Author: Beth Greener

Two recent Incline contributions have considered how New Zealand should seek to position itself to meet the challenges of, in Hugh White’s words, an increasingly "contested Asia" where, Matt Hill suggests "while we might not be interested in strategic competition, strategic competition is interested in us".

In response to this strategic competition Hill suggests that we refresh and upgrade the status quo, with an emphasis on the need to increase our interoperability with Australia, mentions the need to support our other security partners (here I read the US) and calls for upping our naval combat, littoral operations and maritime surveillance capabilities. Hill argues that this needs to be done because “we cannot hope to advance our stake in regional security by being a mute witness on the periphery, nor will we be taken seriously as a partner if we are perceived to free ride on the efforts of others”. He notes an increased willingness by China to risk confrontation, and (in somewhat loaded terms) suggests that the significance of the US’s rebalancing is "under-appreciated" in New Zealand.

Author: Jim Rolfe

In a recent piece Xiaoming Huang  noted correctly that China is moving rapidly to internationalise its economy and that the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is just the latest piece of the puzzle. He also noted that New Zealand has consistently pursued its regional economic interests through engagement with China. Correct again, certainly so for the last decade or more.

But there is more to China’s activities than just the internationalising of its economy. China is engaged in a redefinition of the relationship between economy and security in a way the current order has only paid lip service to. We have become used to the standard tropes that, for example, the regional US military presence has ensured the trade routes stay open, or that the regional security environment is enhanced by having separate institutions for political, security and economic activity (respectively the East Asia Summit, ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation process). Yet China is arguing, in effect, that separating security and economics like this makes little sense.

Author: Hugh White

Matt Hill, in his pithy and neatly-argued post about the regional setting for New Zealand’s 2015 Defence White Paper, is absolutely right that New Zealand’s strategic situation is being very significantly transformed by the escalating strategic rivalry between the US and China over the future Asian strategic order.  This marks a fundamental change from the circumstances which have framed New Zealand’s (and Australia’s) defence policies for over 40 years.

Since the early 1970s, the peace and stability of the Asian region has been underwritten by the simple but enormously important fact that US primacy has been uncontested by any other Asian power. That has sharply limited the risk of a major regional conflict which could have profoundly affected our nations’ well-being, which in turn has limited the kinds of wars our militaries have had to be prepared to fight.