Since 2018, our national security threat environment has changed from benign to threatening, points out a new book, State of Threat: The Challenges to Aotearoa New Zealand’s National Security, which arrives hard on the heels of a sweeping rethink of security strategies unveiled by the outgoing government in August.
The book features contributions from notable academics and analysts who pick up on many of the core issues at the heart of our new National Security Strategy. Its editors argue that national security is located at the intersection of domestic and international security.
That’s a very appropriate place to begin, as the problems we have faced this past year have been a head-on collision of domestic and global forces. In fact, we have seen at least three collisions: between our domestic view of New Zealand as a “moral” global player and the increasing international tensions over China and Russia; between our view of New Zealand as a peacemaker (or broker) and the realities of great power diplomacy; and in the balance between external enemies and those that weaken us from within. These clashes of our identity and sense of mission with the relentless forces of ideology, “grunt” geopolitics and circumstance may end up jolting us into being more candid about who we are and what we want.
Our moral pedestal
Aukus, an arms-sale-cum-alliance between Australia, the UK and US, has been a slow-motion collision between New Zealand’s long-held “moral” foreign policy and the increasing demands of a world that is preparing for the possibility of war.
This is evident in the pressure coming from Australia for New Zealand to pull its weight in regional security, emphasised during new Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s early meeting with his trans-Tasman counterpart, Anthony Albanese, just before Christmas, where New Zealand’s potential future role in the non-nuclear layer of Aukus was discussed.
The roots of our moral (or principled, values-based) foreign policy originated with Michael Joseph Savage and Peter Fraser, and became a blueprint for the Jacinda Ardern government (with a little Norman Kirk thrown in for good measure). It was Savage who decried British “immorality” over Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia, and Fraser who challenged the creation of the veto in the UN Security Council. Kirk stuck to his principles over the murder of Chilean president Salvador Allende – refusing to acknowledge the Pinochet government – and in sending the frigate Otago, followed by HMNZS Canterbury, to Moruroa over French nuclear testing. The highpoint of our moral position was the decision to walk away from the security guarantee of Anzus in 1985 and establish a nuclear-free Pacific.
A product of that was a long-standing distrust of New Zealand by the US – “Your prime minister could not keep his word,” US Secretary of State George Shultz said of David Lange over our anti-nuclear policy – and perhaps even greater wariness by the Australians, who consider our foreign policy as mostly grandstanding.
The Anzus decision also had good consequences. New Zealand recognised the zeitgeist that led to the end of the Cold War and the nuclear-free policy was widely embraced. We also garnered a reputation of “speaking truth to power” and forged a name as a champion of small states. It became the entrenched view that we had an independent foreign policy, free of the realist binds that middle powers like Australia had to the “great and good”. Also, we came to understand the importance of rules, or what we call the rules-based order. As a result, we developed a mantra of an independent, values-based foreign policy, built around multilateralism, or mutually agreed promises and norms.
This mantra masked a much more pragmatic foreign policy. The 2008 Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with China was lauded but largely implemented after the experiment to socialise China into a democracy had been seen to have failed, particularly after Tiananmen Square. There is no denying the practical necessity of our FTA with China – Britain had sent us off looking for other trading partners from the mid-1960s. And while Australia got an FTA with the US for helping in Iraq in 2003, New Zealand’s unwillingness meant none.
But the decision to go with China collided with our ethical principles, and it was this dilemma that Ardern and her foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta, struggled to articulate for a long time: the “Dragon and the Taniwha” and the “mature relationship” were two iterations. The treatment of the Uighurs and dismantling of Hong Kong’s democracy were frequent reminders that the Chinese Communist Party does not tolerate dissension, yet New Zealand dissembled. In one notable case, we turned down signing a Five Eyes joint declaration that denounced China’s democracy clampdown, citing “independence”. [The Five Eyes intelligence alliance includes NZ, Australia, the US, UK and Canada.]
Buck-passing
International relations experts describe New Zealand’s position relative to the US and China as “hedging”, or as Waikato University’s Reuben Steff puts it in State of Threat, “cultivat[ing] a middle position that forestalls or avoids having to choose one side (the US or China) at the obvious expense of another”.
There is another explanation: since the mid-1980s, and particularly in the past decade, New Zealand has been “buck-passing”. According to Mark Brawley at McGill University in Quebec, buck-passing happens when a state declines to join an alliance on the basis there is already enough power to deter or defeat the adversary. The state is neither needed, nor does it want to spend the blood and treasure on its own defence. Unlike hedging, however, where the state may be waiting for an event that will change its mind, in buck-passing there is a long-term strategy in place: it is looking to delay the need to convert its economy into brute military power. This time component is actually quite an important factor. New Zealand is not waiting to see who the winner in a conflict between the US and China might be, nor are we being coy about which party we are likely to side with.
