ANZUS is back

Yesterday’s $12 billion defence Capability Plan was largely back to the future.
 
Not only were its big-ticket items, the naval frigates and helicopters, a repeat of the 2019 plan, but its big strategic thrust marked a return to ANZUS.
 
However, yesterday, the Prime Minister and Defence Minister fudged questions about what the return means.
 
But, the underlying strategy is “interoperability” with Australia.
 
The Prime Minister dismissed as “rubbish” concerns recently expressed by the former National Foreign Minister Murray McCully that we should not “sub contract” our foreign policy to Australia.
 
Given the degree of integration proposed in the capability plan, it is hard to see how we are not in danger of doing that.
 
The headline the Government was anxious to get across was that by 2032 we would be spending two per cent of GDP on defence.
 
For starters, the boosts to that expenditure over the next three years will be:

• • • • • Replacing the maritime helicopters $2 billion+
        • Frigate sustainment programme $300-600 million
        • Uncrewed surveillance vessels $50 – $100 million
        • Eventual replacement of the ANZAC frigates (not costed)
        • Weapons, vehicles, digital warfare capabilities  and unstated capabilities for the army up to $1.75 billion
        • Drones for the Air Force up to $300 million
        • Space capabilities $600 million
        • Replacing the 757’s up to $1 billion

Most of those items  (except for the drones, uncrewed vessels, space capability and the replacement 757s) were in Labour’s 2019 plan, which also included the P8 ocean surveillance aircraft and new C130 aircraft, which have been delivered and put into service.
 
So the hardware has not changed much.
 
But what has changed is the strategic thinking behind the defence force.
 
In 2019 there was a priority on New Zealand’s defence forces being able to operate independently.
 
That has been changed to our forces being a “force multiplier” with Australia and for our procurement purchases to be “interoperable” with Australia.
 
In a colourful brochure given to journalists yesterday, “Our Defence Objectives” were defined as:

1. 1. 1. 1. To protect and promote the security of New Zealand and the immediate region
         2. To enhance the ANZUS alliance with Australia and New Zealand’s most important security partnerships
         3. To contribute to achieving New Zealand’s global interests.

Objective One can be taken as given, and Objective Three verges on being meaningless.
 
But Objective Two raises big questions.
 
It is the first time a Defence Capability Plan or White Paper has acknowledged ANZUS’s continuing existence (as far as New Zealand is concerned) since 1985.
 
The former Prime Minister and now Leader of the Opposition, Chris Hipkins, told POLITIK last night that while his Government had referred to Australia as an ally, he couldn’t recall the term ANZUS being used to characterise that relationship.
 
The problem with the Treaty is that it is a tripartite treaty, a point acknowledged by Sir Carl Berendsen, New Zealand’s Ambassador to Washington in 1951, who signed the Treaty on behalf of New Zealand.
 
“It is not a guarantee of the security of New Zealand by the United States and Australia,  of Australia by the United States and New Zealand, it is a common undertaking to regard a danger to one as a danger to all, a common assumption of a formal duty — the same identical duty — by each of the three parties,” he wrote in his report back to Wellington on what the Treaty meant.
 
Thus, it is the only document that commits Australia and New Zealand to each other’s defence, with the United States awkwardly placed in the middle.
 
The Capability Plan stresses the need for New Zealand defence assets to be interoperable with Australia.
 
It says the Government’s particular focus of its defence policy is to enhance its relationship with Australia and further strengthen the alliance by deepening alignment and coordination on policy and strategy development, responses to events and increasing information sharing.
 
The Plan is predicated on New Zealand being a “force multiplier” with Australia and interoperable with partners.
 
“New Zealand and Australia have committed to modernise our alliance and further strengthen our bilateral defence relationship, including the development of a more greatly integrated Anzac force,” it says.
 
“This means the two countries will combine military forces in defence of shared interests, common values, and territory.
 
“This will include the introduction of more common, complementary, and increasingly interoperable capability, further entrenching our ability to act together in support of shared interests.”

 At the Waikato University Economic Forum in February, the former National Government foreign minister, Murray McCully said maximising interoperability was the way to go.
 
“But maximising interoperability with Australia does not mean subcontracting your foreign policy decisions to Australia,” he said.
 
“Australia has quite a different view.
 
