Asking the right questions

Andrew Wierzbicki reflects on the challenges and misconceptions involved in crafting New Zealand’s defence policy.

Far from being simple, formulating New Zealand’s defence policy is a complex exercise today. When making decisions about how to secure the country and its trade, the government must weigh a range of factors. Finding the right balance is critical, whether it concerns funding, equipment or staffing of the forces or having the right mix of capability to meet both domestic requirements and international requests for assistance. The challenges include sensitivity around language on defence and security and the multiple stakeholders and audiences involved, time horizons and the problem of long-term planning, funding and the tension between expectations and reality.

This article is not specifically a review of New Zealand’s current defence policy but rather a look at some of the issues which typically influence the development of the policy. I will be drawing on my eighteen years working on defence policy in the Ministry of Defence, where I finished in November 2016. The views expressed are my personal views. They are not those of any government agency; nor are they that of the NZIIA, which does not itself express any views on issues but rather provides a platform for its members to be exposed to a range of issues which affect New Zealand’s international relations.

I will consider three perspectives: l the context for New Zealand defence policy; l some of the challenges faced when crafting the policy; l some misconceptions that exist about New Zealand defence policy.

New Zealand governments fairly regularly publicly release statements of their defence policy. The last one was on 4 August 2023 by the Labour-led government when the then minister of defence, Andrew Little, released the Defence Policy and Strategy Statement, along with a second document, the Future Force Design Principles. The latter complements the strategy statement by discussing the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF)’s capability requirements in order to respond to the challenges set out in the statement.

In a welcome development, for the first time the Defence statement was part of a suite of security related documents comprising: l the National Security Strategy 2023–2028, the first such report, also released on 4 August 2023 by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet; l New Zealand’s Security Threat Environment 2023, also the first such report, released by the Security Intelligence Service on 11 August 2023; and l the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Strategic Foreign Policy Assessment — Navigating a Shifting World, which is a document projecting out to 2035, released on 10 July 2023.

Later in 2024, a third defence-related document, the Capability Plan, is to be released. This will outline those defence capabilities which the government is committing to providing to the

NZDF as the means for delivering on its defence policy. The plan’s release will also be an opportunity for Minister of Defence Judith Collins to indicate any change in direction in defence policy of the National-led government from the 2023 Defence statement.

Key advantage

While preparation of the plan started before the October 2023 change of government, a key advantage in New Zealand is that, while governments of different political parties may change emphasis and nuances, New Zealand’s overall defence policy tends to be bipartisan. I am assuming, therefore, that the essential elements of our current defence policy will not be significantly altered. Whether this situation changes in the future, though, because of AUKUS Pillar 2 remains to be seen. Recent debate on this issue suggests there are pronounced views developing on the merits or otherwise of New Zealand being associated with Pillar 2, if indeed this is the direction the government decides to go in once it considers the outcome of officials’ current information gathering exercise.

Collins outlined some of the government’s priorities on 10 May as a pre-budget announcement. A key area of concern, as it was for the previous government, is dealing with NZDF attrition, something I come back to below.

Whichever government is formulating defence policy, the messaging is neither simple nor straightforward. In my experience, having been involved in this process several times as a Defence official, this is the key challenge for any administration. But it is not the only challenge. I will discuss four of these challenges: l the sensitivity around language on defence and security and the multiple stakeholders and audiences involved; l time horizons and the challenge of long-term planning; l funding; l the tension between expectations and reality.

Major challenge

In messaging a defence policy, the language used is important because it must encompass both domestic and overseas audiences. The wording discloses how the government perceives the security environment and what, as a consequence, it intends to do, especially concerning future NZDF capabilities. Until 2023 a broader context for such decisions was lacking. This has now been remedied with the development of a national security strategy.

Some wording is easier to formulate than others. For example, there is agreement by all that the NZDF needs the capability to undertake search and rescue in New Zealand’s area of responsibility in the South Pacific and that our only ally Australia is our closest defence partner. Similarly, there is no disagreement that New Zealand needs appropriate NZDF capabilities to respond to requests for assistance from our Pacific Islands neighbours, especially as a result of natural calamities such as extreme weather events or volcanic eruptions like that of Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai in 2022.

Notwithstanding the clarity around these, however, they are but three aspects of a much broader and deeper policy environment. The 2023 suite of security statements clearly emphasised that this is just one component of a broader policy mix determining both domestic national security and foreign policy. Whatever the government says about its defence policy, therefore, is carefully scrutinised both within New Zealand and especially externally. This means there is always a quite lengthy process of fine-tuning the wording in order to not only provide the right nuances but also perhaps to send particular messages, maybe directly or in some instances in more calibrated language. This will reflect the collective decision-making of the government, beginning with officials and finishing with ministers.

