Reactions to Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ recent speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs show that debate is intensifying about participation in Pillar 2 of Aukus.
Despite the speech being non-committal about this prospect, critics such as former prime minister Helen Clark argue otherwise. The speech has since been overshadowed by the furore following Mr Peters’ comments about another Aukus critic, former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr.
Regrettably, the Aukus debate to date has attracted too much of this sound and fury, distracting attention from the bigger picture regarding where New Zealand should position itself in a visibly altered regional security environment.
Sounding like an agitated seabird, Aukus was initiated in 2021 during the time of Australia’s Scott Morrison government. Pillar 1 of the arrangement involves the United States and United Kingdom assisting Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines. Pillar 2 envisages extensive co-operation in developing advanced military technologies in non-nuclear areas and potentially involving other partners. Most details remain hypothetical.
The current government has signalled an open mind on possible participation, depending on clarification of those details. As Mr Peters has noted, the previous Labour government adopted a similar line, prompting Ms Clark to berate them in 2023 for abandoning New Zealand’s "capacity to think for itself".
It is easy in New Zealand to criticise the nuclear aspects of Pillar 1. Patently, nuclear-powered submarines are at the heart of it, and the UK and the US are both nuclear-armed states.
But the nascent debate about the non-nuclear Pillar 2 misses the bigger picture. The underlying issue is not about technologies or the taint of nuclearism associated with Aukus. Rather, the key questions are why Australia has not deviated from this path even after Anthony Albanese’s Labor Party defeated Mr Morrison’s government in 2022 and what it means for New Zealand.
The answer to the first question relates to Canberra’s altered threat perceptions, which are set out starkly in its recently released 2024 National Defence Strategy. Similarly, if in a more understated way, New Zealand’s reading of the regional environment has shifted.
In her speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs in 2021, prime minister Jacinda Ardern embraced re-framing the Asia-Pacific region as the Indo-Pacific — a concept favoured by the US, Australia, Japan and India but condemned by China as a cover for containing its legitimate rise.
Last year, the Chris Hipkins-led Labour government issued several security-related documents. In summing up the impetus behind them, defence minister Andrew Little directly upended a famous 2001 statement by Miss Clark when he stated that, "in 2023, we do not live in a benign strategic environment".
In his speech Mr Peters quoted from another document issued during Labour’s time in office in arguing that the country’s strategic environment had been transformed by a wider shift from "rules to power", in a world "characterised by more contested rules and where the relative power between states assumes a greater role in shaping international affairs".
Much of Mr Peters’ address reflected an evolving trajectory. The more important questions it raised relate to these wider trends and responses by successive governments to a shifting regional environment, rather than Aukus per se.
Rather than sound and fury, there needs to be a national conversation about the changing strategic environment captured in Mr Little’s comments. If he was correct, what is the prudent course? Should we increase defence spending, as Mr Peters advocates (and as Labour began doing in government)? Should we align more closely with democratic partners, or should we hedge between great powers, as Asean states do? Can our voice best be heard alone or together with others?
If so, which others? Are we really facing binary choices? Does economic dependence on China constrain our options or can we disagree with Beijing at times in the expectation that its reactions will be as relatively benign as Washington’s were when we parted ways as allies in the 1980s?
Ultimately, membership of Pillar 2 is a tactical decision, not one of grand strategy. If we did participate, it would not be to secure access to technology for the sake of it, but for a purpose. It is that purpose which needs to be debated.
— Emeritus Prof Roberto Rabel is a fellow at Victoria University’s Centre for Strategic Studies and a former University of Otago academic.
