Since 2018, our national security threat environment has changed from benign to threatening, points out a new book, Stateof Threat:The Challengesto Aotearoa New Zealand’s National Security, which arrives hard on the heels of a sweeping rethink of security strategies unveiled by the outgoing government in August.
The book features contributions from notable academics and analysts who pick up on many of the core issues at the heart of our new National Security Strategy. Its editors argue that national security is located at the intersection of domestic and international security.
That’s a very appropriate place to begin, as the problems we have faced this past year have been a head-on collision of domestic and global forces. In fact, we have seen at least three collisions: between our domestic view of New Zealand as a “moral” global player and the increasing international tensions over China and Russia; between our view of New Zealand as a peacemaker (or broker) and the realities of great power diplomacy; and in the balance between external enemies and those that weaken us from within. These clashes of our identity and sense of mission with the relentless forces of ideology, “grunt” geopolitics and circumstance may end up jolting us into being more candid about who we are and what we want.
OUR MORAL PEDESTAL
Aukus, an arms-sale-cum-alliance between Australia, the UK and US, has been a slowmotion collision between New Zealand’s long-held “moral” foreign policy and the increasing demands of a world that is preparing for the possibility of war.
This is evident in the pressure coming from Australia for New Zealand to pull its weight in regional security, emphasised during new Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s early meeting with his trans-Tasman counterpart, Anthony Albanese, just before
