WHY NEW ZEALAND NEEDS ANOTHER DEFENCE WHITE PAPER.

• Author: Beath, Lance

Lance Beath argues the need for a further step in developing a coherent framework for defence, but foresees no early action.

As 1972 publication of the NZIIA reminds us, New Zealand has a long and healthy tradition of debate over the direction its defence policy should take.(1) Authors represented included Ken Keith, Fred Wood, Ralph Mullins, R.B. Bolt, Hedley Bull and W. David McIntyre. This is a distinguished roll call. But re-reading these papers 30 years on reminds us how little has changed, at least in terms of building a durable approach to New Zealand defence policy. Wood, for example, talks of defence analysts and the `dauntingly elusive and fluctuating data' that is their lot. Amongst the special factors confronting the New Zealand policymaker he lists small population size, geographical isolation, paucity of industrial resources and an unusual dependence on overseas trade on which to maintain our standard of living. Interestingly, he also cites a `stubborn group of mental fixations' affecting New Zealand policy, including a recurrent ambivalence in attitudes towards the United States (read also Australia). Finally, as a small, exclusive, affluent, isolated community, Wood describes a New Zealand desire for `some strong friendly outside force as a protection in a barbarous world, even when the dangers to be feared cannot be precisely defined'.

Of course, one thing that has changed, at least in the view of the present government, is our broad picture of the strategic environment. No longer a barbarous place, apparently, the region, seen through New Zealand eyes, has become `incredibly benign'.(2) In announcing its force structure decisions on 8 May,(3) the government stressed that its decisions were based on comprehensive reviews of New Zealand's strategic position. Calling the new plan `A Sustainable Defence Force Matched to New Zealand's Needs', Prime Minister Helen Clark described it as a plan which `meets New Zealand's strategic needs, and allows to contribute usefully to international operations where we decide to engage'. Given the controversy that erupted around these announcements, and subsequent calls by the government's critics for a renewed policy debate, it is worth briefly recalling how the government reached these decisions.

Soon after taking office, the Labour-Alliance government commissioned a new Defence Policy Framework statement from Defence officials, which it released in June 2000. This statement was accompanied by the release, in the same month, of a companion paper by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade entitled `New Zealand's Foreign and Security Policy Challenges'.

To underpin both of these papers a strategic assessment was prepared by the External Assessments Bureau and released in June 2000 in unclassified form with the title `Strategic Assessment 2000'. The main conclusion of this paper was that New Zealand is not directly threatened by any other country. The paper also assessed it as unlikely that New Zealand would be involved in widespread armed conflict within the general five-year timeframe of the assessment.

Notable aspects

Two things are notable about the EAB's `Strategic Assessment 2000'. First is its five-year time horizon, which can best be described as astonishingly short for a formal assessment of this nature. Second is the happy coincidence of view between this assessment and the ideological position adopted by the Labour and Alliance governing parties, based on a belief that with the passing of the Cold War the risk of inter-state conflict has greatly diminished. In the run up to the 1999 election both parties, it will be recalled, had campaigned against the retention of a separate New Zealand air combat capability, and both were opposed to the purchase of a third Anzac frigate to replace HMNZS Canterbury. Both parties saw the re-equipment needs of the Army as having top priority, and both saw a need for a general shift in policy towards `depth over breadth', that is, equipping the New Zealand Defence Force on the basis of doing a few things well rather than a lot of things poorly.

The government describes its policy approach as being largely based on the work of Parliament's Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Select Committee. Chaired by Derek Quigley, this committee produced four separate reports over the period...