The increasingly fraught tension between New Zealand's competing military, intelligence, and trade objectives was a focus of the University of Otago's 50th annual Foreign Policy School at the weekend. Eileen Goodwin reports.
An icy Dunedin morning or driving a car pose more direct risk than terrorism, but the latter's ''dread factor'' commands political response, a senior New Zealand Government intelligence figure told the Foreign Policy School in Dunedin yesterday.
Assessments manager (Middle East and Asia) Dr Anthony Smith, of the National Assessments Bureau in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet participated in a panel session on intelligence and national security.
Much of the session focused on how intelligence agencies could avoid being manipulated by the political, trade, and military agendas of the day.
Dr Smith spoke of the ''failure'' of intelligence leading to the Iraq invasion, which ''may strike you as a slightly odd example for me to be raising''.
The faulty intelligence about non existent weapons had had several causes, but there was ''probably a lot'' of credence in the charge it involved a predetermined agenda. About New Zealand's imminent terror threat, Dr Smith was circumspect. A small number of people posed a threat, but the overwhelming majority of Muslims in New Zealand had no interest in extremism, he emphasised.
Intelligence officials needed ''bravery'' in presenting good information to decision makers.
''Intelligence agencies have a job to speak the truth, basically, and even to come up with conclusions that are very uncomfortable for decision makers.''
The nature of information gathering had changed for intelligence agencies and other organisations. Some news outlets tracked movements of Russian troops by following Instagram accounts: ''That's the kind of age that we're in,'' Dr Smith said.
Panellist Dr Paul Buchanan, of 36th Parallel Consulting, slated the media for its role in hyping terror threats. An example was the recent scaling of Parliament; the media ''went nuts'' on the supposed security threat.
But the good natured Greenpeace stunt bore none of the hallmarks of terror. Dr Buchanan said activists should not be targeted by national security agencies. They were targeted after the end of the Cold War because of a lack of real threats, he said.
''You're classifying as threats people who climb up trees.''
The shift coincided with New Zealand's move to a ''trade centric foreign policy'', in which economic and security objectives diverged in a potentially risky manner.
''When we focused our trade relationships increasingly towards Asia and China ... and yet we kept our Western centric security relationships, now reaffirmed and deepened.''
In a former role as consultant to United States security agencies, Dr Buchanan had experienced a conflict between his left wing background and United States foreign policy, which favoured ''right wing dictators who are pro capitalist''.
Dr Jim Rolfe, director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University, also took part in the panel.
