Why are the greens like this? How is being prepared to defend ourselves and help our allies “a concern”?
There’s a reason given in the article you’ve linked:
“China and the US are engaged in some kind of competition over the Pacific right now and New Zealand must display a principled, independent voice and lift our Pacific neighbours above the interests of these overly-militarised superpowers.”
In practical terms, what does that mean?
And why does that preclude conducting training exercises with our allies?
That doesn’t answer my question at all.
In practical terms, what would the greens like us to actually be doing?
Never mind their policy, what actual actions, if any should we be taking?
Your questions seem to be more of an excuse to rage on the Greens, rather than understand their positions.
The policy doc I linked you to sets out what they’d do and prioritise - peacekeeping, disaster response, eez policing, stay out of the US China cold war as much as possible and look after ours and the Pacific Island’s interests first, support military deployment through international orgs and channels.
You don’t have to agree with that but I feel like you’re on the verge of wilful ignorance here.
This is exactly the case. He wants to rage on the Greens, and is wilfully not engaging any thought into their position.
It’s simple. The article states the Greens don’t think we should’ve been a part of the war games. This is in line with their policy. The whole “what should we do then” is just begging the question. The article, and OPs initial question, was around why the Greens don’t support these games. This is clear in both the article and their policy page, and thus that question is settled.
My point is, it’s very easy to say what we shouldn’t be doing, it’s much harder to come up with an alternative.
Neither the green party, or the commenter I’m replying to, seem to have any idea what we should be doing instead, besides some very vauge and aspirational goals.
An alternative to participating in the war games? The obvious alternative is not participating in war games.
I think your point is that you are a right wing person who fetishises the military and wants the west to engage in an active war with China. Any policy or even speech that seeks any other way of relating to china is going to get vehement and loud pushback from you. You think the only way to relate to china is via the most violent way possible.
I did read their document, it talks a lot about what they don’t want our military to be doing, and some vague mission statement about what we should be doing.
Overall not a very informative document.
Most of the examples I pulled out were shoulds. It’s not the most detailed policy document but it seems pretty on par with some others I’ve seen across parties.
I wouldn’t say the day to day messaging about the case for doing these exercises in the first place, or entering AUKUS and so on is particularly more detailed anyway. It usually boils down to traditional allies and ‘pulling our weight’ and so on.
It kiinda feel like you’re holding an impossible to meet standard because underneath you just don’t agree with the position.
I disagree, at least one example of what they think our armed forces should be doing to protect NZ and our allies is very easy ask, and yet you can’t.
Both their statements and your comments are a series of don’ts.
America doesn’t play defence.
I suspect this is where they’re coming from. While there is nothing wrong with ensuring military readyness, I can understand the opinion that these wargames are pretty unprovoked and could be seen as unnecessarily adding to tensions in the Pacific.
This has “Ukraine provoked Russia by defending itself” vibes.
And the States aren’t the ones provoking tensions in the pacific.
No it doesn’t, what a strange comparison. One has a nation state under attack by another, while this is about a joint military wargame with no direct benefit outside if some training, except for pissing of China. If the goal is to reduce tensions in the Pacific, as the Greens seem to want, then this is probably not a great use of our time.
no direct benefit outside if some training, except for pissing of China
Training is kinda why we do these things though. And why would China care, it’s not like they’re planning any funny business, right?
And as to the Ukraine comment, I was thinking more about how them trying to join a defense alliance (NATO) was a provocation, because Russia can’t bully them any further.
The USA is clearly planning an attack on China.
What is your point exactly?
Do you really think we are going to defend ourselves in a war with China?