Based on my reading of the latest upscaling of US rhetoric, one of the military options being considered by the Israeli-American axis is the nuclear option. Refer Trump says a ‘whole civilization will die tonight’ if deal isn’t reached, One News, 8 April 2026.

The possibility of Netanyahu and Trump thinking this way would reflect a widely-held understanding that World War Two ended not only with the atomic bomb, but because of those nuclear strikes on Japan. In particular, the prevailing American narrative is that Little Boy and Fat Man saved the United States from having to make a ground invasion of Japan.

My sense is that if Israel and/or the United States go for a nuclear strike, soon or sooner, it will be on a city or some other quasi-military site in the northeast of Iran, closer to Afghanistan than to the present Persian Gulf warzone; away from the energy infrastructure of the Gulf.

Not only is the northeast the birthplace of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, it is also the part of Iran which gave least support to President Masoud Pezeshkian in the 2024 presidential election. Pezeshkian, a former heart surgeon, was elected as a moderniser. In 2024 and 2025 he was committed to evolving Iran away from being a Shia theocracy and towards being a typical BRICS’ middle-range geopolitical power. (See my The Enigma of the Iranian President, Scoop, 27 March 2026.)

If we look at the map here – the second round of the 2024 Iranian presidential election – we see that Pezeshkian’s support was most in the more secular northwest and least in the more Islamist northeast. I suspect that the Axis’ military planning will be to inflict as much damage as possible – in one or a few dramatic strikes – on the present Iranian civilisation which draws heavily on Shia Islam; hence focussing on the Shia heartland.

Finally, here, I draw attention to the movie Don’t Look Up. In that movie, the threat was an asteroid, not a nuclear war. The key theme was the widespread dispassion that prevailed, especially in the mainstream media, towards a known and imminent catastrophe. In the case of a nuclear strike on Iran away from Tehran or the Gulf or the Pakistan border, the present lack of mainstream outrage at the aggressions of the last month will probably continue on and beyond the day after.

————-

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.

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.

In this the eighth episode of A View from Afar for 2023, political scientist Dr Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning examine the risks of a 21st century nuclear war.

The movie Oppenheimer has renewed interest in the dawn of the nuclear era. Almost 80 years later, are we safer from nuclear war than we were in the years immediately after 1945?

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock hand to 90 seconds before midnight, the highest threat level since the Cuban Missile Crisis.What does that say about contemporary international security affairs?

No new nuclear arms limitation agreements have been signed in over a decade, several have lapsed and most nuclear armed countries are not signatories to them anyway.

Countries like China are rapidly expanding their arsenals and others like North Korea and Iran are seeking to join the nuclear armed club.

Has nuclear arms control failed?

What is the future of the Non-Proliferation Treaty?

Although conventions against the use of chemical and biological weapons are widely recognised, violations of the prohibitions have occurred regularly, most recently in Syria. Weapons like white phosphorus and cluster munitions continue to be used by many states.

The Questions include:

• Has non-nuclear arms control failed as well?

• Russia’s Putin Regime has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine and NATO. Is the nuclear genie about to come out of the bottle, even in a tactical use?

• Are we seeing the return of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)?

• Are we on the brink of Oppenheimer’s nightmare: nuclear Armageddon?

• And importantly, what are the solutions to this most serious and dangerous threat?

INTERACTION:

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RECOGNITION: The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication. Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category.

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New York, December 2021 – We live in worrying times. The climate crisis, stark inequalities, bloody conflicts and human rights abuses, and the personal and economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have put our world under greater stress than it has faced in my lifetime.

But the existential threat that cast a shadow over the first half of my life no longer receives the attention it should. Nuclear weapons have faded from headlines and Hollywood scripts. But the danger they pose remains as high as ever, and is growing by the year. Nuclear annihilation is just one misunderstanding or miscalculation away – a sword of Damocles that threatens not only suffering and death on a horrific scale, but the end of all life on earth.  

Through a combination of luck and judgement, nuclear weapons have not been used since they incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. But with more than 13,000 nuclear weapons held in arsenals around the world, how long can our luck hold? The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a new awareness of the catastrophic impact of a low-probability event.

Following the end of the Cold War, nuclear arsenals were dramatically reduced and even eliminated. Entire regions declared themselves nuclear-weapons free zones. A deep and widespread repudiation of nuclear testing took hold. As Prime Minister of my country, I ordered Portugal to vote for the first time against the resumption of nuclear testing in the Pacific. 

But the end of the Cold War also left us with a dangerous falsehood: that the threat of nuclear war was a thing of the past. 

Nothing could be more mistaken. These weapons are not yesterday’s problem. They remain today’s growing threat.

The risk that nuclear weapons will be used is higher now than at any point since the duck-and-cover drills and fallout shelters of the Cold War. 

