Listening to the radio this week, I heard the New Zealand Army is now joining the armed forces of other western countries like the U.S and Britain in having uniforms made in China.
While uniforms might not be considered a strategically sensitive type of military hardware, more significant components like aircraft parts are also being manufactured in the people’s republic.
Neo-liberal economists claim this is a good thing, since free trade supposedly discourages countries from going to war with one another.
However, the problem with this argument is that we now have an historically unprecedented situation where just one country, China, is doing almost all the manufacturing.
The West’s ability to wage war may be declining, but China’s ability to wage war is rapidly increasing.
With economic nationalism making a comeback, we might want to consider whether contracting out armaments production to a powerful non-western country that might attack us is a sensible idea.
Posted by mikecourtman 