A few days ago, I read an article by Oliver Hartwich, the executive director of the New Zealand Initiative, entitled “Time for ANZAC 2.0”. I generally agree with material produced by the New Zealand Initiative, and in particular with articles written by Dr Hartwich. But not this time.
Dr Hartwich recalled a meeting he had just had with Michael Pezzello, a former Secretary of the Australian Department for Home Affairs, in which the latter had extolled the desirability of an integrated ANZAC military force. Mr Pezzello had argued that “the defence of New Zealand actually starts at the outer edge of the Australian territorial sphere. If Australia goes down, if Australia is militarily defeated or has its sovereignty severely impacted by military coercion, then New Zealand is next.”
And Dr Hartwich went on to suggest that the timing of his discussion with Mr Pezzello could not have been more timely, coming just days after a Chinese naval cruiser, equipped with 112 missile cells capable of precision strikes against targets in both Australia and New Zealand, had conducted exercises in the Tasman Sea.
Dr Hartwich and others write about the visit to the Tasman Sea of Chinese naval vessels as if this visit came out of the blue and was totally unprovoked. But of course it follows the transit by both Australian and New Zealand naval vessels through the Taiwan Strait, a piece of water just 130 kilometres wide at its narrowest point, separating mainland China from Taiwan, a territory which New Zealand, Australia, the US and indeed the great majority of other countries regard as part of China, as it was for centuries prior to its being ceded to Japan after Japan attacked China in 1894.
How would New Zealand feel about a flotilla of Chinese and, say, North Korean vessels sailing uninvited through Cook Strait; or how would the United Kingdom feel about such a flotilla sailing through the Irish Sea, separating Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom?
Unsurprisingly, China regards such regular transits between China and Taiwan by the naval vessels of the United States and countries which have gone out of their way to declare their support for the United States as distinctly unfriendly.
Australia itself, as a core member of the AUKUS military alliance, has declared itself as unambiguously on America’s side in the event of any war with China. And America currently seems to regard war with China as nigh on inevitable, with bipartisan support in Congress for redeployment of US military assets to the Indo-Pacific from other theatres, for legislative measures to limit Chinese student enrolment in STEM subjects at US universities, for measures to close off Chinese social media channels such as TikTok, and for similar measures which presume that China is a hostile Power.
Perhaps war is inevitable. Certainly, those who have read Graham Allison’s classic book, Destined for war: Can America and China escape Thucydides’s trap?, published in 2017, will find it easy to believe that war is inevitable.
The US has been the dominant hegemon for decades, unchallenged since the collapse of the Soviet empire until the rise of China in very recent years. The US has maintained some 800 military bases around the world, including bases surrounding China’s eastern border, in South Korea, Japan, Guam, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and Australia. That the US itself sees war with China as at least possible, if not inevitable, has been confirmed in very recent days when the issue of whether the Pentagon could provide a briefing on plans for any war between the US and China to Elon Musk was openly discussed in public.
Unsurprisingly, China resents being hemmed in, as America would if the boot were on the other foot (recall the US reaction to Soviet missiles in Cuba in the early sixties, or imagine how the US would react if Chinese naval vessels were cruising up and down off the coast of New York or Washington DC). China’s economy is already the largest in the world, measured on a purchasing-power-parity exchange rate preferred by economists when comparing countries, and seems destined to get very substantially larger still, given China’s population is four times that of the US.
So where do New Zealand’s interests lie? Yes, we could strengthen our defence relationship with Australia, but at least as things stand today, that means a tight defence relationship with the US and involvement in any war which the US and China get involved in. It would mean for us a radical increase in defence spending, even though no remotely feasible level of defence spending would make the slightest difference to the outcome of any war between the US and China.
And by openly declaring our hostility to China we would run the risk of jeopardizing our heretofore excellent relationship with our largest export market, a major market for tourists to New Zealand, and the source of some our most productive citizens.
As I have argued previously, our national interest lies in retaining a cordial relationship with both the US and China as Singapore has successfully done.
Very shortly after the present Government was formed in 2023, the Prime Minister visited several countries in South East Asia, including Singapore. The Prime Minister of Singapore, Mr Lee Hsien Loong at that time, told him that Singapore is
“a major security cooperation partner of the US. This is a technical term. We are the only one of its kind the world. That means we do a lot of security cooperation with the US – security in terms of counterterrorism, for example anti-extremism, but also in terms of defence cooperation, in terms of defence purchases, training. But we are cooperation partners, not treaty partners, not treaty allies. And there is a fundamental difference. Therefore, we can cooperate with [the US] in many different ways, but push comes to shove, there is no treaty obligation.”
Within the last 10 days, Singapore’s Defence Minister, Mr Ng Eng Hen, has reaffirmed Singapore’s determination to remain on friendly terms with both the US and China. As in several other policy areas, Singapore’s foreign policy is clearly the optimal policy for New Zealand.
Tragically, this is not the path the Government is currently on, and the Prime Minister’s recent speech to the Raisina Dialogue conference in Delhi illustrates the point: in pushing for a closer relationship with India, he appears to be relaxed about going out of his way to offend China, ironically at the very time when India itself appears to be courting a closer relationship with China.
And unambiguous neutrality would be desirable even had we not seen in recent weeks the most radical reorientation of US policy in the lifetime of anybody alive today.
From being a country committed to a close alliance with European nations, committed to an international trading system guided by rules established by the World Trade Organisation, committed to a close relationship with the so-called Five Eyes nations (including New Zealand), and (for the most part at least) committed to upholding the rule of law, the US has suddenly changed in radical ways – apparently no longer firmly committed to NATO, certainly no longer committed to expanding international trade along WTO lines, happy to threaten Five Eyes member Canada, willing to threaten to take over Greenland and the Panama Canal, and possibly even Canada. The US is no longer the benign hegemon which, at least from a New Zealand perspective, it had appeared to be since 1945.
The last thing New Zealand should want is to be pre-committed to fighting a war alongside the US against China by forming a tighter military alliance with Australia.
Don Brash
23 March 2025
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