Should war define New Zealand’s self view?
How does New Zealand perceive its place in the world? What elements combine to create New Zealand’s self view? In this talk Terence O’Brien examines possible factors involved in forming a self view and a perception of the country’s place in a world where we have partnerships with countries that have disagreements with each other. How do we balance this?
This talk was delivered on June 4th as part of the series on conflict presented jointly during 2015 by the National Library of New Zealand and Victoria University of Wellington.
Terence O’Brien is the founding Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies: New Zealand (CSS:NZ) and currently is a Senior Fellow at the Centre.
He served as Ambassador to the UN (including on the Security Council), to the European Union (EU), and as Ambassador to WTO-GATT and European Office of UN.
Terence is not an employee of the National Library, and as such his ideas and opinions are his own.
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New Zealand’s world view is shaped by geography, size, resources, colonial inheritance, external trade and intermittent experience of distant warfare. Each of those factors is more or less equivalent in its impact upon our perceptions of New Zealand identity. What the country is, and seeks to be, are central however to its sense of place. New Zealand’s originality resides with the Treaty of Waitangi with a commitment to reconciliation at the core of its democracy, which strives to blend Maori and European contributions to cohesive nation building – while adjusting to a multicultural future. Those origins and that challenge ahead will define the New Zealand world journey in the 21st century.
The task of reconciliation is complex, diversified, sometimes controversial and represents an enduring rite of passage for the country. Other countries particularly those Anglo Saxon democracies with whom New Zealand tends to compare itself, possess no equivalent. Some have a more chequered record in relation to indigenous people, and harmonious racial order. In an era of international relations where the idea of ‘soft power’ as distinct from the hard power of sheer military and economic strength, is valued and promoted, New Zealand has credentials. Soft power is not the monopoly of the strong. It defines whatever contribution a small non–threatening conscientious contributor to international relations, can make. Evenhandedness and a potential for impartiality are assets.
War
It is remarkable nonetheless the extent to which New Zealand’s sense of place in the world has for a century or more, been influenced through intermittent experiences of distant warfare. For such a remote country with a traditionally low sense of threat to its own physical existence, this is an anomalous birthmark. The explanation derives, of course, from our colonial culture and a sense of separation from pakeha cultural roots. A psychology of dependency and enduring concern to demonstrate that despite geography, NZ remains a reliable, dependable partisan of Atlantic/European values and interests drove that New Zealand disposition.
Two world wars, conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia and UN peace making operations in sundry places add up to a sturdy New Zealand record of burden sharing in the international business of peace support. Membership variously, in military alliances (SEATO, ANZUS, the Canberra Pact) serves as proof of New Zealand vigilance. The prolonged four year commemoration of New Zealand involvement in the First World War (1914–1918) represents an extensive tribute to the valour of the New Zealand effort. It recalls a New Zealand pattern of traditional dependency at the very moment however when new dependencies increasingly shape New Zealand’s sense of place. It recalls, too, severe blunders and mistaken ambitions on the part of northern hemisphere politicians and commanders, which cost New Zealand dear. Has that lesson been learnt?
That is a fair question at a time when, once again, New Zealand has implicated defence forces in the Middle East. It is remarkable indeed the extent to which the intermittent New Zealand experience of distant warfare has centred around the Middle East and its neighbourhood. There remains an embedded conviction amongst New Zealand defence policy makers reflected in government Defence White Papers (DWP), that this distant region should be a focus for New Zealand military effort although there is no apparent disposition to deepen independent understanding of the lessons or complexities which that region now provides.
Defence policy
A small professional New Zealand defence force remains a real national asset for the simple reason it is itself a product of New Zealand society and self view, which has traditionally embodied fair mindedness, even handedness, capacity for impartiality, and dependability. For obvious reasons New Zealand defence planning is always predicated on an assumption that only in the most exceptional circumstances would the force operate as a stand alone contingent. Interoperability with like minded others is the presumed rule of thumb reflected in the partnerships and coalitions New Zealand seeks to join. These involve NATO countries and in particular the US but exclude interoperability exercising with East Asian defence forces. Successive New Zealand political leadership has commanded a ‘whole of government’ approach to Asian relationship building. It is not clear just how far the NZDF is here actually on board with overall New Zealand government strategy with regard to important Asian countries – beyond occasional rhetoric and some conventional defence diplomacy.
