Constructive Defence

Sir: I feel moved to express my admiration at J.K. Hunn’s masterly and moderate analysis of our problems of national defence. Mr Hunn has not always been my pin-up boy. Perhaps too hastily I had in the past identified him with a fixed Rightist position. I hope his views are a little to the Right of centre; for the striking thing about our present commitment to the American policy in Asia is that one does not need any particular political orientation, but only a clear head and some knowledge of the nature of Asian nationalism, to grasp that that policy and our commitment to it are both unrealistic.

My own opposition to our participation in the Vietnam War has always been (and still is) based on a deep recognition that people are brothers and sisters, even when maddened by real or imagined injustice, and that the expression of this difficult relationship is constantly frustrated by reflex militarist thinking. Perhaps the deepest wounds in Asia and Africa are racist in origin. If we saw this clearly we would withdraw our troops from a war that continually increases racial tensions and devote the same attention and financial expenditure, for example, to sending non-military supplies to the starving and besieged Biafrans, along with mollifying diplomatic overtures to the Nigerian Government.

But it is too much to expect that one’s countrymen will ever take wholly to heart the Sermon on the Mount. I believe that wars will cease in the world. I do not think they will cease on account of a conversion of ourselves and the Americans and the Russians and the Chinese and the North and page 592 South Vietnamese to pacifism. I think they will cease because people like Mr Hunn, who are not pacifists, are clear-headed enough and sane enough in their emotions to distinguish wheat from chaff in international policy. Undoubtedly a humanist concern that people should deal adequately with the problems of peace rather than create new problems by war will lie somewhere behind his argument. But I see him most of all as an intelligent patriot (not a nationalist; there is a world of difference) who has recognised that New Zealand has a possible international role which is not the role of a little dog trotting behind the American military brass band. Again I must congratulate him on his far-sighted contribution to our discussion of these problems.

1968 (520)