At the officials’ level, aside from the Ministry of Defence, which is the lead agency on defence policy, other agencies have an interest in what is said about New Zealand’s defence policy. These include the Defence Force, Foreign Ministry and Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, to name but three. This is only the beginning, however, because the process is mirrored in Cabinet discussions. Here agencies’ respective ministers also have their input and make the final decisions on defence policy and how it is messaged. In my view, classic examples of recent deliberate messaging by the government have been the changes in the tone of the language concerning China and Russia.

Positive messaging

In the 2016 Defence White Paper, the last with which I was involved, the messaging on China was positive, highlighting cooperation between New Zealand and China — wording that I would characterise as safe. Fast forward to 2023 and the Defence statement refers to the Chinese government’s ‘assertive pursuit of its strategic objectives’ and China ‘using all its instruments of national power in ways that can pose challenges to existing international rules and norms’. That this wording was carefully calibrated is borne out by the very similar wording in the Strategic Foreign Policy Assessment, the National Security Strategy and the Security Threat Environment documents as well as the Ministry of Defence’s 2024–2028 Statement of Intent, released on 27 August 2024. None of this is a coincidence. Similarly, the messaging on Russia moved from the cautious in 2016 where the Defence White Paper talked of ‘Russia’s intervention in Ukraine’ to the 2023 wording, where it had become ‘Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine’. A similar evolution of messaging over the last eight years has occurred on other emerging security challenges. Two of particular note are climate change and cyber-security.

Talking about the present is, however, a far more straightforward exercise than trying to predict the medium- to long-term strategic environment. In Defence (both force and ministry) this is a necessity when trying to determine the capabilities — people, equipment and skills — that the NZDF is likely to need to deal with future contingencies. This leads me on to the second challenge. As mentioned above, there are known tasks which the NZDF will always be expected to perform, such as providing assistance within New Zealand at times of national emergencies and for which the appropriate planning for refreshing capabilities can be undertaken. There are, however, other tasks, especially those arising externally — future events rather than present ones — for which planning is more problematic. Thus, trying to understand what is going to happen in the next five, ten and twenty years is important when deciding on the NZDF’s future structure and capabilities. As one experienced British commentator has put it, ‘Defence policy tries to anticipate the future threats which might alter the national and international security landscape, but is often confounded’.

Implementation delay

Changing structure and capabilities must be done with the longterm future in mind — it simply does not happen overnight. For example, a government decision that the army needs to be up- skilled to take on a new task could take several years to implement. It would involve finding and training the necessary personnel and providing the required dedicated infrastructure; and if specialised equipment is required, possibly joining a queue to get it from what is likely to be, at best, only a handful of possible suppliers. In many cases, though, there will be only one realistic supplier, which adds all sorts of difficult complications, not the least being getting the equipment at a competitive price.

The challenge, then, is to reach conclusions about the security environment which are not only balanced but also as realistic as possible. Navigating the complexities of trying to predict what might happen is part of this process. Suffice it is to say that Defence uses a number of established tools to work through the range of possible future scenarios. Scenario planning in Defence is no different from the private sector’s approach to thinking about future directions. Shell Oil’s response to the 1970s oil shocks is a classic example of this at work.

This is not, however, an exact science, as the Russo-Ukraine War demonstrates. Ten years ago, no-one predicted Europe’s security would again be threatened by a conflict as serious as that presently taking place on that continent. Nor could it have been foreseen that, as a result of the conflict, two of the staunchest independent minded nations on that continent, Sweden and Finland, would join NATO. Similarly, there was no planning in New Zealand to again be involved in a European conflict. Fast forward to 2024 and New Zealand is one of a broad array of nations assisting Ukrainians fight Russia’s aggression. Our contribution includes a NZDF role, training Ukrainian troops in the United Kingdom.

The Ukrainian conflict has also highlighted how quickly technology can change military tactics. I refer particularly to the critical role which drones have come to play in that war. The use of drones in the civilian context is now well established, but the Russo-Ukraine War has underscored their military application. The NZDF will be carefully assessing the lessons of the conflict and what they mean for New Zealand, including the affordability of the emerging technology. It will be interesting to see what the Capability Plan says about this.