Relationships between some countries that possess nuclear weapons are defined today by distrust and competition. Dialogue is largely absent. Transparency is waning and nuclear weapons are assuming greater importance as national security strategies find new contexts for their use. 

Meanwhile, technological advances and the emergence of new arenas of competition in cyber space and outer space have exposed vulnerabilities and increased the risk of nuclear escalation. We lack international frameworks and tools that can deal with these developments. And today’s multipolar global order means that regional crises with nuclear overtones threaten to draw in other nuclear-armed countries. 

The nuclear landscape is a tinderbox. One accident or miscalculation could set it alight. 

Our main hope to reverse course and steer our world away from nuclear cataclysm is the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons – better known as the NPT – which dates from the height of the Cold War in 1970. 

The NPT is one of the main reasons why nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945. It contains legally binding commitments to achieve nuclear disarmament, including by the five largest nuclear-armed countries. It is also a catalyst for disarmament – the only way to eliminate these horrendous weapons once and for all.

The 191 countries that have joined the NPT – representing the vast majority of the world – have pledged not to acquire or develop nuclear weapons. And these pledges are policed and enforced by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

One month from now, the countries that are members of the NPT will meet for their regular five-yearly conference to look at the Treaty’s progress.  

Another United Nations conference for a treaty with an acronym may not seem particularly newsworthy. But the NPT is critical to the security and prosperity of all people on earth. 

We must seize the opportunity of January’s NPT Review Conference to reverse dangerous and growing trends and escape the long shadow cast by these inhumane weapons. 

The review conference must take bold action on six fronts: 

• Chart a path forward on nuclear disarmament. 
• Agree new measures of transparency and dialogue, to reduce the risk of nuclear war. 
• Address simmering nuclear crises in the Middle East and Asia. 
• Work to strengthen the global frameworks that support non-proliferation, including the IAEA. 
• Promote the peaceful use of nuclear technology for medical and other uses – one reason why the NPT has won the adherence of non-nuclear-weapons states. 
• And remind the world’s people – especially its young people – that eliminating nuclear weapons is the only way to guarantee they will never be used.  

I urge governments to approach the conference in a spirit of solidarity, frank dialogue, and flexibility. 

What happens in the NPT negotiating rooms in January matters to everyone – because any use of nuclear weapons will affect everyone.

The fragility of our world has never been clearer. 

I hope people everywhere will push governments to step back from the abyss and create a safer, more secure world for all: a world free of nuclear weapons.

A View from Afar – In this podcast, Paul G. Buchanan and Selwyn Manning analyse the AUKUS Alliance and deep-dive into:

• How the AUKUS Alliance has triggered a geopolitical realignment.
• Why has this Anglophone AUKUS alliance formed? And what’s the fallout?
• What does China do now?
• How will Australia assert itself as the Southern Hemisphere’s military great power?
• How does the AUKUS Alliance impact on the applied foreign policies of regional independent nations like New Zealand and indeed the ASEAN economies?
• Where to from here for France and Europe, China and South East Asian nations, and New Zealand?

You can comment on this debate by clicking on one of these social media channels and interacting in the social media’s comment area. Here are the links:

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If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

A View from Afar – LIVE @ MIDDAY Thursday September 30: In this podcast, Paul G. Buchanan and Selwyn Manning will analyse the AUKUS Alliance and will deep-dive into:

• How the AUKUS Alliance has triggered a geopolitical realignment.
• Why has this Anglophone AUKUS alliance formed? And what’s the fallout?
• What does China do now?
• How will Australia assert itself as the Southern Hemisphere’s military great power?
• How does the AUKUS Alliance impact on the applied foreign policies of regional independent nations like New Zealand and indeed the ASEAN economies?
• Where to from here for France and Europe, China and South East Asian nations, and New Zealand?

Join Paul and Selwyn for this LIVE recording of this podcast and remember any comments you make while live can be included in this programme.

You can comment on this debate by clicking on one of these social media channels and interacting in the social media’s comment area. Here are the links:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

New Zealand was said to have been sidelined when the trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States was announced a week ago. But very quickly the “Aukus” pact has taken on an unpopularity in this country, with a consensus forming that New Zealand is best out of the defence arrangement. This is especially due to its centrepiece nuclear submarine plans, which will have huge ramifications for the Asia Pacific region.

The New Zealand Government has been noticeably muted in their response to the arrival of Aukus. Officially the Anglophone initiative is being welcomed, with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern pointing out that although legally the new submarines won’t be able to enter New Zealand waters, nonetheless “we welcome the increased engagement of the UK and the US in our region”.

I’ve criticised this stance in an analysis column in which I argue that the New Zealand Government should actually be condemning this dangerous warmongering, as such a nuclear and military escalation is not in the interests of New Zealand nor the Asia-Pacific region – see: What happened to the dream of a peaceful nuclear-free Pacific?.

