Questioning our natural alliance: Hugh Steadman calls for more careful assessment of New Zealand's interests when supporting the Western alliance in response to contentious international events.

• Author: Steadman, Hugh
• Position: Essay

Since the end of the Cold War, the nature and purpose of the Western alliance, of which New Zealand has by long established tradition been a member, has undergone significant change; so, too, have New Zealand's commercial interests and trading patterns. New Zealand now faces significant costs from its continued membership of a military alliance no longer in perfect harmony with its commercial interests. With the conformity demands of the Western alliance and the country's best commercial interests diverging and soon, possibly, to be pulling in opposite directions, is it time for New Zealand to make a fundamental reappraisal of its positioning?

New Zealand is part of what is loosely termed the 'Western alliance'. Its participation is founded on the cultural empathy that sprang naturally from its filial duty to its imperial motherland. It is an alliance cemented by the blood, which New Zealanders shed profusely in the Boer War and the two world wars that followed. In the Second World War, Britain and New Zealand were both saved from alien conquest by the decisive intervention of the United States and the crucial contribution offered by their mutual ally, the Soviet Union. With the war over, and fascism vanquished, our 'natural' allies fell out with their 'unnatural' ally.

The ensuing Cold War, into which the New Zealand public was dragged willy-nilly and with varying degrees of enthusiasm, proceeded to shape international relations for the next four decades. The Cold War, with its doctrine of mutually assured destruction, posed a real threat to the continued existence of humanity. It was, therefore, with universal relief that the Soviet Empire was finally seen to blink.

Just two months after having been elected to the position of general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in May 1985, in a momentous speech given in Leningrad, Mikhail Gorbachev marked the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union and, with it, the end of the Cold War. Two months after Gorbachev's speech, in July 1985, French intelligence agents sank the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour.

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By 1986, with glasnost, perestroika and demokratizatsiya rapidly being implemented in Russia and with public opinion reinforced by the actions of the DGSE (the French equivalent of Britain's MI6) and the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, the time was ripe for the New Zealand government to act on the nuclear free mandate given to it in the election of 1984. This policy was duly enshrined in legislation in June 1987. Seeing that the excuse for the continuance of the Cold War was fast evaporating, the Lange government could be forgiven for assuming that its decisions in this area would not be of much significance in regards to New Zealand's participation in the Western alliance. Ten years earlier, Gough Whitlam had failed to get away with an independent foreign policy for Australia--but these were different times. Or were they?

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As it turned out, no backsliding from the alliance was to be permitted. The Godfather was of the view that having once joined it, the only way to leave the Mob was in a box. New Zealand's waywardness posed a threat to the united front that the leadership of the Free World demanded. Politics being the art of the possible, in the following year David Lange duly signalled his kowtow to Washington. This came in the form of agreeing to the construction of the Waihopai 'communications centre' and the gift of a contract to Australia to build two Anzac frigates--a class of ship primarily designed for the defence of aircraft-carriers, of which New Zealand had none, but of which the United States had many.

No debate

Since that brief interlude, and having once again stepped back into line, New Zealand has seen no serious public debate about where its foreign policy direction should point in relation to that of the Western alliance. Other than Helen Clarks refusal to involve the New Zealand military in the actual invasion phase of the Iraq War, New Zealand has consistently toed the Western line.

It is indeed remarkable that there seems to have been so little public debate in New Zealand about this apparently unthinking acceptance of its continued membership of an alliance which is now operating under radically different circumstances to those that prevailed during the Cold War.

As a member of a military alliance, a smaller nation should expect that there will be costs involved. The most obvious of these is the automatic inheritance of all the enemies that the more powerful members of the alliance are likely to bring with them. This comes together with the expectation that the smaller members, as a demonstration of solidarity with their larger allies, will participate in any hostile acts they are called...