Defence funding

The third challenge is funding for defence, specifically how much is the right amount for New Zealand to spend. The budget currently hovers at around $5 billion, approximately 1 per cent of GDP. This minimal expenditure reflects a New Zealand reality — defence is not what can be called a tier-priority for government expenditure. It is always eclipsed by the higher priority sectors of health, education, welfare and law and order. Politically, these have far more resonance with New Zealand voters than defence, which is competing with the other policy areas for the remaining expenditure.

Since the Second World War New Zealanders simply have not seen themselves as in any way pressured or threatened in a manner that demands significantly more defence funding on a par with what European nations are now spending because of the serious threat posed by Russia. But the security environment is the most unstable it has been for a significant period of time. Aside from Europe, other key areas of instability include the South China Sea, the Korean peninsula and the Middle East, all of direct interest to New Zealand, especially from a trade perspective.

New Zealand may not, therefore, be immune from having to consider spending more on defence. Aside from our own needs there are our partners’ expectations that we are ‘pulling our weight’, not a new issue as it was always in the background during my time in the Defence Ministry. In what may well be a nod to this inevitability, when in Washington DC in July 2024 for a NATO meeting, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon reiterated a statement he had earlier made in New Zealand that he would like to double defence spending to 2 per cent of GDP. If this eventuated, it would bring New Zealand much closer to its one ally, Australia, where defence expenditure currently sits at just over 2 per cent of GDP. For geopolitical, alliance and domestic reasons, however, defence figures so much more prominently in the Australian consciousness, which is consequently reflected in that country’s much higher level of defence expenditure.

An increase of this magnitude is easier said than done. To achieve it, the government would have to find another $5 billion or so. Notwithstanding Luxon’s view, it will likely be difficult to get ready acceptance for any increased funding, particularly at a time of severe budgetary constraint. This is not helped by New Zealand lacking meaningful political, public or commercial defence constituencies to pressure governments to spend more on defence.

In the political sphere there are very few of New Zealand’s 120 members of Parliament whose re-election can be meaningfully influenced by a defence-related vote because there are only nine NZDF locations in New Zealand: l the three Army camps in the Hutt Valley, Palmerston North and Christchurch; l the three air force bases in West Auckland, the central North Island and the top of the South Island; l the navy base at Devonport; l the Wellington City and Hutt Valley NZDF facilities.

Muted voice

In Parliament, the defence voice, if it can be described as that, is these days very muted. Only five of the current MPs have had a military background, all from the National Party (though in the last Parliament it was four National and one Labour). Two of these five MPs are ministers with one of them also being the associate minister of defence. This severely constrains their ability to publicly express views inconsistent with government policy. Of the other three MPs, two sit on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Select Committee, where examination of defence issues does occur, albeit to a limited extent. The committee’s membership also includes a former Labour defence minister.

For most of the public who are not associated with any of the nine NZDF locations, their only real exposure to defence is Anzac Day or publicity around a NZDF deployment, whether domestically for a national emergency or overseas. For the rest of the time defence would barely figure in their thinking. Underscoring this is the difficulty I recall in getting the public to engage with the defence assessment process when their views were being sought.

Unlike Australia, neither is there a significant defence-related commercial presence in New Zealand which can exercise any noticeable influence on defence policy. To be sure, there are small niche pockets of defence business but nothing to compare with the significant Australian businesses, which, for example, make army vehicles or maintain army, navy and air force capabilities at the numerous large bases around Australia.

This lack of consciousness has, in my view, contributed to defence funding long being tightly constrained. Every dollar spent, therefore, needs to give Defence the best bang for the buck, to use an apt colloquialism. How this plays out can be seen in defence decisions of previous governments. For exam- ple, the National-led government in 1999 decided not to buy a third Anzac frigate because of the cost. Similarly, in the early 2000s, the Labour-led government decided to do away with the air combat force because of the cost of buying and sustaining replacement fighters for the 1960s era Skyhawks which the RNZAF was then flying.

Expenditure pressure

The pressure is always on to get real value for money. The problem is that nothing defence-related is cheap, exacerbated by the rapid leaps in technological complexity and resultant skyrocketing cost of defence equipment. One ship or a small number of aircraft or a fleet of army vehicles, for example, can cost well into nine figures. Trying to get fixed, firm reliable costings for the government so it can make informed decisions about what to buy, when and from which manufacturer has always been challenging. It is even more so now given the requirement on Defence to provide, rightly in my view, whole of life costs. This means Defence needs to estimate the total cost over the 20–30 years’ life of a capability, beginning with the initial procurement cost of the equipment, through to ensuring for the life of the equipment that there is on-going support to keep it current, and to having a constant pipeline of trained personnel to run the equipment over its life.

