. And American and French testing at Bikini and Mururoa. We have seen this tyranny of distance more generally in the mining exploitation of ‘distant’ ‘peripheral’ lands in Africa and South America. These parts of the world, distant from the world’s major population centres, are relatively exploitable and expendable.

There is a new component to the new tyranny of distance; New Zealand is coming to be treated as a billionaires’ nuclear bolthole. Refer to these 2025 stories (among many others): Billionaire boltholes: inside the doomsday hideouts of the super-rich (complete with picture of Peter Thiel), The oligarch’s guide to sitting out a nuclear winter, and Apocalypse now: Doomsday bunker secretly installed on New Zealand property – confirmed. In some privileged circles, there is a misguided belief in New Zealand exceptionalism; that Aotearoa New Zealand may be some kind of global life raft.

The presence of these people in Oceania increases the likelihood of Australasia being a nuclear target. So does Australia’s formal membership of AUKUS. So does New Zealand’s Minister of Defence signalling for Aotearoa to become an ally of Nato (refer: Judith Collins makes secret visit to site of Russian missile attack in Kyiv, TVNZ, 4 Sep 2025).

On Deflection

Far from being the least likely part of the world to become a victim of nuclear war, Oceania may indeed be the most likely venue for a deflective nuclear strike. If Aotearoa New Zealand can stifle its latent militarism (and can instead become an influential advocate for the new Third World), then the far side of Australia might be more at risk; Australia is already firmly in the European geopolitical camp, despite its obvious self-interest to maintain close ties with its Asian neighbours. Nuclear weapons are most likely to be targeted at cities, and any city far away from any other city becomes an excellent candidate for nuclear victimhood.

In the United States in 1945, there was a high-level debate about the best way to use its incipient nuclear weapon. Henry Stimson, United States Secretary for War, said “not Kyoto” (refer The man who saved Kyoto from the atomic bomb, BBC 9 August 2015). Even from the outset, war-torn Europe never looked like a good bet; indeed the July 1944 Bretton Woods Conference was conducted on the basis that allied victory was just a matter of time. The ‘dovish’ option was to perform a ‘demonstration’ drop, to show what might happen if Japan did not immediately capitulate. The problem was that, by July 1945, Japan had already been bombed to smithereens and it had still not capitulated. The alternative to a demonstration drop was a gratuitous drop or two or three on a significant Japanese city. (The next two cities on the nuclear list were Kokura and Niigata; the plan was to bomb them around November 1945, when new warheads had been manufactured.)

In the end, the Americans did do two demonstrations. In August 1945, the value to Americans of a Japanese life was no higher than the value of life of a Gazan is to an Israeli Zionist. The bombs over Japan were demonstration drops; the real audience of the demonstrations was Josef Stalin, not Emperor Hirohito. Japan was a good site for a ‘show and tell’ because it was far from both Europe and North America. Japan – like Bikini and Mururoa, later on – was a Pacific test site.

In the present geopolitical environment, and if a nuclear war starts, a deflective proportionate retaliatory nuclear strike may be the only offramp; a way to avoid assured-global-destruction. From an Eastern standpoint the ideal target would be a place which is overtly allied to its Nato foe (and, to boot, is part of its adversary’s communications network), which can produce rockets and other high-tech componentry for Nato, which is sufficiently far away from major population centres to lessen environmental harm, which has a small (thereby relatively expendable) population, which has minimal anti-missile defences, and which has in its midst a number those enemy billionaires who helped to create the geopolitical problem in the first place.

Conclusion

Nowhere is safe. Rationally, distance may make a place less safe, not more safe, from nuclear destruction. While great-power brinkmanship is far from rational, rational thinking under great pressure will be required to end a nuclear war once started. Even the most rational decision-process will involve many casualties. The frontlines of a nuclear war are not the same as the frontlines of a conventional war.

*******

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.

People of a certain age will be aware that the 1962 Cuba Missile Crisis was, for the world as a whole, the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. The 1962 ‘Battle of Cuba’ was a ‘cold battle’ in the same sense that the Cold War was a ‘cold war’. (Only one actual shot was fired, by Cuba.) Nevertheless, it is appropriate to ask, “who won”?

In military events hot or cold – it is surprisingly difficult to answer such a question. But it’s actually quite easy in this case.

The cold Battle of Cuba was about three countries, and three charismatic leaders: Nikita Khrushchev (Soviet Union), John F Kennedy (United States), and Fidel Castro (Cuba). Following the disastrous American invasion of Cuba in 1961, Cuba had taken on the role of a Soviet Union ‘client state’ – hence a military proxy – of the Soviet Union. (Prior to the Bay of Pigs assault, Cuba, while a revolutionary country, was not a communist country; though at least one prominent revolutionary, the Argentinian doctor Che Guevara, was certainly of the communist faith and took every opportunity to convert Cuba into a polity that followed the Book of Marx. The actions of the United States facilitated Castro’s eventual conversion.)

