World War One is really the first conflagration of a Great World War which lasted between 1914 and 1945. That great war was a ‘”game” of two halves’ with an extended and less violent mid-war phase; total war, with an interregnum which exacerbated rather than resolved the trigger issues of early twentieth century ideologies.

These mid-war events – in particular (but not only) the rise of the Stalin and Hitler regimes in Russia and Germany – could not have happened as they did without their being embedded in the Great World War. These regimes epitomised socialist and nationalist social pseudoscientific belief systems; two of the great pseudoscientific Utopias, Marxist Historicism and Social Darwinism. To them we may add the capitalist social pseudoscience (economic liberalism; liberal mercantilism; ‘Social Newtonism’ to coin a new label) which gave the Euro-dominant world the calamitous Great Depression of the early 1930s. These three potentially catastrophic ‘scientific’ Utopias dominated the intellectual ether, so to speak, before 1914. They manifested in their various deeply problematic and distorted ways within the context of the 1914-1945 world war experience. Fascism and economic liberalism had their roots in biology and physics. The socialist pseudoscience – aka Marxism – had its roots in historical materialism, a conflation of (Ricardian) classical economics and Hegelian historicism, an attempt to create a social science of history.

In this regard, we may see the denouement (WW2) of the Great World War as a battle between three problematic personalities: Stalin, Churchill, and Hitler. Each representing their own false depiction of the world as ‘scientific’ Utopia: Marxian Socialism (aka ‘Communism’, in its pejorative sense), Economic Liberalism, and National Ethno-Supremacism. (And we note that each of these pseudoscientific belief-systems carried seeds of each other. For example, Winston Churchill’s liberal mercantilist worldview was imperial, nationalist, and deeply racist. Adolf Hitler [with no interest in appeasing aristocratic or bourgeois interests] pitched his ‘Aryan’ nationalist poison to the German working precariat. And Josef Stalin terrorised and starved his own people, especially but not only in the 1930s while the world was distracted, as the mismatch between reality and Marxian ‘science’ became increasingly evident.)

(We note that, for the post-great-war generation, these issues of the three Utopias were practically resolved in ‘The West’, through for example decolonisation, Keynesian economics, and non-Marxian socialism. Though the Stalinist Utopia took on an even more demonic second phase in Mao Zedong’s China. The Social Darwinist Utopia took on a new life in South Africa and Israel; and for a while continued to inform the Dixie states of the US south. Racism never really left the United States. And Economic Liberalism – initially as neoliberalism, now as Liberal Mercantilism – returned to the world with a vengeance in the 1980s. Today, just as Stalin could not reconcile Marxism with reality; our western liberal elites cannot reconcile the diktats of the prevailing [and increasingly mercantilist] capitalist ideology with reality.)

Were there Goodies and Baddies in 1914?

However we choose to see this 1914 to 1945 period of widespread humanicide, it’s difficult to see a clear group of ‘Goodies’ and a clear group of ‘Baddies’ in June 1914. Thus, we can at least start our analysis of this war without succumbing to the ‘Goodies’ versus ‘Baddies’ (Good versus Evil) narrative. I would argue that the emergence of this as the predominant narrative of modern warfare, and its conflation with Winner versus Loser (‘we won, you lost, eat that!’) narrative, were themselves the single biggest cause of the world’s greatest conflagration to date. (For interest, see this New Zealand Journal of History review of Paul Goldsmith’s book We Won, You Lost. Eat ­That!; a book which derives its title from the late Michael Cullen, former Minister of Finance of New Zealand. Indeed it is Goldsmith who is easily the most qualified current politician in New Zealand to be Minister of Finance.)

Nevertheless, there is a compelling argument that Germany was ‘The Bad Guy’ in WW1 because it was the ‘principal aggressor’, evidenced by the fact that most of the fighting took place on other countries’ territories. True, but the story of aggressor versus aggressee – invader versus invaded – is more nuanced than that. Two comments here: the most significant battle in 1914 – in August 1914 – was the Battle of Tannenberg, fought in Germany (East Prussia); and much of the important action of the war was fought in Germany’s proxy territory, the lands of Austria-Hungary. Though almost none of these battle-sites are in modern Austria, Hungary, or Germany. On the western front, the earliest battles were fought in Alsace-Lorraine, territory then held by Germany.

In reality, the three-way war that ended inconclusively and abruptly in November 1918 (albeit with a clear but not huge ‘advantage’ to the Western Powers) was ‘settled’ as if there had been a decisive military victory to The West. (For the first half of 1918, Germany had won the war in the East and was winning the war in the West.) Victors’ justice soon followed, although the Americans prevented it from descending to show trials of war criminals only the losing side. (We note that a similar process had taken place on the Eastern Front, with Germany able to impose victors’ justice over Russia; indeed the German state had done all that it could to facilitate the second [Bolshevik] Russian Revolution of 1917. Leon Trotsky signed the humiliating Brest-Litovsk Treaty in March 1918, which among other things granted most of Ukraine to Germany. Further, the Western Powers then [ie early in 1918] involved themselves in the subsequent Russian Civil War; see The Allied Intervention.)

In WW1, the victors – the western powers – became ‘The Good’; the ‘victors’ usurped the narrative (as victors do), and would consequently place themselves in the predominant position to determine how the subsequent ‘peace’ would play out.

