How Long Can Anglosphere Nations Survive in the Pacific?
I suspect a lot of British people have a dream of New Zealand, an uncrowded, unspoiled ideal version of the British Isles, safely hidden away on the far side of the world. We are not surprised that the makers of the film version of ‘The Lord of the Rings’ found it easy to film Tolkien’s Shire in NZ, though the same country also provided the scenery for some much less homely parts of Middle earth.
I certainly have such a dream - literally, for I have a clear recollection of dreaming of finding myself in a stone-built tower amid soft green downland which I knew, as one does in dreams, to be in the South Island of New Zealand, and of waking disappointed to find I was not really there. I know that the truth is a bit more prosaic, not least because of a close colleague, back in my Swindon Evening Advertiser days, who was a New Zealander and was able to tell me about the disadvantages of his homeland. There weren’t many, but there were some. It certainly wasn’t an unalloyed paradise. By then, in the mid-1970s, it was clear that old cosy relationship between Kiwi farmers and British housewives – they provided the wool, meat and dairy products, we bought them – was over, thanks to Britain’s treacherous little affair with Brussels. I don’t think, in all my childhood, I ever saw any other butter on sale apart from Anchor Butter from New Zealand, in its brightly-coloured 1930s-style wrapping. Then it vanished for quite a while, to return in recent years more suavely packaged, but one among dozens.
And any illusions New Zealand might have had that it was immune from the cold winds of the wide world ended in 1984, when the then Labour Government introduced the so-called ‘Rogernomics’ programme (named after Finance Minister Roger Douglas) of free market liberalisation , abolition of subsidies, deregulation, floating exchange rates and tight monetary policy. There was also a large reduction in jobs in manufacturing industry. Does this sound familiar at all?
I bore all this in mind as my flight from Sydney approached its goal . We came into land over the beautiful harbour of Wellington, the capital, whose wooded seaside suburbs reminded me of those of Seattle in the American Pacific Northwest . In fact, I was often reminded of that equally pleasing landscape and cityscape, with its feeling of spaciousness and remoteness, during my brief visit. It has another characteristic, too, which is more unsettling – a feeling that in this vastness, such idyllic forms of human settlement may ultimately be temporary, depending on the existence of an advanced if grimier civilisation elsewhere, which ultimately sustains it. Wellington was my only contact with the North Island, which is the more populous and political part of the country. If and when I go back, I’ll have to put that right. I then headed south in a small plane, which flew through clear skies along the East Coast of the South Island, a very lovely prospect and one of those rare air journeys on which you are at just the right height to follow your progress on the map.
I cannot offer any more than a very impressionistic, wholly subjective reflection. I’ve written it mainly for my own satisfaction, for New Zealand was one of a very small number of places which I had long wanted to visit but never had (the others are, absurdly, Greece and Denmark, which I have somehow never been to but could easily reach, and Saudi Arabia, and most especially Mecca, which are forever closed to me). I worked out recently that I have now visited 58 countries, from Iceland to the Falklands , and including the Gaza Strip, which really ought to be enough for most people. I’ve even visited countries which nobody can ever go to any more – East Germany and the Soviet Union. Until I was invited to Australia this year, I had pretty much abandoned hope of ever seeing New Zealand at all, as the journey from England is so forbidding. As it is, I was there for no more than three days, which may have to be enough.
I headed for Christchurch, the largest city in the South Island, mainly because of my love for travelling by train. NZ’s railways don’t really operate a regular passenger service any more, but they do run a small number of very pleasant tourist runs, two of them starting and finishing in Christchurch.
The more spectacular, the Tranzalpine, crosses the Southern Alps through tunnels and high passes. First, it travels through industrial estates and suburbs, then through small towns and alongside country roads, in a cosy, settled landscape much like what you might find in the eastern states of the USA, or parts of Southern England (though I looked in vain for hedgerows, for me the most quintessentially English landscape feature, though they are these days more readily to be found in the Normandy Bocage than in Britain).