The fourth challenge is the tension between expectations, on the one hand, and reality, on the other. It is one thing to identify an unstable and unpredictable strategic environment and the demands this could place on New Zealand but, as earlier discussed, it is another thing for governments of today to ensure they have appropriately structured the Defence Force to give governments of tomorrow options and choices when considering potential New Zealand responses to meet future demands. For example, it may be clear that New Zealand needs plenty of airlift capability such as Hercules aircraft, of which a new fleet of the latest J model has now started to arrive. One needs only to recall the pivotal role its predecessor, the 1960s era H model, played in the evacuations from Noumea in June 2024 or in the aftermath of the Kaikoura earthquake in 2016. But the cost of procuring and operating these aircraft was always going to dictate that we could only afford five replacement aircraft. As a consequence, allowing for maintenance, personnel shortages and competing activities, there will inevitably be occasions when the RNZAF will not be able to meet government expectations at a particular time, which will be hard to explain to ministers.

Obsolete aircraft

Similarly, few would dispute the undoubted advantage of using the RNZAF’s larger Boeing 757 transport aircraft for prime ministerial trade missions and other government missions, aside from its primary military transport role. The only trouble is that these aircraft are now well past their use by date and are subject to more frequent maintenance issues, invariably just as they are required for a mission. Notwithstanding the negative publicity which results when the 757s are unavailable, there is still seemingly minimal appetite either among the public or the politicians to spend several hundred million dollars on replacement aircraft for them, especially at a time when the government’s priorities are elsewhere. It will be very interesting, therefore, to see whether the government’s Capability Plan provides for replacing the 757s. If not, avoiding the capital expenditure now simply means paying even more in the future when replacements can no longer be delayed. In the meantime, the cost of maintaining the 757s will keep on increasing.

All the equipment in the world is useless, however, if there are not the personnel to run it. As has been well publicised in recent times, the high NZDF attrition rate has been and still is a huge problem. Both the previous and current governments have had to find significant funding to try to stem the high attrition rates. Until this problem is resolved some of the capabilities the government thinks it has do not in fact have the required personnel to operate them. For example, in October 2023 the RNZN’s two offshore patrol vessels and one of the inshore patrol vessels were tied up for lack of crew.

These then are four of the challenges which face governments when formulating their defence policy. But while these can be overcome if the will is there, it is a different story trying to deal with what I would call misconceptions about New Zealand’s approach to defence because of the deep-seated views held by those advancing the misconceptions. Three of these warrant mentioning.

Significant misconception

There is a misconception that internationally New Zealand’s defence policy does not matter. The short response to this is that it does matter. Certainly, New Zealand is a small island nation in the South Pacific, which is not currently directly threatened by, nor definitely a threat to, anyone. But these ignore other realities.

First, there is New Zealand’s geographic isolation, or the tyranny of distance, as it is sometimes labelled. This is a major weak link because New Zealand relies for its economic prosperity on being able to trade and to do that successfully New Zealand’s exports and imports need to be able to move freely around the globe. Currently, two key areas for shipping goods from and to New Zealand are major flashpoints — the South China Sea and the Suez Canal. This means New Zealand has a direct strategic interest in the effects of the instability in these areas, aside from any other considerations. That interest carries obligations, which include contributing to the security of our trade routes whether through multilateral, bilateral or ad hoc arrangements.

We cannot reasonably expect others to shoulder the burden of maintaining this security without also making a meaningful and credible contribution to it ourselves as well. It is about New Zealand accepting an appropriate level of this burden if it is to be taken seriously.

New Zealand’s geographic location also means that it is looked to not only by our Pacific Islands neighbours but also our partners generally to be a key source of assistance when this is required by Pacific Islands nations. That assistance will invariably require personnel, equipment and logistics, which only an appropriately structured and equipped Defence Force can provide.

The second reality is that New Zealand is a strong proponent of the rules-based international system and especially one of its key pillars, the United Nations. While not the only way in which New Zealand underlines its commitment to the rules-based international order, the NZDF provides a means by which successive governments have been able to demonstrate this in a meaningful way through contributing NZDF personnel to peacekeeping or other missions. New Zealand is highly respected and valued in this regard because of the quality and integrity of its NZDF personnel. If New Zealand did not have the NZDF assets to make these contributions, we would not be pulling our weight internationally.