Why is Ardern so soft on the Anglo-militarisation of the Pacific? I argue that “Ardern doesn’t want to get offside and suffer diplomatic consequences. In this regard, she is no David Lange or Norman Kirk. These former Labour prime ministers were at the forefront of the fight against militarism and nuclear technology in the Pacific, and were willing to pay a price to uphold their country’s independent foreign policy.”

I’m not the only one to notice Ardern’s soft approach to the escalation of nuclear and military tensions. Richard Harman says “New Zealand has been absent from any international discussion on the agreement”, and points out that Ardern’s statement was “to partly defend the thinking behind Aukus” – see: Ardern lays it on the line (paywalled).

According to Harman, it’s one thing to say that the subs won’t be able to come here due to the law, but Ardern hasn’t extended this statement to say New Zealand is also “not welcoming them because they represent an international alignment which we do not share.”

Progressive condemnation of Aukus

There’s been very little debate and comment from politicians and political parties. Even the Greens have gone quiet on this. Political activists – even from the peace movement – have been silent or unbothered by the landmark military announcement.

However, one strong voice against it is former Green MP Keith Locke, who penned a scathing analysis of the deal, saying Ardern has welcomed engagement in the Pacific to curry favour with US and allies, but that New Zealanders should be upset by the nuclearisation of our neighbour, pointing out that it’s a slipperly slope towards Australia getting nuclear weapons – see: Many anti-nuclear reasons to oppose Aukus.

Locke says that “New Zealand has long championed nuclear disarmament” and pushed for treaties in the region that prevent nuclear arms and pollution, which he believes are about to be violated by the three Anglophone countries.

Chris Trotter has written two columns warning against New Zealand becoming ensnared in the Anglo alliance of countries that have been illegally waging wars in other parts of the world to ill-effect – see: A coalition of the waning. He says: “Surely, it is time for New Zealand to break free of the imperial project in which it has been enmeshed for the past 181 years?”

But he warns that those in the MFAT and Defence Establishment will be alarmed that this country has been left out of the pact of our traditional allies, and they’ll now be pressuring the Labour Government to get closer to Washington – see: Keep New Zealand Nuclear-Free – stay out of Aukus!.

Similarly, today leftwing political commentator Gordon Campbell says New Zealand is lucky to be outside of the Aukus deal, and will be increasingly seen by other countries as saner in its orientation to China – see: On Canada’s election, and the Aukus defence pact. Campbell believes that the new nuclear subs won’t even be of much use in defending Australasia – they are more of a forward attack mechanism to point against China.

Newspaper editorials united against Aukus

The major newspapers have also published editorials that are negative about Aukus. The New Zealand Herald editorial is the strongest – painting a picture of an agreement that threatens to make a volatile situation in the region even worse – see: Aukus security pact has rocky start; could make China, Asia tensions worse (paywalled).

The Herald argues that the motivations behind the defence announcement are more about the three Anglo countries’ domestic politics – it’s about political reputations rather than the public interest. And the paper warns that it pushes Australia and the region closer to war, “and other countries may seek nuclear-powered subs”.

The Otago Daily Times is also unimpressed, suggesting that New Zealand is fortunate not to be involved – see: Scotty’s submarines steaming ahead. The paper also says “it is upsetting to think of nuclear subs operating off our coastline”, and therefore “Former Labour prime ministers Norman Kirk and David Lange, and generations of peace and nuclear-free advocates, will be spinning in their graves at the thought of nuclear subs just across the Tasman Sea.”

Today’s Stuff editorial is also highly negative about the deal, labelling it “a major development with unsettling implications”, and rebutting those that suggest New Zealand needs to now get closer to these Anglo allies – see: Hawkish Aukus not for us.

The prospect of US nuclear-armed subs being hosted nearby is also pointed out by the editorial: “Australia is getting a leg up to receive nuclear-propelled submarines, and is also expected to offer a base for its allies’ own submarines, some of them potentially nuclear-armed, to receive deep maintenance, thereby maintaining a sustained presence in the Indo-Pacific region.”

Aukus presents opportunities for New Zealand

The above Stuff newspaper editorial argues that instead of following the Anglophone’s hawkish approach, New Zealand should be less black and white towards China, “which is to co-operate with China where we can and team up with like-minded democracies to push back where there are disagreements that require it.” Such an approach might well see New Zealand rewarded in trade terms with both China and the European Union.

This is also an argument made by international analyst Geoffrey Miller, who says that countries like New Zealand that are deliberately not part of the aggressive Aukus-style orientation towards China will be rewarded, not just in the Asia Pacific, but also in Europe where Australia’s reputation has been sunk at the crucial time that trade deals are being negotiated with this part of the world – see: New Zealand could be the big winner of Aukus fallout.

Miller argues that the creation of Aukus heralds the establishment of “a new hierarchy when it comes to countries’ views of China” – with the “premier league” of defence hawks including the US, UK and Australia (perhaps also with India and Japan), whereas a “second division includes the EU, Canada and New Zealand, as well as potentially some Southeast Asian countries”. He predicts that New Zealand will sit well within that group of like-minded countries, who will prosper by taking a less confrontational approach to China.

