A correspondent, Liam Hehir, writing in the Manawatu Standard, attempts a rationale as to why New Zealand should be actively involved in the Western military effort against ISIS. It is because of a shared cultural traditions enjoyed by the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. He defines some key aspects of this shared culture.
As it is with families, so it is with nations and there is a natural affinity between those countries that share a Britannic inheritance. Winston Churchill spoke of the common bonds of the "English speaking peoples". New Zealand historian James Belich has written of it as the "Anglo-World". The term that seems to be vogue now is the "Anglosphere". . . .Hehir neglects to mention that the two dominant members of the Anglosphere, the UK and the US, also have a long tradition of colonialism and neo-colonialism respectively. This tradition we in NZ, but also Canada and Australia do not share--at least not to the same degree. It is those traditions which have led both the UK and the US off to war, repeatedly.
This closeness is not based on race. An Italian American has little ancestry in common with a British Pakistani or an Australian Aborigine. There is no such thing as a "Canadian" or "New Zealand" ethnicity. Our familiarity is instead bound up in shared traditions like the common law, habeas corpus, trial by jury, free enterprise, private property, freedom of speech and, of course, the English language.
