To AUKUS, or not to AUKUS?

"Economists think that the more interconnected countries are by trade and investment, the less likely warfare will occur between them. [See for instance the NOT PC posts 'Free Trade Is the Path to Peace & Prosperity' and 'The Horsemen of non-apocalypse']
    "On many occasions countries have consciously intensified those interconnections as an alternative to war.
    "Examples include the federation of the American states into the USA following a confederation after customs conflict between Maryland and Virginia; the European Coal and Steel Community (which evolved into the EU) tying up the French and Germany industries after three painful wars; ASEAN which was started after the Indonesian confrontation of Malaya ended; recently India has improved its physical and trade links with its neighbouring China and Pakistan.
    "Alas, economic relations between China and the US have deteriorated. That this occurred under both President Trump and President Biden suggests a structural tension arising from jostling over their places in the world. ...
     "One can explain the First World War and the follow-up Second World War as a consequence of Germany catching up in economic size to Britain and trying to find a comparable place in the world. (Neither noticed that the US was already bigger.) We may be grateful that moving from one global hegemon, Britain, to a second, the US, did not involve conflict between the two (although the two world wars accelerated the transfer from a weakened Britain). 
    "It is unlikely that China is going to be the next global hegemon. Rather, we are moving to a multipolar world where there is none. There is a plausible economic model which predicts that world economic output, and hence power, is moving to where the populations are – the situation before British industrialisation. It occurs because of the ease with which technology and capital can transfer between countries.
    "That does not mean that Chinese productivity will catch up to the American level – not in this century anyway. Factors like the resource base and social organisation mute the economics. ...
    "So behind today’s incipient economic warfare and military machinations we face a multipolar world whose shape is uncertain. ... The challenge for the world, then, is how to get from the current world order, in which the US acts the hegemon, to a multipolar world in which the US is but one of four or so big economies. Full multipolarity may be less than a quarter of a century away.
    "The US does not seem to see the issue this way. It is largely preoccupied with the short-term task of trying to maintain its current hegemony in a world whose order it sees as not too different from the immediate post-war one. ....
    "New Zealand may have little influence over the evolving world order. In so far as we have, we should be putting our effort in assisting it to move towards the reality of multipolarity. Ultimately New Zealand is having to balance its short-term interests against its long-term ones. I am not sure our friends always understand this."

~ Brian Easton from hist post 'Trading Towards A Multipolar World'

AUKUS: "NZ indeed is missing out on a guarantee of security, which given the limited firepower of its armed forces some would suggest leaves it without any protection."

"Thomas Nash, co-director of the independent think-tank, New Zealand Alternative ... says many of the opinion writers [decrying NZ's exclusion from AUKUS] appear to prioritise a militarist worldview but he contends if we are to enjoy a peaceful future, we should do the exact opposite 'and forge closer relations that share our anti-nuclear values.' NZ [he says] should resist pressure to fall into line with the military power of the US, the UK and Australia. Instead of focusing our diplomatic and security efforts on the Five Eyes, he argues, we should strengthen our relationships in Asean countries, Latin America, and in our neighbouring nuclear-free Pacific Islands.
    "Among those who might not agree with Nash are the NZ cricketers who stepped away from a potential terrorist threat in Pakistan, just weeks ago, thanks to a timely warning through a Five Eyes channel.
    "That incident underlined how valuable it is for NZ to belong to that particular arrangement and receive critical intelligence when it discloses threats to New Zealanders’ security....
    "In not being invited to even consider membership of AUKUS, NZ might have been written off, not just by the US, but by the countries which it fought alongside in the world wars of last century.
    "NZ indeed is missing out on a guarantee of security, which given the limited firepower of its armed forces some would suggest leaves it without any protection.
    "Additionally it is accepting being locked out from the agreement of the three countries to share their most sensitive technology. As The Economist noted in an editorial last week:

'The three countries’ co-operation promises to embrace cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and more besides.... 

    '[AUKUS’ true significance however is] a step towards a new balance of power in the Pacific…. It is a decades long commitment and a deep one.... At least eight nuclear submarines suggests a contract value in the tens of billions of dollars. As a strategic shift it is even bigger. The pact is America’s most dramatic and determined move yet to counter what it and others in the Indo-Pacific region see as a growing threat from China.'

"As Point of Order noted earlier this week, no-one in Wellington yet grasps the full impact of the AUKUS deal."

~ Point of Order, from their post 'AUKUS – it’s all very well expressing our moral repugnance but that won’t halt China’s bullying'