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.

Author   David Capie

​Amidst the furore over the Huawei 5G decision and New Zealand’s increasingly turbulent relations with China, it would be easy to overlook the news that the leader of another important Northeast Asian partner is visiting this week. South Korean president Moon Jae-in has touched down in Auckland for a two-day state visit on the way home from the G20 meetings in Argentina. It marks the first visit by a Korean president in nine years.
 
The visit promises some respite for the Ardern government after a bumpy few weeks in its Asian diplomacy. One important focus of talks will of course be the situation on the Korean peninsula, which has seen a roller coaster 12 months of nuclear crisis and unconventional diplomacy.  President Moon will be keen to enlist New Zealand’s support for his efforts to engage North Korea, including plans for a summit with Kim Jong-un in Seoul, possibly as soon as the middle of this month. His government is working to re-establish links between north and south and looking for ways to offer North Korea economic incentives without violating UN sanctions. He is likely to get a sympathetic hearing. Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ interest in North Korean issues is well known and Prime Minister Ardern will welcome the chance to play up her government’s disarmament and anti-nuclear credentials. 

Author    Robert Ayson

Perhaps aside from a few of its Pacific neighbours, not many countries treat Australia as a major power. But that is exactly what New Zealand does. This means that Australia constitutes more than New Zealand’s most important diplomatic relationship, as significant as that may be. It also makes Australia essential to explaining the foreign policy choices New Zealand makes beyond the trans-Tasman relationship and how these choices are depicted and understood.
 
There are three ways of viewing Australia's significance to Wellington. In the first instance, and most obviously, Australia is a partner with cooperative endeavours in all sorts of functional policy areas. But secondly, Australia is also something of a competitor for New Zealand: contrasts with Australia, and how Australia does things, are often used to define New Zealand as a distinct foreign policy actor. And yet thirdly, Australia is also a facilitator for New Zealand foreign policy: Australia helps provide space and opportunities for the choices that Wellington makes. Yet none of this is automatic or inevitable, and in the current circumstances of global and regional flux, nobody should assume Australia’s role can be assumed as a given. 

Authors:   Anna Powles and Michael Powles

​This week Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Winston Peters are in Nauru attending the 49th Pacific Islands Forum. Against the backdrop of well-publicised strategic anxieties and foreign policy recalibration towards the Pacific Islands here, here and here, this year’s pre-eminent annual meeting of regional leaders is shaping up to be particularly interesting.
 
First, a new security declaration, known as Biketawa Plus, will be launched. This will be the newest addition to the regional security architecture since the Biketawa Declaration was signed eighteen years ago. The 2000 Biketawa Declaration is best known for mandating the fourteen year-long Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) and the new declaration, likely to be named the Boe Declaration after Nauruan Prime Minister Baron Waqa’s home district of Boe, seeks to expand both regional cooperation and the concept of security. 

Author    Terence O'Brien

​The Ardern coalition government has chosen an awkward moment internationally to release its first big picture view on world affairs. The primary purpose of its 2018 Strategic Defence Policy (SDP) Statement is to demonstrate why NZ requires a suite of identified military capabilities. Although the envisaged costs are considerable, the statement presents a solid case for equipping NZ first and foremost for credible stewardship and protection of its ‘near abroad,’ from Antarctica to the Equator. The presentation is clear and concise.
 
In addressing the wider context of NZ interests the document stresses the crucial importance of an international rules based order (in its 39 pages there are 33 such references) and the responsibility of the New Zealand Defence Force and security/intelligence community to strive to ensure the integrity of that order.  Concern for rules-based order has of course traditionally been a first care of foreign policy advisers and the new statement gives a nod to NZ’s independent foreign policy.  But it reflects more significantly the way in which national security agencies of New Zealand’s traditional partners now prioritise oversight of rules-based order as justification for their own international relations primacy, and for enhanced military and security capability to confront perceived threats. Is NZ now on the same pathway?

Author    Van Jackson

The buzz from New Zealand’s Strategic Defence Policy Statement (DPS) released last Friday has focused on its uncommon candor about China.  According to a statement at the end of the document, the DPS was heavily coordinated across the government, and reflects a commendable shift in public tone.  It’s on-trend with how other liberal democracies see the world today, and avoids doublespeak about threats to New Zealand’s interests. 
 
But there’s a more consequential and tangible challenge that the DPS also surfaces: the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) has what’s known in force planning as a strategy-force mismatch.  That’s when the military lacks the resources to do what it might be asked to do.  Where there’s a mismatch there’s risk—to lives, to values, and to international reputations.  

Author     David Capie

The government’s Strategic Defence Policy Statement, launched on Friday by Defence Minister Ron Mark, signals a new view of New Zealand’s security challenges. It sounds a more worried tone about the security picture in the Asia-Pacific and beyond. Perhaps most notably it breaks new ground with its frank language about China’s actions in the South China Sea and how it characterises the rising power’s wider ambitions.
 
The Statement describes three major challenges putting pressure on the ‘rules-based order’ that has served New Zealand well over the last seven decades. These are shifts in the balance of power and the emergence of ‘spheres of influence’; challenges to open societies such as the rise of populism and illiberalism; and what it calls ‘complex disruptors’ including the proliferation of new technologies, extremist ideologies, climate change and transnational crime. As these pressures grow and interact, it concludes, “the foundation of international security is shifting.”