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.

Author   Anna Powles 

On November 4, Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta gave her first major foreign policy speech on Aotearoa New Zealand’s policy in the Pacific. It was highly anticipated amongst Pacific watchers. Mahuta had signalled at the outset of her term that she intended to deliver a foreign policy distinct from that of her predecessor Winston Peters. At its core is New Zealand’s policy transition from the Pacific Reset, launched by Peters in 2018, to a Pacific Resilience partnership approach announced by Mahuta and laid out in a subsequently released Cabinet paper. Last Friday, the 'Partnering for Resilience' approach received its first international mention at the Australia-Aotearoa New Zealand Foreign Minister Consultations.
 
Since Mahuta was appointed foreign minister in late 2020, she has given a number of speeches that have sought to define her foreign policy agenda and approach. It is helpful to consider this latest speech in the context of earlier statements, notably Mahuta’s inaugural foreign policy speech at Waitangi, her dragon and the taniwha speech to the New Zealand China Council, and her address to the Otago Foreign Policy School. The common theme is the centrality of Te Tiriti o Waitangi to New Zealand’s foreign policy principles and praxis; and that New Zealand’s approach to the Pacific is anchored in New Zealand’s connections to Polynesia.​

Author   Robert Ayson

​It takes a lot for me to get focused on questions of methodology. But my interest was piqued by this week’s media coverage of the Ministry of Defence’s thinking as it prepares a new Defence Assessment (normally the part way mark towards a new Defence White Paper). It  wasn’t surprising to know that with the increased regional competition between China and the US, among other factors, defence officials judge that New Zealand’s security environment is deteriorating. As David Capie has suggested, that point should hardly be news to anyone. Instead my attention was drawn to another quote from the video (which I have not seen, and that has since been removed from public view): “New Zealand’s defence policy approach should shift from a predominantly reactive risk management-centred approach to one based on a more deliberate and proactive strategy, with explicitly prioritised policy objectives.”
 
Combining that methodological point together with a less positive security environment can be crudely translated as follows: New Zealand’s defence policy will be less about managing a wide range of risks and more focused on efforts to forestall, deter or defeat, specific threats. You might think I am rushing to an outlandish summation out of sync with the way New Zealand thinks about the options available to it. But other parts of the official system are thinking this way too. A few days ago, Andrew Little, argued in an address hosted by the Centre for Strategic Studies that there were “four premises” for a much needed “conversation on national security.” The first of these deserves careful consideration: “New Zealand faces threats to physical and economic security, and social institutions from forces and interests that would do us harm.”

Author  David Andrews

For the first time since the Anzac-class frigate program commenced in the 1980s, the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN) and Royal Australian Navy (RAN) are simultaneously undertaking a comprehensive fleet recapitalisation. By the mid-2030s, the RNZN and RAN are both due to replace their current surface warfare, patrol, sealift, hydrographic, and mine countermeasures vessels. This presents a unique opportunity to reinvigorate and strengthen the trans-Tasman relationship by pursuing a coordinated and consolidated approach to maritime capability acquisition that would enhance interoperability and reinforce a sense of shared purpose and direction between the allies.
​
As Peter Greener noted recently, despite the ongoing social and economic challenges posed by COVID-19, this is a crucial time in setting out the shape of the future New Zealand fleet. As I have argued previously, in this global context, defence organisations everywhere can expect to come under pressure to find savings, which will necessitate some hard (or perhaps, creative) choices to ensure they are able to adequately respond to the full range of emergent security challenges.

Author  Peter Greener

At a time when the economy continues to face the costs imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic it may seem premature to be exploring opportunities for building the Royal New Zealand Navy of the future, but now is the very time to be doing so.
 
Over the next ten to fifteen years, the government will need to consider replacements for the Protector class Offshore Patrol Vessels, the Anzac frigates and the dive and hydrographic support ship HMNZS Manawanui. The Defence Capability Plan 2019 envisaged a decision being made by 2028 for the replacement of the Offshore Patrol Vessels, with the Anzac frigates being replaced in the 2030s “with modern surface combatants relevant to New Zealand’s prevailing strategic environment”.  The dive and hydrographic capability was to see HMNZS Manawanui “replaced with a similar vessel in the mid-2030s”.

Author  B K Greener

The Taliban have achieved in hours what many would thought would take them at least months. The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) have folded like a house of cards. Kabul has fallen, and many provincial capitals too. And despite earlier protestations to the contrary, the Taliban is not looking to share power. After twenty years of international intervention, the loss of tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars of aid, many of the gains made have been rolled back in the blink of an eye.
​
Analyses of what went wrong will continue to emerge. Those who warned of the perils of history – regurgitating phrases like ‘graveyard of empires’ – or who raised concerns about flimsiness of the ANSF or who shook their heads about the ill-conceived nature of liberal state-building attempts may crow, but if they do, it should be without any pleasure. For what comes now?

Author    David Capie

Over the last few months more than a few commentators at home and abroad have become highly sensitive to changes in the New Zealand government’s China settings. Statements about everything from Hong Kong, cyber-security, the origins of covid-19, and the treatment of the Uighurs have been subjected to forensic scrutiny. Yet last week, perhaps lost amidst a late deluge of Olympic medals, a significant development in New Zealand’s position on China’s claims in the South China Sea went largely unnoticed.
 
By submitting a statement or ‘note verbale’ to the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, New Zealand has joined a growing number of countries including Australia, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, the UK, the US, and Vietnam, setting out their legal position on the South China Sea disputes. In doing so, the Ardern government has gone much further than it has previously been willing to go in rejecting Beijing’s expansive territorial claims.