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.”