Similarly, Pete McKenzie believes that this like-minded grouping of countries is an opportunity for New Zealand to break away from its current pivot towards the US-led confrontation with China – see: Aukus pact could push New Zealand to deepen relations with Europe and Pacific.

Aukus puts pressure on New Zealand

The arrival of the Aukus pact will ratchet up pressure on New Zealand to contribute to traditional defence agreements according to some commentators. This is best seen in Thomas Manch’s article: Why doesn’t New Zealand have submarines? Aukus highlights pressing military question for Government.

In this, former defence minister Wayne Mapp is quoted saying that Australia will now be applying the pressure: “It’s certain that Australia, at least, will be saying, ‘Well you’re a military ally of ours, what are you gonna do?'”… When you are in a military alliance, it has obligations as well as advantages. There’s no bucking that fact, and we can’t hide behind the nuclear-free thing and say, ‘Oh that answers everything’. It doesn’t.”

Pressure to spend much more on defence equipment will be one specific outcome. Mapp points to the need for new frigates to match those of Australia: “This particular [Aukus] announcement will put quite a bit of pressure on the New Zealand Government to make it clear how they’re going to replace the Anzac frigates, because they can’t wish that decision away.”

There’s a growing consensus that the arrival of Aukus means that an Anglo-Chinese military confrontation is much more likely than before. And the Herald’s Audrey Young has looked at what this escalation might mean for New Zealand, and in particular whether this country would be expected to contribute militarily to the US-led side – see: Preparing for war between US and China – what it means for NZ and Australia (paywalled).

In this, Young makes it clear that if New Zealand chose to stand aside from the US, failing to endorse its military and diplomatic strategies, there would be trouble: “What New Zealand says matters in terms of allegiances, because as a small country with relatively little economic or military strength, its voice is often its biggest contribution. Hence the pile-on when it takes a different position to its larger friends.”

For an example of the heat that New Zealand experiences due to perceptions amongst allies that it is not pulling its weight see Scott Palmer’s Aukus: New Zealand labelled ‘a joke’ after nuclear-free stance blocks Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines.

Although this article contains the expected condemnation of New Zealand from Australia, it does raise legitimate concerns about New Zealand no longer having defence interoperability with Australia. In particular, the question is asked: how can New Zealand rely on its biggest defence ally, Australia, coming to its defence in the future when its nuclear-propelled vessels won’t be allowed into local waters?

Finally, some are arguing that Aukus means that it’s now time for New Zealand to ditch its laws banning nuclear propulsion. For more on this, see Stuff political editor Luke Malpass’ column, Why Aukus should make us reconsider parts of our nuclear-free stance.

A View from Afar: Selwyn Manning and Paul Buchanan present this week’s podcast, A View from Afar, where they analyse:

Revelations that the People’s Republic of China has further developed missile silos in its north-west desert. How does this fit with proliferation of nuclear silos in the west?

How do great powers enforce their nuclear deterrence dogma and strategy in 2021 compared to when the first Cold War was chilling the world’s expectations of longevity?

And what of new nuclear powers like Israel, North Korea and others – with their lack of ability to sustain a total annihilation attack, do they pose a real first-strike threat? And, if so, is nuclear deterrence rendered an obsolete strategy?

And what of Aotearoa New Zealand, does its nuclear-free position, placing it independent of so-called ‘protections’ of the United States’ nuclear umbrella keep us safe from becoming a target? Or has the weaponising of space, the practice where RocketLab sends payloads of US military-tech into orbit, bring New Zealand into scope?

WE INVITE YOU TO PARTICIPATE WHILE WE ARE LIVE WITH COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS IN THE RECORDING OF THIS PODCAST:

You can comment on this debate by clicking on one of these social media channels and interacting in the social media’s comment area. Here are the links:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

A View from Afar: Selwyn Manning and Paul Buchanan will present this week’s podcast, A View from Afar, LIVE at midday Thursday where they will analyse:

Revelations that the People’s Republic of China has further developed missile silos in its north-west desert. How does this fit with proliferation of nuclear silos in the west?

How do great powers enforce their nuclear deterrence dogma and strategy in 2021 compared to when the first Cold War was chilling the world’s expectations of longevity?

And what of new nuclear powers like Israel, North Korea and others – with their lack of ability to sustain a total annihilation attack, do they pose a real first-strike threat? And, if so, is nuclear deterrence rendered an obsolete strategy?

And what of Aotearoa New Zealand, does its nuclear-free position, placing it independent of so-called ‘protections’ of the United States’ nuclear umbrella keep us safe from becoming a target? Or has the weaponising of space, the practice where RocketLab sends payloads of US military-tech into orbit, bring New Zealand into scope?