In WW2, the sequence was reversed. Rather than the victors becoming The Good, ‘The Good’ became the victors (but not the only victors). Indeed from 1944 The Good puzzled over why it took so long for their adversaries to see ‘the writing on the wall’. The answer was largely obvious, the English-speaking ‘Good’ (aka The West) waged relentless terror campaigns against ‘The Bad’; most of The Bad had presumed they were The Good (and fought hard on that basis). The Good had (inadvertently?) reinforced the belief that The West was The Bad, through their malicious and relentless bombing of civilians. Who would surrender to such aerial firebombers; what other kinds of evil could they cook up? In reality The War – as are most wars – was waged between The Bad and The Bad; or – as in the Great World War, it became The Bad versus The Bad versus the Bad versus the Bad (now including Japan). In the end it was victor’s justice that prevailed, posing as the Judgement of The Bad by The Good. The West and Soviet Russia got away with their many pre-war crimes and war crimes, scot-free.

World War One was not a decisive victory on either front

In the land war, while in a stalemate on the western front in 1916 and 1917, Germany had the military upper hand in the first half of 1918. In the end though, the most vital factor was the British naval blockade, and the associated economic war. Germany was being starved. Yet the worst of the food shortages in Germany were in the winter of 1916/17. By early 1918, Germany was able to redeploy battle-hardened troops from the Eastern to the Western Front. And Germany now had access to food supplies from Ukraine.

On the adverse side for Germany, however, was the arrival of American troops into France. These were ‘green’ troops who could not compete with Germans in direct military combat. But they did bring with them, unintentionally, the lethal weapon which may have won the war for the West: influenza.

As I see it, Germany lost its advantage in World War One for three reasons: the economic blockade, the lack of strategic vision of what ‘success’ on the Western Front actually meant, and the influenza brought by the American troops. (The 1918 influenza pandemic was most likely due to a hybrid novel H1N1 virus, forged in France as a result of a combination of the lethal influenza strain traced back to military barracks in Kansas in 1917 and a severe seasonal strain of ‘Asian flu’ already present in France.)

With the lack of strategic direction and military setbacks from July 1918, the German leadership – a dynamic flux, with an overall focus on civilianisation – sought to freeze (or even make concessions in the form of withdrawals from occupied territories) the western frontline so that it could end the war with its eastern gains intact. To this end, a new liberal Chancellor – Prinz Maximillian von Baden (interestingly, in light of later Nazi developments, a known homosexual) – was appointed early in October 1918. Also interesting, Prinz Baden and half a million other German civilians, became “seriously ill” with influenza that spring.

Returning soldiers from the western front were the main transmission vectors of the 1918 influenza pandemic, the ‘Black Flu’, the misleadingly named ‘Spanish Flu’. It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that the influenza, brought in initially by the American troops, played a vital role in Germany’s military setbacks in the late-summer and spring of 1918.

There seems to be very little written about the contribution of either the influenza or the naval blockade to Germany’s truce (a truce which began through Germany’s leaders reaching out to US President Woodrow Wilson; but which morphed into a substantial political defeat) which, to the West, ended the war, but which to many Germans looked very much like a ‘stab in the back’. Hence, from the German point of view, scapegoats had to be found, and the events which led to an eventual continuation of the Great World War were set in train. This was not helped by poorly considered attempts (especially at Versailles in 1919) by France and Britain to make Germany – now firmly ensconced in the western mind as a comprehensive Loser – pay for the war. And, perhaps most significantly, Germany being stripped by the Western powers of the full suite of its military gain in the East. Ukraine and other German-acquired territories were returned to the Russian Empire; now in the form of the ‘Communist’ Soviet Union, although in 1919 very much in a state of a civil war in which the West had intervened.

These events clearly represent the foundations of the Nazi doctrine of Lebensraum; more than anything, Germany wanted Ukraine back. Germany’s main weakness in World War One had been its resource base, especially its inability to feed itself. Germany, from the 1870s onwards, had become a food importer following its rapid industrialisation and imperial outreach (which included Samoa and New Guinea). And Germany also needed time to repopulate, to breed a new generation who could fill and administer what it saw as its ‘rightful’ empire in the west, and in the world.

We can clearly see Germany’s growing vision to replace its former far-flung empire by acquiring – as a proxy empire – France’s overseas territories. We saw this play out in 1940, with the creation of ‘Vichy France’ a nominally independent client state of Nazi Germany, and to whom the whole of the French Empire was designated. (In this light, had Germany’s military plans worked out in the early 1940s, France’s interests in the Northern Levant – Syria and Lebanon today – represented a possible solution for the alleged ‘Jewish problem’ of Eastern Europe. The West had a similar ‘Jewish problem’, which was resolved initially in 1924 by shutting down Jewish immigration to the United Kingdom and United States; that shutdown was still in place post-1945, meaning that The West used the Southern Levant as a repository for its erstwhile Jewish immigrants.)

We might note that, today, Germany is very well aware that it has the same resource vulnerability that it had from 1914 to 1940; and must look East for a solution. In addition, many people in Germany are well aware of a new form of demographic ‘crisis’ that Germany is facing, and that immigration from Eastern Europe (and a further degree of proxy absorption of Eastern Europe) represents its only plausible hope for an ‘ethnic European’ future.

What Happens if The Bad wins a World War (or any war for that matter)?

In 1918 the politically victorious West was able to create a Goody-Baddy narrative, facilitating a victors’ justice by presenting it as Good judging and punishing Bad. One consequence, reinforced by the western campaign of terror over Germany, half of which took place from November 1944 to April 1945. (Documents which have since come to light suggest that this bombing campaign – with the loss of 800,000 German civilian lives through horrible fiery deaths – was a failed genocide. The Morgenthau Plan, for example, advocated what amounted to bombing Germany ‘into the stone age’ – an expression which, applied to Vietnam, resurfaced in the 1960s – reducing Germany’s population from 80 million in 1939 to 30 million. 80 million people standing side-by-side along the equator-line would complete a circle of the world; now imagine randomly executing five-of-every eight people in that circle. Nuclear weapons were one means of making that genocide of civilians and refugees ‘more efficient’, as was actually done in Japan. Britain’s genocide plans included Operation Vegetarian, a dastardly scheme of biological warfare.)

