The heat goes on: Helen Clark and Winston Peters on why Aukus talk matters
Close allies: Defence ministers for Australia (Richard Marles), Britain (John Healey) and the US (Lloyd Austin) met in London in September to progress Aukus talks. Photo / Getty Images
In late September, the Royal New Zealand navy ship Aotearoa joined a fleet of American, Japanese and Australian warships on patrol in the South China Sea. They sailed through the Taiwan Strait – the 180km geopolitical flashpoint separating Taiwan from mainland China – and conducted joint exercises. These were quickly followed by a series of Chinese exercises which appeared to rehearse a naval blockade of Taiwan.
In the same month, New Zealand’s exports to China, since 2013 our largest trading partner, continued to decline. Trade with the United States increased. It’s now our second export market, ahead of Australia, both of which are adopting an increasingly adversarial attitude towards China and its expansion into the Pacific. The tension increased under the first Trump administration and continued under Joe Biden.
The nature of US policy in the Pacific under a second Trump term is extremely uncertain. In May, Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters characterised the New Zealand-China relationship as “complex”. Neither Peters nor Prime Minister Christopher Luxon visited China during the first year of the coalition government, although Luxon met President Xi Jinping at the Apec summit in Peru this month, where Xi invited him to lead a trade delegation to China early next year.
In New Zealand, US-China tensions have played out mainly in the heated debate around Aukus, a trilateral strategic security pact between Australia, the UK and the US. Aukus initially focused on the long-term development and deployment of nuclear-powered submarines for Australia, dramatically increasing our closest neighbour’s naval power – with the stated aim of increasing security and defence in the Indo-Pacific region.
China has interpreted Aukus as an attempt to constrain its emergence as a Pacific power, with one of its senior officials warning, “The nuclear submarine co-operation between the US, the UK and Australia has seriously undermined regional peace and stability, intensified the arms race and undermined international non-proliferation efforts.”
Last May, China’s ambassador to New Zealand, Wang Xiaolong, in a speech to a China business summit in Auckland, directly attacked the alliance, which he described as “a nuclear-based military-nature alliance clearly and unabashedly designed to maintain US hegemony”, before warning New Zealand that “joining such an alliance in whatever form is taking sides” and that “counting on military alliances to maintain peace is a poisoned chalice”.
China has interpreted Aukus as an attempt to constrain its emergence as a Pacific power.
In September, China conducted an intercontinental ballistic missile test containing a dummy warhead. It landed in the South Pacific.
How does tiny, remote, nuclear-free New Zealand fit into all this global geopolitical and nuclear diplomacy? Aukus has two components, known as Pillars. Australia’s submarines are Pillar 1. They’re not expected to begin to arrive until the early 2030s.
Pillar 2 involves the development of advanced military and intelligence capabilities – underwater drones, artificial intelligence, cyber security, deep-space radar, hypersonic missiles – to be developed and deployed across a shorter timeline.
Our possible inclusion in Pillar 2 provokes anticipation, consternation and disbelief among foreign policy experts and observers in roughly equal measures.