Moreover official defence language about what drives NZ coalition choices, affirms the importance of common values, ideals and democracy when seeking partnerships. While this is superficially convincing, actual experience with conflict of the past 100 years or so, points in a different direction. It proves clearly that common values or ideals do not explain alignments in times of need – communists and capitalists fought fascists, dictatorships and democracies combined to confront communists, and right now human rights advocates join with flagrant human rights abusers to defeat religious jihadists. All this does not mean common values are not important but it does suggest New Zealand defence chiefs need be tasked by government with developing closer operational ties with Asian governments, just as New Zealand private sector relationships have done in trade, finance, education, technology.
Present conflict
The new century so far yields conflict in the Middle East and parts of Africa that is cruelly distinctive – involving ferocious internally radicalised Islam together with intractable regional separatism, tribalism and cultural antagonism. The resurgence of religion as a vividly disruptive factor in international relations was largely unforeseen by intelligence services. It changes the very nature of diplomacy, peacemaking and international security. Expertise for handling those challenges no longer resides (if it ever did) with governments, diplomats or military commanders alone. Religion is now very obviously part of the problem, but religion now also becomes part of the solution. Military intervention by outsiders to take sides in such combustible circumstances and to impose a victory for one religious community over another is profoundly mistaken. Inter religious dialogue between Muslims, between Muslims and Christians and with other religions becomes an indispensable world wide priority. Domestic pressures upon individual governments by religious leaders – including in New Zealand – to respond to the barbarity of Middle Eastern conflict, brings home forcibly the new religious dimension to security in the modern secular age.
Yet it is important to be candid about underlying political causes of the present tumult which touches nearly every single country in the Middle East. The region is historically much scarred by violence – between empires, civilisations, cultures and religions. In the modern era a particular succession of powerful outside governments have intruded into the region to impose their versions of order, and to tie the regions fate and resources to their own interests. No other region has suffered quite the same prolonged intrusion or manipulation. It is sheer self deception to believe there is no connection between the present radicalisation of Islam and its violent collision with an intrusive West bent upon privileging interests and spreading its values. Repercussions of today’s devastating internal violence will one way or another likely persist for decades ahead. Well resourced, media savvy Islamic extremists are determined to redraw the map of the Middle East in the same way imperialists did one hundred years ago – with devastating consequences that persist today.
Five Eyes & threat
New Zealand’s self view in the future is perhaps less likely to be influenced by war as such, than by perceived threat of insecurity (perceived by others perhaps more than by New Zealand itself) and by fundamental shifts to the tectonic plates below the international landscape. The two factors are related but different. The scourge of terrorism is not new. As a tactic it is as old as warfare itself. In the modern era of accelerated movement by people, weapons, technology, money and dissidence across national boundaries, it assumes ever greater foreboding. It deepens the threat mentality amongst those who fear to be targets. One result is exaggeration, even fabrication, of intelligence so that it becomes a self–fulfilling prophecy. Look at Iraq and the 2003 invasion, which was a monumental blunder whose disastrous consequences endure with the rise of ISIS. The US in particular suffered a deep shock as the century began following spectacular unprecedented attacks upon its homeland. Washington launched a “war on terror’ which it has leveraged into an organising principle for American global leadership, and which involves massively enhanced intelligence gathering that surpasses in scale and power anything known previously.