WE INVITE YOU TO PARTICIPATE WHILE WE ARE LIVE WITH COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS IN THE RECORDING OF THIS PODCAST:

You can comment on this debate by clicking on one of these social media channels and interacting in the social media’s comment area. Here are the links:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

While a Paris roundtable about the legacy of nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls is eagerly awaited by the French Polynesian government, the nuclear veterans organisations wonder whether the victims are really represented at the talks. Like every year, they will instead mark tomorrow — July 2 — as the day in 1966 when France detonated its first nuclear bomb in the South Pacific. Walter Zweifel reports.

A high-level roundtable on France’s nuclear legacy in French Polynesia is being held in Paris this week, aimed at “turning the page” on the aftermath of the weapons tests.

Between 1966 to 1996, France carried out 193 tests in the South Pacific, yet 25 years later there are still outstanding claims for compensation and the test sites remain no-go zones monitored by France.

The two-day Paris meeting was called by the French president Emmanuel Macron in April shortly after a new study about a 1974 atmospheric weapons test caused another wave of outcry.

Analysing declassified French documents, the study Toxique by the news website Disclose concluded that the fallout affected the entire population and not only the immediate testing zone around Moruroa as the public had been led to believe.

Macron’s initiative to put the recent history on the table has been welcomed by French Polynesia’s president Edouard Fritch, but has been dismissed by the opposition, nuclear veteran groups and the dominant Maohi Protestant Church, which will stay away, saying the delegation from Tahiti lacks credibility and legitimacy.

For Fritch, the problems thrown up by the nuclear test era have been discussed with French politicians for the past 25 years but he says it is Macron who at last wants to deal with this “pebble in the shoe” in the relationship with Tahiti.

This harks back to Macron’s 2017 presidential election campaign when his team promised Tahitians that Paris would assume key responsibility for health care and to pay in full for the medical costs incurred by those suffering from radiation-induced illnesses.

Tests’ impact on health, environment
Fritch told media that the upcoming talks should bring ‘truth and justice’, with an agenda looking at the tests’ impact on health and the environment, and the financial costs.

The Tahitian delegation also wants France to acknowledge its nuclear legacy in the constitution.

Fritch said he would “ask the President of the Republic to give us a precise timetable and above all to send us competent people in the matters that will be discussed”.

Accompanying Fritch is a representative of the Territorial Assembly and the territory’s members of the French legislature, such as Lana Tetuanui, as well as employer and union delegates.

Among the French participants will be the health minister but the defence minister is not certain to attend.

French Polynesia’s former president Gaston Flosse, who for decades defended France’s testing regime, was not invited.

Reflecting the simmering dissonance in Tahiti, the pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira party of Oscar Temaru rejected the invitation to Paris outright, labelling the planned talks a sham.

Temaru said any such talks should not be held in the capital of the colonising power, but rather in New York under the auspices of the United Nations.

While France refuses to acknowledge the 2013 UN decision to reinscribe French Polynesia on the decolonisation list, Temaru insists that “the right of peoples to self-determination is a sacred right, and there is no mixing the sacred and the vile, that is money. Our people are not for sale, Mā’ohi Nui is not for sale.”

The main nuclear test veterans organisation, Moruroa e tatou, decided to boycott the talks.

Its leader Hiro Tefaarere said that after 50 years of people suffering from the test legacy, those going to Paris put money at the forefront of their demands and not ethics.

He said Fritch would not have joined the roundtable had not it been for the release of Toxique which identified the French state’s “secrecy, lies and negligence”.

‘Crime against humanity’
Rejecting the French invitation, the Māohi Protestant Church, which is the main denomination in Tahiti, has in turn invited Macron to attend its synod when he is expected to visit Tahiti in the next few weeks.

The head of the church, Francois Pihaatae, said that by going to Paris, they would have the “wool pulled over their eyes”, but once Macron was in Tahiti the presence of the local people would create a counterweight.

The church has been critical of the French state, saying it proceeded with the tests in full knowledge of the impact of nuclear testing since before 1963.

Both the church and Temaru’s Tavini Huiraatira Party alleged that this amounted to a crime against humanity.

Three years ago, they announced that they had taken their case to the International Criminal Court (ICC), but it is not known if the court has accepted jurisdiction for their complaint.

Paris roundly rejected the claims, condemning what it called the misuse of the court’s international jurisdiction for local political purposes.

The French High Commissioner Rene Bidal said at the time the definition of a crime against humanity centred on the Nuremburg trials after the Second World War and referred to killings, exterminations, and deportations.

Soon after making his charge, Temaru was forced out of office over an election campaign irregularity, which his Tavini Huiraatira party said was orchestrated by France to “politically assassinate” him in retribution for the ICC case.

Until 2009, France claimed that its tests were clean and caused no harm, but in 2010, under the stewardship of Defence Minister Herve Morin, a compensation law was passed.

