Author    Robert Ayson

​He was bound to say it. Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines wouldn’t be welcome visitors on this side of the Tasman, and AUKUS would not change New Zealand’s long-held nuclear free policy. But Chris Hipkins was addressing a non-existent problem. On the one hand, it’s difficult to envisage a peacetime scenario in which Canberra would want to send one of those multi-billion dollar subsurface vessels, suited for missions well into East Asian waters, to a New Zealand port. And on the other hand, we have plenty of time to ponder the hypothetical chances of that request coming from Canberra. Assuming no big delays (a dangerous thing to do) Australia will be waiting about a decade for the delivery of its first Virginia class submarines from the US (and then another decade before Australia builds any of the new generation submarines, the AUKUS SSNs, which will also be procured by the Royal Navy).
 
But that complex and expensive multi-stage deal brings a different nuclear-related challenge that touches on New Zealand’s pro-disarmament view of the world. The reactors in the Virginia class (as in some other US vessels) rely on weapons-grade highly enriched uranium. Selling vessels with this propulsion system may not be a technical violation of the respective safeguards agreements that nuclear weapon possessing America and its non-nuclear armed ally Australia have with the International Atomic Energy Agency. But it is definitely a blow for the spirit of the nuclear non-proliferation regime which New Zealand strongly supports, and will leave the IAEA with an extra verification challenge it scarcely needs.

Author   Jon Fraenkel

​2006 coup leader and 2007-22 Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama and the former police Commissioner Sitiveni Qiliho appeared before the Suva magistrate’s Court on 10th March, after being held in custody overnight. Two days earlier Bainimarama resigned from parliament and surrendered his position as Leader of the Opposition.
 
Bainimarama and Qiliho are getting a taste of their own medicine. Opposition MPs have repeatedly been taken into custody for ‘questioning’ over the past 16 years, in some cases as a precursor to the laying of charges.
 
One might have cause for concern that the new Rabuka-led government is using the same draconian tools of its predecessor to deal with its opponents, including long suspensions from parliament, claims of ‘inciting unrest’ and linked police investigations, but the new government does need to deal sternly with efforts to subvert its elected authority.

Author   Christian Novak

Energy security - to borrow a definition from Australia’s 2019 Liquid Fuel Security Review -  comes down to ensuring reliability of supply, and that it is resilient enough to withstand the most likely disruptions. With the global economy facing upheaval after two years of a global pandemic and now, high inflation, the Russia-Ukraine conflict underscores the need for sovereign governments to protect and manage their strategic assets; in this case, energy supply and the risks associated with them. 
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For that reason, Marsden Point’s decision to become an ‘import only’ terminal calls into question New Zealand’s approach to energy security. Considering the Government struck a deal with Rio Tinto to keep the Tiwai Point Aluminum Smelter open, it puts the spotlight on the government’s decision not to underwrite the refinery. That light shines even brighter when you compare New Zealand’s approach to Australia’s, which is subsidising its two oil refineries on both strategic and national security grounds.

Author   Peter Greener

​In March 2022, the Report of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee on the 2020/21 Annual Review of the Ministry of Defence and the NZDF, noted in the section headed ‘Strategic competition in the Pacific’ that, “We heard that there will not be a white paper in 2022. However, Defence will be recommending to Ministers terms of reference that look at the development of defence policy settings in a more proactive approach, and the force structure that would support those settings.” Does this mean that there might be a new white paper in 2023, will we see another government defence policy statement, or will there be a revised defence capability plan?
 
The Ministry of Defence website notes that Defence policy settings in New Zealand's are reviewed on a regular basis, and that “The results of these reviews, Defence White Papers and Strategic Defence Policy Statements, are the highest-level expression of Government's Defence policy settings.” It notes that, “these policy documents will present an assessment of New Zealand's strategic environment and set out at a high level the range of activities the New Zealand Defence Force must be prepared to undertake” before adding that “[t]he most recent formal expression of New Zealand's Defence policy is the Strategic Defence Policy Statement 2018,” which was released by the Labour-led Coalition Government.

Author  Robert Ayson

​In little more than a year an inside-out experiment at foreign policy making for New Zealand has been turned outside-in. Barely fifteen months ago Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta set out an agenda which began with the Treaty of Waitangi and sought to globalise indigenous values. But claims to New Zealand’s foreign policy uniqueness have been overtaken by events in Europe. Since Russia launched its devastating invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, Jacinda Ardern’s government has been focused on expressing New Zealand’s solidarity with its larger western partners.
 
While more a follower than a leader New Zealand has nonetheless crossed two important policy thresholds in trying to keep pace with its traditional partners as they punish Moscow. First, the Ardern government eventually relented to pressure and introduced Russia-specific autonomous sanctions legislation. Second, despite its initial reluctance to provide military assistance, the Labour-led government also decided that New Zealand would help fund the United Kingdom’s provision of weapons and ammunition to Ukraine’s armed forces.

