Cutting their cloth: New Zealand’s defence strategy

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has today released its latest report, which traces the processes by which New Zealand determines its defence needs and maintains its policy directions while also managing its relationships with defence partners.

The report is authored by Jim Rolfe, a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies in New Zealand.  It examines three components of New Zealand’s defence posture: the country’s capabilities, its commitments, and its defence and security relationships with its two closest partners—Australia and the US.

Dr Rolfe argues that since 2000 the New Zealand government has attempted to build a New Zealand Defence Force that meets the country’s principal strategic needs.  The result, he says, has been a more practical military force, structured and equipped to achieve specific, and quite narrow outcomes, rather than to be able to fight a conventional enemy under almost any circumstances.  Still, the NZDF can take its place alongside allies when necessary, or operate more or less independently to support New Zealand’s interests in the immediate neighbourhood.

But New Zealand’s defence relationships are still fragile.  The relationship with Australia waxes and wanes, haunted by strongly held and long-term doubts within Australia about New Zealand’s commitment to and capacity for the two nations’ common defence.  The report examines the extent to which New Zealand’s capabilities add value to Australia’s, and considers what more the two nations could do together.  The New Zealand-US relationship is even more delicate, though the War on Terror has provided new opportunities for the two countries to work together.