The vehicle chosen by Washington and London to anchor and coordinate the enhanced intelligence system internationally directly involves New Zealand – through the so–called “Five Eyes” intelligence sharing arrangement between the five Anglo Saxon democracies. New Zealand is by far the junior participant and the only one effectively with no hard power. There is self evident mistrust in the rest of the world about US led massive surveillance, and the notion of a five nation stockade behind which the English speakers shelter in a hermetically sealed cabal with one another. In an era where New Zealand is crucially striving to widen and deepen global connections (and most notably in Asia) and where cultivation of trust with other governments, is an absolute premium, the Five Eyes arrangement risks harm to New Zealand soft power reputation. It is obtuse to imagine otherwise.
New Zealand perceptions about threat will be influenced too through and by, the reorganisation within Wellington of the management of both our international security responses and the revitalised relationship with the US (after a 25 year standoff over US disapproval of New Zealand’s non–nuclear policy). An expanded Prime Minister’s Office with enhanced intelligence and national security management responsibilities becomes a small cameo of the American system where the White House with the National Security Council and Pentagon holds complete sway over external relations policy including even the geopolitics of trade policy, while diplomacy (the US State Department) suffers diminished standing. Given New Zealand possesses no effective hard power, it seems counter intuitive to tilt its own institutional arrangements for policy making now in the direction of such hard power calculations associated normally with the business of so-called national security states – exemplified in Washington, or Canberra. It is a sign however of how strongly the US prefers to conform the practices of smaller partners to its own matrix. The depletion of the pool of experience in the actual conduct of New Zealand foreign affairs stemming from problematic reforms at MFAT, that will take time to refurbish, adds complexity to the business of restoring balance to New Zealand political/security international relations thinking.
South Pacific & Australia
The New Zealand requirement to strike the right balance between threat assessment and external opportunity – between security policy and foreign policy – manifests itself particularly in our neighbourhood policies in regard to the Pacific Islands Region (PIR) and to Australia. The two relationships capture the essential realities for New Zealand external policy. There is an intrinsic connection for New Zealand between them. The cultivation of stable, friendly, prosperous, well disposed relationships with the PIR where New Zealand has extensive traditional ties together with constitutional obligations and responsibilities is an important New Zealand national interest in its own right. Although it is important always to respect the diversity within PIR, New Zealand policy should not however be driven by calculations of threat to our own wellbeing from within PIR. We need to work cooperatively with others, notably of course Australia, when pursuing our objectives but, and this is important, New Zealand must not conceive its role as acting as a proxy manager of PIR security on behalf of large powers (the US) thus sparing them the burdens of stewardship.
That point deserves to be registered because Australia, with its larger baggage train of international interests, its middle level power ambition and its close security treaty relationship with the US, does conceive its own role as the metropolitan power with regional security supervision responsibility. Its highly developed sense of security vigilance nourishes interventionist instincts in the PIR where some Australian pundits have identified an Australian ‘arc of instability’. For New Zealand, Australia remains of course its most important relationship centred around the Canberra Pact as well as a Closer Economic Relationship (CER) which is one of the world’s most comprehensive, effective and compatible (with international trade rules) economic agreements anywhere. It offers a platform for successful joint trade negotiations with South East Asia.
While the two countries share much modern history, culture and attitude neither envisages political federation even while a network of agreements underpin unique political, economic, security, social and cultural relationships where New Zealand occupies the classic situation of the junior partner, and where the senior partner understandably pursues interests with often little obvious concern for the junior bedfellow. In the past Australia has identified the mutual security effort as the touchstone for the entire trans–Tasman relationship, whereas New Zealand emphasises rather the relationship’s multiple strands without privileging one above others. New Zealand is motivated by a practical realisation that its capacity to spend more on defence is circumscribed whilst Australia, because of its close American security ties, confronts pressure always to remain in step with its powerful patron when equipping its defence force.
In the PIR however, where the forces of globalisation have debilitated traditional hierarchies within society and disturbed small fragile economies, and where greater outside interest is evident particularly in regional maritime resources, there is emerging resistance amongst some governments, to Australian and New Zealand metropolitan supervision. Ideas for new regional institutions that would exclude the two metropolitans are surfacing. Resistance remains too in negotiations over a revised reciprocal regional trade agreement to replace an earlier non–reciprocal arrangement.