Over a decade, it proved to be a source of frustration because most claimants, who suffered from any of the 23 recognised types of cancer, failed with their applications.

This prompted a loosening of the eligibility criteria and then again a tightening, leaving it still open for further amendments.

French Polynesia’s social security agency CPS has repeatedly called on the French state to reimburse it for the medical costs caused by its tests.

It said that since 1995 it had paid out US$800 million to treat a total of 10,000 people suffering from cancer as the result of radiation.

Temaru said the money was a debt, pointing out that if a crime was committed it was not up to the victims to have to pay.

Risks around Moruroa
The question of the tests’ lasting intergenerational effects remains unanswered.

In 2018, a study was planned after the former head of child psychiatry in Tahiti, Dr Christian Sueur, reported pervasive developmental disorders in zones close to the Moruroa weapons test site.

The findings — reported in the Le Parisien newspaper — caused an uproar in Tahiti and Fritch accused Dr Sueur of causing panic.

The psychiatrist had reported that a quarter of children he treated for pervasive developmental disorders had intellectual disabilities or deformities which he attributed to genetic mutations.

However, three years on a study by a geneticist is yet to be commissioned.

Calls for a clean-up of the Moruroa test site continue.

Although France stopped its weapons tests in 1996, it has refused to return the excised atoll to French Polynesia and declared it a no-go zone.

The Tavini’s Moetai Brotherson, who is also a member of the French National Assembly, said France might lack either the technology or the financial means to remove radioactive sediments.

He also said the cracks on Moruroa were a concern which might explain why France’s biggest investment in the region is the US$100 million Telsite monitoring system against a possible tsunami.

There are fears the atoll could collapse as result of the more than 140 underground nuclear blasts.

Plans for a memorial to be built in Pape’ete have had lacklustre support from those who keep mistrusting France.

While the roundtable is eagerly awaited by the French Polynesian government, the nuclear veterans organisations wonder whether the victims are really represented at the talks.

Like every year, they will instead mark tomorrow — July 2 — as the day in 1966 when France detonated its first nuclear bomb in the South Pacific.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Thirty five years ago today the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was bombed in Auckland’s Waitematā Harbour by French secret agents in a blatant act of state terrorism, killing a photojournalist.

People’s campaigns have moved on since then from nuclear tests and refugees to climate justice – and future Pacific refugees.

The environmental campaign flagship was bombed on 10 July 1985 just weeks after it had been in the Marshall Islands carrying out four humanitarian voyages to rescue more than 320 Rongelap atoll villagers from the ravages of US nuclear tests and take them to a new home, Mejato island on Kwajalein atoll.

READ MORE: Eyes of Fire – Thirty Years On
LISTEN: David Robie reflects on the Rainbow Warrior on RNZ’s Crimes NZ programme

They were nuclear refugees seeking justice, relief and a healthy life far from the dangerous legacy left from 105 tests on Bikini and nearby atolls.

Ironically, the bombing in Auckland and mounting Pacific opposition led to a massive wave of New Zealand and Pacific anti-nuclear solidarity and ultimately to the halt of French nuclear testing at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls in 1996 after 193 blasts.

The bombed ship’s pioneering environmental work has since been carried on by Rainbow Warrior II and the state-of-the-art eco campaign ship Rainbow Warrior III.

Today the focus is on climate refugees, the lack of adequate health compensation for the Polynesians who suffered radiation and failure to provide proper clean-up of the French nuclear testing zones that are still off-limits after almost a quarter century. Tests were carried out by balloon, derrick, in the lagoon and in a series of underground shafts which have threatened the stability of the 60 km long atoll, leaving it fractured “like Swiss cheese”.

Landmark ruling
In January this year, in a landmark United Nations ruling, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, governments have been told not to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by climate change.

Climate action activists have greeted this ruling as a potential game changer for both climate refugees, or migrants, and for advocates for global climate action.

The UN Human Rights Committee ruled in the covenant that “without robust national and international efforts, the effects of climate change in receiving states may expose individuals to violations of their rights”.

The ruling applied to a humble New Zealand vegetable farm foreman, Ioane Teitiota, from the island nation of Kiribati, who had become a poster boy for climate refugee legal advocates even though he had little understanding of this concept.

Five years earlier, his lawyers had applied for protection for him in New Zealand after presenting a legal argument that he and his family’s lives were at risk from the impact of climate change and rising Pacific Ocean level in Kiribati as one of the “frontline states” facing global warming.

Although Teitiota and his lawyers lost the case because the threat to Kiribati was not deemed to be an imminent risk, the ruling opened the door to recognition of the existence of climate refugees and the possibility of legal refugee protection.

Climate change will force tens of millions of people to leave their homes in the next decade, according to a report by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF). And this would include many on low-lying atolls in the South Pacific.

