Even within the post-World War 2 rules-based international order, might has too often made right.
Now, thanks to the bullying and recklessness of United States President Donald Trump and his acolytes, failures and fissures are appearing everywhere. Might is, once again, blatantly right.
The US, once the so-called leader of the free world, is, week by week, less free and less of a leader.
For all its hypocrisy and unwise or unlawful interventions over the past 80 years, the United States did at times walk the talk.
In 2001, Prime Minister Helen Clark described New Zealand’s strategic environment as ‘‘incredibly benign’’. Smart and shrewd though she was, she proved off the mark.
Power plays, violence and vulnerability are part of the real world, of realpolitik, and we are naive to think otherwise.
This is the context for Civis’ reaction to last weekend’s Otago Daily Times page-one lead story: ‘‘Uni’s NZDF ambitions ‘shameful’.’’
The University of Otago was accused of being ‘‘desperate’’ and ‘‘shameful’’ for pursuing a contract with the New Zealand Defence Force, including work that could help develop weapons.
Green Party MP Francisco Hernandez made these comments after being presented with a university discussion document prepared for the NZDF and leaked to the ODT.
The document said New Zealand-developed weapons technology ‘‘offers the potential to build unique sovereign capacities relevant to our own geostrategic context and physical environment’’.
Mr Hernandez said the university ‘‘desperately bidding for a defence technology accelerator contract, especially one with a mandate for offensive weapons technology, is deeply concerning’’.
He argued that the university should refuse to work on offensive weapons technology and instead act as a force for peace and understanding.
An unnamed staff member said the implications for academics were ‘‘fraught’’.
The university subsequently said weapons were not part of any future NZDF contracts.
Oh, to live in such an idealistic ivory tower. By all means, work for peace and understanding and search for alternatives to war.
But be prepared and on guard. Peaceful protest has its place and can succeed in the right circumstances.
If the soldiers are not prepared to gun down fellow citizens, as in Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution, that’s all well and good.
Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent resistance advanced Indian independence because the British were not ruthless enough to remove him permanently.
These days, try peaceful protesting in Iran, Burma, Russia or China and see how far it gets. The Arab Spring uprisings and the Hong Kong protests were crushed.
The Moriori of the Chatham Islands (Rēkohu) developed a philosophy of non-violence. When mainland Māori invaded in 1835, about 300 were murdered and the rest enslaved.
The point is that, in a dog-eat-dog world, the bottom line is effective defence and deterrence. North Korea wields its nuclear threat, and Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz.
When Israel first struck Iran with missiles, Iran responded with token retaliation, avoiding escalation — a stance interpreted as weakness.
Such restraint, sadly, is inadequate when confronted by bullies like Mr Trump and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Likewise, the limited response of the West and Nato when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, annexed Crimea in 2014 and began its war in eastern Ukraine, emboldened President Vladimir Putin.
We are now more than four years into his full-scale invasion of Ukraine — the so-called ‘‘special operation’’.
‘‘Peace for our time,’’ proclaimed by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938 after conceding the Sudetenland to Adolf Hitler, has gone down in infamy. Hitler claimed it would be ‘‘the last territorial demand I have to make in Europe’’.
So, Civis says the university should indeed be exploring contracts with the NZDF, even involving weapons, both for commercial reasons and because this may help stiffen the defences of a small and exposed land.