In the end The Good was able to conceal most of its many very Bad contemplations, in large part because it was becoming more concerned to turn its killing attentions onto its erstwhile ally, Stalin’s Russia. Interestingly, as A C Grayling noted in Among the Dead Cities, the British leader of its terror-bombing force equated his efforts (killing 800,000 civilians in Germany) with the numbers of civilians estimated to have died of starvation or malnutrition in World War One as a result of the naval blockade.

Of course, whoever ‘wins’ a world war will use the victors’ prerogative to call themselves The Good. But, if, during a world war, ‘we’ have fully convinced ourselves that we are The Good, and we are suffering unsustainable losses, at what point do we (aka The Good) surrender to The Bad? Do we fight on, futilely, to the last man and woman, as it seemed the Germans and the Japanese were doing in 1945? Do we call a truce, as ‘we’ did eventually in Korea in 1953, and in Vietnam in 1972? Looking back, we are truly grateful that we did end those two Asian wars, one with a result that would be called a ‘draw’, the other becoming a clear defeat in 1975.

In the Good versus Evil narrative, Good never capitulates to Evil; not even if the alternative is the nuclear destruction of all life on Earth.

Truth and Reconciliation versus Accountability and Retribution

As we have seen at the end of World War One, an attempt by Germany at reconciliation to end the conflagration – including a willingness to have war crimes assessed and adjudicated in an international court – turned into a humiliation of Germany; that humiliation, in turn, ensured that the conflagration would recommence at a time of Germany’s choosing.

Fortunately, we have the South African experience of the end of Apartheid as a template for another way: Truth and Reconciliation. The former can always win out over the latter. Processes of humiliation and punishment are accompanied by large-scale processes of evasion and concealment; the incentives are to conceal rather than reveal the evidence of what really happened. It is better to know and not punish, than to punish a few scapegoats and to conceal the rest.

The best outcome is Remembrance, not Punishment and Vengeance. Sunlight is the strongest disinfectant. And to remember all; not to over-remember some things while severely under-remembering most things. For most younger people in the world today, World War One is understood as gritty soldiering in the trenches of the Somme, or under the cliffs at Gallipoli. And World War Two is reduced to Adolf Hitler’s genocidal mania, and Winston Churchill’s ‘heroic’ campaigns to defeat Goering, Rommel and Hitler (thereby, though too late, to save the Jews). Even the Pacific War is largely forgotten, except for reminders every five-years or so of Pearl Harbour and Hiroshima; the rest is unfathomable nuance.

Today

The western powers have tried hard to present themselves as ‘The Good’ in a biblical struggle through their Ukraine client regime, against Vlad ‘The Bad’. Yet the paucity of western Goodness has been so deeply exposed by the western alliance’s complicity in the genocide by Israelis of their co-semitic Palestinians, with whom they share the land known from 1918 to 1948 by some as ‘Mandatory Palestine’ and by others as ‘Eretz Israel’. Whatever we think of the virtue of the various western alliances (starting with the French-British Entente of 1904), clearly they are not ‘The Good’. Like all the other dirty wars in the twentieth and twenty-first century, the contests are between The Grubby and The Grubby, each looking for an opportunity to impose victor’s justice over the other.

Israel is trying to create a nationalist ethno-Utopia in accordance with the principles of Lebensraum. Israel has been doing so since the newly formed United Nations inflicted WW2 victor’s justice upon an indigenous third party in 1948.

Truth and Reconciliation is the answer; researching what happened and how and why, noting the root of the word ‘publication’ is ‘public’. Not one-sided Accountability and Retribution.

Conflicts will always exist. If we can get past the Good versus Bad narratives, we can make deals  which are never perfect for either party; but better for all three parties (noting that world wars have major impacts on third parties, such as the indigenous people of the Levant; and such as the birds, bees, people and trees, all of whom will lose big-time in the case of a self-inflicted extinction event).

Two Interesting Historical Deals

In the Napoleonic Wars – World War Zero – we had the British on one side defending the ancien regime European orders of feudalism and merchant capitalism; versus the French side which (under Napoleon Bonaparte) both advocated for and subsequently destroyed the new revolutionary liberalism.

As in World War One, the British Navy played a major role. Important territories for France were the Indian Ocean islands of Isle de France (now Mauritius) and La Réunion. In 1810, Réunion Island was captured by the British. In 1814 a deal was done. Réunion was swapped for the more economically valuable Isle de France. Great Britain had the military advantage of having captured the less populated part of this ‘France in the Indian Ocean’. Hence, Britain in 1814, leveraging off its relative military success, instigated a swap deal; Britain gained Mauritius (reverting to its former Dutch name), and Réunion was restored to France. (As usual in those times, indigenous people didn’t get a look in!) For France, the only alternative was to continue the fight; in that event, France would eventually have lost both islands. Pragmatism prevailed; the 1814 swap took place.

A second event – also an allegory for our present times – involved a genocide; an event in the Banda Islands (in present Indonesia) described by Bengali writer Amitav Ghosh, in his 2021 book The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis. This particularly problematic genocide was perpetrated by the Dutch East India Company (Dutch abbreviation ‘VOC’; Abel Tasman’s employer) in the 1620s. (Mauritius was then also part of the VOC territory; indeed that’s who ruled Mauritius when the dodo became extinct, in 1662.) At that time, England and the Netherlands were the great mercantile rivals in the North Sea, Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean spheres. England had possessed one of the more remote Banda Islands, Rhun. To settle the second Anglo-Dutch War in 1667, the Dutch formalised a land-swap deal which at the time seemed very advantageous to them (Manhattan or Pulau Rhun? In 1667, Nutmeg Made the Choice a No-Brainer, New York Times, 2024). England got the last laugh, however. It had acquired Manhattan Island; and, as they say, the rest was history – world history – the island in which fortunes were made from real estate deals.