The situation that Khrushchev faced in late 1961 was that NATO had an installation of American nuclear-armed missiles in Turkey (now Türkiye). While Turkey had a common border with the Soviet Union – Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia – the missiles were essentially facing north across the Black Sea, into Ukraine and Russia. This was a clear and open – though not widely publicised in ‘the west’ – security threat to the Soviet Union.

Taking advantage of the political fallout between Cuba and the United States, Khrushchev – in an act of bravado, indeed brinkmanship – negotiated with Castro to install nuclear-capable missiles in Cuba, one of the few genuine security threats that the United States has ever faced.

The world trembled at the prospect of imminent (and possibly all-out) nuclear war. Castro looked forward to a hot battle which he was sure Khrushchev and Castro would together win. But Castro was doomed to disappointment. Khrushchev dismantled his missiles in Cuba, and Kennedy dismantled his missiles in Turkey.

So, compare, say, October 1963 with October 1961. The only real difference was that in 1961 there were American missiles in Turkey pointing in the direction of Moscow, and in 1963 there were not. Game, set, and match to Khrushchev. (And of course, the whole world was the winner, in that not a nuclear missile was fired in anger. Though the Cubans did shoot down an American reconnaissance aircraft.)

That’s not the narrative which the western world has taken on board though. In the West, it’s interpreted as a Soviet Union backdown, in the face of relentless diplomatic pressure from the Kennedy brothers (with Robert Kennedy playing a key negotiating role). Certainly, the world was on tenterhooks; brinkmanship can go disastrously wrong.

There are some analogies with the current Ukraine crisis. Though the Ukraine War is certainly a hot war.

Brinkmanship failed in 2021 and 2022. Nevertheless, Volodymyr Zelenskyy does pose as a good analogue to Fidel Castro (though not as an incipient communist!).

Donald Trump’s brinkmanship re China and the European Union

Trump’s war is a ‘trade war’, Winston Peters’ rejection of the ‘war analogy’ notwithstanding. This is a war that uses the language of war. Two longstanding mercantilist economic nations (China, European Union) and one mercantilist leader are slugging it out to see who can export more goods and services to the world; the prize being a mix of gold and virtual-gold, the proceeds of unbalanced trade.

(Historically the United States has also been a mercantilist nation, going right back to its origins as a ‘victim’ of British mercantilism in the eighteenth century. The United States has always been uneasy about its post World-War-Two role as global consumer-of-last-resort and its historical instincts towards mercantilism; an instinct that contributed substantially to the global Great Depression of 1930 to 1935. ‘Mercantilism’ is often confused by economists with ‘protectionism’, and indeed the American Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930 were a mix of both.)

My reading of Donald Trump is that he is a mercantilist, but not a protectionist; that he’s not really a tariff-lover, just as Khrushchev was not really a missile lover. Instinctively, China and especially the European Union are protectionist as a way of supporting their ingrained mercantilism. But a country that is ‘great again’ – in this ‘making money’ context – can prevail in a trade war without tariffs. Indeed, that’s exactly why the United Kingdom moved sharply towards tree trade in the 1840s and 1850s. England had not lost its mercantilist spots. But at the heart of an English Empire within a British Empire, London had the power to win a ‘free trade’ trade war. It was the other would-be powers – the new kids on the global block; the USA, Germany’s Second Reich, and later Japan and Russia – which turned to tariff protection in order to stymie the United Kingdom.

Trump’s super-tariffs against China and the European Union – trade weapons, economic ‘missiles’ – are designed to get those two economic nations to remove their various trade barriers that existed in 2024. Once they do that, then Trump may remove his tariff threats.

Trump is playing brinkmanship in the way of Khrushchev. Xi Jinping is Kennedy; so, in a way, is Ursula von der Leyen. Canada, in a sense, is Cuba. (Though Mark Carney may not like to think of himself as Castro!)

If Trump gets his way, the United States’ economy in 2026 will be as free as it was in 2024. The Chinese and European Union economies will have significantly fewer tariff and non-tariff import barriers than in 2024. Significantly fewer ‘trade weapons’ poised to ‘rip off’ the United States! Canada will be much the same in 2026 as in 2024, albeit with a newfound sense of national identity.

Implications for the Wider World, and the Global Monetary System

The wider world will probably not be better off with a mercantilist war, albeit a free-trade war. When hippopotamuses start dancing …!

We already see how free trade in ‘big guns’ is creating military instability in Africa and South Asia. And we must expect to see the United States’ special role as the fulcrum of the world’s monetary system dissipate if the United States significantly reduces its trade deficits; requiring some other deficit countries to take up that challenge. Canada? Australia? India? United Kingdom? A new anti-mercantilist British Empire? I don’t think so. Türkiye? Saudi Arabia? Brazil? Maybe not. Japan? Maybe. Russia? If the Ukraine war ends, Russia will struggle to import more than it exports; though I am sure that Donald Trump would like to see the United States exporting lots of stuff to Russia.

