What are the costs and consequences of our alliance with the US?
Economic costs are astronomical with the purchase of military equipment and armaments that are mostly cloaked in secrecy and acquired from the major party in the alliance. The alliance is not made up of equals.
Being hoodwinked into believing that we have shared values with the U.S.A. These values include the American Dream, nationalism, independence, individualism, self-reliance, material wealth, equal opportunity, and competition. This may have appeared the case to a naïve immature country in the 1950s, but now is patently clear to mean greed, ruthlessness, ultra-nationalism, violence, dishonesty, racism and secrecy.
We are now considered internationally as a lapdog of the U.S.A. or at least the southern-most state of the U.S.A.
Internally, we have become diplomatically lazy. We have dropped out of caring for our Pacific neighbours unless China shows an interest and we need fruit pickers.
We have become more secretive internally with secret trials and imprisonment. We wage a war on whistleblowers, leakers and investigative journalists – in fact anyone who disagrees with the government policy is labelled a traitor. We now have indefinite detention and a government who deliberately creates fear for its citizens so that in the name of ‘security’ we actually create increased insecurity. This is a tried and true route to achieve the goals of our master ally’s rule book.
We eagerly sacrifice up our sovereignty due to an overblown sense of loyalty stemming from WW2, but today we are in a different world. One in which Asia is relentlessly moving into world super power status, (ignored at our peril,) whilst the West (i.e. U.S.) thrashes about seeking to maintain its domination. Whether this is so important as to risk a nuclear war and the end of civilisation as we know it or whether the U.S. can adapt to a lesser position on the world stage requires earnest, strong advocacy from states likely to be on the front line of such a conflict – backed up by states who have had direct experience of the ravages of war i.e. Japan and Europe. Don’t forget the U.S. has gotten off lightly from conflicts it has waged well away from its borders.
(This statement was submitted by Janette Morgan on behalf of David Morgan deceased)