*******

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.

A leading peace campaigner is calling Aotearoa New Zealand’s decision to stay away from a peace event in Nagasaki paying tribute to victims of the Japanese city’s 1945 nuclear bombing “outrageous”.

Former trade union leader Robert Reid said New Zealand could have acted as a strong independent Pacific voice by attending today’s peace gathering, held annually on August 9 to commemorate the estimated 70,000 people killed in a US nuclear attack on the Japanese city at the end of World War II.

“New Zealand has missed an opportunity to demarcate itself from the cheerleaders of the Gaza genocide, from the US and the UK and other Western countries, and in a way has turned its back on Japan, which was an ally with us in the anti-nuclear position that New Zealand has held for many years,” the former Unite president said.

His comments come after a Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (Mfat) spokesperson confirmed to In Context neither New Zealand’s ambassador to Japan Hamish Hooper nor any other consulate official would be attending the peace ceremony, stressing the move was due to “resourcing” and unrelated to a boycott by Western nations following the city’s decision not to invite Israel.

The US and its Western allies are staying away from the peace ceremony because Nagasaki’s Mayor Shiro Suzuki declined to send an invitation to Israel to attend, over events in the Middle East and to avoid protests against the war in Gaza at the event.

In a statement a Mfat spokesperson said: “The New Zealand government will not be represented at the commemorations at Nagasaki on 9 August 2024. This decision reflects limited resourcing of the Embassy in Tokyo, and is not associated with attendance of other countries.”

However, it is understood New Zealand was represented at a commemoration event at head of mission level in Hiroshima last Tuesday. Nagasaki is located south of Hiroshima and a journey three-and-a-half hours by train.

Cancelled last year
The Nagasaki commemoration was cancelled last year due to a typhoon warning. New Zealand had been represented at both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki events in recent years, at head of mission level in 2022 and 2021.

It only attended the Hiroshima commemoration in 2020, a period when covid-19 lockdowns and travel restrictions were widespread.

New Zealand’s absence comes after envoys of the US, Canada, Germany, France, the UK and other Western nations sent a letter to Nagasaki organisers expressing concern over the city not inviting Israel.

The letter, dated July 19, warned that if Israel was excluded, “it would become difficult for us to have high-level participation” in the event as it would “result in placing Israel on the same level as countries such as Russia and Belarus,” both having been excluded from the ceremony since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In a statement on July 31 outlining the reasons for excluding Israel, Suzuki said officials feared protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza would take away the ceremony’s solemnity.

He added that he made the decision based on “various developments in the international community in response to the ongoing situation in the Middle East”.

ICJ ruled Israel as apartheid state
An International Court of Justice (ICJ) advisory opinion on July 19 ruled Israel’s occupation of Palestine illegal and that Israel was administering a system of apartheid through discriminatory laws and policies. Apartheid is a crime against humanity.

In a 14-1 ruling, the ICJ directed Israel to immediately cease all settlement activity, evacuate settlers from occupied Palestinian territories, and pay reparations to Palestinians. It also voted 12-3 that UN states not render aid or assistance to Israel to continue the illegal occupation.

On July 30, the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner said in light of the ruling: “States must immediately review all diplomatic, political, and economic ties with Israel, inclusive of business and finance, pension funds, academia and charities.”

There were protests on Wednesday following a decision by the Hiroshima municipality to allow Israeli representation at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park event the day before, while not inviting a Palestinian envoy on the basis that the occupied country was not a United Nations member and that Japan did not recognise it as a state.

“I understand New Zealand is not calling its absence a boycott, but just that it’s too busy, but it has attended in the past,” Read said.

“I think we’re just playing with words here. This was a chance for New Zealand to stand with the people of Palestine, to stand with the Japanese people, who have had bombs dropped on them and they have perhaps taken a weak way out by not attending.”

The Disarmament and Security Centre Aotearoa is holding a Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemoration event on Sunday, August 11, at Christchurch’s Botanic Gardens.

Virtual centre
The non-profit organisation is a virtual centre connecting disarmament experts, lawyers, political scientists, academics, teachers, students and disarmament proponents.

Its spokesperson, Dr Marcus Coll, said he was shocked New Zealand would not be attending the Nagasaki event this year.

“These sorts of things should never be about resources because it’s the symbolism of it that is so important and actually showing solidarity with the victims of Nagasaki,” he said.

“In the Pacific region especially, we’ve really felt the effects of nuclear testing throughout the decades and then in Japan, there still are a lot of the survivors and their families are affected because of the intergenerational effects.”

Dr Coll spent seven years studying and working in Japan. His doctoral research involved interviewing and researching survivors of the atomic bombings, as well as indigenous rights activists, religious and military leaders, peace campaigners, and others who were instrumental in shaping New Zealand’s nuclear free identity.

He said Japan’s survivors had expressed awe at a small country in the Pacific taking a strong stand against nuclear weapons.

“New Zealand has really been a kind of a beacon of hope for a lot of those people,” he said.

Nuclear-free legacy
New Zealand became a nuclear-free country in 1987, with a Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament and Arms Control Act that effectively banned US nuclear vessels from its waters.

It led to New Zealand being frozen out of the ANZUS security treaty and allowed the country to develop a more independent policy engagement with the Pacific and the rest of the world.

“That came from the government level as well,” Dr Coll said.

“It was a groundswell from the public, which changed our policy, but governments of all stripes up until recently have really not contested that legacy and actually been kind of proud of it.

“It really is something that sets us apart, especially internationally and we’re respected for it . . . So, it seems like a real let down that our own government can’t even show up.”

Dr Coll said New Zealand had nurtured a significant link with Nagasaki, being the last place to suffer a nuclear attack in warfare.