‘Humanitarian visa’
In October 2017, New Zealand’s Climate Minister James Shaw announced that the incoming government was planning an “experimental humanitarian visa” category for Pacific Islanders forced to leave their homes. Partially inspired by the Teitiota case, it was envisaged that up to 100 people a year might settle in New Zealand under this scheme.

However, this humanitarian plan was quietly shelved because Pacific Islanders generally do not want to leave their homes. They prefer support for adaptation and mitigation for their continuing lives on ancestral land with refugee status as merely a last resort.

The Rainbow Warrior had visited Kiribati and Vanuatu on the voyage to New Zealand after the Marshall Islands mission. Crew members saw at first hand some of the climate pressures already apparent back then.

Cancer sufferers seeking nuclear compensation from the French government under the controversial Morin law received a boost last month when a man who had developed bladder cancer as a result of the nuclear tests was awarded almost US$180,000 by the administrative court.

This news was welcomed by both health advocates and activists.

According to the local news service Tahiti-Infos,  an earlier application for compensation had been turned down by the authority dealing with the case.

The compensation law has been tightened up again after being earlier relaxed with most claims being rejected between 2010 and 2017.

Uproar in Tahiti
In May, there was an uproar in Tahiti when the French National Assembly attempted to include a clause about compensation over nuclear weapons testing into generic covid-19 legislation while the French Polynesian representatives were absent from the chamber because of the pandemic travel bans.

Tahiti’s Moetai Brotherson, one of the two French Polynesian representatives, described this move as a “scandal” and two nuclear test veteran advocacy groups, Moruroa e Tatou and Association 193, were also angry, reports RNZ Pacific.

During the three decades of French tests, the early atmospheric explosions had dusted atolls and islets with radioactive fallout.

Brotherson expressed disappointment that the French state had demonstrated yet again that it “detested” the Tahitian people. Moruroa e Tatou’s Hiro Tefaarere said he was “outraged” but not surprised because all French presidents from de Gaulle to Macron “couldn’t care less” about Polynesians.

During 2019, the French Polynesian social security agency CPS reported that it had spent US$770 million on health care costs for radiation-induced illnesses. The CPS, responsible for medical expenses and pension payments, has struggled with its budgets and wants France to take responsibility for compensation.

However, French authorities do not accept liability for test-related illnesses, claiming the nuclear blasts were “clean” unlike the earlier US and British tests in the Pacific.

The nuclear tests have rarely been an issue outside French Polynesia and independent Pacific nations. But some consciences are occasionally pricked.

A French Watergate?
Five years ago, the unmasked French bomber who sank the Rainbow Warrior in 1985 made some revealing comments during his interviews with the investigative website Mediapart and TVNZ’s Sunday programme, none more telling than that “the first bomb was too powerful, it should have ended as a Watergate” for French President François Mitterrand.

Mitterrand stayed in office for 14 years – a decade after the bombing and before he finally stepped down when his second presidential term ended in May 1995, the year before nuclear tests ended.

The bomber, retired colonel Jean-Luc Kister, added that had Operation Satanique – the sabotage plot – involved the United States, “more heads would have rolled”.

However, while the “innocent death” of Portuguese-born Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira has clearly played on his conscience for all these years, Kister’s sincere apology wasn’t without a hint of trying to rewrite history.

The claim that the secret sabotage operation never meant to kill anybody is unconvincing for anybody on board the Rainbow Warrior on that tragic night when New Zealand lost its political innocence and the crew lost a dear friend.

In 2005, two decades after the bombing and nine years after Mitterrand’s death, Le Monde published a leaked document revealing that the late president had personally approved the sinking of the ship.

The newspaper obtained a handwritten account of the operation, written in 1986 by Pierre Lacoste, who was sacked as head of the secret services.

The Democracy Now! report – Rainbow Warrior and President François Mitterrand. Video: Democracy Now!

‘Neutralise’ the Warrior
He had testified that he had asked President Mitterrand for permission to “neutralise” the Rainbow Warrior at a meeting two months before the attack and would never have gone ahead without the president’s authorisation. 

The so-called nuclear “war” in the Pacific dates back to the US bombing of Hiroshima and

Nagasaki in 1945. The bombing was followed by  atmospheric nuclear testing by the United States in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958, arguably the “dirtiest” nuclear testing.

The first so-called nuclear refugees in the Pacific were the Bikini atoll islanders who were relocated into “exile” for the first US weapons tests in 1946.

Then came the British tests at Christmas Island (now Kiribati) and in the Australian outback; the start of the French testing at Moruroa in 1966; more US tests at Johnston Atoll in the early 1960s; flight testing of ICBMs, anti-satellite weapons; and more recently “Star Wars” technology at the Kwajalein Missile Range in the Marshall Islands.

As the late Steve Sawyer, Greenpeace campaign coordinator on board the Rainbow Warrior and whose birthday was being celebrated on board the night of the bombing, noted, “the displacement of local populations and adverse health effects as a result of these programmes has not been without opposition.