Then, quite suddenly, the line climbs into a landscape of amazing, fierce ruggedness. On an early Spring day, with a bit of chill and wind in the air, and a few traces of snow on the far-off peaks, it looks inhospitable enough. In true Winter, it must be savage. Yet they built a railway line up and through it, the act of a pretty tough, pioneering people. I think I saw an Eagle. And there are people living in small homesteads up in these lonely meadows. The astonishing thing is the proximity. It is as if one left( say) Canterbury and an hour later were high up in icy mountains, overlooking vast passes and dangerous-looking riverbeds, the sort that are wide enough to cope with the spring melting of the mountain snow.
Yet later in the trip, we were in rail replacement buses ( alas, a tunnel was under repair, and I had no choice but to endure this inadequate substitute) and a small incident suggested that the old pioneering spirit has also been replaced - by modern ultra-safe risk-assessment thinking.
As we approached a railway level crossing, we saw that the warning light(indicating an approaching train) was flashing. Now, it was extremely unlikely that there would be a train coming. A few miles West we had passed a long, immobilised coal train astride the single track. A few miles east lay the tunnel through which our own train could not pass. The track, visible for hundreds of yards in both directions, was empty. All the other traffic, pausing briefly to look both ways, was overtaking us and driving across. But our driver would not do so. In fact, the warning light had been triggered by a small repair vehicle, which was stationary on the line about a mile to our east, as we discovered later. At one stage I offered to drive the thing across myself and take any consequences, an offer which was rejected.
It must have taken a full quarter of an hour before we finally resolved to cross. I wondered at one point if we would be there all night. As it was a very remote spot, mobile phones didn’t work, so there was no way of contacting anyone. You either had to use your initiative, or remain, paralysed by regulations, where you were. I reckon something similar might well have happened in the USA or in Britain, but not (for instance) in the New Zealand of 70 years ago when that line was built, and when tough pioneers lived on their wits and their work, or in the NZ of 40 years ago, when it was still fairly British and imperial. It was the contrast between the exhilarating, uplifting, lonely landscape and the mentality of a London borough council that was so striking.
It was also very sad to see the state of Christchurch, the city where I stayed, which was devastated by a powerful earthquake in 2011, in which 185 people died. The city’s Victorian cathedral, an amazing achievement so far from home and in such a small, new place, now lies open to the weather, its east end destroyed and its spire demolished. I really hope they rebuild it as it was. Many other fine buildings were wrecked, damaged, or destroyed. The centre of the city looks much as if it has recently been bombarded or bombed from the air, with whole areas just missing and cleared, roads arbitrarily blocked off and many buildings barricaded because they are structurally unsafe.
It was unsettling to be in an essentially British cityscape (sometimes too British, with too many bland modern towers and blocks) which was also in a major earthquake zone. I know that an earthquake badly damaged Lincoln Cathedral in 1185, but that was a very long time ago and we generally assume that the worst we can face is a tremor or two. This was a giant, furious convulsion, in an element we still think is solid. It isn’t. Maybe it’s not as solid here as we think it is.
It was also sad to see how long it is taking to fix things. For a moment, I unfairly compared the desolate scene in the heart of the city with the Japanese response to earthquakes, which generally involves a complete rebuilding in about ten minutes flat. But of course Japan is a highly-industrialised, extremely wealthy and densely populated country in which no square inch is wasted. New Zealand is prosperous and settled but its population (and tax base) are tiny compared to Japan’s. It must be far harder to recover from a blow on this scale. The city is still obviously rather lovely, full of pleasing old houses and gardens, with the willow-shaded river and several fine parks, planted with magnificent Oak and Ash trees presumably dating from more than a century ago, and a general feeling of peace, space, order and plenty.
As in Australia, I kept marvelling that British ideas had taken root so effectively in a place so very far away, and that there was perhaps nowhere else on earth where they had such perfect conditions in which to do so.
And yet I also felt that it was terribly vulnerable. The Christchurch earthquake served as a metaphor for the enormous untamed forces of global power and money which these days leave almost nobody alone.