“Our former director used to go to Nagasaki. She had very strong connections with the mayor there. There’s actually a sculpture in the Nagasaki Peace Park, given to the city on behalf of New Zealand cities and the New Zealand government back in 2000s, forging that strong connection.

“It’s called the Korowai of Peace. Phil Goff as foreign minister, the New Zealand ambassador and other civil society people were there . . .  This decision I suspect is a kind of PR and not to attend is a blow to our heritage of promoting disarmament and being anti-nuclear.”

The US envoy to Japan Rahm Emanuel is expected to attend a peace ceremony at the Zojoji Temple in Tokyo on Friday instead.

Nagasaki was bombed by the United States on August 9, 1945, after Hiroshima had been hit by atomic bomb on August 6. The two attacks at the end of World War II killed up to 250,000 people. Japan surrendered on August 15.

Republished from Mick Hall In Context with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Authorities in the small town of Boulouparis have commemorated Armistice Day on May 8 with a new memorial honouring New Zealand soldiers who were stationed in New Caledonia during World War II.

The ceremony took place in the township on the southwest coast of the main island of Grande Terre in the presence of New Zealand’s Nouméa-based Consul-General Felicity Roxburgh.

Also present were Boulouparis Mayor Pascal Vittori and French Commissioner (South) Grégory Lecru, as well as military and civilian officials — and to the sounds of school children singing the New Zealand, French and New Caledonia anthems.

“It’s not a well-known story, but we wanted to value this so we can honour our common values and the strong connections between New Caledonia, New Zealand and France, and the sacrifices during World War II, especially at this time when the region is facing geostrategic challenges,” Roxburgh told local media Radio Rythme Bleu.

Vittori said: “New Zealanders were with us during the World War II And we wanted this to be remembered . . . and also to enable those New Zealanders who would like to come here and remember.”

The new monument, which represents a New Zealand soldier, with a plaque at the base, is the result of a joint initiative from the local Veterans Association and the New Zealand Consulate.

Further North on New Caledonia’s west coast, in Bourail and the nearby village of Nessadiou, a New Zealand cemetery contains the graves of about 246 soldiers.

Thousands of New Zealand military personnel were based in New Caledonia during World War II, when Bourail was the Headquarters of the 3rd New Zealand Division.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

When I was growing up in Kiribati, then known as the Gilbert Islands, New Zealand divers came to safely detonate unexploded munitions from World War II.

Decades on from when US Marines fought and won the Battle of Tarawa against Japan, war was still very much a part of everyday life.

Our school bell was a bombshell. We’d find bullet casings.

In fact, my grandmother’s leg was badly injured when she lit a fire on the beach, and an unexploded ordnance went off. There are Japanese bunkers and US machine gun mounts along the Betio shoreline, and bones are still being found — even today.

Stories are told . . . so many people died . . . these things are not forgotten.

That’s why the security and defence pacts being drawn up around the Pacific are worrying much of the region, as the US and Australia partner up to counter China’s growing influence.

You only have to read Australia’s Defence Strategic Review 2023 to see they are preparing for conflict.

The battle is climate change which is impacting their everyday life. The bigger powers will most certainly go through the motions of at least hearing their voices.

— Barbara Dreaver

Secret pact changed landscape
While in the last few years we have seen China put big money into the Pacific, it was primarily about diplomatic weight and ensuring Taiwan wasn’t recognised. But the secret security pact with the Solomon Islands changed the landscape dramatically.

There was a point where it stopped being about just aid and influence — and openly started to become much more serious.

Since then, the escalation has been rapid as the US and Australia have amped up their activities — and other state actors have as well.

In some cases, lobbying and negotiating have been covertly aggressive. Many Pacific countries are concerned about the militarisation of the region — and whether we like it or not, that’s where it’s headed.

Tuvalu’s Foreign Minister Simon Kofe said he understands why his country, which sits between Hawai’i and Australia, is of strategic interest to the superpowers.

Worried about militarisation, he admits they are coming under pressure from all sides — not just China but the West as well.

“In World War II, the war came to the Pacific even though we played no part at all in the conflict, and we became victims of a war that was not of our making,” he said.

Important Pacific doesn’t forget
“So it’s important for the Pacific not to forget that experience now we are seeing things that are happening in this part of the world, and it’s best we are prepared for that situation.”

Academic Dr Anna Powles, a long-time Pacific specialist, said she was very concerned at the situation, which was a “slippery slope” to militarisation.

She said Pacific capitals were being flooded with officials from around the region and from further afield who want to engage.

Pacific priorities are being undermined, and there is a growing disconnect in the region between national interest and the interest of the political elites.

Today in Papua New Guinea, we see first-hand how we are on the cusp of change.

They include big meetings spearheaded by the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, another one by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a defence deal that will allow US military access through ports and airports. In exchange, the US is providing an extra US$45 million (NZ$72 million) in funding a raft of initiatives, some of which include battling the effects of climate change.

Equipment boost
The PNG Defence Force is also getting an equipment boost, and there’s a focus on combatting law and order issues — which domestically is a big challenge — and protecting communities, particularly women, from violence.

There is much in these initiatives that the PNG government and the people here will find attractive. It may well be the balance between PNG’s national interest and US ambitions is met — it will be interesting to see if other Pacific leaders agree.

Because some Pacific leaders are happy to be courted and enjoy being at the centre of global attention (and we know who you are), others are determined to do the best for their people. The fight for them is not geopolitical, and it’s on the land they live on.

The battle is climate change which is impacting their everyday life. The bigger powers will most certainly go through the motions of at least hearing their voices.

What that will translate to remains to be seen.

Barbara Dreaver is TV1’s Pacific correspondent and is in Papua New Guinea with the New Zealand delegation. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The last 10 days has seen the entire media focus (aside from the ubiquitous concern for the All Black prospects in a rugby test and then the fate of coach Ian Foster) has been on allegations of bullying by new opposition National MP Sam Uffindell and bullying of first term Labour government MP Gaurav Sharma.

Sam Uffindell’s future is still up in the air while Dr Sharma’s political career has resembled a meteorite — a brief, bright burn.

Meanwhile, over this time we were visited by US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who was on a whirlwind visit through the Pacific which the US has just rediscovered after finding China has been courting our Pacific neighbours.

Sherman was here to remind us the US fought in the Pacific 75 years ago, that it is ready to fight here again (on the side of “democracy” and “freedom” of course) and probably assessing when best for the US to launch a destabilising campaign against Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, who has had the audacity, from the US point of view, to sign a development agreement with China.

There is a host of good, hard questions that should have been put to Sherman by our journalists but alas there is nothing of substance anywhere.

Here for example is RNZ’s Morning Report interview with Sherman.

Calling it a “soft” interview doesn’t describe it well — “cringing embarrassment” would be better.

Full of talking points
Sherman was full of US talking points such as the importance of the “[US] rules-based international order developed after World War II” and “no country should decide the political future of another country or bend that country to their political will”.

Just read that last Sherman quote again. She is aiming at China but probably three quarters of humanity have experienced precisely that interference at the hands, guns, banks and bombs of the US since World War II — democracies included.

RNZ let it all go unchallenged. The US is already on the record as saying they will “not sit by” and allow China to get a foothold in the Solomon Islands or the Pacific.

Why wasn’t Sherman interrogated on this? Why weren’t hard questions asked? The danger signs for our corner of the world are everywhere — but invisible to RNZ.

Instead the hard questions were saved for the hapless thug Uffindell and those responsible for Dr Sharma’s meteoric career.

Aotearoa New Zealand got closest to an independent foreign policy in the mid-1980s but there seems no journalistic memory. Instead of asking about US intentions in the Pacific and suggesting that New Zealanders don’t want to see superpower rivalry on our doorstep, RNZ simply asks what are the prospects of New Zealand joining the AUKUS alliance (Australia, the UK and the US who are joining forces to arm Australia with nuclear submarines to counter China)

Meanwhile, Aotearoa New Zealand moves insidiously closer to the US military.

Here in Christchurch, protests will accompany the Rocket Lab presence at the 2022 Aerospace Summit.

In case anyone hasn’t caught up with developments, Rocket Lab is now majority owned by the US military and has launched numerous rockets for direct military purposes.

The protest will have some hard questions for Peter Beck — don’t expect them from the news media.

John Minto is a political activist and commentator. This article was first published by The Daily Blog and is republished with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Even from the grainy black and white footage of American soldiers wading towards shore while under fire, you can see and sense the fear, resignation and determination in that moment.

The Battle of Midway in World War II may have been won, but on August 7, 1942, the Solomon Islands campaign was just beginning.

By the end, nearly 40,000 men lost their lives here, 31,000 Japanese and 7,100 Allies.

In 2013, I travelled with a large group of New Zealand war veterans to New Caledonia, marking the war in the Pacific.

There is a New Zealand cemetery at Bourail where Kiwis who died in the Pacific are buried. It was humbling to be with these men, aged in their 80s and 90s, as they were slowly led down to the graves of their mates.

There were many tears for fallen but also burdens of their own to carry. Many years had passed but some things remain raw.

One of the veterans who came along was a man named John Jones. He was one of three coastwatchers who survived in what was then the Gilbert and Ellis Islands. He and the others survived because they were captured early in the war by the Japanese.

Rounded up, beheaded
Unlike his three best friends (they had all signed up together) who were later among 25 rounded up and beheaded.

Jones would weep as he thought of the terror his mates must have felt as they watched their colleagues being beheaded one by one while waiting for their turn. Unimaginable.

Solomon Islands marks 80th anniversary of Battle of Guadalcanal. Video: 1News

Jones had fought NZ authorities pushing for acknowledgement of the slain coastwatchers.

He succeeded and there is now a beautiful monument in their honour. I had got to know him over the years and was immensely fond of him.

We met up many times and when he died in 2017, myself and a fellow journalist, Mike Field, who had also written about him extensively, went to his funeral.

So here we are in the Solomon Islands and I am reminded of my old friend as there are no veterans here today. Too many years have now passed — any still alive would be in their late 90s or older.

So why does it matter 80 years later that we remember this day?

Undercurrents of tension
There are currently undercurrents of tension in the Pacific we would be foolish to ignore. In the three decades of covering the Pacific, a lot of it based in the region, I feel deep unease about what is happening that I’ve never felt before.

China’s reach and influence are growing. While that’s not a bad thing in some areas, there is a flow-down impact on development, democracy, justice, and freedom of speech.

There is a lot of cash and corruption around. My home country of Kiribati is isolated even from its neighbours and this feels very deliberate.

I fear for what is ahead.

So while we think back to the past today, we need to think about what was won — and at what cost — and how we must go forward.

Barbara Dreaver is 1News Pacific correspondent and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

With the arrival of the omicron variant on our shores, it is hard to believe, judging by the media coverage — particularly on MIQ, that the Aotearoa New Zealand government has got anything right in its pandemic response.

One important feature that has been missed in the debate on New Zealand’s pandemic response to date, however, is our very low death rate. At under 60, it is 0.5 percent of the rate in the United Kingdom – approximately 10 per million, compared with more than 2000 per million in the United Kingdom.

This is a very important metric that has been given too little regard here and overseas. The number of people dying of covid-19 in the UK is well over 150,000. This figure is confirmed by the data on excess deaths estimated against the long-run average; the two numbers closely correspond.