Another political scientist, Iain Henry, of the Australian National University in Canberra, argues in his recent book, Reliability and Alliance Interdependence, that allies don’t want reliability in the shape of loyalty and credibility in a partner; they want pragmatism. Japan, for instance, may not want to be dragged by the US into a war over Taiwan if Taiwan is already lost. Japan wants the US to be a reliably pragmatic partner, not a reliably loyal one. Neither does New Zealand want to be dragged into a war against China that the US might enter into – particularly under a second Trump presidency – because it wanted to be seen as a credible superpower.
If this is all true, then the tug-of-war we have witnessed between New Zealand’s independent, principled foreign policy and the Western allies is a bit of a sham. Aotearoa is neither sitting on the fence nor is it sitting it out through a moral aversion to war. Instead, we have been asking the US and Australia to underwrite our security while at the same time harbouring grave concerns about their ability to steer a peaceful path.
China & the pacific
A second collision between international and domestic forces was evident in the outcome of Mahuta’s indigenous foreign policy. Mahuta planted herself firmly on the side of the Pacific Island states, and professed the “family first” Blue Pacific Continent strategy, which concentrates not on China as the adversary, but climate change. Citing principles such as kaitiakitanga (stewardship and intergenerational wellbeing), Mahuta was finding a way to knit our response to Covid disruption to a Pacific economic and health strategy. This seemed to be a true intersection of national and international security.
However, by mid-2023, there appeared to be a deepening divide between Mahuta’s rhetoric and that of defence and intelligence minister Andrew Little. As minister responsible for the SIS and the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), Little had been active in naming and shaming Chinese, Russian, North Korean and Iranian cyberattacks, espionage and foreign influence measures. As defence minister, he evidently arrived at the decision that China in particular needed deterring and that the non-nuclear, advanced technology-sharing tier of Aukus – pillar two – might be the instrument to do that. In March, Little said he was willing to explore pillar two membership.
In July and August, we saw the release of four grim reports: the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s “Navigating a Shifting World” assessment; the Defence Ministry’s “Defence Policy and Strategy Statement”; the SIS’s “New Zealand’s Security Threat Environment 2023″; and “Secure Together”, our first National Security Strategy. The Defence Policy and Strategy Statement put it the most bluntly: “The Chinese Government in particular has sought to grow its political, economic, and security influence in the Pacific at the expense of more traditional partners such as New Zealand and Australia.” The statement called for improving our military readiness with “a combat-capable, credible, deployable force” and described the South Pacific as a “strategic theatre”.
These strategies were launched by prime minister at the time Chris Hipkins and Little, the latter rephrasing Helen Clark by saying we were no longer in a benign strategic environment. As Little claimed on his retirement after Labour’s election defeat, “I don’t treat the world as I would like it to be, I treat it as it is.” This suggested that, at least as far as he was concerned, the era of buck-passing may soon be over.
It was hard not to see this as a shift away from Mahuta’s less confrontational indigenous foreign policy project. In embracing the Blue Pacific Continent strategy, she had mirrored Lange’s 1985 view that New Zealand should challenge great power politics and concentrate more on our Pacific neighbourhood. In a May speech, “Why the Pacific Way Matters for Regional Security”, she emphasised that climate change was the Pacific’s “greatest security threat on all levels”. Even as late as July, she told US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “I’ll be really clear, we’re not contemplating joining Aukus.”
If you believe that national security is as much about the framing of threats as the threats themselves – a key argument in State of Threat – then it seems Mahuta had lost the narrative to the world view of the Western allies.
Internal security
A third collision between international and domestic forces came in the shape of the 2020 royal commission of inquiry’s findings into the Christchurch mosque attacks, recently reprised in the six-week coronial inquest before Christmas. The royal commission found that low levels of public trust in our intelligence and law enforcement agencies had led politicians to avoid the challenge of public engagement in counter-terrorism.
The commission began to explore the effects that greater social cohesion, inclusion and diversity might contribute to preventing or countering extremism. This brought national security policy into the realm of social policy: where poverty, lack of access to healthcare and education, and institutionalised racism are recognised as making New Zealand an unsafe place.
In fact, during the public consultation process, the national security policy team visited the University of Otago to talk to students. A young Māori woman told them she had been the target of racism since her first year in school. “You talk about protecting us,” she said. “I have never felt protected by the government.” Another reminder came in the Covid vaccination rollout, where isolated rural communities were not prioritised, disproportionately affecting Māori.
