Author     Euan Graham

​Rob Ayson’s thought-provoking post implied that the temporary incapacity of New Zealand’s two ANZAC frigates is a blessing in disguise. In other words, because both vessels were undergoing a significant upgrade refit in Canada, Wellington would be able to rebuff any request from Washington to send a warship to the Gulf, simply because the capability was unavailable. Rob went on to ponder whether the absence of a surface combat capability beyond 2030 really matters for keeping New Zealand’s lights on.
 
To this Australia-based occasional commentator on trans-Tasman strategic affairs that seems like a fair, if deliberately provocative, question. After all, successive New Zealand governments have run down the NZDF’s combat capabilities, including its fast jets, without incurring obvious strategic costs. Or, at least not costs that bother most taxpayers, since it is they who are ultimately expected to foot the bill for defence, against competing priorities with more tangible socio-economic benefits. 
  

Author    Robert Ayson

One day (well, 20 May of this year to be precise) as Opposition Leader you’re launching a discussion document on your party’s international policies. ‘National's positioning on international relations issues is anchored in our values, ’ you say. ‘Those values are rooted in our country's long history of unbroken democracy, embrace of political and economic freedoms, tolerance, a staunch defence of fundamental human rights, and a recognition of the need to provide security and safety to our people at home and abroad.’ Hear, hear. But barely 100 days later and you give an interview in China where you laud Xi Jinping and the Communist Party of China, doing your level best to prove the thesis that the only value that really matters is trade-enabled prosperity.

​This is the recent course that New Zealand’s National Party leader Simon Bridges has taken, and it’s no surprise that he is getting roasted for his interview performance. He’s easy meat for the Ardern government which has toughened up New Zealand’s stance on China since coming into office, laying out New Zealand’s concerns about Beijing’s South China Sea moves in last year’s Strategic Defence Policy Statement and more recently including New Zealand’s signature on a letter to the UN Human Rights Council about China’s detention practices in Xinjiang. Finance Minister Grant Robertson, a keen rugby player, took the ball and ran: “the most extraordinary interview I think I've ever seen the leader of a National Party give", he is reported to have said in parliament. 

Author      Lance Beath

Professor Robert Ayson is right to be uncertain about the likely shape of the future surface combatant force once HMNZS Te Kaha and Te Mana are withdrawn from service in the first half of the 2030s. But the reasons for uncertainty are a good deal more complex than Rob’s piece argues.

Robert writes ‘If I was Navy, and fond of my frigates, I’d regard with dread paragraph 204 of the DCP (government’s Defence Capability Plan of April 2019): “The ANZAC Frigates are scheduled to be replaced with modern surface combatants relevant to New Zealand’s prevailing strategic environment in the mid-2030s.” This is hardly a definitive commitment.’ 
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It is hard to see why anyone thinking about the question of the replacement of the frigates would be unhappy with this drafting. The DCP says as much as needs to be said, or indeed can sensibly be said, this far out from any replacement decision, viz: the ANZAC frigates are scheduled to be replaced with modern surface combatants relevant to the strategic environment of the mid-2030s and well beyond.

Author    Robert Ayson

​As I read Jim Rolfe’s thoughtful response to my post on the future of New Zealand’s frigates, one line really stood out. “The primary purpose of the warships is to be able to go into dangerous situations and defeat or deter enemies at sea.” This important message is only amplified if we see what the government’s recent Defence Capability Plan (DCP) says about the money that is being spent on Te Kaha and Te Mana: “These upgrades have been undertaken to ensure that the frigates remain world-class maritime combat capabilities for the full duration of their service.”
 
And that brings to mind Lance Beath’s polite reinterpretation of my subversive suggestion: “if New Zealand did not need the kind of naval combat capability represented by our two upgraded frigates”, he asks, “why did this government choose to spend many hundreds of millions of dollars on the Frigate Systems Upgrade in the first place?” Why indeed. 

Author    Jim Rolfe

Two of my colleagues have used this forum recently to comment on the need for a naval combat force. Both have useful insights to make, but neither gets to the root of the issue.

Professor Robert Ayson assumes that because we do not have ships readily available today because they are being upgraded (and we seem to be surviving as a country without them) a future government may well decide that the cost of a warship capability might better be directed elsewhere. Perhaps so, but this seems to me to be hypothetical and drawing from a single data point.
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In contrast, Lance Beath argues that a naval combatant capability is essential, but that the real answer lies in an integrated single combat service for the armed forces. That is, however, to discuss structure rather than capability and to assume the context of the domains within which future operations will be conducted. 

Author    Lance Beath

In a recent Incline post titled ‘Where are the Frigates?’ Professor Robert Ayson notes, quite correctly, that the frigates currently undergoing refit in Canada represent ‘no small portion of New Zealand’s modest capacity to project military power.’ He then asks, ‘if New Zealand can have a period of months when it does without that capacity in its entirety, would the lights really go out if there were no frigates at all?’
 