The International Monetary Fund? Maybe, but only if it changes some of its narratives. The challenge here will be for it to reform itself in line with John Maynard Keynes’ proposals at and after Bretton Woods, the 1944 conference which set itself the task of establishing the post-war global monetary order. Keynes envisaged a World Reserve Bank; though he didn’t envisage monetary policy – with New Zealand in 1989 acknowledged as the world’s lead ‘reformer’ – falling into the hands of the ‘monetarists’ and their false narratives about inflation.

*******

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.

Sylvia C. Frain reports from Hawai’i on the release of a poetry work focusing on the impact of nuclear activity in the Marshall Islands.

Nuclear activist, writer and poet Kathy Jetñil-Kijner from the Marshall Islands has launched her new poetry work which has a focus on nuclear weapons.

Her newest poem, “Anointed” can be seen as a short film by Dan Lin on YouTube.

At da Shop bookstore for the official launch of her poem, Jetñil-Kijner shared her writing process inspiration with the gathered audience. “I knew this poem could not be a broad nuclear weapons poem, but I needed to narrow the focus,”  says Jetñil-Kijner.

The project, which has an aim to personalise the ban of nuclear weapons, began during a talk-story session with photojournalist Lin three years ago in a café. Jetñil-Kijner told Lin that she wanted to perform a poem on the radioactive dome located on what remains of the Runit Island in the Enewetak Atoll Chain. Lin, who before this project worked as “only a photojournalist,”  agreed to document this collaborative “experiment”.  Lin spoke of how Jetñil-Kijner’s previous poems  had the “Kathy effect” which were filmed with only an iPhone and went viral across digital platforms. 

However, they agreed that this story deserved more in-depth documentation.  They partnered with the non-profit organisation,  Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL) and with the Okeanos Foundation, specialising in sustainable sea transport. Travelling by Walap/Vaka Motu/Ocean Canoe for 11 days, Okeanos Marshall Islands ensured that zero carbon emissions were used and the experience served as a way to connect with the sea.

Runit Island
The radioactive dome on Runit Island is one of 14 islands in the Enewetak Atoll Chain, and the farthest atoll in the Ralik chain of the Marshall Islands. Enewetak and surrounding area has been studied scientifically after the 43 nuclear bomb explosions (out of the 67 total nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands) by the United States between 1948-1958.

Dubbed the “Cactus Crater”, Runit Island has limited economic possibilities. It is not a tourist destination nor has ability to export goods. No one will visit or purchase products from a radioactive location. This leaves the community dependent on funding from the United States. While many are grateful, they truly want to self-sustaining future. 

While conducting research for the poem, Jetñil-Kijner found that most of the literature is scientific and by journalists or researchers who do not include the voices of the local community or share the end results. Jetñil-Kijner wanted to create a poem focusing on the story of place beyond the association as a bombing site, and ask, “what is the island’s story?”

She learned from the elders that the island was considered the “pantry of the chiefs with lush vegetation, watermelons, and strong trees to build canoes”. As one of the remote atolls, the community consisted of navigators and canoe-builders with a thriving canoe culture.

Both Lin and Jetñil-Kijner said visiting the atolls was emotional and that approaching the dome felt like “visiting a sick relative you never met”.

The voyage included community discussions with elders and a writing workshop with the youth. Since the story of the dome is not usually a “happy one” the gatherings and workshops served as a method for the people to tell their stories not covered in the media or reported in US government documents.

Creating the poem with the community also required different protocols and Jetñil-Kijner thanked the community for generously sharing their knowledge and stories. She spoke to how the video connects the local community with a global audience across digital platforms. 

Digital technology and the future
Despite the remote location and distance as an outer island, there is limited wi-fi and the community has access to Facebook. These technological advances help with visualising these previous unfamiliar spaces, including using a drone to capture aerial shots of the dome and the rows of replanted but radioactive coconut trees. Supported by the Pacific Storytellers Cooperative, a digital platform for publishing Pacific voices, more young people are able to tell their stories online and foster relationships beyond the atoll.  

The newest generation is raising awareness through the incorporation of cultural knowledge combined with new media technologies to tell their stories. Empowered young leaders continue to unpack the layers of the nuclear legacy while highlighting their unique community and culture.

The Anointed poem and film serves as an educational resource to highlight the nuclear legacy and ongoing environmental issues in the Marshall Islands. This piece also promotes community justice and is a visual learning tool. Jetñil-Kijner and Lin encourage others to share Anointed and to join the call to action to ban nuclear weapons.

• Pacific Storytellers Cooperative – Marshall Islands audio nuclear archive

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3

Report by Pacific Media Centre ]]>