However, by mid-2022, it already seemed likely from consultation on the National Security Strategy that national security and social policy would not be considered as a coherent whole. This played out when the strategy was released with the other policy papers in August 2023. As David Capie, director of Victoria University of Wellington’s Centre for Strategic Studies, put it: “Strategy documents are like buses. Wait for one for ages and then four come along at once.”
The bus analogy may be apt: you can only catch one at a time. As one national security insider told me, there was a lot of internal frustration over the timing. Certainly, “combat-ready forces” was the idea that got the most press, and it looked as if the social cohesion angle had been buried. Once again, national and international forces had clashed.
New old broom
With a new government, and particularly a National-led coalition, we can expect to see some changes in posture. Political scientist David McCraw once characterised Labour’s foreign policy as idealist and National’s as realist: National is more likely to cosy up to allies, whereas Labour’s moral approach tends to cause problems with them.
Winston Peters, now on his third tour of duty as Foreign Minister, famously told the Chinese ambassador in 2020 to “listen to your master” and get back in his box. Peters was the author of the “Pacific Reset”, a boost of aid money to the Pacific Islands that recognised a need to put our money where our mouth is over rising Chinese influence. In his first weeks back in the job, Peters has already pooh-poohed the idea of New Zealand having an “independent” foreign policy, saying all states consider themselves to be independent. He also implied that values are not something we own exclusively, but which collectively drive the rules-based order. Both of these can be considered pokes at the previous government’s rhetoric, but they are also consistent with Peters’ spade-calling. Signalling that New Zealand will “reinvigorate” its alliances and the Five Eyes relationship, he also spoke of acting “urgently and with energy” to strengthen the regional and international security environment.
In this respect, he committed himself to a more vigorous role in the Middle East, as well as ongoing support for Ukraine. But the real question will be how he navigates his relationship with China. Peters does not care much what people think of him, and he may push his comments further than National wants him to. We may be reminded of then-prime minister Bill English and foreign minister Gerry Brownlee’s apology to Israel’s Netanyahu in 2017 after Brownlee’s predecessor Murray McCully tried to push a resolution through the UN Security Council condemning West Bank settlements.
Limping defence
New Defence Minister Judith Collins will probably be a friend to the Defence Force. While Collins has already expressed disappointment that “more wasn’t done” to get us into Aukus pillar two, Euan Graham of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute was quick to label her attitude “entitlement”, and ask, “What are they [NZ] bringing to the party?”
After years of underfunding and a workforce deserting for better salaries, Collins’ first task is to rebuild the Defence Force into a useful partner. The Labour government funded some pretty pricey equipment, but the problems with our military go much deeper. It is very nearly broken. Just in October, the Air Force’s Ohakea base closed itself to large passenger aircraft diverting in an emergency from Wellington Airport: there weren’t enough firefighters to ensure landings could be made safely. What does this mean if we’re faced with another natural disaster that calls for military help?
Collins is also Minister of the SIS and GCSB. It’s difficult to know whether, as with Mahuta’s dual roles of minister of local government and foreign affairs, Collins will suffer accusations she is overstretched. She has a very good SIS director-general in Andrew Hampton, who moved from the GCSB just before Christmas. Hampton joined the Five Eyes directors in mid-October in calling out Chinese espionage in Silicon Valley and has been vocal in naming and shaming China, North Korea and Russia’s hacking and disinformation campaigns. His move to the SIS came at the same time the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet restructured its national security group, splitting it into two, with policy and intelligence in one division and risk in the other. It remains to be seen whether the new government has a different vision for the PM’s department, which led the Covid response plan and the Cyclone Gabrielle state of emergency, as well as developing the National Security Strategy.
Peters and Collins are at risk of finding they can do no more on China and our defence problems than their predecessors. Similarly, Cyclone Gabrielle reconstruction is still in progress, and is likely to put more pressure on poverty problems.
The coalition government’s policies, particularly some of Act’s, run the risk of creating greater divisions, radicalisation and anger of the kind we saw in Parliament grounds in 2022. As the Gaza tragedy has shown us, international conflict is constant, and can create new tensions for us to resolve at home.
New Zealand is not an observer of the world’s problems – removed and righteous. We are in the thick of them, and in the midst of all the noise we need to be the quiet, measured and honest voice.
Dr Peter Grace is a politics lecturer at the University of Otago with a special interest in national security. State of Threat: The Challenges to Aotearoa New Zealand’s National Security, edited by Wil Hoverd and Deidre Ann McDonald (Massey University Press, RRP $60)
