NZ must resist the morally repugnant logic of Aukus

The Aukus alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom and United States has triggered a dangerous line in commentary questioning Aotearoa’s nuclear-free status.

Many of the opinion writers commenting on international and security matters appear to prioritise a militarist worldview above all other perspectives. The latest is Matthew Hooton, who writes that the ‘‘long peace among great powers since is a historical anomaly sustained only by the nuclear deterrent’’. There hasn’t been a long peace, unless you discount people who live outside the nuclear-armed states.

The truth is that the great powers relentlessly attacked each other through proxy wars that killed and injured countless civilians with conventional weapons in Africa,

Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere.

Hooton describes New Zealand’s antinuclear legislation as ‘‘extreme’’ and asserts that no other country has taken up antinuclear laws. In fact, more than 80 countries have signed the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and, in ratifying it, several have adjusted their own domestic law to make nuclear weapons illegal.

Similar talking points were offered by Ben Thomas on RNZ Nine to Noon earlier this week, albeit in a more relaxed way, calling NZ’s anti-nuclear policy a ‘‘shibboleth’’ and, like Hooton, suggesting that some people think former prime minister David Lange helped end the Cold War with his speech at the Oxford Union debate. I have never heard anyone say this. I don’t think anyone thinks it.

Stuff political editor Luke Malpass also last week dismissed New Zealand’s nuclear-free status as a ‘‘foundational myth’’, describing it as ‘‘puritanism’’ and suggesting nuclear weapons will be more important for our security in the future than they might have been in the Cold War.

What is striking about these comments is that they present the militarist worldview as incontrovertible. This is a long-standing rhetorical device of those who seek to perpetuate militarism. It is presented as ‘‘the only way’’, and anyone who questions it or suggests an alternative is considered to live in an alternate reality. This is precisely how those representing powerful interests have always sought to prevent progressive change in the past.

The questions we should be asking ourselves are more searching than the benefits of our nuclear-free status, though. We should ask where our security comes from and, given that Aotearoa relies on peace for collective prosperity, how we can encourage a more peaceful world. My pick would be more diplomacy, more capacity to help prevent conflict, and more dedication to the main challenges of our time: climate, equality and nature.

New Zealand rightly rejected nuclear weapons in the 1980s, and we have consistently challenged their existence. Australia has not been able to do this in the same way, because it explicitly seeks security benefits by embracing the US nuclear umbrella. What that means is that Australia has received a guarantee from the US that, if Australia is attacked with nuclear weapons, the US will retaliate with nuclear weapons.

There is a reason why advocates of ‘‘nuclear security’’ do not generally talk about what the weapons actually do.

To suggest that New Zealand should be more like Australia on nuclear issues is to embrace this constant threat of mass murder by the vaporisation, blast waves and radiation poisoning caused by the detonation of a nuclear warhead. When you face the humanitarian reality of nuclear weapons, this kind of thinking appears not only morally repugnant, but seems to abandon any ability to shape a better future.

If we want to enjoy a peaceful future, Aotearoa should do the exact opposite of what Hooton and Malpass suggest.

■ Thomas Nash was part of the successful campaign to achieve the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.