It is reasonably clear moreover that some PIR governments at least do not relish definition as an Achilles Heel for Australian and New Zealand security. Greater attention from China and Japan has extended PIR diplomatic horizons and economic development opportunities. This does not, in the NZ mind, indicate sinister intent. New Zealand’s ability to “think small” inside PIR has always previously counted as an asset. But the extent to which New Zealand’s external political self view has now shifted away from being a country both ‘in’ and ‘of’ the PIR, towards a more detached metropolitan stance driven, for example, by threat–dominated policy judgments because of Five Eyes loyalties and/or Australia’s wider interests, will obviate that perceived New Zealand comparative advantage in neighbourhood dealings.
China & the rise of Asia
Having said all that it is important at the same time to emphasise that changes in the international political and economic landscape are changing substantially New Zealand’s particular ‘comfort zone’ in external relations, where for decades New Zealand looked principally to Atlantic powers for reassurance to ensure its prosperity and security. Over the last 30 years of the old century a group of larger developing economies, especially in Asia led first by Japan, and then by China, seized upon the advantages of globalisation to register economic and social progress that is transforming the centre of the world’s political and economic gravity.
For New Zealand the ‘potential of proximity' to this transforming gravitational pull replaces the old ‘tyranny of distance’ from its European antecedents and, indeed, it must influence the New Zealand sense of place in the world. The newly emerging East Asian powers who owe their success to their own industry and effort, not to foreign magnanimity, are demonstrating that to be modern and successful in today’s world does not necessarily require a country first become western or democratic. One abiding lesson is then that a world of diversity, involving a more hybrid international order, remains the ultimate destiny in the age of globalisation. We shall come back to this.
The emergence of China in the 21st century with its economy as a transforming influence in a world of established American primacy will set the tenor of modern international relations. This indomitable fact presents New Zealand with a challenge to its foreign policy unequalled by any of its 20th century experience and one where New Zealand needs a clear sense of place in which it accordingly promotes and protects its interests and values. Like most small countries New Zealand does not want to have to choose between the two powerful partners, China and the US, and in this it shares the same interest as most of the rest of governments in East Asia. New Zealand needs a quality of relationship in Washington and in Beijing that can survive those occasions whenever choice becomes unavoidable. That requires first and foremost independence in New Zealand foreign policy thinking about those issues that shape the regional and global future.
International system
Globally, New Zealand needs to keep clearly in view the equivalence of responsibilities and of obligations of all member states – the heavyweights and the featherweights – inside the international system. As things stand the UN system is experiencing a crisis of relevance. Inefficiencies, lack of coordination, overlapping mandates, and diminished member state allegiances combine to undermine its standing. It stands in dire need of reform – so do the attitudes of member states. It has, nonetheless, a reputable list of accomplishment in economic and social development in member states, assisting countries to nationhood, in protecting refugees and the rights of the child, in securing disarmament agreements, in the linking of major international challenges of climate and environment with both security and prosperity. Above all membership in the system ‘socialises’ member governments to dealing with others and improving overall understanding of prevailing challenges. The system is dismissed as a mere “talk shop” by firm eyed realists but in an era where religious and cultural antagonisms show every sign of being very divisive, it would be foolhardy indeed to dispense with the ‘socialisation’ potential of the UN system; quite apart from discounting the vast network of rules and principles devised under its auspices to underpin the international community.
The New Zealand sense of place internationally is reinforced by the effectiveness of a widely mandated system grounded in open liberal order, in the sovereign equality between nations, in principled negotiation open to all as well as the novel provision of permanent conference diplomacy which benefits smaller countries with limited diplomatic reach. New Zealand has deep vested interest in an effective rules based international system which it specifically identifies as a vital NZ security interest.
