Complacent media fails debate over ‘empire’ wars

Abstract

Reviewed book by Nicky Hager Publication date: October, 2011

Nicky Hager's main charge in Other People’s Wars is that New Zealand’s defence and foreign affairs establishment has developed a culture where some senior officers ‘wanted to obey the government only when they agreed with it’, and otherwise ‘quietly undermined’ its policies and decisions. They believed they could ‘go to war without telling the public most of what they did’—and Hager provides convincing evidence that, for most of the last decade, they have been successful.