From Anzus fracture to US alliance: The massive shift in NZ’s foreign policy
Late in December 2018, Winston Peters stepped up to a podium in front of a vast glass wall at Georgetown University in Washington DC. Before him was an audience of American diplomats, officials and students, whom he couldn’t resist needling as he began his speech. “New Zealand is a small but well-functioning democracy. Indeed, looking increasingly well-functioning against some international comparisons,” he noted, to knowing chuckles from the anti-Trump crowd.
Quickly, however, Peters settled into an address devoid of his usual jokes and comic asides. Instead, he began to chart an ambitious vision of New Zealand foreign policy grounded in the relationship between New Zealand and the US: two partners, he said, who shared a “special connection” stronger than almost any other. That connection was “now coming into sharper relief in the Asia-Pacific”, he noted. Sticking carefully to his script, Peters explained that “the region is becoming more contested and its security is ever more fragile. It is New Zealand’s view that the Asia-Pacific region has reached an inflexion point, one that requires the urgent attention of both Wellington and Washington.”
Throughout his speech, Peters studiously avoided pinpointing the country he felt was contributing most to the insecurity he warned of. But in a question session afterwards, a student made the subtext explicit: how could New Zealand compete against the vast resources of China?
It was a question Peters had already answered. “The significant focus of our visit to Washington is to share our concerns and enlist greater US support in the region closest to New Zealand,” Peters had said in his speech. Enunciating every word, he had added, “We unashamedly ask for the United States to engage more and we think it is in your vital interests to do so. And time is of the essence.”
Since the collapse of our military alliance with the US over nuclear ship visits in 1986, which led the American ambassador at the time, Paul Cleveland, to remark that the US would “not be able to trust” New Zealand, we have insisted that we have an “independent foreign policy”. In practice, that meant we worked with the US on espionage and the occasional military operations, with Australia in the Pacific and with China in pursuit of economic growth. Mostly, that balancing act held because nobody paid us much attention. New Zealand faced no major security threats, China was focused on its own challenges and US foreign policy was focused on the Middle East.
By the time Peters made his speech, that had changed. New Zealand and US officials were watching with deepening concern as Chinese diplomats fanned out across the Pacific in search of allies. A stream of Chinese hacking and propaganda efforts have disturbed New Zealand communities. Rumours abound about China’s efforts to establish military bases in the Pacific. As New Zealand’s Secretary of Defence, Andrew Bridgman, said last year, our “strategic environment has deteriorated more quickly than we imagined”.
In response, New Zealand has dramatically deepened its relationship with the US. Over the past decade, we have welcomed US vessels to our ports, regularly participated in military exercises in the Pacific, and pursued closer ties with Western alliances such as Nato. Our diplomats sometimes issue joint statements with partners in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. Even our spies have become more open about the relationship, to the point where the head of the SIS, Andrew Hampton, recently travelled to Washington DC to appear on 60 Minutes alongside his American counterpart in a stunning display of solidarity.
Peters’ speech made it clear New Zealand is no longer sceptical of a US presence in our region: we are actively calling for it. The US is taking us up on the offer. In years to come, this dramatic change in our foreign policy will further dominate our lives, affecting the places we can go, markets we can sell to and the security of our home. So, how did we go from being a partner the US could no longer trust to a strategic ally, growing ever closer?
Security pact
It is hard to remember the fear in the months following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941. At the time, my grandmother was a child in Amberley, north of Christchurch. One of her abiding memories is of listening to her mother suggest a plan if Japan invaded: the family would go to a nearby cliff and jump. That fear lasted even after the war’s end, driving New Zealand and Australia to insist that the US give them a security guarantee in exchange for their consent to a final peace treaty with Japan. That deal led eventually to the birth of Anzus: a formal military alliance under which the US promised its support if the two countries were ever threatened.
Paired with the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, to which New Zealand contributed and received some products of US intelligence, we were one of the US’s closest allies. But horror at nuclear testing in the Pacific and growing concern about the risk of nuclear war abroad prompted a shift in mood. By 1982, the US Embassy was reporting to Washington: “These New Zealanders are wary of what they see as cultural and political dominance by the United States and they believe that New Zealand’s interests would be best served by a rejection of traditional alliances, with the hope that such a neutral stance would spare the country from involvement in any future superpower conflict.”