Author:   Robert Ayson

Few observers would take issue with New Zealand’s latest criticisms of the international community’s failure to stem Syria’s civil conflict. Chairing a special meeting of the Security Council in New York, John Key has just been laying into that august assembly:

‘After more than five years of violence, Syria has become a byword for failure. Failure of the parties and their supporters to put peace, and the lives of innocent people ahead of self-interest and zero-sum politics. Failure to respond to the crisis early to prevent this tragedy. And a collective political failure, including by this Council, to do what must be done to end the conflict.’

This argument should come as no surprise. In the first instance, the Council’s membership has hardly been united in an urgent determination to quell the humanitarian suffering in Syria or to help resolve the conflict that is causing it. Secondly, Mr Key’s words are reminiscent of one of the arguments that New Zealand used in its quest to get onto the Council in the first place. Speaking at the UN in September 2014, Foreign Minister McCully argued that:

'In Syria and Iraq we see the truly frightening consequences when leadership, both internally and in the Security Council, has failed.'
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From Wellington’s view, not much has changed in the lasy two years, a period that has coincided with New Zealand’s membership. It has been there, of course, with the limited time frame and limited leverage that all temporary members have to work with. And it is fair to say that Wellington attributes much of the blame to the permanent five whose veto power Mr McCully referred to last year as ‘the single largest cause of the UN Security Council being rendered impotent in the face of too many serious international conflicts’. 

Author  John Battersby

Serious research into terrorism has been going on for decades, peaking in the late 1970s when terrorism started to emerge as a global phenomenon, followed by a determined resurgence after 9/11.  The world again appears to be in the grip of terrorism inspired by Al Qaeda and ISIS, which has seen vicious attacks in many countries.  But for all the time, effort and resources that have gone into studying these groups, we don't seem to have progressed very far in our understanding of terrorism or come to any consensus about what really makes people commit these acts. 

This is not a reason to give up. But it is depressing to hear a French investigation citing a failure of communication between intelligence agencies and other security forces as a key reason a series of terrorist plots in France last year went undetected, costing 147 lives.  Every terrorist involved was known to someone, their potential for involvement in something dangerous was predicted or predictable – but no one joined the dots.  This must be the oldest, but hardest lesson to learn – information is power. It can provide security and it can ensure safety, but it cannot do this if organisations who have knowledge work in silos, and are threatened by sharing it.  It is always easier to join dots in hindsight and appear wiser for doing so, but, with the death toll in the hundreds in recent attacks, more connections need to be made before violence occurs. 

Author    David Capie

​Hot on the heels of the Hague Tribunal’s decision about the South China Sea, Foreign Minister McCully is back in Asia. Back-to-back meetings with ASEAN, ASEAN Regional Forum and East Asia Summit foreign ministers this week in Laos will give McCully and his diplomatic team a front row seat to assess the rapidly changing regional security situation.
 
But as well as providing New Zealand with a chance to listen and share our views on pressing regional issues, the sidelines of these meetings also provide important opportunities for one-on-one discussions with regional partners. Among the many ‘bilaterals’ scheduled for Mr McCully in Vientiane was one with special significance. For the first time in more than two years he met his counterpart from Thailand. In doing so, he signalled a major reversal of government policy.

Author   Terence O'Brien

​Although the 2016 Defence White Paper (DWP 2016) does not itemise a sequence of equipment purchases, the commitment to expenditure upon identified capabilities lends predictability for defence planners. It reinforces too the value of a small professional defence force as a national asset in advancing NZ interests. Those interests are now in an era of substantial transformation.
 
DWP 2016 represents the only public NZ document that conveys through the single lens of defence policy, official thinking about the world “big picture”. There is no equivalent political or economic document.  DWP 2016 is also the first official statement  on NZ defence and security following decisions to strengthen the Prime Minister’s Department with extended national security powers (including external intelligence connections)  thus bringing NZ practice into closer line with that in more powerful traditional defence partners although NZ’s own hard power is negligible; and its level of international ambition is different - including from Australia.

Author   W J Fish

Recent developments in international politics have highlighted the uneasy attitude that politicians are beginning to develop towards information, truth, evidence and expert opinion. In the UK, where the Brexit referendum has now concluded, we not only found members of the Leave campaign claiming that the British people “have had enough of experts”, they also made a number of promises – that a post-EU UK would save £350M per week that could be spent on the NHS, and that immigration would be reduced in the event of a leave vote – that were speedily dropped after the votes were counted. The Remain camp were also guilty, however: in the event of a leave vote they threatened both the immediate triggering of Article 50 and a “punishment budget”, neither of which ultimately transpired.

Across the Atlantic, where the presidential election is still to come, we find Donald Trump, who is notorious for making claims that not only contradict one another, but actually turn out to be false, with PolitiFact suggesting that 76% of the 77 Trump statements they checked were false to some degree. It’s even been alleged that he has impersonated his own spokesman. And whilst things haven’t yet reached such dire straits here in New Zealand, journalists have complained that over the past decade or so, access to accurate information has become more difficult, and successive Prime Ministers have shown signs of playing “fast and loose with the truth”.

Author: Robert Ayson

News that Minister Todd McClay will be seeking assurances on New Zealand’s trade position from his EU and UK counterparts following the pro-Brexit referendum vote reinforces a predictable focus. As night precedes day, pre-referendum coverage in New Zealand focused on the economic implications of a leave vote. And as day then turns into night, a continuation of the same pattern is to be expected.
 
But Brexit is going to be a much bigger and wider problem for New Zealand because of what it means for the western commitment to a global order founded on international cooperation. Britain is now set to exit the European Union, which, for all its faults, has been the deepest experiment in voluntary cooperative interstate relations the world has ever seen. In turn an already strained EU has been robbed of one of the five permanent members of the UNSC, and one of its most pragmatic and sensible participants. Despite the efforts of the remaining 27 powers to rally around a flag with one less star, whatever remains of the EU’s aspirations for significant global influence is fast disappearing. Likewise, an already diminished United States has lost its chief EU partner in the promotion of global rules. A major new crack in the trans-Atlantic commitment to sustained international leadership has been opened. And if you think this doesn’t matter, just think for a moment about Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Ukraine, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, human rights, and cyber-security. 

Author      David Capie

I was born in England (in glorious carpet-making Kidderminster, birthplace to former Prime Minister Walter Nash, and home to the mighty Kidderminster Harriers FC). I came to Wellington when I was ten, and apart from a very brief, foolish and extremely expensive wager against the All Blacks at Eastern Hutt Primary School in Standard Four, New Zealand has had my loyalty. My dad is a Scot, my mum is a Kiwi, but despite growing up on the other side of the world, I have always retained my deep-seated, innate fondness for Britain. I’ve been back many times and I’ve always thought of the UK as a very familiar but still slightly foreign country. Not home, but perhaps the next best thing. Put it this way: I unhesitatingly cheer for the All Blacks and the Blackcaps against all comers, but every four years some cruel part of my DNA still hopes against hope that the English football team can live up to their tabloid hype and win the World Cup. I'm still trying to find some way to get that fixed and in the meantime to get excited about Aston Villa’s away fixtures next season.

So it’s as both a British citizen and a New Zealander that I feel so deeply disappointed and profoundly saddened by today's EU referendum vote. Let's be honest: in political science we almost certainly overdo the earthquake metaphors, but this really does feels like a moment when tectonic plates are shifting. Events are fast moving, things are really complicated and hard to interpret. At this stage it’s hard to know quite what has driven the ‘Leave’ vote over the line (is it fears of ‘rampant’ immigration? Deep-seated frustration with elites? The EU’s democracy deficit? Disillusion with globalization and deeper economic integration?). Plenty of people who seemed to be doing OK out of closer integration also voted LEAVE. It’s difficult to know what this means for the British, European or world economies, but it’s hard to see any particularly happy news. It’s also hard to know what it means for EU-like regional integration projects the world over (although no-one’s tried to leave ASEAN yet, at least as far as I know).

But there are three things that strike me about this vote, as I write (not too long after the result), late on a Friday night.  

Author  BK Greener

I recently attended an international security event. As is normally the case, fewer than twenty percent of the people attending were women. After a series of initial briefings we were divided up into working groups. In one of the smaller groups the man to my right knew me well. He knew my expertise. The man to my left didn’t. During the presentations the man to my left carefully explained the matter under discussion to me. The man to my right grimaced. I endured the explaining politely, and then attempted to demonstrate through my interactions that I knew something about the topic that was being explained to me. Actually, I’ve written a book or two on it. 

The first issue here, then, is that I had my own area of expertise in international security mansplained to me. The man to my left was attempting to be helpful. But had I been a man would he have assumed that lack of knowledge on my part? The man to my right didn’t say anything. He was waiting for me to reveal that, actually, I knew the topic well. And of course, for him to explain this for me would also be problematic.

Yet I didn’t stop the man to my left and correct his mistake. Why?​

Author: John Battersby

The weekend’s discovery of 494kg of methamphetamine on a Northland beach is hugely significant. Never before has such a large cache of the drug been found at one time in New Zealand. This single haul is more than the total combined amount of meth seized across the entire country in 2015. 
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Police estimate the drugs’ potential street value at nearly half a billion dollars, but it’s much harder to quantify the enormous social harm that amount of methamphetamine could cause.  For every ounce consumed, users are damaged and those under the influence of methamphetamine often end up being dealt with by police in a range of criminal contexts. The many mental and physical health effects on users and their families ultimately falls to our health system to deal with. This is a huge social cost which has now been avoided because of the seizure of these drugs.

Author David Capie

The release of the 2016 New Zealand Defence White Paper last week has sparked an unusual amount of media coverage of defence issues.  Arguments have raged for and against additional defence spending and most of the major newspapers have offered editorial views, including The Dominion-Post and the Otago Daily Times. Some regular contributors to Incline have been at the forefront of this commentary and analysis and in lieu of a standalone post this week, we thought we’d share some of the coverage.

In a piece at The Spinoff, David Capie took issue with some of the more excitable press coverage that followed last Wednesday’s launch, arguing the obsession with drones and cyber warriors missed the point that the White Paper’s focus on New Zealand’s neighbourhood means it has a good chance of finding support from future governments of all political stripes.  Robert Ayson has been as prolific as usual, arguing in the Dominion Post, that the $20 billion committed in capital spending means “the government wants its successors to have real military options for operations further afield.” But, he warns decisions need to be made soon, “the clock is ticking.” CSS Senior Fellow Peter Greener makes a similar point about future spending in this Radio New Zealand story. In another piece published in the Lowy Interpreter, Ayson argues that New Zealand’s White Paper shares with its recently published Australian counterpart a common focus on maritime strategy, but a different view on the geographical focus for those efforts.