The Anglo-Saxon Empire: As World War II ended the imperial baton passed from the United Kingdom to the United States. Bounding to Uncle Sam's side were the old empire's eager puppies - Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The current debate about the "Five Eyes" espionage network is in the process of morphing into a much broader debate about who New Zealanders are - and whom they should serve.
“I’M SENTIMENTAL – if you know what I mean – I love the
country but I can’t stand the scene.” So sings Leonard Cohen in the final verse
of his grand 1992 anthem “Democracy”. The country he’s singing about is, of
course, the United States of America, and his conflicting feelings about the
place are shared by millions of people around the world. There is a great deal
to love about America and Americans, but there is, equally, a great deal that
rest of the world, like Cohen, cannot stand.
The tragic human cost of US “diplomacy”. The vast powers
wielded by what President Dwight Eisenhower dubbed the “military-industrial
complex”. The evident inability of the “special interests” which now control
the US Congress to any longer even recognise, let alone serve, America’s
national interests. All of these political afflictions, combined, have created
a “scene” to which no sane person (or nation) would pledge allegiance.
And yet that is exactly what the tight little political and
journalistic clique clustering around John Key (like the doomed 300 at
Thermopylae?) is demanding of New Zealanders. We are being told that, in spite
of its manifest failings, the United States remains the last, best, hope of
humanity, and that any person, or group, who dares to question the NZ-US
relationship is guilty of something very close to treason.
Nicky Hager: Patriot.
The prime target of this latest thrust against the Key
Government’s critics is Nicky Hager. No other journalist has so consistently –
and accurately – mapped the moral fault-lines running through the NZ-US
relationship. Whether it be the exposure of our own Government Communications
Security Bureau’s unacknowledged participation in the US National Security
Agency’s Echelon spy system in Secret
Power (1996) or the NZ Defence Force’s unmandated determination to range
itself alongside America in Other
People’s Wars (2011) Hager’s investigative journalism has for the best part
of 20 years undermined successive New Zealand governments’ attempts to remain a
member in good standing of the Anglo-Saxon “club”.
It is worth taking a moment to consider what New Zealand, as
a member of this 70-year-old club (the USA, the United Kingdom, Canada,
Australia and New Zealand) has signed-up to.
Though these five states represent less than 7 percent of
the world’s population, the USA and its four closest allies constitute the
Earth’s most powerful military, economic and diplomatic combination.
English-speaking, and still predominantly white, the Anglo-Saxon club holds the
rest of humanity (overwhelmingly non-English-speaking and non-white) in its
grip. The global reach of the so-called “Five Eyes” intelligence gathering
apparatus is but one aspect of the Anglo-Saxons’ “full-spectrum dominance” of
the planet and its peoples.
When we consider the extent to which these powers dominate
the world’s key resources – especially oil, coal and iron-ore; when we add up
the number of nations that, in one way or another, are beholden to them; when
we recall that the US Dollar remains the world’s fiat currency; and when the
five Anglo-Saxon nations’ ability to project decisive military resources to any
point on the Earth’s surface is taken into account; are we not justified in
discarding the word “club” and replacing it with the much more appropriate
“empire”?
No one likes to hear it called that, of course. The world is
supposed to have rid itself of empires in the years immediately following World
War II. Ours is a democratic age, and as every good historian knows,
imperialism and democracy don’t mix. And yet, the behaviour of the five
Anglo-Saxon powers, in the 70 years since the end of World War II, is difficult
to characterise as anything other than imperialistic. If the “club” looks like
an empire, speaks like an empire, and acts like an empire, then, chances are,
it’s an empire.
Anglo-Saxon Imperialism: If it looks like an empire, speaks like an empire, and acts like an empire, then, chances are, it’s an empire. (Magnum photo by Philip Jones Griffiths)
The Prime Minister’s media defenders condemn Hager as
“anti-American” because he has been able to correlate directly the strength of
New Zealand’s military and intelligence ties to the United States with New
Zealand’s loss of diplomatic independence. This would be dangerous enough in
itself, but Hager’s revelations also help to remind New Zealanders of those
occasions when their leaders had the courage to stand apart from the
American-led Anglo-Saxon Empire. That Hager was an active player in the events
that led to New Zealand declaring itself nuclear-free in the mid-1980s only
sharpens the Right’s determination to blacken his reputation.
Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that New Zealand’s
most senior and effective right-wing journalists are engaged in an attempt to
fundamentally re-shape New Zealanders’ perceptions of the anti-nuclear
movement. Rather than an expression of our growing sense of nationhood, they
intend to re-cast it as the unfortunate result of a left-wing conspiracy to
extricate New Zealand from the “Western Alliance” (also known as the
Anglo-Saxon Empire). According to this revised history of the past 30 years,
Kiwis have been duped by leftist radicals like Hager (and Helen Clark?) whose
ultimate objective is to thrust New Zealand naked and alone into an
increasingly dangerous world.
And to whom should this duped and defenceless New Zealand
turn for protection? Why, Uncle Sam, of course! Hager’s revelations have upped
the ante of the national independence debate and, in Poker parlance, the Right
has opted to “see him” and “raise him”. The debate about New Zealand’s
involvement in the Five Eyes alliance is, accordingly, being broadened out to
embrace the much more vital questions of who we are and whom we should serve. Will New
Zealand continue striving to become an independent South Pacific nation, or
will it opt to remain a far-flung, but intensely loyal, province of the
Anglo-Saxon Empire?
For those who love this country, but can’t stand the
political scene, the stakes have never been higher.
This essay was posted
on The Daily Blog and Bowalley
Road blogsites on Tuesday, 17 March 2015.
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