KEY POINTS:
Before they came home last November, New Zealand SAS troops were working somewhere in Afghanistan, on tasks the Government's obsession with secrecy prevents the rest of us from knowing.
They must have been doing something right. Their presence and the value placed on it were used by critics
of Australia's earlier absence from the troubled nation to help prod Prime Minister John Howard into deploying a considerable number of his troops there.
Our small contingent of SAS, according to defence analyst Jim Rolfe, added value to the very much larger multi-national force through its expertise in long-range, long-term operations, rather than the shorter missions carried out by the special forces of other nations.
Likewise, New Zealand's provincial reconstruction team, working in the central highlands province of Bamyan. As well as security patrols, the successive teams have built a boys' school, five police stations, bridges, a new hospital ward and a water supply system.
Before Canberra sent its first similar unit to Afghanistan, it was advised by commentators who had visited Afghanistan to learn from the New Zealanders - especially the low-key approach that had won the friendship of the people living in the area.
This is the real essence of New Zealand's defence strategy: finding ways to make ourselves useful. And Mr Rolfe's analysis of the NZDF for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has found that by and large we are managing to do it, despite distance, size, and lingering tensions with our two major security partners, Australia and the United States.
Real and serious problems remain, but Mr Rolfe's conclusion that the NZDF is "as capable today as it has been in the past 30 years and is as capable as it needs to be" had Defence Minister Phil Goff smiling. This week, as Cabinet approved a $21 million upgrade to the systems used to protect C130 Hercules from rockets and other forms of attack, Mr Goff saw Mr Rolfe's analysis as vindication both of the Government's defence strategy and its 10-year, $8 billion plan to re-equip and man the force.
"This report is an A pass for the current state of the NZDF, that by 1999 was clearly failing after a decade of massive cuts and growing obsolescence of equipment," he said.
Mr Rolfe did not go as far as that, but he did point out one key aspect of New Zealand's defence effort. With no compelling reason to spend on guns rather than butter, and unlike most other countries, we have a choice: "New Zealand is 2000km from its nearest neighbour, and that neighbour is friendly."
But there is a recognition that it is in our interests to have friends, both in the immediate neighbourhood where crises such as East Timor and the Solomons can quickly spill over into our own comfort zone, and in the wider world. To do that, New Zealand has to contribute, and contribute usefully.
Not everyone we want to impress agrees with the way Wellington has set about this, in terms of how much the nation spends on its military and in the way we spend it. Because we do not have the hordes at our gate, the NZDF is structured to achieve "specific and quite narrow outcomes" rather than fight a conventional enemy under almost any circumstances on land, sea or air.
Especially with the decision to dump the Air Force's combat wing and halve the Navy's frigate fleet to two, foreign critics complain the NZDF is not a real, war-fighting machine. Mr Rolfe argues that this criticism misses the point that New Zealand needs to follow its own understanding of the big, bad world rather than acquiescing to another nation's (read Australia's) definition of threat or need.
On our own, we have done some things well, others not so well.
Long-term funding and successive reviews and policies since 2000, Mr Rolfe says, have given the NZDF a certainty it had not enjoyed for decades, with a new system of joint headquarters - under which the Air Force, Army and Navy act as one - improving the readiness of all units and ensuring military operations are conducted more effectively.
The Army has been significantly upgraded, with two infantry battalions and enough new armoured cars to motorise them both, a new fleet of other vehicles, and new anti-tank and very low-level anti-aircraft missiles. It will be getting new tactical communications and intelligence management systems.
Against this, the Army does not have enough personal radios, night-vision equipment and body armour.
The Navy, with its two frigates and soon-to-be-delivered multi-role ship and offshore and inshore patrol vessels, will soon be a more flexible and much more versatile force, although it is having trouble finding and keeping enough sailors and coping with the rapid introduction of the new fleet.
The Air Force, although losing its combat role, will have a fleet of almost new aircraft when upgrades and purchases are completed. Its Orions, for example, will be as capable as any in the world for watching the surface of the ocean, although they will be of little use in tracking the growing number of submarines in our region.
Intelligence management systems are limited, and major units cannot defend themselves. The Navy's torpedoes are almost obsolete - with no replacement in sight before 2015 - and the frigates are becoming more vulnerable to attack from both air and sea.
But Mr Rolfe says that overall, and despite criticism that combat forces have been reduced, the present shape of the NZDF gives "no lesser real availability" of operational forces than before Labour's overhaul.
He argues that the defence force has boosted its ability to combat terrorism - the most likely military threat to national security - and is well-placed to operate at a modest military level in the present international climate.
And this leads to the key question: does all this make us useful?
If you take the most vocal Australian critics to heart, then probably no, or at least not as useful as we could be. They regard New Zealand as a defence free-rider, with an "unofficial but authoritative" attitude toward Wellington of "bugger them".
There has been recognition and gratitude for New Zealand's willingness and ability to co-operate in such crises as East Timor and the Solomons, and under the closer defence relations agreement there are very close working relationships between headquarters staff on each side of the Tasman, and good practical co-operation between the two forces.
But in his introduction to Mr Rolfe's analysis, ASPI executive director Peter Abigail, a retired major-general, says the relationship may be in pretty good shape at the moment, but remains haunted by tensions arising from the Anzus split.
Australians have a different perspective on the world and their close neighbourhood and, naturally enough given their history and location, a much greater sense of threat. They believe that for all the use New Zealand has been in recent times, we could and should do much more.
The Americans are completely different again, when they take the time to notice us.
Wellington tries to make that happen whenever it can. Neither country sees any use in resurrecting the old alliance or creating a new one, or in revisiting the nuclear issue that saw New Zealand expelled from Anzus.
But Washington is finding that although the mouse might not roar, its squeak can be useful. New Zealand's contribution to Afghanistan has been noted and appreciated, as has its role in President George W. Bush's Proliferation Security Initiative.
Strategic intelligence is still denied, but Washington routinely provides the far more important operational intelligence and places no restrictions on co-operation when it moves beyond the strictly defence field.
Mr Rolfe says both the US and New Zealand regard engagement with Pacific states as a priority, and one in which Washington would happily allow Wellington to take the lead. And he believes that New Zealand's non-nuclear credentials could be useful to the US, as they have been through Wellington's inclusion in the "five plus five" group working on the North Korean nuclear standoff. New Zealand was included because of its "western yet anti-nuclear values".
"The more the US can see that New Zealand is useful to it," says Mr Rolfe, " ... the easier the two countries will find it to develop ever more substantive relationships."
