Difficult Decisions Ahead: New Zealand cannot endorse Obama’s gunboat diplomacy in the South China Sea without antagonising its largest trading partner. Hence, Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee’s description of China as a “true strategic partner”, and his announcement that Kiwi troops will train alongside the Peoples Liberation Army. This both-sides-against-the-middle approach to building strategic security may end up dwarfing the consequences of the anti-nuclear policy.
MANY NEW ZEALANDERS would be surprised to learn that their
government considers the Peoples Republic of China a “true strategic
partner”. Most of us have come to terms
with the fact that China is our largest trading partner – but a “true strategic
partner”? Strategic partnerships are the stuff of geopolitics: they’re about
the nation’s fundamental interests; its oldest loyalties. When something’s
wrong in your neighbourhood, who ya gonna call?
Up until the Japanese sinking of the British warships Repulse and Prince of Wales in 1941, New Zealand’s “true strategic partner” had
been Britain. New Zealand had been a British colony since 1840, and a Dominion
since 1907. At the outbreak of war in 1939, New Zealand’s foreign policy was
memorably summed-up by Prime Minister, Michael Joseph Savage, when he stated
simply: “Where Britain stands, we stand. Where she goes, we go.”
And go we did. Not even the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour
and her armies lightning advance into the Pacific and South-East Asia was
sufficient to persuade the New Zealand Government to bring her only effective
military forces home from North Africa. The Australians were not so selfless.
With Darwin in flames, and Emperor Hirohito’s forces advancing across New
Guinea, Prime Minister Curtin recalled his troops to defend the Australian
continent. He, at least, understood that, in geopolitical terms, Australasia’s
“true strategic partner” was no longer Britain, but the United States of
America.
By 1951 that partnership had taken the form of the Australian,
New Zealand, United States (ANZUS) Agreement. Diplomatically and militarily,
the ANZUS alliance spoke eloquently of the new strategic realities inside the
Pacific rim. While sentiment, and London’s fading dreams of empire, may have
persuaded many Kiwis to persist in calling Britain “home”, it was to Washington
that her senior soldiers and diplomats turned – not only for protection, but
also for guidance.
And that was the way the story went for the best part of
thirty years, until, as we all know, it fell apart amidst New Zealanders’
determination to make, and keep, their country nuclear-free. Needless to say it
wasn’t an outcome with which the country’s senior defence force personnel,
diplomats and public servants were at all comfortable. As far as they were
concerned, New Zealand’s need for a “true strategic partner” had grown more,
not less, acute. The Chinese giant was waking up. South America was outgrowing
its dictators. Absent her true strategic partners, New Zealand was extremely
vulnerable.
Their problem was that, in the eyes of those partners, New
Zealand’s anti-nuclear policy constituted a massive rock in the road to a full
restoration of the strategic relationship. And that wouldn’t happen, said
Washington and Canberra, until the obstacle was removed. In vain did the NZ
defence Force and MFAT protest that removing the obstacle was politically
impossible. With both the Labour and National parties committed to a
nuclear-free New Zealand, that wretched rock wasn’t going anywhere.
New Zealand diplomats had no other option except to come up
with their own solution to the problem of how to restore the Washington,
Canberra, Wellington relationship. In the end, MFAT and the NZDF decided that
if they couldn’t remove the rock, or go through the rock, then they would
simply have to go around the rock.
As a way out of the impasse it was nothing short of
brilliant. By quietly cutting a narrow track on both sides of the rock, and
then widening it, laying down shingle, and, finally, sealing it over, the rock
was gradually reduced to one of those landmarks that everybody passes by
without really noticing. Washington and Canberra hadn’t changed their position
on the undesirability of the rock, but now, with the encouragement of
successive New Zealand governments, they were simply invited to ignore it. The
signing of the Wellington Declaration in November 2010, while not formally
restoring New Zealand to the status of an American “ally”, did describe her as
the United States’ “partner” in the Pacific. It was a remarkable diplomatic
breakthrough.
Rapprochement with the USA did not, however, leave New
Zealand suddenly bereft of rocks in the road. Determined to check the Peoples
Republic’s rising global influence, President Barack Obama “pivoted” away from
the Middle East and back towards the Pacific, where he’s currently flexing
American muscle in the South China Sea. America’s Pacific “partners” will be
expected to join in.
New Zealand cannot, however, endorse Obama’s gunboat
diplomacy without antagonising its largest trading partner. Hence, Defence
Minister Gerry Brownlee’s description of China as a “true strategic partner”,
and his announcement that Kiwi troops will train alongside the Peoples
Liberation Army. This both-sides-against-the-middle approach to building
strategic security threatens to dwarf the consequences of the anti-nuclear
policy.
Somehow, New Zealand has to avoid catching itself between
this latest rock in the road and a very hard place indeed.
This essay was
originally published in The Press of Tuesday,
3 November 2015.
