Bulletins and News Discussion from January 22nd to January 28th, 2024 - Iowa Caucus, Bigger AUKUS? - COTW: New Zealand/Aotearoa

Image is of the Te Pati Maori (Maori Party) cofounders, Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. They have 6 of the 123 seats in the New Zealand parliament.

Officially confirming that the Republican primaries were a gigantic waste of time for everybody involved, Trump has massively beat everybody else in Iowa, and will very obviously be the Republican candidate for 2024. Given the abysmal state of the US economy (for everybody who isn't in the top 1-10%, which is mainly what national statistics reflect when they aren't telling blatant falsehoods), it's more plausible than ever that Trump may indeed once again become President - though I personally refuse to predict one way or another due to how volatile politics and geopolitics currently are. Project 2025 is coming, folks - either as the official Republican governance program, or as what the Democrats will do in 2026 after the midterms, stating that they have no other choice and have to reach across the aisle as they are the Adults In The Room™.

In other news...

Late last year, New Zealand voted in a new and very right-wing government, composed of the center-right National Party, the libertarian ACT Party (ACT stands for the "Association of Consumers and Taxpayers", good lord), and the fascist New Zealand First party. By what I can tell, this was the well-trodden path of "Vaguely center-left party does neoliberal austerity and causes a recession and workers fucking hated it and voted in a different party out of desperation," though the flooding and cyclones did add challenges to Chris Hipkins' short reign after Jacinda Ardern resigned.

It's worth noting that Hipkins was at least fairly China-friendly, meeting up with Xi Jinping on a five-day visit in the summer. They still do the whole "We have concerns about human rights" thing, but of all the countries of the imperial core, New Zealand is - or, perhaps, was - one of the most amicable. In 2021, China was New Zealand's single largest trading partner, with a third of exports going to China (more than Australia, the US, Japan, and South Korea combined), and they receive 22% of their imports from China too, more than any other single country.

Christopher Luxon, the new Prime Minister and sentient thumb, has said that he is exploring a closer relationship with AUKUS:

Luxon said New Zealand was interested in becoming involved in AUKUS Pillar 2: a commitment between the three partners to develop and share advanced military capabilities, including artificial intelligence, electronic warfare and hypersonics.
“We’ll work our way through that over the course of next year as we understand it more and think about what the opportunities may be for us,” Luxon said. “AUKUS is a very important element in ensuring we’ve got stability and peace in the region.”

This is not to say that Hipkins wanted nothing to do with AUKUS or Western organizations aimed generally against China - in fact, pre election, "he was open to conversations about joining Pillar II of AUKUS". But the current government is pushing down on the accelerator pedal.

The left-wing Maori party, Te Pati Maori, has stated that they want New Zealand to remain non-aligned, as joining AUKUS would erode the sovereignty of the country:

As Maori we cannot allow our sovereignty to be determined by others, whether they are in Canberra or Washington. Aotearoa should not act as Pacific spy base in the wars of imperial powers. Joining AUKUS will severely undermine our country’s sovereignty, constitution, and ability to remain nuclear free. There is too much at stake for our government to make a commitment of this magnitude without a democratic process.

In general, the party leaders of Te Pati Maori want New Zealand to be the "Switzerland of the Pacific", which is perhaps not the greatest analogy given all the problems Switzerland had and has, but we understand the intended meaning of desiring neutrality.

The Country of the Week is New Zealand! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants. More detail here.

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Looking at the Suppression of Enemy Air Defenses (SEAD) capabilities for various air forces, and holy crap Europe is in a vulnerable position. The only aircraft in the air forces of European countries that can do SEAD and general electronic warfare(EW) at the same time is the Tornado ECR. Some countries have fighter jets like the F-16 equipped with anti radiation missiles for SEAD, but no electronic warfare capabilities. And their electronic warfare platforms are based off of passenger or cargo aircraft. So only Germany and Italy have a plane with proper SEAD and EW capabilities simultaneously in the Tornado ECR. Germany has 35 of these, and Italy 16. The plan here is clearly to rely on the Americans for this with the EA-18G squadrons, plus hope that the F-35s can do some miracle work with "datalink". That's exactly what the UK are trying to with the F-35B.
To put this into perspective, Australia has better SEAD and EW capabilities than most of the European continent, as Australia has 12 EA-18G aircraft.
Russia has also realised through the Ukraine war how important this is, that's why they plan to manufacture 30 Su-34M/ Su-34 NVO fighter planes, which have both EW and SEAD capabilities. Russia only had 10 of them before the war started, and it's only other proper SEAD and EW fighter plane was the Su-24MP, of which only 10 exist.
China have the J-10D and J-16D variants as the aircraft that can do both SEAD and EW. Heavily investing into this area. They also have multiple aircraft types that can fulfil one of the two roles.
The United States has 85 EA-18G aircraft.
I don't think people realise how important these aircraft are to winning wars and achieving air superiority. It is the backbone of any air operation. The whole reason that non stealth jets from the US and NATO were able to carry out such uncontested aerial bombardments with minimal losses during the Gulf war, the bombing of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, etc, is due to their SEAD and EW capabilities, which were developed after the massive losses in Vietnam. The only aerial losses that occurred during the bombing of Serbia, happend when the EA-6B jets were grounded due to weather. The EA-6B, now replaced by the EA-18G, is credited for the US and NATO achieving such minimal losses during these operations. Being able to simultaneously jam the enemy early warning radar, and take out any active air defense systems with anti radiation missiles, is an essential capability. It can't be split between two platforms. The fact that only Germany and Italy have this capability in Europe is crazy. If America pulls the plug, most of Europe won't be able to take out peer enemy air defenses. Europe is basically entirely dependent on the USA for this.
- These capabilities (targeting / jamming radar + communications) seem primarily suited for offensive operations, but unless there is a direct confrontation between the US / Europe / Russia / China, I don't think they will pay very much dividends. That is, unless the imperial powers are willing to lend their state of the art tech to their proxies - but they are too stingy about this sort of thing. Too worried about espionage, reverse engineering, etc. They'd rather keep this tech in their back pocket while their imperial network crumbles before their eyes. And that is their true weakness. Their industrial base is already crumbling without any adversarial bombing campaign. Their power lies primarily in the financial realm, and this financial power relies on a globe-spanning military industrial supply chain which is only as strong as its weakest link.
  
  I mean even if you're on the defense in a war, you have to attack eventually, look at Ukraine's "counter offensive" for an example. Their lack of an air force severely limited it. China is investing heavily in this arena for a reason. Without it, your airforce becomes a paperweight against a peer enemy with solid air defence systems. It's just another example if how Europe is reliant on the USA for everything these days.

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