This figure is just under half the number of British troops killed in World War II. And this in two years of a pandemic, compared with the six years of that conflict.

In other words, the deaths wrought by covid are on a scale comparable with a major outbreak of warfare. And yet too many commentators and decision-makers have become inured to this death toll, concentrating instead on the performance of the health system and the enjoyment of individual freedoms.

If we had suffered the same rate of covid deaths as the UK has, that would make the number of deaths not 50-60 but 10,000, not far short of the number of New Zealanders dying in World War II (just under 12,000).

The scale of death — or the potential for death — therefore needs to feature more prominently in the coverage of the politics of the pandemic.

‘Let the bodies pile high’​
For example, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is said to have stated that he would prefer to “let the bodies pile high”​ rather than pursue another lockdown.

True or not, that reported statement had almost no impact on his popularity compared to stories of his attending parties at Downing Street when the UK was under firm restrictions on gatherings.

This blind spot in the media coverage and cultural resonance of the pandemic came home to me when a columnist in the left-of-centre publication New Statesman pointed out that, pre-omicron, her friends in Australia didn’t know a single person with the virus, and yet their state and federal governments at that time were pursuing far stronger public health measures than were being applied the UK.

The same could have been said of New Zealand since the two countries have followed similar policies.

Yes, most Australians — and New Zealanders — pre-Omicron were unlikely to know anybody with the virus; but neither were they likely to know anybody who had died of it, which is in many respects a far more important metric both ethically and politically.

Arguably, New Zealand — like Australia — is a more communitarian country, with “two degrees of separation” and all that. Thus, it might matter that bit more to us whether or not our neighbour, friend, or relative dies of a pandemic disease.

In larger, more anonymous societies there is less proximity to death.

Pictures of morgues
At present anyway, pictures of morgues piled high with the dead from the pandemic would be socially unacceptable in our culture. Added to this is the special place of Māori, who could suffer disproportionately with a premature opening of our borders.

This is something that Grounded Kiwis, the expatriate New Zealanders’ group pushing the legal case against the government, may have missed. If it forces the hand of the government to open our borders before we have been able to achieve acceptable levels of both vaccination and infection protection — such as masking, ventilation, distancing, and self-testing against the onslaught of omicron – then the consequences may also be an increase in the likely death rate in New Zealand.

For example, New South Wales at the peak of its omicron outbreak recorded rather more deaths in a single day than New Zealand had recorded over the near-two years of the pandemic, despite the supposedly milder and less impactful character of this variant.

Is that really what we want?

It is also as well to remember our responsibility to all vulnerable populations, including the elderly, Māori and Pasifika, and all those with relevant underlying health conditions. These groups have suffered disproportionately in the pandemic so far.

Few of us have experienced over a short time and in a proximate way significant numbers of deaths in our circles. Half a century ago, it was more common for people to die at home, often surrounded by family, but this has become much less so.

These days it is more likely to be professionally and medically managed, with much of our experience of death otherwise coming packaged via mass and social media.

The government — and New Zealanders — have done well to keep pandemic death at bay. This is not to justify draconian measures without considered trade-offs against wider societal costs and benefits.

But it is to argue for a more balanced discussion of our pandemic response, and to show greater respect for the more communitarian style of it.

Peter Davis is an elected member of the Auckland District Health Board, and emeritus professor in population health and social science at the University of Auckland. His article was first published at Stuff and is republished on Asia Pacific Report with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A deadly explosion in the Solomon Islands capital has caused fear and confusion about the ongoing threat posed by hidden munitions left over from World War II.

A central Honiara residential area was rocked on Sunday by the detonation of a buried howitzer shell which left one person dead and three others injured, two seriously.

The 101mm cannon round exploded in the Lengakiki area where four youth members of the Kukum Seventh Day Adventist Church had been holding a fund-raising barbecue.

An elder from the church, Lloyd Tahani, said the open fire they were cooking on was directly above the shell.

“Maybe, because they had been cooking a long time, it triggered the bomb to explode,” said Tahani.

He said the young man who was killed, who he identified as Raziv Hilly, “was hit directly” as he was cooking beneath a mango tree while the other three injured people were standing nearby.

The incident has left the people in Honiara shocked and scared, said Tahani.

‘Fear to the residents’
“It brought fear to the residents in Honiara because, you know, Honiara is where the battle between Japan and the USA finishes,” he said referring to the 1942-43 Guadalcanal campaign.

“You just don’t have a comfortable environment when such things happen. People just feel that we don’t know whether a bomb is still sitting under your house or somewhere where you’re staying.”

Raziv Hilly was a leader in the Kukum SDA Church’s youth ministry, according to Tahani, who will be sadly missed.

He was one of the country’s future leaders, according to a member of the Solomon Islands Parliament.

Peter Kenilorea Jr, who knew Hilly and his family, said he was a much respected youth leader.

“He was a very promising leader here in the Solomon Islands. He had a lot of respect,” said Kenilorea.

“He was one that had a lot of potential for us in the Solomons so it’s just sad to see him go this way. So the family is grieving at the moment and we send our love and our condolences.”

Hilly was also one of the country’s top aviation engineers whose loss is being mourned by his colleagues at the Ministry of Aviation and Communication, according to the Solomon Star.

The other three injured members of the church remain in hospital with one having received surgery on Monday for her serious injuries.

Munitions recovery ongoing
With Solomon Islands seeing some of the most intense conflict in WWII, the country remains littered with bombs, with hidden munitions an ongoing threat across the country.

The head of the police’s explosive ordnance disposal team, Clifford Tunuki, said they had responded to a number of unexploded ordnance (UXO) reports over the years in the capital.

“We keep a data base of the response we conducted and we have checked the history of that area,” said Tunuki, referring to Lengakiki.

“Our research indicates that it is no more contaminated with UXO than other parts of the capital.”