“But that opposition has been so scattered and unorganised until recently that it has been little felt in Washington and Paris.”

And the Rainbow Warrior Pacific voyage was planned to make a global difference. It did, but one that shook the world and ended in tragedy.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Thirty five years ago this week in another life Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie was an environmental journalist on board the original Rainbow Warrior, the Greenpeace flagship that was bombed by French secret agents on 10 July 1985.

He was on board for almost 11 weeks and joined the Greenpeace campaigners in the Marshall Islands to rescue the Rongelap islanders from the legacy of US nuclear tests.

He wrote a book about this “last voyage”, Eyes of Fire, which has been published in several countries.

He shared some of his reflections on Southern Cross radio at 95bFM today and also discussed latest happenings around the Pacific – including the massive “march in black” peaceful demonstration in Papua New Guinea last Thursday in memory of the young mother Jenelyn Kennedy and against gender-based violence, and the webinar exchange about the West Papuan media freedom #black hole” between Dr Robie and a senior Indonesian Foreign Affairs official.

Southern Cross host Sherry Zhang, who is joining The Spinoff next week, and producer James Tapp were also farewelled from the programme today.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By RNZ Pacific

The French nuclear compensation commission, CIVEN, says it will soon report on how to respond to last month’s Supreme Court reinstatement of some compensation claims from French Polynesia.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Michael Andrew

The devastating loss of life and suffering from the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been remembered in Auckland.

Organised by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the 74th anniversary of the bombings brought activists and members of the public to the Ellen Melville Centre to commemorate the estimated 220,000 people who were killed in the blasts and the resulting fallout.

The evening featured a variety of musicians and speakers whose powerful words stressed the importance of a global pursuit of peace and the rejection of nuclear power and weapons.

READ MORE: Marchers in Tahiti ‘mourn’ French nuclear weapons test legacy

Waitematā Local Board member and anti-nuclear activist Richard Northey spoke of New Zealand’s historic anti-nuclear stance and its legacy in resisting nuclear initiatives, such as French testing in the South Pacific in the 1960s.

However, he said nuclear power was becoming more appealing to some as an alternative energy source to emission-producing fossil fuels.

He said there was a need for the public to continue pressuring politicians to ensure that such options were not entertained.

“None of us can leave these issues just to others who seem more powerful than us. We must claim and assert power over our own future and take what action we can to achieve a peaceful, just, diverse and empathetic society locally and worldwide,” he said.

Letter of survival
WILPF member Anna Lee then recounted her first anti-nuclear protest in the 1960’s in Auckland where Susumu Yoneda, a survivor of the Hiroshima bomb handed her a letter describing his harrowing experience of the blast and trying to find refuge in a razed and burning city while people were suffering in the inferno.

“All around me were wounded people. Some had their eyeballs protruded, others had their bowels burst out. Some were almost burnt to death by heat rays, showing their red flesh,” the letter read.

It finished with an emotional appeal for a total ban and elimination of nuclear weapons to prevent such horror from ever occurring again.

The destruction of the bombs was strikingly contrasted with the beauty of contemporary Nagasaki through WILPF member Del Abcede’s photos, taken on a trip to Japan earlier this year.

A recurring theme on the evening was a warning against the narrative that the dropping of the atomic bombs was justified.

Intense controversy
Since 1945, the bombs have been the subject of intense controversy and debate with the American argument usually following the narrative that their use was necessary to bring about the end of the war.

This has been countered by arguments that the bombs were grossly unjustified, that the Japanese would have surrendered regardless and that their use was to justify their enormous cost and intimidate international rivals like the Soviet Union.

Valerie Morse from Auckland Peace Action warned against the justification narrative, saying that such arguments could be used as an excuse to use weapons of mass destruction in the future.

Aiko Sakurai, a member of global Buddhist organisation Soka Gakkai International then spoke about the need for youth to recognise its power and responsibly to bring about global peace.

She recalled stories from her grandmother who had survived WW2 in Japan, where food was scarce and cities were ruthlessly firebombed by the American air force.

Plight of Japan
While the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks are infamous for the immediate loss of life and the horrific radiation illnesses they caused, an estimated 300,000 to 900,000 people were killed in firebombing in other parts of Japan in the months prior.

On March 9 1945, much of Tokyo was destroyed in a huge firestorm which resulted in a death toll as large, in not larger, as the first day at Hiroshima.

Sakurai declared her commitment to prevent such horror recurring through self-reflection, compassion and awareness of the precious value of each human being.

She concluded with a quote from Soka Gakkai President Dr Daisaku Ikeda: “A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, will enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.”

The evening concluded with a candle-lit vigil. In the spirit of the Japanese custom to “send off” spirits through the lighting of fire, people were invited to light candles and place them on the ground, eventually forming a large and glowing dove – the international symbol for peace.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz