New Zealand’s Military Expenditure

A few weeks ago Bryce Edwards wrote an interesting column called ‘New Zealand’s Military future[i]’. He provided links to numerous recent articles which discussed the current government’s Defence Review, and the question of how much New Zealand should spend on its military. The most prominent commentators Edwards linked to were Chris Trotter and Karl du Fresne, both of whom argued that New Zealand should seriously consider increasing its spending on “defence”.

I’m going to declare my cards very clearly before going any further: I think that increasing New Zealand’s “defence” spending is both wrong and absurd, and I agree with commentators like Bob Jones and Richard Jackson that New Zealand’s “defence” budget should be zero dollars. I think that a much better and more historically appropriate term for “defence spending” would be “offence spending”. But for the purposes of this blog article I am going to strive to put my ideological position to one side. I will use the neutral term “military spending”, and I will refrain from making any comments about imperialism, nationalism, how nasty and dangerous China might be in the future, and so on.

Instead, I will focus very narrowly on some claims both du Fresne and Trotter make about the size of New Zealand’s military spending and how it compares to other countries. Both commentators blithely and confidently claim that New Zealand doesn’t spend very much at all on its military, especially in comparison to its major allies: the US, UK and Australia. Trotter says:

Links Update

I was really pleased to receive an email from Jared Davidson recently, he is the author of 

Fighting War: Anarchists, Wobblies and the New Zealand State 1905 - 1925 

....which I referred to in an earlier post. There's a fascinating history here which tells the stories of socialists, anarchists, anti - miltarists and labour activists who were opposed to the war. They might have been a minority group, but the more I read about them the more significant I think they are. He has written two other valuable articles which cast more light on this history:

Socialist cross of honour: Makings of a working class counter culture 

and

Remains to be seen: Tracing Joe Hill's Ashes in New Zealand 

I'm also going to highlight a specific page on the 'Honest History' website which has a list of links to articles and information about the Armenian Genocide. There is a lot more of interest contained in the Honest History site, it is a really valuable resource.

Honest History list - Armenian Genocide 

Finally (for now) a piece by Dougal McNeill - impressions and reflections on Anzac day inspired by his experience of the opening of the Pukeahu National War Memorial Park in Wellington. I think his comments on Anzac as a kind of hyper-real spectacle are spot on, and I suspect there is more to be said on this topic. 

Anzac: they'll remember it for us wholesale

Ormond E Burton and Anzac Nationalism

There's a famous quote by Ormond E Burton which gets mentioned many times by Anzac commentators: ‘somewhere between the landing at Anzac and the end of the battle of the Somme New Zealand very definitely became a nation.’ . Just what this means exactly, and just how much of our so called 'national identity' derives from our inheritance of WW1 battle experience is a subject I will leave to the various newspaper and magazine editors. I'm much more interested in the man Ormond E Burton, and how this conservative trope squares – or fails to square – with his subsequent statements about nationhood and his militant pacifism.

The Absurdity and Obscenity of Gallipoli

As we appoach the Gallipoli centenary, I have set myself the task of re – reading some of the best examples of New Zealand writing about the disastrous invasion. There are three books, Ormond E Burton's 'The Silent Division', Robin Hyde's 'Passport to Hell' and Alexander Aitken's 'Gallipoli to the Somme', all based upon first hand experiences of New Zealanders who fought in the bloody trenches of Gallipoli. I'll start with the horror and some images of the 'fallen'. Here is Private J. D. Stark (8/2142, Fifth Reinforcements, Otago Infantry Battalion) describing the bodies of the dead:

But the dead who waited in No Man's Land didn't look like dead, as the men who came to them now had thought of death. From a distance of a few yards, the bodies, lying in queer huddled attitudes, appeared to have something monstrously amiss with them. Then the burying-party, white faced, realised that twenty four hours of the Gallipoli sun had caused each boy to swell enormously – until the great threatening carcases were three times the size of a man, and their skins had the bursting blackness of grapes. It was impossible to recognise features or expression in that hideously puffed and contorted blacknessⁱ.

A link to my Daily Blog Anzac post

Here's a link to my 'Guest Blog' at the Daily Blog. 

An Anzac Thought Experiment 

 I've submitted an edited version of this to a few mainstream press papers too. I have never done this before, but obviously this is the only time of year I am going to have a chance of getting mainstream exposure. My goal for the next ten days is to write a series of short, punchy pieces which will hopefully travel beyond the already converted readership of this blog. Any words of advice about how I might improve my chances would be appreciated. The Daily Blog is a good start, but I reckon if this blog was doing its job properly I would get heaps of abusive comments on it. So Please help me out and share the word on facebook at least.

Haunted Gold: the dubious profits of Gallipoli

Based on interviews with war veteran Douglas Stark, Robin Hyde's book Passport to Hell is one of the most readable and insightful books about the New Zealand experience of the trenches of World War One I have read. Starkie is a rebellious, tough and frequently violent character who gives a raw and completely unsentimental picture of the reality of trench warfare. As we approach the Gallipoli centenary it is his descriptions of the blackened and bloated corpses lying in No Mans Land which stick in my mind most of all. What also comes to my mind is the focus of Hyde's Gallipoli narrative: money. After the horror and sense of disgust has worn off, Starkie and his mates focus on gambling. Trench warfare involved a huge amount of boring waiting, and Anzac soldiers filled up the hours with coin games of 'Two Up' and card games to distract themselves from both the tediousness and the horror of the war:

What do the Pope, Kim Kardashian and the Anzacs have in common?

The answer is that they all have some major form of influence over the upcoming centenary of the Armenian genocide, which began on April 24^th 1915 – just one day prior to the famous Gallipoli landings.

Only 22 countries officially recognise the Armenian genocide, which took the lives of at least 1.5 million people. From what I have read this is actually a conservative estimate, and does not take into account the deaths of other Christian minorities. Recognition – or rather the lack of it – is a major political issue for some of the countries which have important relationships with Turkey. New Zealand, along with the US, Australia and Israel all fail to officially recognise the Armenian genocide. Diplomatically making this sort of recognition is a very big deal, and Turkey takes a very hard line against any country which dares to make this sort of statement. With the centenary approaching, and high profile people like the Pope and Kim Kardashian helping to raise the issue, it isn't too surprising that Turkish PM Recep Erdogan is looking for cover. Where exactly will he hide? Well, the Anzac centenary is pretty damn close, so who will notice if he moves it a day behind to coincide with the Armenian genocide centenary?