Need for change
In the 21st century three interrelated changes are vital in this connection. First, the successful large emerging economies (China, Brazil, India, Indonesia etc.) must commit to full support of the international rules based system from which they have so conspicuously benefitted, in ways that are commensurate now with their increased capacities, interests and responsibilities. That will entitle them to a greater say in the management and indeed future agenda setting in the system. Second, the necessary space for this change to occur requires that important western governments, founders of the system and New Zealand’s traditional friends, should now share their monopoly over management and command inside the system with the entitled newcomers. They must move over to create the necessary space.
Third, and most specifically, China and the US, must commit to equality of responsibility and obligation inside the system. For the US this will inevitably require that it dispense with “exceptionalism” according to which it self exempts from international rules that are perceived (in Washington) to infringe US sovereignty or frustrate its interests. Without such a conversion it will be very difficult to persuade China (and others) not to assert similar immunities. It is wrong to underestimate how difficult this will be for Washington to set the example whereby US will share power with others and not impose power upon others, through the international system. Yet if the US is concerned to ensure that its supreme legacy to the world of an open, liberal, equitable international system endures, from which others like New Zealand have manifestly benefitted, and then such adjustment is unavoidable.
In the best book on New Zealand foreign policy independence written over 20 years ago, it was suggested that New Zealand traditionally exercises ‘loyal opposition’ whenever it seeks improvements in the international system, rather than indulging in an act of sedition against established order. That elegant prescription based upon the Westminster democratic tradition, seems harder to apply in the case of the 21st century international system. The seismic changes evident on the international landscape suggest a more hybrid world and system, and who is part and who is not part, will be an immensely tough question especially for the exceptionalists.
Some efforts to refashion the international system to reflect changing reality have been made. The formation of the G20 involving the world’s top twenty economies is a signal of a recognition that successful large emerging countries must be enrolled in the business of guiding the global economy. The G20 is not intended to take charge of existing trade, economic and financial international institutions but rather to improve their operations on the basis of G20 members’ undertaking collective efforts to sustain an open world economy.
This sounds all very fine but results are uncertain. American trade policy for example involves two major initiatives – the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) where New Zealand is closely implicated, and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) with the EU. These are ambitious proposals that extend well beyond traditional free trade agreements aiming at significant economic policy integration. What is common to both is that they exclude any of the fast growth newly emergent economies (China, India, Brazil etc.). If consummated both such agreements would therefore significantly divide the world trade economy and, of course in the case of TPP, the Asia Pacific regional economy. How this would conform to G20 objectives and more precisely serve New Zealand interests has not yet been explained by New Zealand political leaders.
New Zealand and the UN Security Council
Finally, many New Zealanders are more comfortable with definition of self view that stems from the country’s exercise of good global citizenship, rather than by experience of war. Its role in the UN system is viewed in that light. Every once in a while the New Zealand place in the UN is illuminated, as now for only the third time in 70 years, by a place at the table of the UN Security Council (UNSC). Success in the face of tough competition for a seat is rightly prized by New Zealand governments and extolled as recognition of New Zealand’s good global citizenship. As a non permanent Council member New Zealand has only two years to make its mark. The influence it is able to exercise on the UNSC over that time is exceeded by the influence that the UNSC experience will have on New Zealand itself both during and after its tenure. For outsiders, it is actually difficult to judge the quality of contributions being made by individual UNSC members behind closed doors while operating in continuous crisis mode around the table. The public sessions displayed on media on the other hand are carefully choreographed events that disguise the hard bargaining.
A reputation for good global citizenship depends rather more therefore on performance in the day to day work of the UN system – affecting contributions to peacekeeping, the size of refugee quota, the levels of aid (ODA) for poverty reduction, contributions to the climate change negotiations and those for environmental protections. The list is much longer than that. The sense amongst other governments that New Zealand is now slipping off the pace in such areas, where there has indeed been some discernible decline in performance, subtracts from good global citizenship credentials; innovation and additional NZ effort will by the same token inflate them, and gratify the NZ self view.