New Zealand flourished as it did thanks to the Pax Britannica, and then later thanks to the Pax Americana, which meant that the Pacific was more or less safe from any further invasions or power struggles (yes, I know that NZ has indigenous people, who were not safe from us. This fact confirms my sad view that it is the fate of peoples either to have empires, or to be part of someone else’s. From what I have seen, the thing is to have one, but if you must be part of someone else’s, hope that it’s us or the USA) .
For a few decades to come, I think NZ will still be politically safe, though it must be hard to be sure how to stay prosperous in such a fast-changing world. I believe a lot of NZ dairy products now find their way to China ( do they have Anchor Butter in Peking?), and I expect its meat and wine will increasingly go the same way, as long as China continues is upward curve.
But I’m told we should all be keeping our eyes on the fate of a small group of islands north-west of Taiwan, known in Japan as the Senkaku islands and in China as the Diaoyu (to make things even more complicated, the Taiwan Chinese call them the Tiaoyutai) . All three countries claim them , though Japan actually holds them ( after a long post-1945 period of US administration) . They are close to fishing grounds and possible oilfields, but their main importance may well be as a test of American resolve in the Pacific.
For, if Japan defends them against Chinese pressure, the USA is obliged by treaty (Japan-USA Mutual Co-operation Security Treaty, 1952) to come to Japan’s aid. This is a Cold War legacy, from the time when Japan was the USA’s principal ally in the region, and China a chilly Communist foe, its faced turned away from the USA much as North Korea’s is now. Things have changed utterly since it was signed.
The dispute is immensely complicated, lost in the mists of history but has recently erupted into confrontations between Japanese and Chinese vessels. China may well have chosen it as a pressure point in which it can lose nothing important, but might gain a lot. It has also been entangled in recent anti Japanese outbreaks in China, which are generally believed to be state-sponsored and are a feature of the new Chinese nationalism which is increasingly replacing Communism as the official ideology of the Chinese state.
But the real point is this. the dispute allows China to test the strength of Washington’s commitment to Japan. The USA does not want to be drawn into this matter, now that it is pursuing friendship with China and is heavily indebted to China. It has so far left statements on the matter to junior officials and deputies. But if Japan refuses to give way, and insists on America fulfilling her treaty obligations, the USA may have to make an open choice between backing Japan and letting her down.
Backing Japan would be risky. But abandoning her would be immensely significant, a message to China that the USA will not stand up to Chinese pressure for the sake of an ally – and so a message to Taiwan that its principal ally cannot be relied on at a pinch. China longs to secure the return of Taiwan to the national fold, but if she succeeds, it will only be after American power and resolve in the Pacific have greatly diminished.
The US Navy is still of course immensely powerful. But is its power still usable? Would any modern US President take the risk of a naval confrontation with China, over Japan’s islands, or over Taiwan? If not, then China can expect to dominate the Pacific by the second half of this century.
My guess is that there will be no direct, sharp confrontation after which it can be clearly said that one power or the other is supreme. My guess is that confrontation will be avoided, again and again, as American resolve weakens, so that it will eventually become clear that the USA is not prepared to back Japan, or in the end Taiwan, but China will be too tactful to assert her new supremacy openly, and Japan too tactful to complain (the loss of face would be severe). It will just slowly become apparent, and China will slowly modernise her naval forces to the point where they can project power all across the Pacific. The US Navy, meanwhile, will slowly diminish its presence and its influence.
What has this to do with the state of New Zealand? Some straws in the wind : Chinese warships have recently paid courtesy visits to Sydney and Auckland (the Chinese declared they were nuclear-free) , and the Royal Australian Navy has even exercised with the Chinese Navy. It’s not exactly the Great White Fleet. But who’d have even guessed at it, in 1945? And it’s only the beginning. What sort of accommodation will the ANZAC nations make with China, when the time comes. What will it be like, a Habeas Corpus, Magna Carta country in the giant shadow of the People’s Republic? Who will decide the limits of speech and thought, and who will control the flow of population? My guess is that the Antipodean Paradise may not have all that many decades to run before it is changed into something rather different. But then I always was a pessimist.