A headline writer on Newsroom, in republishing Rob’s piece, added the provocative headline ‘Farewell to New Zealand’s Frigates?’ with a lead-in paragraph saying that ‘New Zealand’s inability to contribute naval frigates to a US-led operation near Iran may seem embarrassing – but as Robert Ayson writes, it may actually demonstrate we don’t need the vessels at all.’
 
Yet, as I read Rob’s piece, he seemed to me to be asking a rhetorical question. The current unavailability of the two major components of the Navy’s surface combat force does not demonstrate lack of necessity. More correctly, what it demonstrates is a larger and more pressing phenomenon that was the subject of an earlier Incline post by Van Jackson. Namely, an inability to do what the NZDF might be asked to do because of ongoing resource shortfalls or what Jackson called the ‘strategy-force mismatch’. 

Author   Robert Ayson

Australia has just announced that it will join the US-led mission to protect shipping lanes in the Strait of Hormuz against harassment by Iran. New Zealand not only seems unlikely to do the same. It seems unable. Defence Minister Ron Mark has said that "The bottom line [is] that I can barely struggle to keep two P3s [surveillance aircraft] flying ... I just don't see that we have any spare capability right now to engage in that kind of a mission."
 
When Donald Trump’s latest Defence Secretary was in town earlier this month, I implied that New Zealand already had an automatic get-out-of-jail-free card for any US request for assistance, at least on the naval side. One of New Zealand’s two frigates, I suggested, was away being refitted. It turns out I was wrong. Both of the ANZAC frigates, as a colleague corrected me, are in a Canadian dockyard.

Not a conventional blog post, but we can't miss the opportunity to point out that the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington is hosting some incredible speakers over the next few days. When it rains it pours, but if you are in or near Wellington we hope you can find a way to come to some (or better ALL) of these events.  You won't regret it. 

First up, the brilliant Dr Sheila Smith from the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington D.C. will deliver the Sir Howard Kippenberger lecture in the Victoria University of Wellington Hunter Council Chamber on Thursday 1 August at 6pm, followed by a reception. Sheila is a superb speaker and a world authority on Japanese politics and foreign policy. She has been with us for a month in New Zealand as our 11th Sir Howard Kippenberger Visiting Professor and her talk will offer very special insights into the challenging and dangerous regional order that currently faces Japan. Details here: https://www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/sir-howard-kippenberger-public-lecture-2019-an-alliance-an-indo-pacific-vision-and-an-unpredictable-tickets-65493439641?aff=ebapi


Second, on Friday lunch time (12:00-130pm), legendary child-wrangling “BBC Dad" and North Korea expert Robert Kelly will join Pulitzter-prize nominated foreign correspondent Jean Lee, who opened the first Associated Press bureau in North Korea, and our very own Van Jackson for a panel discussion to help us try and understand is happening now the US and North Korea have had three leaders’ summits. Are we closer to war? Closer to peace? Details and RSVP here: https://www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/decoding-north-korea-since-the-summits-a-panel-discussion-tickets-66138641457
 
 
Finally on Monday evening, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will be coming to Victoria University of Wellington to share his thoughts on ‘NATO and New Zealand: Partners in International Security’. This will be an interactive session with Secretary General Stoltenberg keen to talk about everything from trans-Atlantic defence ties to the Women, Peace and Security agenda.  Details here: https://www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/nato-new-zealand-partners-in-international-security-tickets-66645657957?aff=ebapi
 
The Centre for Strategic Studies: NZ is proud to be bringing you such a terrific line-up of speakers, but space is limited for these events so please RSVP now. We look forward to seeing you over the next few days.
 

Author    Robert Ayson

In one of the more tasteful scenes from Team America, Hans Blix informs Kim Jong-Il that unless the UN inspection of North Korea’s nuclear facilities is granted full access “we will send you a letter and tell you how angry we are.” In the movie’s next scene, Blix ends up Kim’s sharktank. But letters can be influential in international relations. John Howard’s 1998 missive to BJ Habibie encouraged the Indonesian leader down a track that led to a hotly contested referendum which precipitated violence, an Australian-led intervention, and eventually East Timor’s independence.
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Sitting somewhere in between these extremes is the recent letter from 22 countries to the President of the UN Human Rights Council raising serious concerns about “credible reports of arbitrary detention in large-scale places of detention, as well as widespread surveillance and restrictions, particularly targeting Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang China.” New Zealand is one of those signatories. I think that’s a pretty big deal for Wellington’s China policy. 

Author    Terence O'Brien 

The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has linked curtailing the spread of 5G telecommunications network by Huawei to the continuation of US intelligence sharing arrangements with partners and allies.  Although no evidence has been supplied publicly, the expressed fear is that cyber security is at greater risk.
 
The Five Eyes is an expedient intelligence sharing arrangement, between a select  group of governments. It derives from an exchange of letters. It is not a formal Treaty.  By its very nature of course expediency is changeable should circumstances and context, change. Intelligence contributes to foreign policy, it does not make or define it.