“The default setting for Australia, and it’s from politicians on both sides, is that they see themselves as a middle power or a G20 power, pick one of those two, and they behave accordingly.
 
“And often, to prove the point, they feel they have to prod the big guys because if you’re scrapping with the big guys, then by definition, you’re probably in almost the big guy’s category.
 
“New Zealand, I think, because of our size and sort of different settings, has got to be more nuanced in the way it behaves.
 
“That doesn’t mean that you don’t express your views clearly and strongly to, for example, China, when the difference about what’s happening in the China Sea.
 
“But I’ve never seen taking a long handle to China in the public arena as a very successful strategy.”
 
Luxon yesterday dismissed McCully’s reservations.
 
“That’s a load of rubbish,” he said.
 
“We are acting in New Zealand’s national interest.
 
“We have our own independent foreign policy.
 
“We make our own assessment of that.
 
“There are relationships and partners that we have that are longstanding.
 
“There are also lots of many lateral groupings across the Indo-Pacific region of a defence nature and also of an economic nature.
 
“And so we partner with like-minded friends and partners, as would expect.
 
“We have one ally, which is Australia.
 
“We are wanting to make sure that, where possible, we can maximise the synergies of our two countries’ defence forces and do the very best we can representing our part of the world.”
 
But the relationship with the ally is getting closer.
 
“The reason we’re an ally with Australia and they are an ally of us is because of ANZUS,” said the Minister of Defence Judith Collins.
 
“So I think people need to get over themselves and realise that we’re not playing tiddly links here.
 
“It’s a tough world out there and the Australians are our best friends and we need to get on with it.”

 
“Getting on with it “will face its biggest test over the ANZAC frigate replacement.
 
The two frigates were launched in 1997 and 1999 with a design life of 30 years.
 
The Chief of the Defence Force, Air Marshall Tony Davies, said the ships were showing their age.
 
“If you go right down to the skeleton of the ship, they are pretty tired now, being 28 and 26 years old, respectively,” he said yesterday.
 
“They will have to be retired at some point.
 
“And we have funding set aside to prolong those ships for as long as possible, which should be around another six or seven years.”
 
Given the desire for the frigate replacements to be interoperable with Australia, it is possible both countries could purchase the Japanese Mogami class frigate, which has the added attractions of not only price (possibly less than $1 billion each) but also that they require only half the crew (90) of the existing Te Kaha and Te Mana.
 
Collins said she had phoned the Australian Defence Minister, Richard Marles, yesterday and briefed him on the plane.
 
“He congratulated us on getting this through,” she said.
 
“He’s also very aware that the Australian Defence Force has been involved helping us, particularly when it comes to procurement and other matters.
 
“So I think the point is that our partners are very happy that we’re going in the right way, the right direction.”
 
The question hanging over getting even closer to Australia is what happens when Australia commits to a conflict that New Zealand does not wish to.
 
This happened in 2003 when President George Bush formed the “coalition of the willing” to invade Iraq to topple the Sadaam Hussein regime.
 
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark refused to support the invasion because it did not have a United Nations mandate, a move that has been largely vindicated by history after the invading force never found the chemical weapons that Hussein was alleged to have been developing.
 
Australia sent 2000 troops.
 
The current flash point between Australia and New Zealand is likely to be China.
 
The 2019 Capability Plan did not mention China once; however, it is mentioned three times this time.
 
The Plan says New Zealand is facing its most challenging and dangerous strategic environment for decades.
 
“The Indo-Pacific is a primary geographical theatre for strategic competition, most visibly between China and the United States,” the Plan says.
 
“China’s assertive pursuit of its strategic objectives is the principal driver for strategic competition in the Indo-Pacific, and it continues to use all of its tools of statecraft in ways that can challenge both international norms of behaviour and the security of other states.
 
“Of particular concern is the rapid and non-transparent growth of China’s military capability.”
 
The document appears to say that, consequently, the New Zealand Defence Force should be ready for war; that it should be “Combat capable with enhanced lethality and deterrent- effect “
 
“Over the next 15 years, the NZDF will need to have the combat readiness, capability, and resilience to act in dangerous situations and environments for extended periods of time,” it says.
 
But despite all the rhetoric, except for the return of ANZUS, there was actually nothing that was radically new in yesterday’s document.