Relationship expectations

The third reality is that New Zealand has a range of relationships. These can include expectations of military contribution. The most important of these is the commitment we have to our only ally, Australia. It has been a long-standing fundamental of New Zealand defence policy that if ever Australia was threatened, we would come to its aid, and vice versa. It goes without saying that the aid would need to include the ability to assist Australia in an armed response if that was required. That is why Australia pays close attention to New Zealand’s defence policy and we to theirs. While once we could have described our part of the world as a ‘benign strategic environment’, this is no longer the case.

l There is a misconception that New Zealand’s defence can be got on the cheap. It cannot. Defence is complex and multi-faceted and requires the proper level of investment to constantly sustain it.

l It is about people, that is, having the right ones when needed, in the numbers that are needed and properly trained. Reference has already been made to the serious staffing problems the NZDF is currently facing. Even if all the gaps could be filled today, the problem would not be solved overnight because training new recruits to the standards required can take months if not years.

l It is about these people having access to the right capabilities to do the jobs the government expects of them, whether it is in having the basic equipment such as vehicles for the Army, ships for the RNZN or aircraft for the RNZAF, or in having the required highly specialised and technical equipment such as information technology and communications systems. The real challenge, as noted above, is trying to properly equip the NZDF but within the very constrained defence budgets which have been a feature of successive governments.

l There are the infrastructure requirements such as housing and working facilities for NZDF personnel, structures for storage and maintenance and specialised infrastructure such as runways for aircraft, wharves for ships and firing ranges for the Army.

l All of this means New Zealand needs to be spending sufficient on defence to maintain a credible Defence Force which can meaningfully and realistically protect and advance our own interests. We cannot expect others to do this for us.

Peacekeeping misconception

There is the misconception that the NZDF should only be trained to do peacekeeping. Those who advocate for this position do it either: l from a philosophical point of view, that is, they do not want New Zealand troops doing anything more than in effect being boots on the ground and, therefore, do not want New Zealand defence personnel trained for combat; and/or l they see it as a way of making defence less expensive, leaving more money for other priorities. Some of these advocates also suggest that New Zealand would be better off adopting a policy of neutrality or associating itself with countries claiming to be non-aligned to any particular geopolitical grouping.

In my view, these positions are illusory. The reality is that what I would call benign peacekeeping is very rarely that. More often than not, it also encompasses the much riskier peacemaking role. This requires that NZDF personnel are trained and equipped to a level where they can properly defend themselves and enforce the peace for which they have been deployed. This means, in effect, training personnel in combat skills. It also means they need to have appropriate personal equipment, such as arms and body protection, as well as other essentials, including ground transport, both conventional and specialised, such as armoured vehicles and communications equipment. One needs only to recall the East Timor and Afghanistan deployments to see how important all of this is. None of this is cheap, so it is not a realistic way to cut defence funding.

A policy of neutrality, far from being a simple policy option or a cheaper way for New Zealand, is a much more complex and expensive alternative. One needs only to look at two European countries, Switzerland and Sweden, in this regard. Aside from New Zealand having a completely different geopolitical, historical, cultural and economic history to these countries, neutrality carries with it the need to have a self-defence capability which is seen by others, especially those who might threaten New Zealand, as a realistic deterrent with all the costs and complications this entails.

Formulating defence policy presents New Zealand governments with a range of complexities. The policy cannot be conceived in a silo, whether domestically or externally, nor is it. It reflects a whole of government approach. Defence policy is inextricably linked not only with New Zealand’s foreign and trade policies but also with domestic policy. It reflects who we are as a country — a Western liberal democracy working with likeminded partners internationally.

Defence policy needs to deal with the here and now but it also needs to deal with the future. There is the difficult task of projecting what the future security environment may look like so this can be taken into account in how the NZDF is configured to meet contingencies that could arise then. It is that configuration which will always be the subject of debate: l Has the government got it right? l Has the government spent enough to get it right? l What other options are there? l Will the public buy into the decisions which have been made? l Will New Zealand’s international partners buy into the decisions which have been made?

These are some of the questions which always arise.

Andrew Wierzbicki is an NZIIA Board member. This article is the edited text of addresses he gave to the NZIIA’s Auckland and Wellington branches on 1 and 28 August respectively.

NOTE

1. Richard Dannatt, Boots on the Ground, Britain and her Army Since 1945 (London, 2016). Lord Dannatt is a former UK chief of the general staff.