Why Aotearoa must stay out of the US war with China

Aotearoa should not be a pawn in the US plan to wage war against China. Ben Morgan’s ‘simple’ explanation of military developments in the Asia Pacific reads like a US state department briefing on the region. The ‘developments’ he speaks of are all in the US preparations for war with China over Taiwan. See his recent Pacific Update.

US Nuclear attack submarine USS Washington

Unstated is the assumption that the US as hegemonic power has the right to wage war against China over Taiwan which it officially recognises as part of China! Any war against China over Taiwan is a war against China itself. The monumental arrogance of this also has a simple explanation.

The US has long assumed the unilateral right to invade and occupy a country when it is in its interests to do so. Afghanistan and Iraq stand out, both were invaded on the spurious pretext of the ‘war on terror’ against ‘clear and present threats’ to US security. Of course, the real objective was to occupy key states as pawns in West Asia to project its power further into all Eurasia, and ultimately China. 

But the coming war with China is something special, a bit like Netanyahu’s genocide in Palestine. It is driven by the fact that the US as hegemon is in decline and is being overtaken by China as the rising powerhouse of the world economy.

The US cannot tolerate being overtaken economically by an upstart Asian nation that has been able to rebuff US attempts to re-colonise it as it returned to the global capitalist market around the millennium.

To add insult to injury China has developed into an emerging imperialist power that is now leading the BRICs bloc as the rival to the US imperialist bloc. This has flipped the balance of global power from the US towards the China led bloc.

This is the simple explanation for why the US is driving us to war against China. War is an extension of politics, which in turn is an extension of economics. To reverse its economic decline relative to the China-Russia Bloc, the US has to turn this into an existential threat to its national security.

This is so irrational and stupid, not to mention as obvious war crime against China, exceeding that of Gaza, it is laughable but for the fact that it will drag the whole Asia Pacific into the maelstrom of World War 3.

For a full picture of what is behind US warmongering in the Asia Pacific have a look at Brian Berletic’s recent video on the subject. Berletic is a specialist in quoting Western official sources and corporate media to refute US propaganda that attempts to cover up its drive for war to defeat and break up its main global rivals, Russia and China.

But Russia has not backed down to war in Ukraine. And China will not back down in defending Taiwan as part of its sovereign territory.

The US cannot win as China has the military advantage of defending its own territory, and has military superiority including the latest drone technology. Once opened this pandora’s box cannot be closed short of Armageddon.

Aotearoa must stay out of this irrational drive to war making it an expendable military target along with many other Indo-Pacific nations in the event of all-out war. It must reject the Coalition Government’s push to reinsert Aotearoa into US defence strategy as members of AUKUS and other security organisations.

To do this it must join forces with other South Pacific nations for a Nuclear Free Pacific, as an independent bloc against Australia and other US allies bent on turning the Pacific into a nuclear wasteland.

In 1982 Owen Gager the founder of our political tendency wrote a pamphlet Towards a Socialist Polynesia. He argued that Māori and Pakeha workers in New Zealand and their comrades in the South Pacific states controlled by it, must unite to fight for a socialist Polynesia.

Rather than going to war to defend the imperialist ruling classes, East and West, we must unite in wars of national liberation that come together in a federation of socialist republics of Polynesia as part of a united socialist states of the Pacific and East Asia!