Author  Robert Ayson

​A few weeks ago you might not have noticed Nanaia Mahuta’s signal that travel restrictions were on the way for Myanmar military leadership. But any excuse for believing that New Zealand had zero autonomous sanctions options without enabling legislation disappeared on 24 February. That’s when the Foreign Minister joined Jacinda Ardern in announcing a series of measures in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. There were three of these; travel bans on “Russian Government officials and other individuals associated with the invasion of Ukraine,” suspending some of New Zealand’s diplomatic interactions with Russia, and a prohibition on the “the export of all goods intended for use by the Russian military and security forces, including any armed force, paramilitary force, police force, or militia.” 
 
The export controls are the most likely reason why New Zealand appeared on the list of sanctioning allies and partners in a White House Factsheet. That naming sits nicely alongside the government’s suggestions that New Zealand was “very much in line” with and “standing alongside" its partners. But the absence of autonomous sanctions legislation has reduced the range of available levers. Even if it wanted to, New Zealand can’t legally do all the things its partners can, especially when the sanctions don’t limit government to government interactions.

Author   Jon Fraenkel

A common Pacific myth tells us that Oceania’s many islands were either ‘fished up’ from the seas or ‘thrown down’ from the heavens. The undersea Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha'apai volcano, which erupted with such force on 15th January, fits both stories. It was raised up when a relatively small 2015 eruption left layers of ash that formed a land platform joining the islands of Hunga-Tonga and Hunga-Ha'apai. The freshly combined islandsthen expanded in size in early 2021 while magma filled the craters below the surface, but now, with the volcano having unleashed its wrath, the land bridge has collapsed beneath the waves leaving the two now much shrunken islands again separated: fished up and then cast down. 

After the eruption, a mushroom cloud of gas rose 30 kilometres into the atmosphere. It was visible from space. 400,000 lightning bolts pierced the sky as ash and atmospheric ice collided generating electrical charges. Magma blasts full of volcanic gas sent sound waves rippling outwards at supersonic speeds. These could be heard as far afield as Alaska. The resulting tsunami swept across the Pacific Ocean hitting the coasts of the Americas, New Zealand and Japan. On Tonga’s main island, Tongatapu, British women Angela Glover, owner of a dog sanctuary, was carried away in the rising seas as she tried to rescue her animals. Two further deaths have since been reported in the Ha’apai Islands. Another two people were drowned in Northern Peru.

Author    Robert Ayson

​Speculation was rife earlier this year that Peeni Henare was about to announce his defence policy principles in a stand-alone speech. If that mode of delivery had eventuated, observers would have pounced. Nothing says New Zealand’s external security environment is fine and dandy quite like a Defence Minister choosing People and Infrastructure as the big ideas alongside New Zealand’s interests in the Pacific.
 
But in a change of plans Henare’s trio of principles and a matching set of underwhelming priorities were rolled into the release of New Zealand’s 2021 Defence Assessment. As was evident in the pre-Christmas launch and the limited media comment which has followed, the picture painted by that new document is bleak.
 
While the Assessment begins with climate change and strategic competition as the top two problem generators, it’s the second of these which does most of the work. And “strategic competition” is a euphemism. A one sentence summary of the 36-page public version of the Assessment could easily read: China is threatening New Zealand’s interests in the South Pacific.

Author   Jon Fraenkel

​Despite the many years of New Zealand participation in the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), understanding of the politics of that country remains minimal. The recent disturbances in Honiara, culminating in the burning down of much of the city’s Chinatown district, brought the affairs of the Solomon Islands back into the New Zealand headlines. So too did the deployment of New Zealand police and troops. But listening to the TVNZ One News last night (Friday 10th December) sounded like a faint echo of the weak interpretations of the historic conflict in that country that were circulating two decades ago:
 
TVNZ Pacific Correspondent Barbara Dreaver: ‘Beneath the surface, the real issues that caused this unrest are still bubbling along. It’s the difference between Malaita and Guadalcanal. These two are at loggerheads and these issues are still there. So when New Zealand and the other international peacekeepers leave, it's a little bit like taking a plaster off. The wounds are still very much there. New Zealand was there for 14 years after a civil war as part of a peacekeeping force. I remember in 2017 Solomon Islanders said to me “we are so worried about the mission ending because we think that there will be more trouble” and they were right’.

Interviewer: ‘Where is this heading?’.
 
Dreaver: ‘I feel like many that the situation is deteriorating. And that’s because the deep divisions between Malaita and Guadalcanal are just so stark at the moment. There’s a real power tussle going on between the two’.
 
One can only just count the errors in that coverage on the fingers of one hand.

Author    Mary Wareham

In welcome news, the Aotearoa New Zealand government has announced it will push for the adoption of new international law to prohibit and limit autonomous weapons systems. The policy commits New Zealand to play “a leadership role in building an inclusive coalition of states, experts and civil society” to achieve this goal. 

According to the Minister for Disarmament and Arms Control, Phil Twyford, the prospect of delegating the decision to take human life to machines is “abhorrent and inconsistent with New Zealand’s interests and values.” Indeed, killing or injuring people based on data collected by sensors and processed by machines would violate human dignity. My organization, Human Rights Watch, and other members of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots are concerned that relying on algorithms to target people will dehumanize warfare and erode our collective humanity.