While the PM's away at NATO
... the Nats will play.
Following a successful visit to Beijing and a meeting with President Xi Jinping, Prime Minister Hipkins is in now Europe. He’s been to Brussels to witness New Zealand signing the NZ-EU Free Trade Agreement, then to Stockholm. Monday and Tuesday he’s at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Leaders’ Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, not far from the border with Belarus. NATO is a defensive treaty that now has 31 member nations, including the US.
And main item on NATO’s agenda is of course Ukraine.
If there’s been a winner so far in the Ukraine conflict, aside from arms manufacturers, it’s NATO. This military alliance has got its mojo back thanks to Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, and he won’t attack any NATO member.
NATO has invited ‘Indo-Pacific partners’ Japan, South Korea, Australia and NZ to its summit meeting. Now that New Zealand’s in the mix, Putin should know he’s doomed. Jokes aside, the moral support of our distant and peaceful nation means a lot for Ukraine, as well as NZDF’s practical assistance in training and logistics.
But what’s the situation in Ukraine? According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) in Washington, DC, the Ukrainians are ‘creating an asymmetrical attrition gradient that conserves Ukrainian manpower at the cost of a slower rate of territorial gains, while gradually wearing down Russian manpower and equipment.’ In plain English, they’re gaining little ground.
The ISW insists this doesn’t mean ‘stalemate’. But, looking at ISW’s map, Zelensky’s present counteroffensive has retaken hardly any territory. By February 2023, the Russians were occupying about 40,000 square miles of Ukraine, and in the last month the Ukrainians have retaken little more than 60. Despite the Wagner mutiny, the Russians have dug in for the long haul, holding a huge swathe of Ukrainian territory.
Putin has so far got what I believe he most wanted: the land that connects Crimea to Donbass including the cities of Melitopol and Mariupol, plus a huge chunk north of Lugansk.
There may or may not come a big breakthrough that shatters Russian defences, but NATO’s doing well out of it anyway. They aren’t directly engaged in the war, but their relevance and resources are higher than ever since the Cold War ended. Suddenly they have work to do and member nations are finding more money to spend on defence. Finland has joined the alliance, and Sweden will too once Turkey relents. NATO members are supplying Ukraine with tanks etc. The US has even agreed to supply cluster munitions, which ought to be banned, but Biden’s excuse is that the Russians used them first. Unexploded ordinance and mines will be deadly hazards for many years to come.
In my amateur opinion, neither side really wins. But what will ‘losing’ look like in terms of new borders? The Russians are now defending territory they’ve taken, and it’s the Ukrainians who have to take the offensive. So far it doesn’t look like the Ukrainians have enough troops to dislodge the enemy. If that remains the case, then the front line turns into a ceasefire line, and then it freezes into a new de facto border. This Novorossiya project was dreamed of back in 2014, but, until the full-scale invasion early last year, I didn’t think Putin would dare.
I don’t foresee Ukraine restoring its pre-2014 borders, but the remainder will one day join NATO.
With Chippy away in Europe, it’d be perfect timing for the opposition to injure another member of his team back home. These professional fouls excite the press gallery and make headlines – and the PM isn’t around to control the narrative.
Even before he’d left we saw some odd framing. A Newshub column that copied the PM’s itinerary from the Beehive website adopted the headline: ‘Chris Hipkins delays chatting with Kiri Allan as he jets off to Europe for trade talks, NATO meeting’. That almost made it sound like the trip was a way of putting off something he didn’t want to deal with at home.
What could this very important chat be about then? It’s about an accusation made by an opposition MP that (so far) has no solid evidence to back it.
A delayed chat about nothing very obvious was apparently up there with a free trade deal and a summit meeting of western leaders – in the mind of at least one editor. There was no effort to analyse the political significance of the PM’s trip abroad.
The NZ Herald ran a lengthy front-page article about the same evidence-free allegations and about the PM and minister Allan sitting down at some stage to talk it over. But talk what over? It may have been the case that Kiri Allan might have raised her voice with public servants. Gosh, wouldn’t you? And it’s known that she’s been through a relationship break-up. Luke Malpass wrote a thoughtful piece about this.
It suits the opposition, and it makes easy click-bait for the media, to tarnish the government’s reputation with negative press about individual ministers, rather than debate matters of public policy. Who’ll be the next target?
France was burning, the West Bank was under attack, the Ukrainians were sacrificing lives for little gain. And in New Zealand, the Beehive was coming under sustained fire from far-right rebels aiming to seize power.
The leader of the rebels, Christopher Luxon, announced that a National government would invest in a new medical school at Waikato University to train more doctors. This means $380 million capital investment, of which a National government would contribute $280 million.
I couldn’t help connecting this, rightly or wrongly, with the $1 million fee paid by Waikato U. to National’s former minister for tertiary education, Steven Joyce, mentioned in last week’s post.
There’s always competition between the universities, but it’s not clear whether a third medical school is really needed. National would continue the existing plan to grow medical student numbers at Auckland and Otago, but that’s still not enough, and the country is recruiting too many from abroad, they say. But then why not invest in expanding the two existing medical schools even further?
I’m not convinced – yet. And certainly Auckland’s medical faculty aren’t convinced.
The proposed new medical school in Hamilton will enrol 120 students, starting in 2027, according to the National Party. It will admit graduates (not school leavers) into a four-year (rather than six-year) medical degree. The bachelors degree needed for admission won’t have to be in health sciences – and I’m wondering now if they’ll accept politics majors!
The University of Waikato said on its website that it “welcomes the announcement by the National Party that if the Party is successful in this year’s General Election it will establish New Zealand’s third medical school”.
The university is unashamedly punting on the outcome of October’s election. Vice-chancellor Neil Quigley knows who to vote for, then, and his staff can follow suit if they want a piece of the action.
A large-scale election pledge to one university, rather than the tertiary-education sector, looks unusual. But universities nowadays routinely make themselves beholden to pet political projects – rather than foster political diversity as critic and conscience – and Waikato’s Faustian bargain with National is just another example. This one has a conspicuously large purse though.
Labour’s promise in 2005 to make student loans interest-free may, as some argued, have won them that election. National’s promise to Waikato University may give them a boost in Hamilton and beyond. Investment in training more doctors will come across well for most voters and any objections from other medical schools will just look petty.
Will Labour raise the ante, I wonder?