After the missions: predicting New Zealand's security future: Peter Kennedy reports on a recent symposium in Wellington.

• Author: Kennedy, Peter
• Position: SEMINAR REPORT - Wellington, New Zealand

On 22 May a packed audience of 170 came together in Wellington to participate in a symposium entitled 'After the Missions: Understanding New Zealand's Security Future'. Formally opened by Commander Joint Forces New Zealand Air Vice-Marshal Kevin Short, the symposium discussed a range of issues related to the end of an intensive decade and a half of New Zealand military and civil operations overseas and considered what the future held in an increasingly complex security environment

In his opening address Short said the strategy of the New Zealand Defence Force is to maintain the security of New Zealand into the future. History has shown that rarely do future predictions play out correctly. Thus it is prudent that New Zealand maintains a balanced force, capable of responding to crises as they unfold, be they humanitarian or combat in nature. Removing unnecessary duplication across the three services has been a major theme of recent reforms (avoiding the 'vanilla' approach at the expense of operational excellence). Turning to the future, Short noted that the United Nations is looking closely at Africa as instability spreads throughout its equatorial region. Deployments to Africa could be on the cards, or the Middle East or Central Asia. Although New Zealand servicemen and women are no strangers to Africa--they have served in Angola, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Mozambique and Sudan in recent years--it would be a very different kind of help. That said, the South-west Pacific would remain our top area of focus. That is why the NZDF needs to have the structure and depth to be able to sustain many different types of operations.

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Deployment lessons

The symposium discussion then began with the first session that looked at what we might have learned from the three major deployments of the last decade: Afghanistan, East Timor and the Solomons (RAMSI). Professor Rob Ayson suggested that the simple existence of a problem overseas did not justify deployment--we have to read it against New Zealand's national interests. Professor Robert Patman said to do this we must understand what our national interests are. Later speakers suggested it was not so much our national interests per se--these tended to be relatively clear--but rather what the government of the day considers is necessary to protect them. And this can be hard to predict.

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Dr David Capie noted that in today's world conflict was more often within states...