The last one was a mortar shell discovered in 2016, said Tunuki.

“Unfortunately citizens of Honiara can find a UXO anywhere and at any time of the year,” he added.

Norwegian deaths
Last September, two members of a Norwegian NGO working on munitions recovery and disposal were killed when they removed ordnance into Honiara where they had been staying.

Tunuki said he could not comment on that case as the investigation into their deaths was still under way.

The United States, which along with Japan is responsible for most of the country’s UXO’s, said in a statement through its embassy in Papua New Guinea that it is “deeply saddened to hear of the tragic incident in Honiara this past weekend and mourn[s] the loss of life.”

“The United States government, through our Department of Defense, will continue to support efforts to remove unexploded ordnance from Solomon Islands.

“Among these efforts is our ongoing partnership with Norwegian People’s Aid, which has worked in Solomon Islands since 2019 to identify and dispose of unexploded ordnance.”

But work by the Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) was suspended last year following the deaths of the Australian and British team members in Honiara, according to Tunuki.

Previously, the Australian and New Zealand military had removed more than 1000 World War II era munitions as part of Operation Render Safe.

Told to hire cleaning company
Meanwhile, the owners of the site of Sunday’s blast have been told to hire a clearing company because there are not enough police resources to check their land.

Tunuki said the scene had been secured and no other threats were detected.

But he said the landowners have been told to hire a private clearing company to check surrounding grounds.

“The problem for us to clear populated areas, then we would need more manpower and resources than we currently have.

“Until then, we can only respond to the community reports that they have located UXO and then we attend to [them].”

Tunuki said there were more recruits being trained for that purpose.

More knowledge needed
But more knowledge and awareness about the potential for UXO’s beneath existing structures and in established neighbourhoods may be needed, according to Peter Kenilorea Jr.

New commercial developments were cleared of munitions but people were not likely to expect them in the yards of existing homes, he added.

“I guess an increase of awareness needs to be done by authorities to alert people on the certain steps that they might need to take, even in an already established area, involving fires and then such,” said Kenilorea.

“I think such awareness needs to come back much more prominent in our discourse here in Honiara and Solomon Islands in general.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

BRIEFING: By Dan McGarry in Port Vila

The “news” this week that Vanuatu was to be the site of a Chinese military base caught most people by surprise. Government officials with detailed knowledge of relevant matters swore hand on heart they’d never even heard hints of such talk.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Ralph Regenvanu questioned the sourcing of the report, telling the Radio Australia’s Pacific Beat radio programme, “I’m not very happy about the standard of reporting in the Australia media”.

Chinese embassy officials in Vanuatu declined an interview request, stating, “The report is groundless and not worth any comment at all.”

READ MORE: Vanuatu rejects ‘speculative’ base claim

The topic has quickly become the loudest non-conversation in town.

Tacitly at least, officials from all nations recognise Vanuatu’s strategic importance.

A Chinese sailor raises the red flag on the prow of a PLA Navy frigate during a visit to Vanuatu. Image: Dan McGarry/Vanuatu Daily Post

-Partners-

Luganville, on the island of Espiritu Santo, was the site of one of the largest military bases in the entire Pacific Theatre during WWII.

Home to about 100,000 personnel at its peak, it saw nearly one million service people pass through before it was decommissioned in 1946.

Controlling air, sea
What was true in the 1940s remains true today: Whoever controls Vanuatu controls air and sea traffic between the United States and Australia. Right now, that’s the government of Vanuatu.

For more than a decade, this tiny island nation has leveraged regional rivalries to drive infrastructure development. Its dalliances with China, for example, resulted in a US$20 million investment by telecoms giant Huawei in an island-hopping communications network.

That move is said by some to have motivated a multimillion-dollar commitment from Australia to fund telecoms regulation and management.

For years, western nations were simply not interested in big-ticket, high-risk projects. Infrastructure projects worldwide are fraught with budget overruns, scope creep and delays. Risk-averse donors therefore shied away.

But not China.

Largely on the back of questionably “concessional” loans from the China EXIM Bank, contractors secured a mixed bag of infrastructure projects, ranging from roads to wharves to buildings. They include sport facilities, a convention centre and a school.

But the most noticeable project was a US$90 million wharf project in Luganville. Almost from the outset, people raised the spectre of the old American base there.

Revived interest
Many Pacific watchers think there’s no coincidence to a recently revived interest from the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank and other funding bodies in Pacific islands infrastructure.

At the same time as the Luganville wharf was being constructed, Japan was also demonstrating its friendship to Vanuatu by building a major wharf facility in Port Vila, the capital. The US$70 million project came at much more favourable terms.

Australia meanwhile signed on to a US$30 million urban infrastructure development project in the capital. The World Bank has already committed $60 million to the nation’s airports, and is reportedly considering upping the ante to $150 million.

Despite the fact that Australia remains the largest donor in Vanuatu and the Pacific, analysts suggest that China has stolen a march on them by ingratiating themselves with politicians who see infrastructure projects as vote-getters.

An artist’s view of the completed Luganville wharf … source of the “base” controversy. Image: Shanghai Construction Group/VDP

Lacking coherence
It is widely felt that Chinese engagement lacks coherence, and that the quality of its work is variable, to be generous. But nobody doubts its popularity with the political elite here, and that is something that should cause concern in Canberra.

Locally, engagement between Australian development workers and their government counterparts is excellent. But communication between Pacific capitals and Canberra is sadly lacking.

Ill-considered stories such as the recent Fairfax article, or Senator Fierravanti-Wells’ January diatribe about Chinese “roads going nowhere” play poorly in the Pacific. They only offer China an opportunity to commiserate with local officials, and to go on quietly building roads and wharves.

Dan McGarry is media director of the Vanuatu Daily Post group. This article is republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz