The lethal theatre of the absurd that has been the Trump administration’s sabre rattling performances in the Central American basin over the last few months culminated with the military attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of its president and his wife in the early hours of Saturday morning, Caracas time. The tactical precision of the special operation was excellent, efficient and low cost when it came to human lives. While the number of Venezuelan casualties are yet unknown (although deaths are reported in the dozens and include Cubans among the victims), US forces suffered eight injuries and although some of the helicopters deployed received shrapnel damage, all assets returned to base safely. From a military tactical standpoint, the operation was a success and a demonstration of capability.

Even so, the broader picture is more complicated and therefore less straightforward when it comes to assessing the aftermath. Here I shall break down some of the main take-aways so far.

The strike on Venezuela was interesting because it was a hybrid decapitation and intimidation strike. Although US forces attacked military installations in support of the raid (such as by destroying air defence batteries), they only went after Maduro and his wife using their specialist Delta Force teams. That is unusual because most decapitation strikes attempt to remove the entire leadership cadres of the targeted regime, indulging its civilian and military leadership. They also involve seizing ports and airfields to limit adversary movements as well as the main means of communications, such as TV and radio stations, in order to control information flows during and after the event. The last thing that the attacker wants is for the target regime to retain its organizational shape and ability to continue to govern and, most importantly, mount an organised resistance to the armed attackers. This is what the Russians attempted to do with their assault on Kiev in February 2023.

That did not happen in this instance. Instead, the US left the entirety of the Bolivarian regime intact, including its military leadership and civilian authorities. Given reports of CIA infiltration of Venezuela in the months prior to the attack and the muted Venezuelan response to it, it is likely that US agents were in “backdoor” contact with members of the Bolivarian elite before the event, providing assurances and perhaps security guarantees to them (amnesty or non-prosecution for crimes committed while in power) in order to weaken their resistance to the US move. US intelligence may have detected fractures or weakness in the regime and worked behind Maduro’s back to assure wavering Bolivarians that they would not be blamed for his sins and would be treated separately and differently from him.

This might explain Vice President (now interim President) Delcy Rodriguez’s promise to “cooperate” with the US. That remains to be seen but other Bolivarian figures like Interior Minister Diosdaro Cabello and Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez, notorious for their leadership of Maduro’s repressive apparatus, may not be similarly inclined given that their post-Maduro treatment is likely to be very different–and they still may have control over and the loyalty of many of the people under their commands.

Trump says that the US “will run” the country for the foreseeable future until a regime transition scenario is developed, but in light of the limited nature of the military operation, it is unclear how the US proposes to do so. What is clear is that the US had real time intelligence from the CIA and perhaps regime insiders that allowed them to track and isolate Maduro in a moment of vulnerability. Ironically, for Maduro this proved fortunate, because given the surveillance that he was subjected to, any attempt to escape Caracas could have resulted in his death by drone. Instead, he and his wife get to be a guest of the US federal justice system.

(As an aside, it is noteworthy that the Maduro’s were indicted on cocaine trafficking charges and possessions of machine guns. No mention is mentioned in the indictments of fentanyl, the justification for the extra-judicial killings of civilians at sea by US forces and one of the initial excuses for attacking Venezuela itself (the so-called “fentanyl shipment facilities”). Possession of machine guns is not a crime in Venezuela, certainly not by a sitting leader facing constant violent threats from abroad. So the US is basically charging them with unlicensed firearms violations in the US rather than in Venezuela–where it has no jurisdiction–even though they do not reside there while switching the basis for the kidnapping from a fictitious accusation to something that may have more evidentiary substance. But in truth, the legal proceedings against the Maduros are no more than a fig leaf on the real reasons for their extraordinary rendition).

Even if limited in nature as a decapitation strike, the immediate result of the US use of force is intimidation of the remaining Bolivarians in government. Unless they regroup and organise some form of mass resistance using guerrilla/irregular warfare tactics, thereby forcing the US to put boots on the ground in order to subdue the insurgents (and raising the physical and political costs of the venture), at some point the post-Maduro Bolivarians will be forced to accept power-sharing with or replacement by the US backed opposition via eventual elections, and as Trump has indicated, the US will take control of Venezuelan oil assets (in theory at least). In his words: “they (US oil companies) will make a lot of money.” For this to happen the US will maintain its military presence in the Caribbean and adjacent land bases, in what Marco Rubio calls “leverage” in case the Venezuelans do not comply as demanded. This is coercive diplomacy in its starkest form.

Source: Wikimedia Commons, November 30, 2025

Put bluntly, this is an extorsion racket with the US military being used as the muscle with which to heavy the Bolivarians and bring them to heel. In light of Trump’s and the US’s past records, this should not be surprising. The question is, has the US read the situation correctly? Are the Bolivarians ao much disliked that the country will turn against them in droves and support an ongoing US presence in the country? Is the military and civilian leadership so weak or incompetent that they cannot rule without Maduro and need the US for basic governmental functioning (which is what the US appears to believe)? Have all of the gains made by lower class Venezuelans been eroded by Maduro’s corruption to the point that a reversal of the Bolivarian policy agenda in whole or in part is feasible? Will average Venezuelans, while thankful for the departure of the despot, accept abject subordination to the US and its puppets? Or will Cuban and Russian-backed civilian militias and elements in the armed forces retreat into guerrilla warfare. thereby forcing the US into a prolonged occupation without a clear exist strategy (i.e. deja vu all over again)?

There are some interesting twists to the emerging story. Maria Corina Machado, the US-backed opposition figure-turned-Nobel Peace Prize winner, has positioned herself to be the power behind the throne for Maduro’s heir apparent, Edmundo Gonzalez, who most election observers believe won the 2024 presidential elections but was denied office due to Maduro’s clearly fraudulent manipulation of the vote count. But Trump says that she “is not ready” and does not have the ” support” or “respect” within Venezuela to run the country. This seems to be code words for “too independent-minded” or “not enough of a puppet” (or even “female”) for Trump, who seems unaware of how a close overt association between his administration and any potential future Venezuelan leader may receive mixed reactions at home and abroad. In any event, sidelining Machado could have some unexpected repercussions.

Then there is the issue of how the US and its Venezuelan allies propose to purge the country of foreign actors like Hezbollah, Russians, Cubans and most importantly from an economic standpoint, the Chinese. Rounding up security operatives is one thing (although even that will not be easy given their levels of experience and preparation); dispossessing Chinese investors of their Venezuelan holdings is a very different kettle of fish So far none of this appears to have been thought out in a measure similar to the planning of the military raid itself.

Finally, Trump’s claims that Venezuela “stole” US oil is preposterous. In 1976 a nationalisation decree was signed between the Venezuelan government–a democracy–and US oil companies where Venezuela gained control of the land on which oil facilities were located and received a percentage of profits from them while the private firms continued to staff and maintain the facilities in exchange for sharing profits (retaining a majority share) and paying sightly more in taxes. That situation remained intact until the 1990s, when a series of market-oriented reforms were introduced into the industry that loosened State management over it. After Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998 on his Bolivarian platform, that arrangement continued for a short time until 2001 when the Organic Hydrocarbon Law was reformed in order to re-assert State control and foreign firms began withdrawing their skilled labor personnel and some of their equipment when taxes were increased on them. By 2013 the oil infrastructure was decrepit and lacking in skilled workers to staff what facilities are still operating, so Chavez (by then on his death bed) expropriated the remaining private holdings in the industry.

This was clearly unwise but it was not illegal and certainly was not a case of stealing anything. Moreover, the Venezuelan oil industry limped along with help from Bolivarian allies like the PRC and Russia because it is the country’s economic lifeline (and cash cow for the political elite dating back decades). So it is neither stolen or completely collapsed. As with many other things, the complexities of the matter appear to be unknown to or disregarded by Trump in favour of his own version of the “facts.”

Regardless, the PRC has stepped into the breech and invested in Venezuela’s oil industry. They may resist displacement or drive a hard bargain to be bought out. It will therefore not be as simple as Trump claims it to be for US firms to return and “make a lot of money” from Venezuelan oil.

It is these and myriad other “after entry” (to use a trade negotiator’s term) problems that will make or break the post-Maduro regime, whatever its composition. In the US the word is that the US “broke it so now owns it,” but the US will never do that. It has seldom lived up to its promises to its erstwhile allies in difficult and complex political cultures that it does not understand. It has a very short attention span, reinforced by domestic election cycles where foreign affairs is of secondary importance. So it is easily manipulated by opportunists and grifters seeking to capitalise on US military, political and economic support in order to advance their own fortunes (some would say this of the MAGA administration itself). If this sounds familiar it is because it is a very real syndrome of and pathology in US foreign affairs: focus on the military side of the equation, conduct kinetic operations, then try to figure out what else to do (nation-build? keep the peace? broker a deal amongst antagonistic locals?) rather than simply declare victory and depart. Instead, the US eventually leaves on terms dictated by others and with destruction in its wake.

One thing that should be obvious is that for all the jingoistic flag-waving amongst US conservatives and Venezuelan exiles, their problems when it comes to Venezuela may just have started. Because now they “own” what is to come, and if what comes is not the peace and prosperity promised by Trump, Rubio, Machado and others, then that is when things will start to get real. “Real” as in Great Power regional conflict real, because launching a war of opportunity on Venezuela in the current geopolitical context invites responses in kind from adversaries elsewhere that the US is ill-equipped to respond to, much less control.

The precedent has been set and somewhere, perhaps in more than one theatre, the invitation to reply is open.

Stay tuned and watch this space.

Conceptual clarity is important in any context but especially when it comes to international relations, foreign policy and the initiation of conflict. Recent events in the Middle East have shown once again how clarity in the use of words is often deliberately obfuscated in pursuit of political agendas.

Unlike what is being reported in the corporate media and by some Western defense officials, the Israeli strike on Iran was not “pre-emptive.” “Pre-emptive” means “a sudden strike thwarting an imminent attack.” That is not the case here. Iran was not about to imminently attack Israel before Israel, and then the US, attacked it. What Israel did was a preventive attack designed to degrade Iran’s nuclear R&D/storage facilities, missile launcher sites and command and control capabilities. The IDF attack focused on preventing and delaying development of Iran’s nuclear strike capability before it reached operational status and was telegraphed in advance (remember the US pulling out embassy staff and military families from facilities in the Middle East in anticipation of an tit-for-tat Iranian response). Both suspected weapons-grade nuclear stores as well as launching platforms were on the target list, as were those responsible for them. The US then followed up with some preventive strikes of its own, using so-called “bunker buster” bombs to penetrate deep into suspected Iranian nuclear development and storage sites. The Iranians responded by lobbing some short and medium-range missiles in the direction of the main US base in Qatar.

Just like his response to October 7 with the ethnic cleansing of Gaza and expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank, Netanyahu has seized his moment of opportunity because, quite frankly, he can. No one will stop him (certainly not the Iranians) and the US backs him, with most of the West tacitly supporting Israel with their silence or tepid responses to the conflict. This, I suspect, is due to Israel’s value as an intelligence partner of the West as much as any other reason.

The preventive nature and targets of the strikes may have helped moderate the Iranian response. On the other hand, killing the Revolutionary Guard Commander and Deputy Commander is a serious affront that will require a response in order for the Iranian regime to save face among its domestic audiences. So the escalation scenario is real, albeit not as bad as it could be. What is clear is that unlike preemptive attacks, the Israeli and US preventive attacks had no justification in the Laws of War (jus ad bellum) and were therefore illegal under International law. One might understand why the Israelis and US conducted the strikes and there is plenty of precedent for them, but that does not make them legal.

Deliberate conflation of the terms “pre-emptive” with “preventive” by security officials and media is either a product of conceptual ignorance or deliberate obfuscation in pursuit of  legalistic white-washing of a blatant violation of international law. If the latter is true we know why they do it, but that does not mean that we have to accept they’re doing so.

The notion of friction is drawn from the physical world and has many permutations. It is not confined to one particular element or dimension. It is about opposition, even if of similar elements or forces, including the element of will. For example, when they meet, fluids and air of different weights create turbulence. Fire on different fire extinguishes or expands. Earth on earth leads to crumbling or inertial momentum. The product of the combination of these physical forces, say fluid on air or earth or fire, depends on the relative weight of each. The same goes for psychological factors in human contests. Mutatis mutandis (i.e., with the necessary changes having been made), this is applicable to international relations. It may seem like a conceptual stretch but I see the use of the notion of friction in terms of international relations more as an example of conceptual transfer, using Clausewitz as a bridge between the physical and the political/diplomatic worlds (more on this later).

We have previously written about the systemic realignment and long transition in post Cold War international relations. The phrase refers to the transition from a unipolar post-Cold War international system dominated by the US (as the “hegemon” of the liberal internationalist world order) to a multipolar system that includes rising Great Powers like the PRC and India and constellations of middle powers such as the other BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, South Africa and recently added members like Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Ethiopia and perhaps Argentina (if it ratifies its accession)) as representatives of the rising “Global South.” In spite of their differences, these rising power blocs are counterpoised against what remains of the liberal institutionalist order, including the EU, Japan, South Korea and Australia. We noted that the long moment of transition is characterised by international norm erosion and increased rule violations and the consequent emergence of conflict as the systems regulator until a new status quo is established (and from which that new status quo emerges). That conflict may come in many guises–economic, diplomatic, cultural and, perhaps inevitably, military or some combination thereof. When conflicts turn military, the moment of force has arrived. And when force is met by opposing force, then friction is inevitable.

Here we extend the notion of friction to include the international moment that we are currently living in. That is, we have conceptually transferred the notion of friction to the international arena because “transfer” in this instance means applying the notion of friction (defined as conflict between competing entities) to a wider environment beyond the physical plane without distorting its original meaning. That avoids the methodologically dubious practice of conceptual stretching (where a term is stretched and distorted from its original meaning in order to analytically fit a different type of thing).

The long transitional moment is what has taken us to this point and allowed me to undertake the transfer, and it is here in the transitional trajectory from unipolar to multipolar international systems where the future global status quo will be defined. It is a decisive moment because it is the period where force has become the major arbiter of who rises and who falls in the systemic transitional shuffle. Given that there are many competitors in the international arena who are capable and willing to use force as well as other means to advance their interests, the global community appears to have reached its moment of friction, that is, the turning point in the long transitional process. Everything that has come before was the lead-in. Everything that comes after will be the result of this conflict-defined moment.

It is no exaggeration to write this. Besides the Ruso-Ukrainian war and the Israel-Hamas war (now extended into direct tit-for-tat confrontations between Iran and Israel), there is the armed stand-off in the Red Sea between Iran-backed Houthis and a naval coalition led by the US, the ongoing skirmishes between PRC naval forces and those of the Philippines, Vietnam and Western naval forces as well as the PRC military threats to Taiwan, the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict along the Israel-Lebanon border, Islamist violence in the Sahel and Eastern Africa as well as in Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other other parts of Central Asia, ongoing conflict in Syria between Assad’s Russian-backed forces, the remnants of ISIS and Western-backed rebels, the Turkish-Kurd conflict along the Turkish, Syrian and Iraqi borders, the civil war in Libya, escalating fighting between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda over mineral rich areas in and around the eastern Congolese city of Goma (in which private military companies and irredentist militias are also involved), narco-violence in Latin America that has reached the level of challenging state monopolies over organised violence in places like Ecuador and parts of Mexico, piracy in the Indian Ocean and in the Malacca Straits, cross-border ethno-religious conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan, ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, the PRC and Gaza, tribal conflict in Papua New Guinea and more. Norms and rules governing interstate as well as domestic forms of collective behaviour are honoured in the breach, not as a matter of course. Individuals, groups and States are increasingly atomised in their perspectives and interactions and resort to the ultimate default option–conflict–to pursue their interests in the face of other’s opposition.

Phillipines and PRC Coast Guard Ships clash in South China Sea. Source: UNN.

Friction extends to economics. The era of globalisation of free trade has ended as nations revert to post-pandemic protectionism or focus on geo-economic bloc-building, “near-“and “friend-shoring” in order to avoid supply chain bottlenecks resultant from commodity production concentration in a small number of countries. Although not a trade pact strictly speaking, the PRC Belt and Road Initiative undermines Western trade agreements like the TPPA and lesser regional arrangements because it ties developmental assistance and financing to Chinese industries and markets. Intellectual property and technology theft is wide-spread despite International conventions against them (ad not just by the PRC). The era of Bretton Woods is over and the agencies that were its institutional pillars (like the World Bank, IMF and regional agencies such as the IADB and ADB) are now increasingly challenged by entities emerging from the Global South like the China Development Bank and BRICS common market initiatives.

In addition, as part of international norms erosion and rules violations, many diplomatic agreements and treaties such as those prohibiting the use of chemical weapons and even genocide are also now largely ignored because, in the end, there is no international enforcement capability to reinforce what is written. The International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court can impose sanctions and issue arrest warrants but have no enforcement authority of their own. The UN can authorise peace-keeping missions and issue resolutions but is subject to Security Council vetoes on the one hand and belligerent non-compliance in the other (besides Israel ignoring UN demands for a cease-fire and humanitarian pauses in Gaza, people may forget that there are UN peace keeping missions in the Sinai, Golan Heights and Israel-Lebanon border, including NZDF personnel among them, because these “blue helmet” missions have had no ameliorating impact on the behaviour of the participants in the Israel-Hamas-Hezbollah-Syria conflict). Adverse rulings in international courts have not stopped the PRC island-building and aggressive military diplomacy in the South China Sea.

Even established conventions like the 1961 Vienna Treaty on diplomatic sovereignty are n ow being violated. Israel struck the Iranian diplomatic compound in Damascus in order to kill Iranian Revolutionary Guard leaders meeting there (which set off the tit-for-tat exchanges of missiles between the two countries) and Ecuador stormed the Mexican embassy in Quito in order to arrest a former Vice President convicted of corruption who had sought refuge there. The examples are many. Given that state of affairs, States and other actors increasingly turn to force to pursue their interests.

Whatever restraint was promoted by the laws of war and international conflict-resolution institutions during the post-Cold War interregnum has been abandoned or become exceptions to the new anarchic rule. One might even say that the international community is increasingly living in a state of nature, even if the terms “anarchy” and “state of nature” are loose interpretations of what Hobbes wrote about when he considered the Leviathan of international politics. But the basic idea should be clear: the liberal internationalist system has broken down and a new order is emerging from the conflict landscape that characterises the contemporary international arena.

Again, the friction is not just things like the military confrontations between Russia, Russian and Iranian-backed proxies in the Middle East and the PRC against a range of Western and Western-oriented nations in the Western Pacific. The BRICS have proposed to develop a single unitary currency to rival the Euro and are openly calling for a major overhaul of international organizations and institutions that they (rightfully so), see as made by and for post-colonial Western interests. But the question is whether what they have in mind as a replacement will be any better in addressing the needs of the Global South while respecting the autonomy of the Global North. Perhaps it will not and will just add another front to the moment of friction.

Empty UN Security Council Chamber. Source: United Nations.

We shall not continue enunciating the reasons why we believe that we have arrived at an international moment of friction (e.g. cultural degradation and social vulgarisation, etc.). That is because it is not yet possible to specify what will be come given that push has now led to shove, nor can we offer a solution set to the problems embedded in and underwriting this sorry moment. What we can say is, just like the fact that we need to learn to embrace uncertainty in the transitional process since outcomes are not assured and guarantees cannot be offered (although some industries like tobacco, liquor, weapons and insurance all profit during times of uncertainty and market hedging strategies become the common response of risk-adverse actors to uncertain economic times, so can be calculated or anticipated), so too we must, if not embrace, then learn to prepare for an era in which friction will be the dominant mode of international transaction for some time to come.

For small countries like NZ, repeating empty mantras about foreign policy “independence” no longer cuts it even as a slogan. The moment of international friction poses some existential questions about where NZ stands in the transitional process, how it will balance competing international interests when it comes to NZ foreign trade and security policy, and about who to side with when conflict comes closer to home.

Because it certainly will.

In International relations, realism refers to the view that States have interests and use relative power capabilities to pursue those interests in an anarchic world order lacking a superordinate power or Leviathan (that is, a condition that Hobbes referred to as the “state of nature’). Conversely, idealism refers to the better angels and perfectibility of humankind, seeing a desire for cooperation as being equally as strong as the urge to enter into conflict with others. Constructivism tries to bridge the gap between realism and idealism by positing that the creation and expansion of international institutions designed to foster cooperation and diminish conflict is a means to constrain anarchy in world affairs. International systems analysis serves as a meta-theory that sees the world order in quasi-organic terms, as an evolving entity that is more than the sum of its aggregate parts and which has an unconscious logic and process of its own that is a collective response to the machinations of individual States and other non-State actors, thereby mirroring the invisible hand of the economic market when it comes to determining efficiency at a systemic level.

Classic realism dates back to Otto von Bismarck and has it most recent exponents in Henry Kissinger and John Mearsheimer. Idealism draws its inspiration from Woodrow Wilson, and constructivism owes its reputation to Alexander Wendt. International systems theory is the brainchild of Morton Kaplan. The works of these authors and others such as Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Waltz continue to be the guideposts for current practitioners throughout the West (the list is illustrative only, as the number of authors involved in International relations theorising is great).

Realism posits that States have core and secondary interests; that threats are existential, imminent, or incidental; that States may have allies and enemies but do not have friends because interest, not affection is what defines their relationships; that wars are defensive or offensive in nature and are fought for existential and imminent reasons that can lead to pre-emptive strikes against existential and imminent threats as well as preventative attacks to reduce the possibility of an adversary reaching imminent threat status. Wars of opportunity are discouraged because they can lead to uncertain and unexpected outcomes and do not involve existential or imminent threats or core interests; wars of necessity are fought because they have to be, as they involve core interests and are fought against existential or imminent threats.

The current world moment has seen another development, one that is less salubrious in part because it originates from within authoritarian regimes like those governing Russia, the PRC, DPRK, Turkey, Iran and other contemporary dictatorships. The basic premise of this school of thought, which I will call “authoritarian realism” is that a new world order must be created that replaces the Western-centric liberal international order that has been present in world affairs for the last sixty or so years and which has dominated the landscape of international relations since the end of the Cold War. The latter is the system that we see in the form of the UN and other international organisations like the ILO, WTO, WHO, IMF, EU, OAS, OAU, PIF, SPC, NATO, SEATO, UNITAS, ASEAN, IADB, World Bank and a word salad of other regional and multilateral organisations.

For authoritarian realists, these organisations constitute an institutional straitjacket that constrains their freedom of manoeuvre on the global stage as well as that of most of what is now known as the “Global South:” post-colonial societies locked into subordinate positions as a consequence of Western imperialism and neo-imperialism. For authoritarian realists, the supposed ideals that liberal international institutions espouse and what they were constructed to pursue were done for and by Western colonial and neo-colonial powers seeking to establish an undisputed hierarchical status quo when it comes to how international affairs and foreign policy is conducted. More pointedly, in authoritarian realist eyes now is the time for that hierarchy to be challenged because the balance of power between the liberal democratic West and emerging non-Western contenders has shifted away from the former and towards the latter.

That is due to the fact that in the transitional period after the US lost its status as sole superpower “hegemon” in world affairs (stemming from 9/11, its ill-advised invasion of Iraq, long-term and futile engagement in Afghanistan and other conflict zones as well as it mounting internal divisions), the world has been moving to a new order in which other Great Powers compete for prominence, and in which the norms and rules-based liberal internationalist system has been replaced by norm erosion, norm violations and conflict on the part of uncooperative nation-States and non-State actors pursuing their goals outside of established institutional parameters.

This is, in other words, the state of nature or anarchy that Hobbes wrote about on which realists are most focused upon. Liberal rules and norms are no longer universally binding so the default option is to use national power capabilities to pursue individual and collective interests unfettered by self-binding adherence to dysfunctional and biased global institutions. It should therefore not be surprising that a new global arms race has developed over the past decade involving the full spectrum of force, including advanced submarines and nuclear-tipped intercontinental and intermediate missile systems.

In realist views power is relative rather than absolute and covers a host of material and ideological dimensions–economic base, diplomatic acumen, military might, internal political and social stability and ideological consensus, and so forth. Adversaries must calibrate their responses to others based on their assessments of relative aggregate power vis a viseach other as well as other States and international actors. For authoritarian realists it is clear that the West is in decline on most power dimensions, especially morally, culturally and politically as exemplified by the US in the last decade. The West still has economic, military and diplomatic power, but the rise of the PRC, India (nominally democratic but increasingly authoritarian in practice), Russia, Turkey, Iran and lesser dictatorships, coupled with an rightwing authoritarian shift in places like Hungary, the US, Italy and France, demonstrates that the halcyon days of liberal democracy are now past. All talk of climate change, work-life balance, LBGTQ rights and indigenous voice notwithstanding, progressivism (either class-or identity-based) is not making significant gains on the world stage, at least in the eyes of realists in both the West as well as the South and East.

Most fundamentally, what separates the democratic and authoritarian realists is not power per se, but values. For authoritarian realists the liberal democratic West is in decline, overcome by its own excesses, degeneracy, corruption, inefficiencies, vacilliatory leaders and other affronts to the “natural” or “traditional” order of things. In contrast, modern authoritarians (including those in the West) value hierarchy, efficiency, unity of purpose, the demographic superiority of their dominant in-groups, decisive leadership and strength of resolve. Freedoms of speech, association and features such as judicial independence from political authority are seen by authoritarians as easily exploitable Achilles Heels through which division and disunity can be fomented in liberal democracies using disinformation, misinformation, graft and other influence campaigns. Liberal democrats are egalitarian “betas.” Authoritarian realists are self-identified “Alphas.” Consequently, the current word moment is seen as a window of opportunity for authoritarian realists to press their relative (Alpha) advantage in order to re-draw the global geopolitical map and its institutional superstructure. This redrawing project can be considered the authoritarian (neo) version of constructivism on the world stage.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Hamas attack on Israel are examples of how Russia practices authoritarian realism directly and indirectly. The idea in the first instance was to redraw the map of Europe via direct aggression on a former vassal state, assuming that NATO and the EU were too divided and weak after BREXIT and Trump when it came to a collective response. That would impede military support for Ukraine, thereby facilitating a Russian victory on Europe’s southeaster flank, something that would further divide and weaken European resolve to confront Russia, leading in turn to more Russian “assertiveness” along its Western Front. Although that assumption proved false and in fact has backfired at least for the moment, the original concept of exploiting perceived Western weakness was and is clearly at play given ongoing divisions within Western nations about if and how to continue supporting the Ukrainian military effort. The end game of that conflict has yet to be written and could well play into Russia’s favour if extended indefinitely until Western electorates tire of supporting governments that continue to direct resources towards someone else’s war.

Hamas’s attack on Israel came after long-term planning, training and equipping involving its two major sponsors: Iran and Russia (who are military partners). Here the goal is to use the attack and the expected Israeli over-reaction (collective punishment of Gazan civilians for Hamas’s crimes) to sow discord within the Arab world and beyond. Although the official response from most Western governments and corporate media is (at times jingoistically) pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian demonstrations across the world have laid bare the broader social-political divisions aggregated around the conflict. Moreover, other than the US and UK, no major power is offering military support to Israel, and China and Russia have both condemned the Israeli response without mentioning Hamas in their pronouncements (and in fact are silent partners with Iran in supplying war materiel to Shiite militias like Hezbollah, Hamas, Houthis and the al-Sadr brigades in Iraq, even while both maintain strong economic ties to Israel). Sunni Arab governments such as those of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which have worked to normalise relations with Israel, have now had to backtrack in the face of unrest emanating from the Arab street, and the prospects of the conflict expanding to several fronts in Southern Lebanon, the Golan Heights and West Bank and even spilling over into a major regional war involving Syria, Iran and their patrons cannot be discounted. All of which will help redefine the geopolitics of the Middle East as well as its relationship to extra-regional interlocutors regardless of the specific outcome of this latest iteration of what has become a perpetual war.

In the South and East China Seas, the Sino-Indian border and the borderlands of Tibet and Bhutan, the PRC has engaged in aggressive military diplomacy, using force to annex foreign territories and present a new territorial status quo to its neighbours. As with the Russian interventions in Georgia and Ukraine, these usurpations have been declared unlawful by international courts and condemned by international organisations like the UN. And yet, because of alack of enforcement power–and will–on the part of the International community as currently represented by its institutional edifice of regional bodies and international organisations, these moves have been only lightly challenged, gone largely unpunished and certainly have not been reversed. The result is a new status quo in East Asia in which PRC sovereignty is claimed and de facto accepted well to the West of its recognised interior land borders and far to the South of its littoral seas.

PLANS carrier Liaoning (CV-16) conducting air operations with Shenyang J-15 PLAn fighter. Source: Wikipedia Commons 2022.

In the authoritarian realist mindset, moves to take advantage of the current moment in order to redraw the international geopolitical order, including its institutional foundations, are critical to their survival as independent powers. The PRC is driven by a desire to finally achieve its rightful place as a Great Power after centuries of humiliation by foreign powers. For Russia it is about re-claiming its place as an Empire. For lesser dictatorships it is about using national power to move unconstrained in the global arena, unencumbered by the protocols, norms and niceties of the liberal internationalist order. For all of these authoritarians, marshalling their resources in a common effort to undermine and replace Western institutions is a giant step towards real freedom of action in which relative power is the sole determinant of what a nation-State can and cannot do when it comes to foreign relations. If one is charitable, there might even be a bit of idealism attached to these various projects, as authoritarian realists use soft power applications in order to help the Global South out from under the yoke of Western post-colonial imperialism once and for all even as they empower themselves by doing so.

Some of this is evident in projects like the PRC Belt and Road Initiative, which is a global developmental project that is designed to challenge and replace Western developmental assistance and cement the PRC’s position as the foremost provider of infrastructure investment and financial aid to the Global South. In parallel, both Russia and China have expanded their military alliance networks in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa while courting more engagement with Latin American and Central Asia countries (India and Pakistan, respectively). Russia and the PRC have quietly revived and assumed stewardship of the so-called BRICS bloc of nations, including expanding its membership to include Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE in 2024. On both economic and military fronts, authoritarian realists are constructing an alternative to the liberal international order.

All of this manoeuvring has added a new twist to the long transitional moment that the international system is undergoing and in fact has altered the way in which the emerging systemic realignment is being shaped. Rather than the anticipated move from a unipolar world dominated by the US to a multipolar world in which the US shared space as a Great Power with emerging and re-emerging Great Powers like the PRC, India, Russia, Japan and perhaps Brazil and/or others, what is coming into shape is a new bipolar world made up of competing constellations or networks of like-minded nation-States, to which are being added non-State technology actors looking for economic opportunity in increasingly loose regulatory environments brought about by the erosion of international rules and norms in the field of transnational commerce.

Multipolarity is not always symmetric in nature or geopolitics. This is an aspartic acid molecule. Source: Wikimedia Commons 2017.

There is some time to go before the full shape of the new bipolar “constellation” order is confirmed. Authoritarian realists will retain their own nation-centric views even if their interests overlap in the bipolar constellation format. Western nations will need to revise their approaches to world affairs and in particular their positions vis a vis the post-colonial Global South given the competition for the South’s attention provided by the authoritarian realists. All of this makes for uncertain and fluid times in which the best hedge is multi-level power multiplication with focused application by the emerging constellations of competing States and associated non-State actors. How the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza turn out will give us a relatively short-term glimpse into what the geopolitical order will look like by the end of the decade because technology, will and multinational commitment are now being put to the test in both new and old ways in those arenas.

Two things are worth noting. At this critical juncture it is by no means assured which side of the emergent bipolar constellation balance of power will be favoured over the long term. What is certain is that only one side is actively working to re-make the world order in that image, Those are the authoritarian realists.

Although individual Western states configured their specific interpretations of the broader strategic shift to their individual geopolitical circumstances, the broader rationale of SOLIC (Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict) made sense. The former Soviet Union was in disarray, with Russia militarily weakened, diplomatically shrunken, economically plundered and political crippled. Its former Republics were yet unable to independently exploit their material resources, and some of its former vassal states in the Warsaw Pact were seeking NATO membership. NATO itself had lost it main purpose for being, since the threat of major war with the USSR (the original rationale for its creation) no longer existed. The PRC had yet to enjoy the economic fruits of fully embracing capitalism in order to buy, borrow and steal its way to great power status and thereby shift away from its defensive land-based strategic posture. In a swathe of regions “failed states” awash in local armed disputes replaced proxy regimes and propped up despots. In other words, there were no “big” threats that required “big” wars because there were no “peers” to fight. The strategic emphasis shifted accordingly to countering these types of threats, often under the guise of “peace-keeping” and nation-building multinational missions such as the ill-fated ISAF mission in Afghanistan.

More broadly, the strategic shift seemed right because the world had moved from a tight bipolar system during the Cold War, where the US and USSR led military blocs armed with nuclear weapons, to a unipolar system in which the US was the military, economic and political “hegemon” dominating global affairs. At the time US strategists believed that they could single-handedly prevail in 2.5 major regional wars against any adversary or combination of adversaries.That turned out to be a pipe dream but it was the order of the day until the sequels to 9/11. Even then, the so-called “war against terrorism” was asymmetric and largely low-intensity in comparative terms. Other than the initial phases of the invasion of Iraq, all other conflicts of the early 2000s have been asymmetric, with coalitions of Western actors fighting much weaker assortments of irregulars who use guerrilla tactics on land and who did not contest the air and maritime spaces around them. As has happened in the past, the longer these conflicts went on the better the chances of an “insurgent” victory. Afghanistan is the best modern example of that truism but the persistence of al-Shabbab in Northern Africa or emergence of ISIS/DAESH from the Sunni Triangle in Iraq’s Anbar Province in the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist regime demonstrates the validity of the notion that guerrilla wars are best fought by insurgents as protracted wars on home terrain. In other words, apply a death by a thousand cuts strategy to foreign invaders until their will to prolong the fight is sapped.

When I was in the Pentagon in the early 1990s the joke was that bomber pilots and tank operators would need to update the resumes in order to become commercial pilots and bus or truck drivers. Money moved away from big ticket items and into the SOLIC community, with a rapid expansion of SEAL, Green Beret, Ranger and Marine Recon units designed to operate in small group formations behind or within enemy lines for extended periods of time. If the Big War moment culminated in “Shock and Awe,” the SOLIC strategy was two pronged when it came to counter-insurgency (COIN) objectives: either decapitation strikes against “high value targets” or a hearts and minds campaign in which cultural operations (such as building schools, bridges and toilets) supplemented kinetic operations led by allied indigenous forces using the elements of military superiority provided by Western forces. This required familiarisation with local cultures and indigenous terrain, so investment in language training and anthropological and sociological studies of societies in which the SOLIC units operated was undertaken, something that was not a priority under Big War strategies because the objective there is to kill enemies and incapacitate their war effort as efficiently as possible, not to understand their culture or their motivations.

SOLIC turned out to be a mixed bag. The US and its allies found out, yet again, that much as like in Viet Nam, indigenous guerrilla forces were often ingenious, inspired and persistent. They learned to get out of the way when Western forces were massed against them, and they knew how to utilise hit and run tactics to frustrate their enemies. It was only when they made mistakes, like ISIS/DAESH’s attempt to create a territorially based Caliphate in Northern Irag and Northern Syria, and then engaged in a protracted defence of its base city Mosul, that they were decisively defeated. Even then remnants of this group and others continue to regroup and return to the fight even after suffering tremendous setbacks on the battlefields. As the saying goes, it is not who suffers the least losses that wins the fight, but instead it is those who can sustain the most losses and keep on fighting that ultimately prevail in a protracted irregular warfare scenario. Again, the Taliban prove the point.

During the time that the West was engaged in its SOLIC adventures, the PRC, Russia and emerging powers like India invested heavily in military modernisation and expansion programs. While the US and its allies expended blood and treasure on futile efforts to bring democracy to deeply entrenched authoritarian societies from the barrel of a gun, emerging great powers concentrated their efforts on developing military power commensurate with their ambitions. Neither the PRC, Russia or India did anything to support the UN mandates authorising armed interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in fact Russia and the PRC funnelled small arms to the Taliban via Pakistan, another yet nuclear armed but unstable state whose utility lies in its strategic ambiguity when it comes to big power conflicts. That fence-straddling posture will eventually be called.

However the future specifics unfold, that move to new or renewed militarisation was an early sign that the unipolar moment was coming to an end and that a multipolar order was in the making. Meanwhile, politics in the West turned inwards and rightwards, the US withdrew from Iraq and ten years later from Afghanistan without making an appreciable difference on local culture and society, with the entire liberal democratic world responding weakly to the PRC’s neo-imperialist behaviour in its near abroad and increasing Russian bellicosity with regards to former Soviet states, Georgia and Ukraine in particular (to say nothing of their direct influence operations and political interference in places like the US, UK, Germany and Australia). The challenges to US “hegemony” were well underway long before Donald Trump dealt US prestige and power a terminal blow.

Things on the strategic front came to a head when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The West and NATO had responded weakly to the annexation of the Donbas region and Crimea by pro-Russian separatists and Russian “Green Men” ( professional soldiers in green informs without distinctive insignia) in 2014. The same had occurred in Georgia in 2008, when Russian forces successfully backed pro-Russian irredentist groups in the Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Vladimir Putin read the West’s response to these two incursions as a sign of weakness and division within NATO and the liberal democratic world in general. He figured that an invasion of Ukraine would be quick and relatively painless because many Ukrainians are of Russian descent and would welcome his troops and prefer to be part of Mother Russia rather than a Ukrainian government presided over by a comedian. NATO and the US would dither and divide over how to respond and Russia would prevail with its land grab. And then, of course, Russia has a legion of hackers dedicated to subverting Western democracy in cyberspace and on social media (including in NZ) and better yet, has acolytes and supporters in high places, particularly in the US Republican Party and conservative political movements the world over.

In spite of all of these points of leverage, none of the Kremlin’s assumptions about the invasion turned out to be true. Russian intelligence was faulty, framed to suit Putin’s vainglorious desires rather than objectively inform him of what was awaiting his forces. Instead of a walk-over, the invasion stiffened Ukrainian resolve, ethnic Russians in Ukraine did not overwhelmingly welcome his troops and instead of dividing, NATO reunified and even has begin to expand with the upcoming addition of Finland and Sweden now that the original threat of the Russian Bear (and the spectre of the USSR) is back as the unifying agent.

Meanwhile the PRC has increased its threats against Taiwan, completely militarised significant parts of the South China Sea, encroached on the territorial waters and some island possessions of neighbouring littoral states, engaged in stealthy territorial expansion in places like Bhutan, clashed with Indian forces in disputed Himalayan territory and cast a blind eye on the provocative antics of its client state, North Korea. It has used soft power and direct influence campaigns, including wide use of bribery, to accrue influence in Africa, Latin America and the South Pacific. It arms Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua in spite of their less than splendid regime characteristics. It violates international treaties and conventions such as the Law of the Sea, the sovereignty of airspace over other nation’s territories and various fishery protection compacts. It uses its state-backed companies for espionage purposes, engages in industrial espionage and intellectual property theft on grand scale and acts like an environmental vandal in its quest for raw material imports from other parts of the world (admittedly, it is not alone in this). It does not behave, in other words as a responsible, law-abiding international citizen. And it is now armed to the teeth, including a modernised missile fleet that is clearly designed to be used against US forces in the Western Pacific and beyond, including the US mainland if nuclear war becomes a possibility.

PLAN Marines practice joint amphibious assault exercises with Russian Marines in 2017. Photo: Xinghua.

All of this sabre rattling and actual war-mongering by the PRC, Russia and allies like Iran and North Korea were reason enough for Western strategists to reconsider the Big War thesis. But it is the actual fighting in Ukraine that has jolted analysts to re-valuing full spectrum warfare from the seabed to outer space.

Since 2016 the US Defense Department has begin to shift its strategic gaze towards fighting Big Wars. In its 2022 National Defense Strategy and related documents, this orientation is explicit, mentioning north the PRC and Russia as main threats.For its part, the PRC has responded in kind and warns that US “interventionism” will pay a heavy price should it interfere with China’s rightful claims on its near abroad (which on Chinese maps extend well into the Pacific). The DPRK is accelerating its ballistic missile tests and openly talking about resuming nuclear warhead testing. India is going full bore with aircraft carrier and submarine fleet expansion. Germany is re-arming as its supplies Ukraine with increasingly sophisticated battle systems while the UK and Australia are raising their defense spending above 2 percent of GDP (the much vaunted but until recently ignored NATO standard). France has withdrawn from its SOLIC operations in North and Central Africa in order to prepare for larger conflicts involving its core interests. Japan has revised its long-standing pacifist constitution and has begun to add offensive weapons into its inventory as well as more closely integrating with the 5 Eyes Anglophone signals intelligence network.

The arms race is on and the question now is whether a security dilemma is being created that will lead to a devastating miscalculation causing a major war (security dilemmas are a situation where one State, seeing that a rival State is arming itself seemingly out of proportion to its threat environment, begins to arm itself in response, thereby prompting the rival State to increase its military expenditures even more, leading to a spiralling escalation of armament purchases and deployments that at some point can lead to a misreading of a situation and an armed clash that in turn escalates into war).

The race to the Big War is also being fuelled by middle powers like those of the Middle East (Israel included) and even Southeast Asia, where States threatened by Chinese expansionism are doubling down on military modernisation programs. A number of new security agreements such as the Quad and AUKUS have been signed into force, exacerbating PRC concerns that its being ring-fenced by hostile Western adversaries and their Asian allies. As another saying goes, “perception is everything.”

None of this means that large States will abandon SOLIC anytime soon. Special forces will be used against armed irregular groups throughout the world as the occasion requires. But in terms of military strategic doctrines, all of the major powers are now preparing for the next Big War. That is precisely why alliances are being renewed or created, because allied firepower is a force multiplier that can prove decisive in the battle theater.

One thing needs to be understood about Big Wars. The objective is that they be short and to the point. That is, overwhelming force is applied in the most efficient way in order to break the enemy’s physical capabilities and will to fight in the shortest amount of time. Then a political outcome is imposed. What military leaders do not want is what is happening to the Russians in Ukraine: bogged down by a much smaller force fighting on home soil with the support of other large States that see the conflict as a proxy for the real thing. The idea is get the fight over with as soon as possible, which means bringing life back to the notion of “overwhelming force,” but this time against a peer competitor.

B-2 Stealth Bomber on training run. Photo: USAF.

The trickle down effects of this strategic shift are being felt in Australasia. Singapore has agreed to hosting forward basing facilities for a US littoral combat ship and its shore-based complement as well as regular port calls by US Navy capital ships such as aircraft carriers. The Philippines have renewed a bilateral defense pact with the US after years of estrangement. Australia has aligned its strategic policy with that of the US and with the signing of the AUKUS agreement on nuclear-powered submarines and adjacent military technologies has become a full fledged US military ally across the leading edges of military force (Australia will now become only the second nation that the US shares nuclear submarine technologies with, after the UK). Even New Zealand is making the shift, with recent Defense White Papers and other command announcements all framing the upcoming strategic environment as one involving great power competition (in which the PRC is seen as the regional disruptor) with the potential for conflict in the South and Western Pacific (with a little concern about the adverse impact of climate change of Pacific communities thrown in). In other words, the times they are a’changin’ in New Zealand’s strategic landscape. For NZ, comfort of being in a benign strategic environment no longer applies.

It remains to be seen how long New Zealand’s foreign policy elite fully comprehend what their military commanders are telling them about what is on the strategic horizon. They may well still cling to the idea that they can trade preferentially with the PRC, stay out of Russian inspired conflicts and yet receive full security guarantees from its Anglophone partners. But if they indeed think that way, they are in for an unpleasant surprise because one way or another NZ will be pulled into the next Big War whether it likes it or not.

It is worth pausing to consider the broader context in which these developments have played out, both in terms of background context as well as some of the specific issues canvassed during the junket. First, we must address some key concepts. Be forewarned: this is long.

China on the Rise and Transitional Conflict.

For the last three decades the PRC has been a nation on the ascent. Great in size, it is now a Great Power with global ambitions. It has the second largest economy in the world and the largest active duty military, including the largest navy in terms of ships afloat. It has a sophisticated space program and is a high tech world leader. It is the epicenter of consumer non-durable production and one of the largest consumers of raw materials and primary goods in the world. Its GDP growth during that time period has been phenomenal and even after the Covid-induced contraction, it has averaged well over 7 percent yearly growth in the decade since 2011.

The list of measures of its rise are many so will not be elaborated upon here. The hard fact is that the PRC is a Great Power and as such is behaving on the world stage in self-conscious recognition of that fact. In parallel, the US is a former superpower that has now descended to Great Power status. It is divided domestically and diminished when it comes to its influence abroad. Some analysts inside and outside both countries believe that the PRC will eventually supplant the US as the world’s superpower or hegemon. Whether that proves true or not, the period of transition between one international status quo (unipolar, bipolar or multipolar) is characterised by competition and often conflict between ascendent and descendent Great Powers as the contours of the new world order are thrashed out. In fact, conflict is the systems regulator during times of transition. Conflict may be diplomatic, economic or military, including war. As noted in previous posts, wars during moments of international transition are often started by descendent powers clinging or attempting a return to the former status quo. Most recently, Russia fits the pattern of a Great Power in decline starting a war to regain its former glory and, most importantly, stave off its eclipse. We shall see how that turns out.

Spheres of Influence.

More immediate to our concerns, the contest between ascendent and descendent Great Powers is seen in the evolution of their spheres of influence. Spheres of influence are territorially demarcated areas in which a State has dominant political, economic, diplomatic and military sway. That does not mean that the areas in question are as subservient as colonies (although they may include former colonies) or that this influence is not contested by local or external actors. It simply means at any given moment some States—most often Great Powers—have distinct and recognized geopolitical spheres of influence in which they have primacy of interest and operate as the dominant regional actor.

In many instances spheres of influence are the object of conquest by an ascendent power over a descendent power. Historic US dominance of the Western Hemisphere (and the Philippines) came at the direct expense of a Spanish Empire in decline. The rise of the British Empire came at the expense of the French and Portuguese Empires, and was seen in its appropriation of spheres of influence that used to be those of its diminished competitors. The British and Dutch spheres of influence in East Asia and Southeast Asia were supplanted by the Japanese by force, who in turn was forced in defeat to relinquish regional dominance to the US. Now the PRC has made its entrance into the West Pacific region as a direct peer competitor to the US.

Peripheral, Shatter and Contested Zones.

Not all spheres of influence have equal value, depending on the perspective of individual States. In geopolitical terms the world is divided into peripheral zones, shatter zones and zones of contestation. Peripheral zones are areas of the world where Great Power interests are either not in play or are not contested. Examples would be the South Pacific for most of its modern history, North Africa before the discovery of oil, the Andean region before mineral and nitrate extraction became feasible or Sub-Saharan Africa until recently. In the modern era spheres of influence involving peripheral zones tend to involve colonial legacies without signifiant economic value.

Shatter zones are those areas where Great Power interests meet head to head, and where spheres of influence clash. They involve territory that has high economic, cultural or military value. Central Europe is the classic shatter zone because it has always been an arena for Great Power conflict. The Middle East has emerged as a potential shatter zone, as has East Asia. The basic idea is that these areas are zones in which the threat of direct Great Power conflict (rather than via proxies or surrogates) is real and imminent, if not ongoing. Given the threat of escalation into nuclear war, conflict in shatter zones has the potential to become global in nature. That is a main reason why the Ruso-Ukrainian War has many military strategists worried, because the war is not just about Russia and Ukraine or NATO versus Russian spheres of influence.

In between peripheral and shatter zones lie zones of contestation. Contested zones are areas in which States vie for supremacy in terms of wielding influence, but short of direct conflict. They are often former peripheral zones that, because of the discovery of material riches or technological advancements that enhance their geopolitical value, become objects of dispute between previously disinterested parties. Contested zones can eventually become part of a Great Power’s sphere of influence but they can also become shatter zones when Great Power interests are multiple and mutually disputed to the point of war.

Strategic Balancing.

The interplay of States in and between their spheres of influence or as subjects of Great Power influence-mongering is at the core of what is known as strategic balancing. Strategic balancing is not just about relative military power and its distribution, but involves the full measure of a State’s capabilities, including hard, soft, smart and sharp powers, as it is brought to bear on its international relations.

That is the crux of what is playing out in the South Pacific today. The South Pacific is a former peripheral zone that has long been within Western spheres of influence, be they French, Dutch, British and German in the past and French, US and (as allies and junior partners) Australia and New Zealand today. Japan tried to wrest the West Pacific from Western grasp and ultimately failed. Now the PRC is making its move to do the same, replacing the Western-oriented sphere of influence status quo with a PRC-centric alternative.

The reason for the move is that the Western Pacific, and particularly the Southwestern Pacific has become a contested zone given technological advances and increased geopolitical competition for primary good resource extraction in previously unexploited territories. With small populations dispersed throughout an area ten times the size of the continental US covering major sea lines of communication, trade and exchange and with valuable fisheries and deep water mineral extraction possibilities increasingly accessible, the territory covered by the Pacific Island Forum countries has become a valuable prize for the PRC in its pursuit of regional supremacy. But in order to achieve this objective it must first displace the West as the major extra-regional patron of the Pacific Island community. That is a matter of strategic balancing as a prelude to achieving strategic supremacy.

Three Island Chains and Two Level Games.

The core of the PRC strategy rests in a geopolitical conceptualization known as the “three island chains” This is a power projection perspective based on the PRC eventually gaining control of three imaginary chains of islands off of its East Coast. The first island chain, often referred to those included in the PRC’s “Nine Dash Line” mapping of the region, is bounded by Japan, Northwestern Philippines, Northern Borneo, Malaysia and Vietnam and includes all the waters within it. These are considered to be the PRC’s “inner sea” and its last line of maritime defense. This is a territory that the PRC is now claiming with its island-building projects in the South China Sea and increasingly assertive maritime presence in the East China Sea and the straits connecting them south of Taiwan.

The second island chain extends from Japan to west of Guam and north of New Guinea and Sulawesi in Indonesia, including all of the Philippines, Malaysian and Indonesian Borneo and the island of Palau. The third island chain, more aspirational than achievable at the moment, extends from the Aleutian Islands through Hawaii to New Zealand. It includes all of the Southwestern Pacific island states. It is this territory that is being geopolitically prepared by the PRC as a future sphere of influence, and which turns it into a contested zone.

The 3 Island Chains. (Source: Yoel Sano, Fitch Solutions)

The PRC approach to the Southwestern Pacific can be seen as a Two Level game. On one level the PRC is attempting to negotiate bilateral economic and security agreements with individual island States that include developmental aid and support, scholarship and cultural exchange programs, resource management and security assistance, including cyber security, police training and emergency security reinforcement in the event of unrest as well as “rest and re-supply” and ”show the flag” port visits by PLAN vessels. The Solomon Island has signed such a deal, and Foreign Minister Wang has made similar proposals to the Samoan and Tongan governments (the PRC already has this type of agreement in place with Fiji). The PRC has signed a number of specific agreements with Kiribati that lay the groundwork for a more comprehensive pact of this type in the future. With visits to Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and East Timor still to come, the approach has been replicated at every stop on Minister Wang’s itinerary. Each proposal is tailored to individual island State needs and idiosyncrasies, but the general blueprint is oriented towards tying development, trade and security into one comprehensive package.

None of this comes as a surprise. For over two decades the PRC has been using its soft power to cultivate friends and influence policy in Pacific Island states. Whether it is called checkbook or debt diplomacy (depending on whether developmental aid and assistance is gifted or purchased), the PRC has had considerable success in swaying island elite views on issues of foreign policy and international affairs. This has helped prepare the political and diplomatic terrain in Pacific Island capitals for the overtures that have been made most recently. That is the thrust of level one of this strategic game.

That opens the second level play. With a number of bilateral economic and security agreements serving as pillars or pilings, the PRC intends to propose a multinational regional agreement modeled on them. The first attempt at this failed a few days ago, when Pacific Island Forum leaders rejected it. They objected to a lack of detailed attention to specific concerns like climate change mitigation but did not exclude the possibility of a region-wide compact sometime in the future. That is exactly what the PRC wanted, because now that it has the feedback to its initial, purposefully vague offer, it can re-draft a regional pact tailored to the specific shared concerns that animate Pacific Island Forum discussions. Even if its rebuffed on second, third or fourth attempts, the PRC is clearly employing a “rinse, revise and repeat” approach to the second level aspect of the strategic game.

An analogy the captures the PRC approach is that of an off-shore oil rig. The bilateral agreements serve as the pilings or legs of the rig, and once a critical mass of these have been constructed, then an overarching regional platform can be erected on top of them, cementing the component parts into a comprehensive whole. In other words, a sphere of influence.

Western Reaction: Knee-Jerk or Nuanced?

The reaction amongst the traditional patrons has been expectedly negative. Washington and Canberra sent off high level emissaries to Honiara once the Solomon Islands-PRC deal was leaked before signature, in a futile attempt to derail it. The newly elected Australian Labor government has sent its foreign minister, sworn into office under urgency, twice to the Pacific in two weeks (Fiji, Tonga and Samoa) in the wake of Minister Wang’s visits. The US is considering a State visit for Fijian Prime Minister (and former dictator) Frank Baimimarama. The New Zealand government has warned that a PRC military presence in the region could be seriously destabilising and signed on to a joint US-NZ statement at the end of Prime Minister Ardern’s trade and diplomatic junket to the US re-emphasising (and deepening) the two countries’ security ties in the Pacific pursuant to the Wellington and Washington Agreements of a decade ago.

The problem with these approaches is two-fold, one general and one specific. If countries like New Zealand and its partners proclaim their respect for national sovereignty and independence, then why are they so perturbed when a country like the Solomon Islands signs agreements with non-traditional patrons like the PRC? Besides the US history of intervening in other countries militarily and otherwise, and some darker history along those lines involving Australian and New Zealand actions in the South Pacific, when does championing of sovereignty and independence in foreign affairs become more than lip service? Since the PRC has no history of imperialist adventurism in the South Pacific and worked hard to cultivate friends in the region with exceptional displays of material largesse, is it not a bit neo-colonial paternalistic of Australia, NZ and the US to warn Pacific Island states against engagement with it? Can Pacific Island states not find out themselves what is in store for them should they decide to play the Two Level Game?

More specifically, NZ, Australia and the US have different security perspectives regarding the South Pacific. The US has a traditional security focus that emphasises great power competition over spheres of influence, including the Western Pacific Rim. It has openly said that the PRC is a threat to the liberal, rules-based international order (again, the irony abounds) and a growing military threat to the region (or at least US military supremacy in it). As a US mini-me or Deputy Sheriff in the Southern Hemisphere, Australia shares the US’s traditional security perspective and emphasis when it comes to threat assessments, so its strategic outlook dove-tails nicely with its larger 5 Eyes partner.

New Zealand, however, has a non-traditional security perspective on the Pacific that emphasises the threats posed by climate change, environmental degradation, resource depletion, poor governance, criminal enterprise, poverty and involuntary migration. As a small island state, NZ sees itself in a solidarity position with and as a champion of its Pacific Island neighbours when it comes to representing their views in international fora. Yet it is now being pulled by its Anglophone partners into a more traditional security perspective when it comes to the PRC in the Pacific, something that in turn will likely impact on its relations with the Pacific Island community, to say nothing of its delicate relationship with the PRC.

In any event, the Southwestern Pacific is a microcosmic reflection of an international system in transition. The issue is whether the inevitable conflicts that arise as rising and falling Great Powers jockey for position and regional spheres of influence will be resolved via coercive or peaceful means, and how one or the other means of resolution will impact on their allies, partners and strategic objects of attention such as the Pacific Island community.

In the words of the late Donald Rumsfeld, those are the unknown unknowns.

While pursuing my Ph.D. I was a student of one of the US’s original nuclear strategists, someone who had been a targeter during the planning for the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In his old age he taught nuclear strategy and wrote several books and articles that outlined the logic of nuclear deterrence that obtained from the end of WW2 through the early 1980s (One was titled “Moving Toward Life in a Nuclear Armed Crowd”). It was from him that I learned that the original logic of deterrence, Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) was being replaced as early as the late 1970s with something known as Flexible Response. That evolution continues to this day, with additional nuclear armed actors now factored into the equation.

Iraq’s Anbar Province, a Sunni stronghold, is now under IS control. Tikrit was occupied a few months ago, Falluja and Haditha fell some weeks ago and Ramadi was conquered a week ago. To the northeast, Mosul remains in IS hands, while Baiji (site of major oil processing facilities) and Samarra remain under siege. With dozens of smaller towns in Anbar and elsewhere under IS rule, to include a front extending south-southeast from Tikrit to the eastern Baghdad suburbs along the Tigris River basin, the advance on the capital appears inevitable. Or is it? In this post I attempt to outline the strategic situation that the NZDF has thrust itself into.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk

First, let’s look at the positives (from the West’s perspective). There is no way that IS can physically take and occupy Baghdad. A city of nearly four million people, most of them Shiia, Baghdad is a fortress when compared to what IS has tackled so far. It has concentrated military forces , is the seat of national government and is the location of numerous foreign military and diplomatic missions. It is therefore a strategic asset that Iran, the West and Iraqi Shiites cannot afford to lose. Moreover, IS is stretched too thin on the ground in Iraq to have the numbers to engage effective urban warfare against a determined and concentrated enemy, has no air power and does not have enough Sunni support in Baghdad to make up for the lack of numbers on the ground (A digression here: IS has a Salafist ideology buttressed by Ba’athist political and military organisation. Much of its leadership is drawn from the ranks of displaced Sunni Ba’athist officials in the Saddam Hussein regime, and it enjoys considerable support in Sunni Iraq. This accounts in significant measure for its success in Anbar).

Although not located in Anbar, Mosul, Samarra and Tikrit also have Sunni majorities, so the trend has been for IS to target and conquer urban areas where its sectarian support is matched by demographic numbers. The question remains as to whether its military campaign can be equally successful in Shiia dominant areas to the east and south of Baghdad, where Iranian forces also have a presence. That appears unlikely.

On the negative side from the West’s perspective, IS appears to be engaging in a pincer movement designed to surround and isolate western and northern Baghdad from the rest of the country. If it able to control the land routes in those areas it can cut off not only supply lines between Baghdad and its allied forces in the north and west, including Camp Taji where the NZDF is supposed to be stationed (I say supposedly because I have read an unconfirmed report that the NZDF deployment are stuck in Baghdad because of the increase in IS hostilities), but it can also proceed to apply a chokehold on supplies entering Baghdad via the north and west. As part of this strategy IS will target the power grid that supplies Baghdad, the majority of which comes from its north (including the power plant at Baiji, now under siege) as well as water supplies drawn from reservoirs in the northwest and piped to Baghdad. This will not be fatal if the Baghdad government can keep its land lines of supply in the south and east open, but it certainly will hinder its ability to keep some (more than likely Sunni) neighbourhoods stocked with life essentials, which will only exacerbate their alienation from central authorities and perhaps contribute to their support for IS.

Moreover, if more difficult to achieve, IS does not need to control all of the territory to the east and south of Baghdad in order to choke it off. All it has to do is establish a thin mobile front that can gain and hold intercept points on the major highways surrounding the city (and relatively close to the city limits at that, which obviates the need to fight Shiias further afield). This includes targeting power and water supplies coming from the south and east.

In other words, IS does not have to achieve strategic depth in order to choke the arterial routes leading into the city from the south and east. Coalition airpower may be able to stave off this eventuality for a while but without ground control that allows unimpeded re-supply, Baghdad will be operating on a scarcity regime within a few months. Resupply by air, while significant, cannot substitute for land supply, and it is worth noting that Baghdad airport as well as the infamous Abu Ghraib prison (where many Sunni militants are held) lie west of Baghdad and have recently been the subject of IS attacks. In fact, in the last year both Abu Ghraib and the prison at Taji have been the scenes of major prisoner jailbreaks orchestrated by IS, with many of the escapees now thought to have joined its ranks in an effort to increase its knowledge of the local fighting terrain.

A microcosmic version of this scenario involves the city of Taji, location of Camp Taji, the huge military base that is the destination point for the NZDF contribution to the anti-IS coalition. Straddling national highway one 20 miles northwest of Baghdad west of the Tigris river, Taji is the last significant town on the run south into Baghdad. With the old Saddam-era and later US military base capable of housing a mix of 40,000 Iraqi and foreign troops (although in reality there are far less on base), and home to a 1700 meter runway and Iraqi’s armoured corps, it is now the focal point of foreign training of Iraqi troops. As such and because of its location, it is a major target for IS, which controls the territory immediately east of the Tigris (about 11 miles away from the base). Since Taji is only 30 miles from Falluja, the presumption is that IS will mass it’s force to the east, west and north of Taji, then launch offensives designed to gain control of the town and highway. That would leave the base cut off from land routes and force it to rely on air re-supply and/or fight its way out of containment. If that happens it is doubtful that the NZDF troops will hunker down “behind the wire” and do nothing else. Whatever the scenario, isolating Camp Taji from Baghdad is a primary IS objective in the next months and will be essential to any move to surround and squeeze the capital city. The good news, from the West’s perspective, is that in order to isolate the base and sever its land link to Baghdad, IS will have to mass significant numbers of fighters, artillery and armour, something that makes it vulnerable to coalition air strikes.

The bottom line is that a successful pincer movement will slowly strangle and starve Baghdad, something that it turn will force the Iraq government to seek a political settlement on terms favourable to IS. That will entail the ejection of foreign forces and partition of Iraq. IS will claim Sunni-dominant areas and merge them with the territory it holds in Syria (IS controls roughly half of Syria’s territory) to establish its caliphate. It has no real interest in Iraqi Kurdistan because it cannot defeat the Peshmerga and other than the oil facilities on its western flank, Kurdistan has no strategic assets. Likewise, Shiia dominant areas of Iraq are too large and populated for IS to occupy, plus any incursion into Iraqi Shiia border territory with Iran will invite a military response from the latter. But where IS is in control, it has already begun to provide the basic services that the Iraq and Syrian governments no longer can, which raises the possibility that partition is already a fait acompli.

As stated in The Economist: “The danger is that the IS caliphate is becoming a permanent part of the region. The frontiers will shift in the coming months. But with the Kurds governing themselves in the north-east, and the Shias in the south, Iraqis question the government’s resolve in reversing IS’s hold on the Sunni north-west. “Partition is already a reality,” sighs a Sunni politician in exile. “It just has yet to be mapped.” (“The caliphate strikes back,” The Economist (on line) http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21651762-fall-ramadi-shows-islamic-state-still-business-caliphate-strikes-back, May 23, 2015).

Thanks to the Iraqi Army abandoning their positions and leaving their equipment behind, IS has captured significant amounts of modern US made weaponry, including the equivalent of several armoured columns. It now has anti-aircraft munitions that eventually will score hits on coalition aircraft. Its fighters are a mix of seasoned veterans and unprofessional jihadis, but IS field commanders have been judicious in their use of each (for example, employing inexperienced foreign jihadists in first wave assaults or in suicide bombings using construction vehicles to breach enemy lines, followed by artillery fire and hardened ground forces). What that means is that IS has the realistic ability to cut off Baghdad’s land access to its near north and west, which will force the Iraq military and coalition partners to stage a counteroffensive to reclaim those lines of supply.

IS relies on mobility, manoeuvre and the selective application of mass force to achieve it ends. The fall of Ramadi was accomplished by rapidly surrounding it from the north and east and focusing firepower on one garrison in it. IS also has relatively unencumbered supply lines coming from Syria, and many suspect that supplies also come from Saudi Arabia and Turkey (Iraq has land borders with those states as well as Iran, Jordan and Kuwait. There is a strong belief–which could well be confirmed by the document retrieval made during the US Special Forces raid on a senior IS financier’s hideout in Syria– that the Saudis in particular are doing more than just financing IS as a hedge against Iran). The best check against its advances is demographic density in Shiia dominant parts of the country and the fact that any adventurous move in the east or south will be met by serious Shiia militia and Iranian military resistance (Sadr City, a bastion of Shiia militias, lies on the northeast of Baghdad and Basra, a major oil refining centre and home of the so-called (Shiia) marsh Arabs, is the capital of the south).

Source: Institute for the Study of War, September 26, 2014.

For those who believe that coalition air power is enough to stem the tide of IS advances, let me simply point out that history has shown that air power alone cannot determine success in a territorial conflict, especially an irregular or unconventional one. Vietnam is a case in point. In the battle for Ramadi the coalition conducted 275 air strikes and still saw the city fall to IS in the space of days. Thousands of coalition air strikes have been launched against IS and while they slowed down many IS advances and were decisive in battles between Kurdish peshmurga and ISIS forces in Syria and northeastern Iraq, they have not proven so when the forces they are supporting are too few or lack the will to fight when things get ugly. Since IS prefers to move quickly between urban areas and stage assaults from within them, the fear of civilian casualties hampers the coalition’s ability strike surgically at them in urban settings. That leaves the coalition with the task of trying to target IS convoys and garrisons, something that has proven hard to do given the dispersed nature of their campaign outside of urban areas.

It would seem that the best way to counter IS advances is to pre-emptively launch counter-offensives using a mix of foreign and Iraq troops and militias. That involves accepting Iranian military participation in concert with Western forces and requires moving sooner rather than later to at least stall IS’s progress southward. But if we take standard basic training as a guideline, then the Iraqi Army forces that have begun to be trained by the coalition troops will not be ready to fight until mid July. That may be too late to stop IS before it reaches Taji and the western Baghdad suburbs. Thus the conundrum faced by the coalition is to commit group troops and accept Iranian military help now or wait and hope that IS will slow down its advance due to its own requirements, thereby allowing training provided to the Iraqi Army by foreigners like the NZDF enough time to strengthen it to the point that it can take back the fight to IS with only marginal foreign assistance.

At worst, the latter is a pipe dream. At best, it is a very big ask.

Sooner or later successful military-bureaucratic regimes seek to legitimize their rule and build a legacy by holding elections (unsuccessful military-bureaucratic authoritarians either collapse or are overthrown). Beyond the mantle of securing popular consent to their rule, doing so allows them to escape international sanctions and re-establish diplomatic relations severed when they came to office. Thus the transition to electoral legitimation is as important to the regime as it is to the people who live under it.
Although some military-bureaucratic authoritarians try to run referenda and even full elections on their rule while the military still controls political power (such as Uruguay in 1981 and Chile in 1989), most military-bureaucratic authoritarian regimes use elections to transit to a “safe” or “guarded” form of elected (if not democratic) civilian rule in which the major achievements and core interests of the regime and the fate of its leaders are unchallenged by their successors.

The most common way of ensuring the transition goes according to plan is to frame the electoral process in such a way that the outcome is apparently contested but essentially pre-determined: only those political actors who adhere to the regime’s vision of the post-authoritarian political system are given a realistic chance of winning elected office. One favored way of doing so is to run a popular military or civilian authoritarian leader as a candidate in the transitional election, be it as a presidential candidate in a presidential system or as the leader of a party in a parliamentary system. To that are added “safe” opposition parties that accept the limitations on post-authoritarian changes imposed by the outgoing regime and who agree to not seek judicial review of the regime’s policies and actions while in office.

The differences between opposition and officially-backed parties in such political transitions is more one of degree than substance, to the point that in military-dominated Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s the division between the nominal opposition and regime-backed parties came to be known as the “yes” and “yes sir!” parties.

The first is that by relinquishing control of the armed forces and delegating it to a successor, the candidate removes himself from the chain of command. This opens the possibility that his successor may not be entirely loyal to him or share the same post-authoritarian vision. Should that happen, the candidate’s power will be diminished and circumscribed by the desires of the new military commander. Should his wishes and those of the new commander clash, the latter will be the one with the authority of command and control over the use of armed force. The bottom line is clear: even if the military-backed candidate wins the election, he no longer is in control of the guns and depends on the goodwill and support of those who are.

The second problem is that, if he previously was in a leadership position during the dictatorship, the military-backed candidate will have grown accustomed to having his orders unquestionably obeyed and his authority unchallenged. He will have been surrounded by supporters and shielded from detractors. This has the effect of making him feel more popular than he really is, which in turn leads him to have expectations of high voter support in the polls.

Even though a margin of 51 percent of the popular vote is sufficient to win, many former military leaders want much more than that as a demonstration of their popularity and mandate to rule. This leads them to set targets of winning 60 percent or more of the vote, which is optimistic in the best of times in a freely contested multiparty election. That is when things start to get tricky.

Signs of an attempt to produce a favorable (i.e. decisive if not overwhelming) outcome include electoral regulations that promote splintering and factionalization amongst opposition parties; delays in announcing the beginning of the election campaign and rules governing it; failure to establish an independent election oversight commission and/or impartial election office well in advance of the election date (since the commission would be responsible for producing voting materials such as candidate lists and ballots as well as training election monitors and scrutinizers); delay or failure to register political parties and/or candidates well in advance of the polling date; and continuation of restrictions on assembly expression and media coverage until close to that date.

Should the opposition coalesce around a core set of goals and candidates that are not existentially threatening to the regime and its hardline supporters (unacceptable being a former government party displaced by coup and seeking revenge or former support parties previously displaced by military-bureaucratic hardliners, as was seen in Chile and South Korea in years past), then the outcome becomes more disputable. That in turn will force the regime’s hand in terms of going ahead with, canceling, manipulating or otherwise tampering with the election process.

In the last fifty years there have been five transitional “waves” to elected rule around the globe. The first encompassed Southern Europe in the 1970s, the second Latin America and Eastern Europe in the 1980s and early 1990s, the third parts of East and Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s and early 2000s, the fourth in the Middle East in the 2010s, and the fifth currently underway in the Southwestern Pacific and South and Central Asia. Not all of these transitions led to democracy, and in fact many of them led to significant civil unrest and political violence leading to the re-imposition of authoritarian controls.

There are learning curves involved in the study of these waves, both for those attempting to control the outcome from positions of power as well as those seeking to contest power in pursuit of genuinely democratic outcomes.

Analysis – By Dr Paul G. Buchanan.

In the wake of the most recent NZDF deaths in Bamiyan Province, the New Zealand Prime Minister has decided to accelerate the timetable for withdrawal of NZDF from the Bamiyan Provincial Reconstruction Team to April 2013. After that the PRT will remain in UN and local hands. The original withdrawal date, originally slated for 2014, had been moved up to late 2013 after discussions with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) partners, but the April date represents a six month advance on that deadline. Even so, the Prime Minister Key says that his government will not “cut and run” on its obligations to ISAF, NATO and the UN (and presumably the Hazara people who are the majority in Bamiyan but who are an oft-oppressed ethnic and religious (Shiia) minority in Pashtun Sunni-dominated Afghanistan). That means that for the next eight months the NZDF will continue its mission regardless of what comes its way in Bamiyan.

The New Zealand Prime Minister has said that the NZDF troops have adequate equipment with which to defend themselves and that no major increases in troop numbers is needed to fulfill the PRT mission requirements. He and the Chief of Defense Forces have also said that they will increase patrols, including into neighboring Baghlan province, in order to prevent and interdict cross-border incursions by Taliban such as those that have resulted in the deaths of the New Zealand soldiers this month (we shall leave aside the snide critique by Mr. Key of the Hungarian PRT in Baghlan since its rules of engagement (ROE) never involved long-range patrols and the Hungarian government has never succumbed to the pressure to do so (seeing it for what it is: “mission creep”). Other Hungarian forces as well as those of ISAF partners did and do conduct day and night patrols in Baghlan). The government has gone on to say that the NZDF have been successfully engaged in a “hearts and minds” campaign as part of their patrols in Bamiyan, which is what has prompted the increase in attacks by the Taliban.

There are several aspects to the account that I find interesting. When the original timetable for withdrawal was announced by ISAF, the Taliban commander Mullah Omar and several of his lieutenants publicly stated that they would increase attacks on all coalition members in order to push them out earlier. They well understood that with a timetable fixed and with the Taliban, as an indigenous armed political force, in Afghanistan to stay, an increased tempo of attacks might force some coalition partners to depart earlier than schedule rather than suffer mounting losses. Add in the fact that the democratic policy-making processes of many ISAF coalition members make them very susceptible to public opinion, then a wave of increased attacks leading to increased losses could well move the political calculation with regards to withdrawal towards earlier rather the later. Indeed, some junior coalition partners have already departed.

In the past year, as the predicted attacks in Bamiyan increased, the nature of the PRT mission changed as well. From its primary objective of reconstruction and capacity-building it moved to force protection, indigenous security training and armed patrol. In recent months and in light of the anticipated withdrawal date, the latter functions–force protection, indigenous security training and armed patrol–have taken precedence over the reconstruction aspects of the mission (which are being handed over to civilian authority in any event).

In response, the last two PRT rotations (October 2011-April 2012, April 2012-present) have seen changes in force composition to more infantry troops and less engineers. Among other shifts, explosive ordinance disposal (EOD) specialists have been priority detailed to the mission. Infantry soldiers replaced engineers because the former are the means by which the hearts and minds, force protection and indigenous mentoring campaigns are undertaken, plus reconstruction work is already passing to civilian hands. Field medics are needed in equal or more numbers given their increasing combat requirement sharing space with the original public health orientation of the  PRT.

The armed Hiluxs that were initially used for “light” patrols were replaced by “up-armored” Humvees and then later by the infamous Light Armored Vehicles (LAVs, or as the US prefers to call them “Strykers”). Although reinforced in theater, neither of these type of vehicle have the V shaped hulls that are the best defense against IED blasts. The LAVs also are not suitable for steep narrow tracks or water crossings, so their presence is most effective in and around the capital of Bamiyan (Bamiyan City). Once NZDF patrols pushed further afield the onus of safety fell on the foot soldiers involved, since dismounted tactics are the most effective tools against small dispersed groups of insurgents given the challenging terrain in which the NZDF is forced to operate.

This shift in troop specialization was reasonable given the increasing pace of attacks, which included Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) as well as small arms ambushes in growing numbers (besides the ambush in which Lt. Tim O’Donnell was killed in 2010, there have been multiple IED  and small arms attacks on NZDF convoys and patrols during the past 18 months). As independent observers have noted all along, the security situation in Bamiyan, as in the rest of Afghanistan, has deteriorated markedly since the withdrawal date was announced. It is therefore not surprising that the NZDF has come under increasing attack, and although sad, it is not surprising that it has suffered losses as a result. What is even more sad is that in spite of the worsening security situation, until very recently the New Zealand government insisted that the situation in Bamiyan was relatively stable and safe, perhaps because it feared what the public response would be if it told the truth.

Now confronted with the harsh reality of the situation, the government has announced its plan to extend NZDF patrols in Bamiyan and into Baghlan and to continue the hearts and minds approach to counter-insurgency. It also says that while doing so it will not significantly increase the combat force complement of the Bamiyan PRT nor raise overall troop numbers much above the 149 currently deployed. That seems odd.

The combination of extended patrols and hearts and minds is essentially the core of the inkblot counter-insurgency strategy that US generals David Petreus and Stanley McCrystal used in Iraq and Afghanistan. It involves stationing troops in villages or in forward outposts alongside local security forces, where they live and work amongst the local population. This gives them an extended armed presence that allows for better collection of local intelligence via the cultivation of personal ties with locals, and is seen as a way of incrementally denying the enemy control of territory in the measure that the various “dots” expand their areas of effective control and begin to merge jurisdictions. On the downside, it also makes the troops involved more vulnerable, particularly to so-called “green on blue” attacks in which local security personnel turn their arms on their foreign mentors (the Taliban have deliberately infiltrated both the Afghan National Army and National Police in order to engage this tactic, with remarkable success).

In order to undertake the inkblot counter-insurgency strategy, both Petreus and McCrystal argued that a “surge” in troops was necessary. That is, more armed “boots on the ground” were required in order to extend the range and scope of operations beyond the fixed bases and daily patrols that characterized the conventional approach to securing the countryside (which was premised on the attrition of enemy fighters resulting in a diminished level of armed conflict). Thus in Iraq and Afghanistan thousands of extra troops were deployed as part of the inkblot surge in order to push the enemy back and secure better conditions for both locals and foreign troops in the months ahead of the withdrawal date. The idea is to not only place the enemy on the defensive in order to give time and space to local forces to more effectively secure their own areas of responsibility, but also to set a more favorable stage for local authorities to negotiate the nature of the post-withdrawal regime. After all, it is better to negotiate from a position of strength than weakness. The inkblot surge is designed to provide the conditions for that to occur.

That is basically what the New Zealand government is arguing in favor of, but without the surge. In a place like Bamiyan, the stated intent to extend patrols as part of an upgraded hearts and minds campaign would appear to require more than the current number of soldiers. In fact, it would seem that an infantry company (around 130 soldiers) would be the basic minimum amount required to “surge.” The question is whether the NZDF has such a capability ready to deploy even if the government would like that to happen. And even if that is the case–that the government wants to undertake the surge and the NZDF can do so–the follow up question is whether that would be politically palatable to the New Zealand public (most would argue that it is not). If the answer to any of these questions is no, then what exactly does the government think that the NZDF can do in Bamiyan to decrease the number of attacks on its troops?

At current levels the PRT cannot not cope with a rising wave of attacks. The IED on the NZDF medivac convoy was placed at night less than 15 kilometers from the PRT base in Bamiyan City.The placement of the IED appears to have been done after the medivac patrol headed out to retrieve the ill soldier from a forward post and in anticipation of its return. There were no LAVs on the medivac mission because they were too large and heavy for the dirt road leading to the post, so four Humvees were used.

The Prime Minister and Chief of Defence Forces say that the IED had 20 kilos of explosives, so a LAV would not have survived the blast either. It is also possible that the triggering device did not act according to plan, resulting in a signal delay that transferred the  IED blast from the first to the last Humvee (and which could well have made impossible a small arms attack once the convoy stopped). Both may be true, but the ability of insurgents to carry, place and detonate  a 20 kilo IED close to the main Kiwi base in Bamiyan on a known route to and from an NZDF forward post without being detected should be a point of discussion in NZDF HQ. After all, mine sweeping is a requisite for mine defusing, and finding one after a fatal attack demonstrates that the NZDF EOD capability in Bamiyan is lagging behind that of the Taliban bomb-makers (one of whom is said to be the target of the previous fatal ambush and who is suspected of participating in the latest attack).

Since the NZDF cannot be everywhere at once, that means that the insurgents have at least partial control of the night very close to the PRT. Moreover, the IED appears to have been detonated by remote control rather than pressure plate, which means that the trigger man had a daylight line of sight on the convoy as it passed the blast zone. What that means, in sum, is that the Taliban operate very close to the PRT itself and can move with some impunity at night even when in close proximity to the very area in which the bulk of New Zealand troops are stationed. That is troubling.

The Prime Minister has given assurances that other country’s special forces will come to the aid of the NZDF if need be. However, other country’s special forces have their hands full in places like Kandahar and Helmand provinces. The bulk of the fighting in Afghanistan is happening in the South and East, not in the Central Northwest where Bamiyan is located. That fighting occupies the full attention of the ISAF forces involved. Even if airborne reinforcements were sent from Kabul (which is about 100 kilometers away from Bamiyan), it may be too late for them to make the difference in any given confrontation.

Expanded combat patrols and increased forward basing mean more chances of contact with the enemy. More contact means more potential casualties. The best way to avoid losses is to have robust forces on the ground close to the point of contact(s) because air cover is not always available in real time, at the moment of engagement. That is why extended patrolling and variations of inkblot approaches to counter-insurgency require more ground troops in theater.

It is unrealistic and dangerous for anyone to suggest that the NZDF will increase and expand its patrols in the months leading to the April 2013 withdrawal date without increasing the number of troops it will dedicate to that task. Perhaps there is something in the New Zealand government or NZDF game plan that will do what even the US could not do, which is to embark on an inkblot counter-insurgency strategy without a troop surge in the six months before departure.

If the New Zealand government cannot or will not commit more troops to Bamiyan, then it should suspend its long range patrols and consolidate its position in and around Bamiyan City while it prepares to leave. An entrenched and reinforced defensive position weighed with infantry, although giving up the countryside to the insurgents, has the virtue of making the last six months in theater more safe for the majority of the soldiers involved in the last rotation. The insurgents will mostly wait until the New Zelanders leave, with periodic reminders of their lethal presence. The local population will be put on notice as the the shifting power dynamic and adjust their bargaining strategies accordingly.

If the aim is to help strengthen local security force control of territory and push the Taliban back in advance of the withdrawal, then the only secure option in the face of the insurgent strategy is to increase the number of NZDF infantry dedicated to the task. To do one without the other increases the possibility of more NZDF casualties and is the worst of all possible solution sets to the problem in theater.

NZDF soldiers in the next (and last) Bamiyan PRT rotation scheduled to begin in October are in for a very challenging six months. Their training and resolve will be tested, and is the best means of ensuring that they all return safely. However, while it is good to hope for the best, it is prudent for the New Zealand public to plan for the worst. There are trying days ahead.

In this installment of the 36th Parallel series of analytic briefs, the focus is on Australia compared to other rising middle powers, including three of the BRICs: Brazil, Russia, India.

Analysis – By Dr. Paul G. Buchanan.

Although it may irk the okkers, Australia can be fairly compared with three of the four so-called BRICs: Brazil, Russia, India. The PRC is a step ahead of the rest in terms of relative global power, to the point that it is seen by policy-makers in most capitals as the main strategic rival of the US. The other three are seen as rising or resurgent regional powers expanding their spheres of influence. Although some define the BRICs by their climb out of underdevelopment, the truth is that none of these countries are emerging from real underdeveloped status. Prior to their exponential growth over the last decade or so, they were all relatively developed countries in terms of economic base and social complexity, at least in and around their major urban centers. If one takes a realistic look at Australia in terms of macroeconomic and social characteristics prior to the 1990s, it manifests a geographic divide similar to the others where relatively advanced levels of urban socio-economic development are counter-balanced by relative under-development in the countryside. Differences in culture and governance are what set these rising powers apart then and now, but the broader similarities remain as the basis for a small case sample comparison.

Accepting this “most-similar” classification allows us to look for specific differences as well as similarities within the case sample.

Brazil and Russia are ruled by well entrenched post-authoritarian regimes that combine electoral politics with commodity exports as the basis for national growth. Nearly thirty years after the withdrawal of the military authoritarians, Brazil is an immature, but clearly maturing, political democracy. Twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia is a hardening electoral authoritarian regime. Both are using oil and gas exploitation as the motor force of the economy, although Brazil has outgrown Russia in terms of value-added manufacturing. In Russia the energy sector is controlled by indigenous interests, both public and private. In Brazil, as in Australia, the energy sector is driven by foreign investment, Chinese in particular. Both Brazil and Russia have strong service sectors, with Brazil having a larger tourism base while Russia is stronger in computing and other high-tech ventures. Both have well-developed financial and stock markets and relatively weak currencies

India combines a long-established parliamentary democracy with low-wage manufacturing and services as the basis for growth. Like Brazil and Russia, it is a federal republic, but its democratic (political, not social) history is longer and more continuous than Brazil’s. Both India and Brazil have large populations, although India’s is nearly five times larger  than Brazil’s 250 million. Both have extensive poverty, although there have been great improvements in standards of living and human security indicators over the last two decades. Despite its growth, Russia exhibits oligarchical traits in the distribution of wealth and public services, with negative population growth and poverty expanding amongst an aging citizenry. It has largely re-built its military and remains a significant arms exporter, including to India and China. Although Brazil is one of the largest and most sophisticated of the Latin American militaries, it has the weakest armed forces of the BRICs (mainly due to the absence of regional conflict in South America and the internal defense focus of the military for years after the return to democracy). India is strategically moving in response to the PRCs military expansion while maintaining its position of strength relative to Pakistan (a Chinese ally). This has seen it direct resources towards upgrading its naval capabilities as well as modernizing its land and air forces in a measure disproportionate to the requirements of regional balancing. To a lesser extent Brazil has done the same, shifting its strategic priorities to maritime and air force projection while maintaining a dominant land-based component. On a power continuum the three countries now outweigh all but the major NATO powers in terms of international influence.

Australia combines a mature post-colonial parliamentary political system at both the national and state level with commodity exports (particularly minerals) in order to improve its strategic position in the world. It has a significant manufacturing base and service sector dominated by finance and tourism, a robust stock market and a strong–some argue over-valued– currency. Although it scores higher on human development indexes than the Brazil, India and Russia, it has pockets of deep poverty (particularly among its indigenous population), growing income inequalities and considerable ethnic and social tensions. Corruption is a problem in the provision of goods and services as well as in political life, albeit to a lesser extent than the other three countries (in which it is rife). Along with the inherent precariousness of its dependence on mineral exports for overall growth, concentrated wealth in the resource extractive sectors has skewed GDP and made most of the country, including its heavily populated Eastern seaboard,  lag behind Western Australia in terms of employment opportunities and regional growth. This distorted economic picture, along with monopolization of media outlets, is a trait shared by Brazil and Russia and, with the attendant modifications made for its different structural foundations, for India as well (i.e. over-reliance on increasingly monopolized commodity and manufacturing exports and regional maldistribution of wealth are common to all four countries, albeit to different degrees).

What is most different about Australia when compared with Brazil, India and Russia is that it is:

• a) a much more egalitarian society;
• b) has a better track record of democratic governance and adherence to the rule of law;
• c) has higher average standards of living; and
• d) is a major US strategic ally (to the point that it is the most important US strategic partner in the Southern Hemisphere).

The last factor has seen a build-up of military capabilities that reinforces its expeditionary character in accord with its role as a key regional deputy in the Western security alliance structure. In fact, Australia is well on its way towards replacing Great Britain as the closest US security ally.

Because it is a first-tier US security partner, the Australian Defence Force (particularly its Army) is currently more battle-hardened than the BRIC militaries (the Russian military ended large scale foreign operations in Afghanistan and has concentrated its attention in the last decade on domestic insurgency throughout its southern periphery, which in its perspective includes Georgian encroachment on Ossetia). It has deployed combat troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, and contributes significant contingents of troops to multilateral peace enforcement missions in East Timor and the Solomon Islands as well as smaller numbers elsewhere. It shares US military technologies not available to other countries and hosts US troops on its soil (none of the BRICs have permanent US combat detachments located on their territory). It has strong bilateral military and intelligence ties to the US in a measure none of the BRICs do.

This allows it to play a vital role in the outer strategic “wall” that the US has erected in the Southwest Pacific as a hedge against Chinese naval expansion (the wall is an arc perimeter that extends from Honolulu to Mumbai via Australia (and increasingly New Zealand). It is complemented by an inner security perimeter that extends from Japan through Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, and which includes bilateral security agreements between the US and all of these countries as well as Brunei, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Designed to be flexible and reliant on a strong US forward presence in the Western Pacific, these security “walls” are the foundation of the strategic architecture that the US has built to “contain” China in the Pacific (the details of the new containment policy are outlined here). Australia is an essential part of this network.

The Australian military build up is remarkable given that when compared with the BRICs it has the most benign threat environment in which to operate. It has no land borders or immediate physical threats to the country itself. It has no significant armed domestic threats, certain jihadist endeavors notwithstanding. It has no real “enemies” other than those it has made by fighting alongside the US in the Middle East and Central Asia, and none of these have the ability to project significant force on Australia. Its military supremacy in the southwestern Pacific is unchallenged (concerns about Indonesian force projection against Australia are overblown given the domestic and defensive orientation of the Army-centered Indonesian military and its relatively small naval and air forces, to say nothing of its lack of logistical lift capability).

Given the long sea and air lines of supply and communication that bind Australia to its trade partners, and the fact that new naval powers and a host of private maritime agents have begun to explore the Southwestern Pacific basin at a time when the US naval reach, although unparalleled, cannot be everywhere at once, it has justifiable reason to upgrade the military assets dedicated to independently safeguarding those lifeline channels. This has been seen in the prioritization of naval upgrades across a spectrum of assets and platforms as well as in maritime air cover. Although public attention tends to focus on the role of the navy in illegal fishery and people-smuggling operations, the bulk of Australia’s maritime orientation is on safeguarding transit off-shore on the adjacent high seas in the Indian and South Pacific Oceans rather than in coastal or in-shore waters.

Australia’s disproportionate military capability (at 1.9 percent of 2012 GDP) also provides a strong deterrent against organized threats, be they indigenous or external in origin, across the “arc of instability” that stretches from East Timor to the borders of French Polynesia. This makes the ADF the southwestern Pacific’s regional constabulary force and the default option for most Pacific Island countries confronted with unmanageable civil unrest (the exception is Fiji, which maintains its own robust defense and which is at odds with Australia on a number of policy issues, to include the development of an armed Melanesian rapid response force). What is different is that Australia is developing force projection capabilities that exceed the requirements of regional policing and peace enforcement, which when taken in concert with its US military alliance gives it global force projection potential.

One of the paradoxes of Australia as it rises to become a regional great power is that it does so in spite rather than because of the actions of its political elite. The fractious and dysfunctional nature of Australian party politics is well known and only mitigated in part by the commonwealth nature of the political system. Party and factional infighting, undue interest group influence, corruption, scandal and malfeasance of various sorts have marked national politics for decades, with the current period being no exception. Many politicians are thrust into ministerial roles that exceed their levels of expertise, and constant intrigue and turmoil conspire against policy consistency amongst the political elite. State politics are often no better, but the checks and balances of commonwealth politics and a strong and independent court system insulates both sides from the excesses of the other. In spite of the flaws in its party system, Australia has gradually begun to emerge from the shadows of provincialism and into the global spotlight as more than a “sporting nation.” In fact, on an economic, military and diplomatic level, Australia is on a par with Brazil, India and Russia, but with far less of a population and far better credentials when it comes to governance even when taking into account the disfunctionalities within (not necessarily of) its political system. Its emergence as a middle power has been evident, among other endeavors, in Australia’s unusually strong interest in securing a seat on the UN Security Council this decade (which among other things contravened an informal agreement with Canada and New Zealand to chronologically stagger their bids for the two year temporary UNSC seats).

The explanation for Australia’s success appears to lie with its institutional robustness. In this context institutional robustness is defined as the ability of government bureaucracies to maintain professional standards and implement policy as required by law or government writ without undue interference from or institutional capture by external actors, to include political parties and interest groups (institutional “capture” is a phenomenon whereby policy-making branches or agencies are colonized or dominated by the logics of specific social groups with a vested interest in the nature and direction of policy emanating from those agencies. It includes but is not limited to rent-seeking behavior on the part of such groups).

Institutional robustness involves advanced levels of organizational autonomy and development, to include a very competent and professional national bureaucracy that is relatively insulated from the cut and thrust of everyday politics. In the Australian case,that can be added to a highly regarded academic community with considerable public policy expertise that has developed synergistic ties with the policy community (seen among other things in the interchange between numerous research institutes and the public sector).

This is particularly the case in the areas of foreign affairs and defense, around which there is a considerable degree of consensus amongst the political elite as all as senior public servants and academics that has allowed for the development of a distinctive Australian strategic culture. This allows Australia to exhibit considerable continuity and consistency in its approach to international affairs in spite of the fractious nature of party politics. The relative insulation of the public bureaucracy from the vicissitudes of political competition also ensures that Australia diplomatically presents itself in the best light, and its close and overt association with the US makes issues of foreign  and security policy relatively simple to address and implement (although increasingly problematic in terms of distinguishing Australian strategic interests from those of the US). There is a saying that in strong countries it is not so much the character of the political leader that matters but the nature of the institutional machine that drives the course of the nation-state. This is clearly the case for Australia.

Even so, political instability in the form of internecine party politics poses a possible obstacle to Australia’s emergence as a middle power. Constant factional infighting and political opportunism have the potential to spill over into national policy-making and undermine the “Advance Australia” ethos that lies at the core of the national psyche. In the measure that the top echelons of the public bureaucracy are politicized as a result, then Australia’s reliability and reputation as an international actor may come under threat, which in turn will impede its ascent, as a nation-state, to greatness in the international realm.

The relationship with the US is already well-established and intimate. That poses a problem for Australia, which needs to be seen as an independent operator if is to be considered a legitimate middle power. Too much identification with the US can lead to it being perceived as a surrogate, proxy or instrument of the US, with all of the negative baggage that entails. Thus Australia has to exhibit some degree of foreign policy independence vis a vis the US in order to achieve its full potential. Where it chooses to do so is a matter of conjecture (climate change may be a start), but in any event it will require that it balance its pro-US security orientation with an economic and diplomatic  approach to the PRC that is neither confrontational nor obsequious, and which bridges the strategic gap between its growing international security commitments and its increasing economic orientation towards the PRC and the rest of Asia. In the measure that it can achieve that balance, its reputation for independence will be enhanced and its rise to great power status advanced.

From time to time 36th Parallel Assessments offers analytic briefs on subjects of diplomatic, geopolitical and strategic interest. This week’s topic is policy fade.

Analysis – By Paul G. Buchanan.

Deployment of Fijian soldiers and police as UN peacekeepers after the 2006 military coup in that country is a good example of policy fade, in this case undertaken by the UN. Initial calls for and threats of Fijian suspension from all UN peacekeeping operations never materialized and Fijian involvement in UN-sanctioned armed multilateral operations increased after 2007.

Image by Selwyn Manning and courtesy of Scoop Media: Fiji Military leader and Prime Minister, Voreqe (Frank) Bainimarama.

Suspension from international organizations such as the Commonwealth, Pacific Island Forum (which included prohibitions on Fiji participation in PIF-sanctioned multilateral armed peacekeeping operations), the halting of foreign aid from the EU and Asian Development Bank, and travel sanctions on officials in the Bainimarama government by Australia and New Zealand were not matched by the UN when it came to peacekeeping. Instead, the UN’s course of action has been marked by non-enforcement of the measures called for by the original policy statements made immediately before and following the 2006 military coup. Along with other circumventions, the UN policy fade allowed the Fijian military to defy the sanctions regime imposed upon it.

Policy fade is the process of putting distance on an initial policy position. There are several ways to back away. Here the focus is not on policy retreats or complete back downs imposed by adverse externalities or changes of mind on the part of policy-makers. Instead, the emphasis is on types of managed policy fade initiated from within a political organization. It can accompany policy softening, which is the modification of policy along its margins without removing the original intent. Managed policy fade is about instituting a controlled move away from failed, unpopular, embarrassing or non-enforceable policy without losing credibility (or face, or honor).

There are several ways with which to manage policy fade. The issue can be ignored over time so that it disappears from the public eye. It can be re-defined so as to diminish its visibility, divert attention away from it or to give credence to a change in approach. It can be deferred and/or delayed so as to encourage historical amnesia. The process of policy fade can involve combinations of these approaches. In all cases the intent is to remove the policy issue from public scrutiny in order to eventually abandon or change the original approach.

The UN used the delay-and-defer approach to the subject of Fiji’s peacekeeping role. Kofi Annan’s originally strong language on the consequences of the coup was qualified by his successor Ban ki-moon. Annan made his statements in October 2006, prior to the coup and during the last three months of his term as Secretary General. Confronted with a lack of votes in the Security Council in favor of a resolution ordering Fiji out of peacekeeping duties and not wanting to risk aggravating rifts in the General Assembly over the issue very early in his term, Ban delayed following up on the promises of Annan and others to that effect. He also deferred the issue to his underlings.

In April 2007 Ban called for a study of the impact a peacekeeping suspension would have on Fijian society as well as the regime. As is well known, service in UN peacekeeping operations is a major source of pride for the Fijian military, which can hone professional skills and maintain espirit d’corps while contributing to domestic stability via remittances from its soldiers abroad. The study was designed to identify the tangible costs of a suspension beyond diplomatic isolation. Its results have never been disclosed. Meanwhile Fijian peacekeepers continued to serve in UN missions and at present constitute the largest source of soldiers for the UN peacekeeping mission in Iraq. It appears that the UN decided the benefits of having Fiji continue to be a contributor to peacekeeping operations outweighed the illegality of its military regime, and simply never admitted to that calculation in public.

The delay-and-defer approach relies on news cycles and diminishing public interest to be effective. If the media and/or public focus continues to bring attention to the issues involved, then policy fade becomes more difficult to implement. On the other hand the pressure of events means that media and public attention spans are often limited, making the policy fade process possible once the glare of scrutiny is off.

Since 2006 the UN’s and global public attention has shifted elsewhere. That reduced the importance of a possible suspension of Fijian peacekeepers as a UN policy priority. The subject of suspending Fiji from participating in UN peacekeeping operations was consequently dropped from public statements and a quiet accommodation was made with the Fijian authorities that sees Fijian military and police continuing to serve in blue helmet missions abroad (the use of Fijian military and ex-military by private security companies was not effected in any event). When 36th Parallel Assessments recently questioned the UN about the ongoing presence of Fijian troops in UN peacekeeping missions, despite the original talk about suspension, the response was to admit that no suspension was authorized and decisions on Fijian participation in peacekeeping operations are taken on a case-by-case basis.

Although it contravenes the intent of the sanctions regime imposed by other international organizations and individual countries, continued Fijian participation in UN peacekeeping operations may be seen as a way of showing goodwill towards, and exercising some diplomatic leverage on, the Bainimarama government as it moves towards re-scheduled elections in 2014. In fact, an increase in Fijian troop contributions to UN missions in 2011-12 coincides with the suspension of the state of emergency in place in Fiji since 2009 and commencement of the voter registration and constitutional consultation process leading up to the 2014 vote.

After 2007 Australia and New Zealand remained silent on the issue of Fijian troops on UN peacekeeping missions even though it demonstrates the futility of their bilateral sanctions against the military regime. Instead, they also have engaged in policy fade, in this case of the “ignore it and it will go away” variety. Knowing that there are more important issues to address and not willing to enter into a public argument with the UN peacekeeping division or be embarrassed in the Security Council and General Assembly when both are contemplating bids for temporary membership on it, Australia and New Zealand cast a blind eye on the continued use of Fijian peacekeepers by the UN even though in some cases (Sinai, Syria) their soldiers serve side by side with Fijians.

In both countries public disinterest or ignorance of the state of play surrounding the bilateral sanctions regime has helped governments to ignore the issue in public while concentrating on other priority policy areas and allowing relations with Fiji to be handled quietly, both directly and in multinational fora.

Given the diplomatic lifeline thrown to the Fijian regime by the UN with regards to its involvement in peacekeeping, the overall sanctions regime imposed on it was porous. However, it also provided a stick to complement the UN carrot, and the uncertainty of the UN case-by-case approach to Fijian peacekeeping ensured that the Bainimarama government could not rest entirely easy with regards to its diplomatic status or that of its blue-helmeted troops in the field.

The task now for Australia, New Zealand and other international agencies is to gracefully move away from their respective hardline stances towards something more accommodating of the Fijian regime. This can be tied to the gradual (and continued) opening of the Fijian political process as the date of elections draws closer, and could involve incremental lifting of sanctions and resumption of fuller diplomatic relations or practical engagement with the Fijian state on the part of those currently employing sanctions against it. The US, Russia, India and PRC already give full bilateral diplomatic recognition to Fiji, so large international organizations can take the lead in following their example in return for continued progress towards the 2014 ballot. Should that happen, then Australia and New Zealand can re-consider their stance on travel sanctions with some decorum.

However it is couched, the ineffectiveness of the international sanctions regime in the face of the UN policy fade on Fijian peacekeepers made necessary policy fade on the part of other actors. The fade process on the original international sanctions policy is transiting to the redefining phase, something that should be evident in policy pronouncements on Fiji by the international sanctions coalition over the next year.

Dispatch/Forecast – by Selwyn Manning.

Since the 2006 Fiji coup Commodore Voreqe (Frank) Bainimarama’s military-led government has remained fully engaged with the United Nations while incrementally increasing the number of troops and police it contributes to UN peacekeeping operations to record levels.

United Nations records show, that in the past year alone, Fiji has increased by 29 percent the number of Fiji military and police personnel deployed to UN operations. Between April 2011 and May 2012, Fiji also contributed more peacekeepers to UN operations than Australia, Canada and New Zealand combined.

A UN Mission’s Summary report obtained by 36th Parallel shows that on May 31 2012 Fiji had deployed 359 soldiers and/or police to UN operations. This same report showed Australia had contributed 112 personnel, Canada 158, and New Zealand 24 personnel.

The comparative report for April 30 2011 showed Fiji had deployed 278 soldiers and/or police to UN operations. That snapshot report showed Australia had contributed 109 personnel, Canada 213, and New Zealand 24 personnel.

The data shows that the governments of Australia and New Zealand have not impeded the participation of Fijian troops in UN peace-keeping operations in spite of their public calls to that effect, and in fact have not impeded a rise in the number of Fiji troops being deployed to United Nations operations since the December 2006 military coup.

That trend has increased in the six years since.

In December 2006, at the time of the Fiji military coup, Fiji had 275 troops serving in UN peacekeeping missions. By April 30 2007, a report published by the United Nations’ Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) showed Fiji had 17 extra soldiers deployed to UN missions – with a grand total of 292 soldiers participating in UN peace missions.

Background:

On the eve of the December 2006 Fiji coup the then United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan warned of consequences for Fiji’s military should it go ahead with a coup. Annan’s spokesperson said Fiji soldiers who took part in the coup d’etat would be unwelcome in UN missions.

In the immediate post-coup period, Kofi Annan also stated: “Any Fijian personnel, who are alleged to have committed human rights abuses or other illegal activities, will be repatriated at the expense of the troop-contributing country.”

But throughout 2007, the UN’s position began to soften. In January 2007 Ban Ki-moon replaced Annan as the UN secretary general. At the time, Ban Ki-moon was under considerable pressure by Australia and New Zealand UN-based diplomatic representatives.

In a response to questions from this author in 2007, New Zealand’s then permanent representative to the UN, Rosemary Banks, stated: “The former UN secretary-general (Kofi Annan) said before the coup ‘…further prolongation of the crisis may damage Fiji’s international standing, which it has built carefully over the years, as an important contributor to UN peacekeeping operations…’ Current secretary-general Ban Ki-moon reiterated previous UN calls for an immediate restoration of constitutional democracy in a statement on 5 January.” Rosemary Banks added: “That same day his spokesperson was asked about his stance viz-a-viz Annan’s comments on Fijian peacekeepers. The response from the spokesperson was that ‘what was previously said, stands.’“.

In January 2007, New Zealand’s then prime minister Helen Clark said at her post-Cabinet press conference: “Shortly after the Fiji coup, when we announced the measures we were taking, our Ambassador herself went to the UN. So we did it at the most senior level in New York, and made it very clear that we did not think that Fiji troops should be supporting these exercises.”

By April 2007, Ban Ki-moon announced he had instructed UN officials to conduct a fact finding mission to Fiji as a basis for establishing a firm policy response in the post-coup period.

In response to questions in May 2007, Rosemary Banks said: “According to a release from the Secretary-General’s spokesperson, the report (when completed) will be confidential and will not be released beyond the Secretariat. We have not seen the report and do not know what its current status is.”

In response to further questions, the UN secretary general’s office replied: “The mission concluded some 10 days ago and the team is now working on drafting the report. It will be some time before we can answer your question.”

Further responses from the UN secretary general’s spokesperson followed: “There has been no increase in Fijian troops or police contributions to UN peacekeeping operations since December 2006, nor has Fiji contributed to any new UN missions since then.”

However, the UN’s own reports showed this statement to be incorrect.

In May 2007, a spokesperson for New Zealand’s then foreign minister, Winston Peters, said: “New Zealand believes it is inappropriate for troops from Fiji to take part in UN operations at a time when the Fiji military has overthrown a democratically-elected government. We are also aware of the financial value of peacekeeping duties for Fiji’s military.”

He said: “However we also understand the difficult balancing act that the United Nations faces. The United Nations did strongly condemn last year’s coup in Fiji and has continued to push for a return to democratic rule there. However, the United Nations also struggles to recruit professional and well-trained troops for peacekeeping duties in areas where those soldiers are potentially preventing civilian deaths from conflict. As a result they have often been forced to accept deployments from nations whose domestic human rights records are questionable,” the spokesperson said.

This appears accurate. UN reports in 2012 suggest Fiji’s troops in particular are valuable in combat operations. Fiji personnel have been deployed to some of the globe’s most serious hotspots. For example, Fiji’s contribution to the United Nations Assistance Mission For Iraq (UNAMI) increased from 221 personnel in April 2011, to 301 personnel in June 2012. That’s an increase of 36 percent, and shows Fiji’s troops make up 75 percent of the UN’s total contingent operating inside Iraq.

Over the past two years, there has certainly been a rapid increase in the use of Fiji military and police personnel. This runs parallel to a relationship thaw between Fiji and the USA, particularly since the Obama Administration deployed its former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, Frankie Reed, as its ambassador to Suva in October 2011.

The move ended the US’s apparent estrangement policy with regard to Fiji. Immediately prior to Reed’s Suva appointment, Commodore Bainimarama was issued an open visa to visit the US and had engagements in Connecticut, Florida and Tennessee. Officially, the rapprochement Between the US and Fiji runs counter to Australia and New Zealand’s travel sanctions policy against Fiji’s military regime leadership and their immediate families.

Then and Now:

From May 2006 to May 2012 the numbers of Fiji personnel deployed to UN missions is (at a 144 percent increase) over four times that of the increase in global deployed personnel numbers (36 percent).

In July 2012  36th Parallel sought a response from New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) asking: In 2006-07 the New Zealand Government openly advocated Fiji be excluded from UN peacekeeping operations. Has the New Zealand Government’s position changed, if so why?

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade responded: “New Zealand has in the past made clear its concerns about Fijian military personnel being used as peacekeepers because of the 2006 coup. Our future position will depend upon developments that take place in Fiji.”

Additionally, 36th Parallel sought a clarification from the United Nations secretary general exactly what its position is on Fiji asking: Can you confirm whether the United Nations has formerly engaged Fiji as a contributing nation to UN-led peacekeeping operations and if so when was the UN-Fiji commitment resumed?”

The UN’s chief public affairs section, Departments of Peacekeeping Operations and Field Support, Kieran Dwyer, responded: “There was no formal suspension of Fijian contribution to United Nations peacekeeping. Since 2006, the United Nations has carefully reviewed any offers from Fiji on a case by case basis.”

Assessment:

Australia and New Zealand’s policy of travel sanctions against Fiji’s military leadership and their immediate families appears out of step with their close security and trade partners – the United States and China.

Throughout the post-coup period, both New Zealand and Australia have maintained sanctions against Fiji, and Fiji continues to be suspended from the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), largely at the insistence of the ANZ bloc. The Commonwealth body continues to maintain its suspension of Fiji. The PIF also suspended Fiji from contributing to the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI).

36th Parallel’s inquiry shows the United Nation’s increased use of Fiji personnel in peacekeeping missions is contrary to the foreign policy positions maintained by Australia and New Zealand. The inquiry’s findings also show the two CANZ bloc nations, while maintaining their respective public hard lines with regard to Fiji, have since mid 2007 remained silent while the United Nations increased the number of Fiji personnel deployed to peacekeeping operations. Meanwhile the United States and China have developed closer ties with Fiji’s military regime.

Through 2012, the Baimimarama regime has indicated its intent to hold democratic elections in 2014 and most recently conducted a voter registration exercise, while work is ongoing on drafting a new constitution.

Forecast:

In view of the UN, US and PRC approaches to Fiji, it is likely that Australia and New Zealand governments will publicly begin to soften their positions against the military regime, and will probably use the 2012 Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ summit as an opportunity to articulate an incremental re-engagement plan.

Assessment/Analysis – By Dr Paul G. Buchanan.

On June 20 New Zealand Defense Minister Jonathan Coleman and US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta signed the Washington Declaration, which specifies priority areas of cooperation between the militaries of both countries.The Washington Declaration is a follow up to the Wellington Declaration signed by New Zealand and the US in November 2010 (with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Foreign Minister Murray McCully doing the honors). The first was a general statement of principle with regard to New Zealand-US security cooperation and bilateral foreign relations. The follow up provides more detail on the specific areas in which military cooperation will occur. These are counter-terrorism, maritime patrol, anti-piracy operations and humanitarian relief. The details of the logistics involved in those areas have not been finalized and/or made public, and in the case of counter-terrorism operations they are not likely to be divulged beyond a general statement. This has as much to do with New Zealand public sensitivities as it does with US public opinion or classified operational details (for example, the role of the NZSAS in joint counter-terrorism operations with US forces).

What is different in the Washington Declaration is that the military-to-military bilateral relationship is now taking concrete shape, whereas the Wellington Declaration was a diplomatic opening rather than a definitive outlining of military areas in which joint operations and exercises will occur.

Professor Robert Ayson of Victoria University in Wellington described the relationship as a defacto alliance between the US and New Zealand. Professor Ayson used the phrase because the US and New Zealand are not entering a formal alliance agreement but a “strategic partnership.” An alliance is essentially a contract with mutual obligations; a partnership is a looser arrangement in which obligations are voluntarily assumed but not contractually defined, binding or specified. Partnerships can be reviewed and modified on a case by case or temporal basis, whereas alliances commit the parties to treaty-strength obligations that require a major diplomatic rupture for them to be abrogated. This distinction theoretically gives the US and New Zealand a greater degree of flexibility in their relations with each other on military issues. That is diplomatically advantageous for New Zealand , which seeks to preserve its image and reputation for foreign policy independence, and also avoids domestic voter backlash to the resumption of something akin to the ANZUS alliance so spectacularly undone by New Zealand’s 1985 non-nuclear announcement. The Labour, Green and Mana parties, in particular, would have been very resistant to the restoration of a formal military alliance with the US, so on political grounds the strategic partnership agreement works out very well domestically as well as bilaterally.

In practice, the strategic partnership with the US aligns New Zealand with other “first tier” US security partners in the Western Pacific Rim such as Australia, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines. This is important for the New Zealand Defense Force (NZDF) as it seeks to integrate more closely with Australian Defense Force operational doctrine, training and equipment (as was suggested by the NZDF 2010 Defense White Paper) at a time when Australia and the US are deepening their bilateral security ties (evident in the recently announced agreement to forward base a US Marine rapid response force in Darwin). Professor Ayson is essentially right in that the NZDF will now be working side by side with the US military on a regular and continuous basis in specified areas (such as the upcoming RIMPAC naval exercises that the Royal New Zealand Navy (RNZN) has joined for the first time in two decades), although NZ will have a little more leeway in refusing US requests to join in foreign conflicts than if it had signed a formal alliance agreement that required both parties to come to their respective defense.

The resumption of near-complete bilateral military ties between New Zealand and the US is not a surprise. The 5^th Labour government (1999-2008) started the rapprochement with the US post 9/11, and the National governments that followed it have openly embraced the prospect of finally overcoming the post-ANZUS freeze in security relations (with the exception of intelligence-sharing, which never suffered the curtailment of ties seen in military relations). Labour was wary of being seen as getting too close to the US, since that could jeopardize its reputation for an “independent and autonomous” foreign policy stance, particularly amongst non-aligned and small states. National prefers to embrace the US more whole-heartedly, in part because of the belief that there will eventually be economic as well as military benefits in doing so (such as via the Transpacific Partnership trade agreements currently being negotiated by the US, New Zealand and seven other Pacific Rim states). The idea behind National’s approach appears to be to use the improved military ties with the US as a hedge against the rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by countering or balancing increased economic dependence on the PRC with the strengthening of economic and military ties with the US and other pro-Western nations along the Pacific periphery. National seems to believe that this balancing act (or straddling of fences), continues the tradition, or at least appearance of independence in foreign affairs.

That may be a mistake because independence in foreign affairs is most often predicated on neutrality with regards to foreign conflicts or great power rivalries. In aligning itself more closely with the US on military matters, New Zealand loses that appearance of neutrality in international security affairs. The New Zealand Foreign Affairs and Defense ministries may believe that this is the best hedge against attempts by the PRC to exploit its economic relationship with New Zealand (since the PRC is clearly the dominant partner in the bilateral Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with New Zealand and has much leverage on New Zealand when it comes to Chinese market access as well as exports and investment from the PRC to New Zealand). Balancing economic dependence on China with strengthened security ties with the US (and its allies) may appear to National to be the best way of New Zealand having its cake and eating it.

Strengthening of political ties with the US is part of National’s larger policy of reaffirming diplomatic alignment with traditional partners. The belief is that New Zealand shares more in terms of core values with these traditional partners due to the Anglo-Saxon liberal democratic traditions that bind them together, rather than the mixed Confucian-Communist-Nationalist values that underpin the core beliefs of the Chinese political elite (or the Islamic beliefs of New Zealand’s Middle Eastern trading partners). Even if the PRC was to continue growing economically at a pace similar to the last decade (which now seems improbable), it seems prudent under this logic for National to reaffirm its Western heritage, joint vision and general orientation until such a time as China and other non-Western authoritarian states begin to open up politically. Reaffirming political ties to the US and other traditional allies does not undermine New Zealand’s position with Asian democracies like India, South Korea, Taiwan or Japan, or with Southeast Asian democracies (such as they are) like Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. All of these countries, as well as Southeast Asian authoritarian states such as Singapore and Viet Nam, fear the rise of China as a military power and/or economic hegemon in the Western Pacific, and therefore welcome any counter-balancing efforts on the part of the US and its strategic partners and military allies.  The political alignment with the US also fits in line with the foreign policy approaches of Australia and the UK, and reasserts New Zealand’s position within that informal alliance structure (Canada is part of it as well).

There are benefits for both the US and New Zealand in this restored relationship. The benefits for New Zealand are that the NZDF will get to conduct exercises and operations with the most hardened, experienced and technologically advanced military in the world. That will expose it to the latest in US strategic doctrine and tactics. It may also result in the US providing military equipment to and training opportunities for New Zealand that it otherwise could not afford. It will reassure New Zealand of the implicit US defense guarantee in the event that New Zealand were to be threatened or attacked (to include economic coercion by the likes of the PRC). It may lead to closer economic ties, although that remains an open and much debated question (there is a large literature on security partners being preferential economic partners because of the mutual trust and dependence established between them. Most of that literature was written during the Cold War and things changed after it ended, but now with the emergence of the PRC and other powers some of those old assumptions are being resurrected and reviewed, especially in the US).

For the US the agreement is win-win. It gets an immediate benefit from securing another strong security partner in the South Pacific, one that has considerable “local knowledge” and relative influence in South Polynesia. This accords with the shift in US strategic emphasis to the Asia-Pacific, which is part of a long-term strategy of ring-fencing Chinese attempts at blue water expansion into the region. In signing New Zealand to a bilateral military partnership similar to those of other Western Pacific states, the US has moved to establish a security cordon in the region, something that also serves as a force multiplier in the measure that US strategic partners commit military assets to a common cause. New Zealand’s reputation as an honest broker in international affairs gives it diplomatic cover in this effort.

More importantly, after 25 years of estrangement and New Zealand foreign policy independence, at least with regard to international security affairs, the US has finally broken down New Zealand’s resolve and returned it to the fold. Post 1985 wooing of New Zealand began during the Clinton administration and continued with his successors. 9/11 accelerated the reconciliation (under a Labour government), and the Wellington Declaration codified it. In many respects, the US’s ability to re-gain New Zealand’s signature on a bilateral military-security agreement is a triumph of long-term great power diplomacy: after years of distance it secured junior military partnership from a small democratic state that prides itself on its modern history of  foreign policy independence. To be sure, fluid global conditions since 1990 have contributed to the evolution in US-New Zealand bilateral relations, but at present it appears that the US has finally managed the contratemp of New Zealand non-nuclearism with diplomatic aplomb and to its ultimate benefit.

The negatives for New Zealand could be that the US will pressure it to increase its spending on defense, now below 1 percent of GDP, to something more in line with Australia’s two percent per annum. This would be on a par with other US strategic partners and around the NATO average, but will be politically unpalatable amongst New Zealand voters, who tend to under-appreciate defense when compared with education, health and welfare. Thus any such request will be politically thorny for a New Zealand government. However, the US can leverage the fact that the NZDF is not “pulling its weight” in the strategic partnership (the Australians already say this).

For example, although the Washington Declaration speaks about closer bilateral military cooperation in the areas of maritime patrol and anti-piracy, New Zealand has very little in the way of long-range patrol and interdiction capabilities. Specifically, New Zealand only has two blue water ANZAC-class frigates, two off-shore patrol vessels and six long-range P-3 patrol aircraft, and its multi-purpose ship, the HMNZS Canterbury, spends more time in port being repaired than at sea, As for its logistical lift capability, not only is the HMNZS Canterbury unreliable, but the RNZAF C-130 fleet, at five aircraft, is also small and already stretched in terms of its operational readiness. Thus the US and Australia can pressure New Zealand governments to increase spending on defense so as to be able to perform the responsibilities and tasks that are expected of it as a strategic partner in the areas designated as joint priority.

There is the risk of being drawn into US conflicts that have nothing to do with New Zealand or an imminent threat to it. Even if New Zealand has leeway in terms of refusing a US request to get involved in a non-immediate foreign conflict, once bilateral military ties are established and consolidated they constitute a source of leverage on the part of the US since any retaliatory cancellation or disruption of the bilateral relationship will hurt the NZDF more than it will the US military. Moreover, the bilateral diplomatic backlash from a public refusal to work with the US in a foreign conflict theater could overcome any domestic and international support for the move.

There is also the more immediate issue of diplomatic fallout over the partnership. The more that New Zealand is seen as aligning itself with the US on security matters, the more US rivals such as Russia, the PRC, and various Latin American and Middle Eastern states will see it as a tool of US foreign policy and military strategy. Even other “independent” states like Uruguay, Finland, Costa Rica, Estonia and Turkey may begin to recast their view of New Zealand as a honest broker in international affairs. That is why National’s belief that its fence-straddling or hedging strategy will continue the image of independence may not work out to be the case, which could have adverse diplomatic consequences.

95bFM The Wire Counter-Clockwise Bulletin – Recorded live on 21/06/12:

Main Points – On Wednesday June 20, New Zealand’s Minister of Defence Jonathan Coleman met with the United States’ secretary of defense Leon Panetta at the Pentagon in Washington DC where the Washington Declaration was signed.

The Declaration formalises in a military sense a warming of a foreign affairs and security relationship between New Zealand and the USA.

From this juncture, the United States will likely shear more military intelligence with New Zealand and keep it in the loop on forward strategy.

New Zealand can expect more coordination of military force training between it and the United States and its allies; more involvement of New Zealand forces in US-led peacekeeping and peacemaking operations.

New Zealand’s relationship with the United States has been warming since the mid 2000s after two decades of estrangement. In the mid 1980s New Zealand established anti-nuclear laws that prohibited vessels carrying nuclear weapons from entering New Zealand’s territorial waters. This legislation placed strains on the ANZUS treaty. ANZUS was a security alliance that was established in September 1951 and committed Australia, New Zealand, and the USA to the defense pact. In 1985 New Zealand stated that a US naval vessel was welcome to visit New Zealand ports so long as the US Government confirmed the vessel was not carrying nuclear weapons. The USA refused to either confirm nor deny which vessels in its Pacific fleet carried nuclear weapons. As a consequence, all US naval vessels were banned from New Zealand waters, and, in 1986, the United States announced it had suspended its ANZUS treaty security obligations to New Zealand concluding that New Zealand was a nation unsupportive of its global security interests.

However, since 2005 relations between New Zealand and the USA began to thaw. In 2006 New Zealand was called on to rationalize its non-proliferation ideal to North Korea during six nation talks attempting to thwart North Korea’s ambition to become a nuclear weapons power.

In 2008 the Labour-led Government hosted a visit by US secretary of state Condolezza Rice who described New Zealand as a “friend and an ally”.

On September 5 2010 the National-led Government’s Foreign Minister Murray McCully and the US secretary of state Hillary Clinton signed the Wellington Declaration which signaled the beginning of a “strategic partnership” a new chapter of even greater cooperation, committing both nations to regular Foreign Ministers’ meetings and political-military discussions.

On June 04 2012, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key signed New Zealand up to a NATO security pact titled Individual Partnership Cooperation Programme (IPCP).

On June 20 2012, New Zealand Defence Minister signed the Washington Declaration at the Pentagon in Washington DC.

Clitics of this trend are likely to argue that New Zealand is at risk of eroding its independent brand of foreign policy and undermining the strength of its diplomacy, should it strive to influence others through the strength of the morality of its argument. Arguably, New Zealand also risks complicating its relationship with the People’s Republic of China – its most influential trading partner – especially should the PRC become sensitive to New Zealand siding with the United States on security issues while the latter seeks to deploy up to 60 percent of its naval fleet in the Asia/Pacific region.

See Also:
• Official Statement – United States, New Zealand Sign Defense Cooperation Arrangement
• Official Document – US/NZ Washington Declaration (pdf)

Selwyn Manning’s Counter-Clockwise bulletin broadcasts live on 95bFM weekly on Thursdays and webcasts on LiveNews.co.nz.

Triangle TV, LiveNews.co.nz: Important Points – New Zealand’s former Foreign Affairs Minister Phil Goff reveals that Australia’s former PM Kevin Rudd, abandoned a pledge agreed in 2004 between Canada, New Zealand and Australia, that New Zealand would be next among the CANZ group to bid for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (for 2015-16). In this interview Phil Goff reveals that on appointment as Australia’s Prime Minister, Rudd unilaterally announced Australia would make a run for a UNSC seat ahead of New Zealand.

Script: New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully says the United Nations Security Council must step up and make “hard decisions” to resolve the entrenched conflict in Syria – We’d hoped to ask him what he meant by that – But he declined our invitation to appear on this programme.

New Zealand has five troops on stand-by to join the UN observation team in Syria – and our Government supports the Australian decision to expel the Syrian ambassador who’s accredited to represent the Assad government on both sides of the Tasman Sea.

But Syria is just one of a range of contentious foreign affairs issues on our political agenda at the moment.

Others include New Zealand’s long term commitment to Afghanistan following the international military withdrawal, the refocusing of our diplomatic representation around the world, and our campaign to secure a seat on the UN Security Council in 2015.

Selwyn Manning’s been exploring those issues with former Foreign Affairs, Trade and Defence Minister – and current Labour Party spokesperson on foreign affairs Phil Goff.

Questions include:

The National-led Government has announced it is openly campaigning for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council (term 2015-16).

1: How would you rate New Zealand’s chances?

2: What effect will Australia’s bid for a non-permanent seat from 2013-14 have on New Zealand’s campaign?

3: One would presume you were briefed on New Zealand’s foreign affairs and security strategy through the last term and certainly as Labour’s spokesperson on foreign affairs. Has New Zealand coordinated its campaign with that of Australia?

4: Presumably, New Zealand has the support of the CANZ voting block (Canada, Australia, New Zealand), it is possible it has the support of the Obama Administration, but to be successful does it need broader support from the BRIC nations, and non-alligned nations – Russia and China for example?

5: For New Zealand to gain a seat on the UN SC it will have to take on Turkey – on the face of it that seems a tough game to play don’t you think?

6: To gain the support of Russia and China, would New Zealand needs to polish up on its independent nation credentials?

7: How do you compare New Zealand’s current foreign affairs strategy (closer security relations with the US and NATO) to that of the Labour-led Government of 1999-2008?

8: Anticipating that New Zealand could likely be led by a Labour Government in 2015-16 – would Labour return New Zealand to a more independently aligned foreign security policy?

The Beatson Interview broadcasts weekly on Triangle TV and webcasts on Livenews.co.nz.

95bFM’s The Wire – Recorded live on 7/06/12: Selwyn Manning & Simon Maude discuss the implications of New Zealand signing a NATO security pact titled Individual Partnership Cooperation Programme (IPCP).

Background:

This week New Zealand Prime Minister John Key travelled from London to north Europe where he signed New Zealand up to the NATO IPCP security agreement.

New Zealand agreed to sign the pact after attending the NATO nations special meeting held in Chicargo in May – where topics included a coordinated exit strategy regarding the Afghanistan conflict, and attrocities being committed in Syria.

The IPCP pact assures NATO of New Zealand’s commitment to NATO-led security efforts. The pact includes a focus on cyber-defence, disaster relief, crisis management, and joint education and training.

New Zealand certainly appears to be abandoning the independent foreign policy that it maintained from 1984 through to 2008. Since 2008 New Zealand has committed to closer defence relations with Australia, it has signed the Wellington Declaration committing New Zealand to a closer security relationship with the United States, and now with the signing of the NATO security partnership alliance document (IPCP), New Zealand demonstrated it has given distance to the independent stance it advanced when refusing to commit to US-led forces that invaded Iraq in 2003.

Is NATO shaping into a broader western-alliance led force?

In recent times we have seen NATO leading a western aligned operation against Libya’s Gaddafi regime; we have seen the United Nations Security Council blocked from making a move against those committing atrocities in Syria. The UNSC is divided over Syria where the United States and west-leaning states favor intervention while Russia and China currently favor a diplomatic solution. The UNSC situation seems untenable.

What has New Zealand signed up to?

The big picture provides a contextual backdrop where New Zealand signs the NATO security pact, we see the NATO secretary general traveling to Australia next week for similar talks, we saw this week Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting his counterpart from the People’s Republic of China in Beijing signing up to a closer security relationship between the two global powers.

The big picture also presents a series of unanswered questions, like:

What is NATO’s common enemy? Is it now outside those presenting as a terrorist organization? Is the common enemy once again states that the Western security alliance considers rogue such as Syria, Iran, Nigeria, Yemen, North Korea?

Are we seeing the emergence once again of a bipolar world divided between countries embracing western ideals form multilateral pacts outside the jurisdiction of the United Nations framework? While other non-aligned nations, led by Russia and China, group together offering a counter-balance to western domination?

In New Zealand there has been little discussion (both publicly and politically) regarding the implications of its Government having signed the NATO IPCP pact.

For more, see:

• 36th-Parallel – Official NATO Statement: Text & Video: NATO and New Zealand Sign New Partnership Accord

36th-Parallel.com’s Dr Paul Buchanan joins Glenn Williams to discuss New Zealand’s bid to be come a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council.

Will New Zealand be successful in its bid? Is the United States backing the campaign? If so, is this a positive or a negative for New Zealand?

See also: 36th Parallel Analysis: New Zealand’s United Nations Security Council Bid

36th Parallel Assessment Series – By Paul G. Buchanan

Introduction:

Four of the South Pacific militaries are variations of the traditional professional model: Australia, Chile, France and New Zealand. In each country the military as an organization is subordinate to elected civilian authority and primarily has an external focus. The Australian and French armed forces are examples of expeditionary forces, those that are organized and trained to fight overseas. That includes a logistics and supply capability that permits ongoing off-shore combat operations. In Australia’s case it has become a major ally of the US and serves, to a great degree, as the “deputy sheriff” of the US in the Southwestern Pacific and Indian Ocean Areas of Responsibility (AORs). Its strategic outlook dovetails with that of the US accordingly. France home ports its Pacific Fleet in Papeete, French Polynesia and has sizable land-based garrisons there and in New Caledonia. Although these garrisons are designed to reinforce French sovereignty over its territorial possessions and thus have internal security functions within them, they constitute overseas deployments for the soldiers involved and are combat-ready (local and mainlander gendarmes do domestic policing). French military forces in the South Pacific are not as integrated into US strategic planning as are Australian forces, but nevertheless exercise and share intelligence with their Antipodean and US counterparts.

The New Zealand Defence Forces are by far the smallest of the traditional professional militaries in the South Pacific, and are characterized by an overt orientation towards international peace-keeping. They do not have a combat air force and have limited naval power projection capability. Although it has a well-respected elite Special Air Services unit that has served in a number of conflict zones including Afghanistan and (reportedly) Iraq, the Army spends as much time on its combat engineer and medicine deployments as it does on combat operations.  This is in line with New Zealand’s long-standing peace-keeping orientation, which has seen its forces recently serve in places as disparate as Bosnia, Lebanon, the Sinai, Solomon Islands and East Timor. Like the other three traditional militaries in the region, the NZDF prides itself on its professional integrity and autonomy from partisan politics.

Australian and New Zealand military and police provide security coverage for all of the Pacific Island countries other than Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Tonga that are not covered by the US or France. These include Manu Samoa, Nauru, Kiribati, Niue, the Cook Islands, and the Solomons.

Fiji is the largest and longest-established of the Pacific Island Country (PIC) militaries. It has a long and distinguished record of international peace-keeping service, and has sent its troops into battle (and lost many) alongside other British Commonwealth nations, where they have distinguished themselves with their bravery and warrior spirit. However, although it has given the appearance of a new professional military from time to time (that is, one that divides internal and external security functions more or less equally and which is largely independent of civilian oversight), in the last 15 years the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF, known as Fiji Military Forces) have reverted to first an arbitrator and now a ruler praetorian role.

After an initial suspension in 2007, the RFMF has been restored to UN peace-keeping contributor status, with Fijian military observers currently stationed in Lebanon and Syria. However, it is barred from participating in Commonwealth and Pacific Island Forum-mandated multi-lateral military operations (in the latter case, such as the RAMSI mission in the Solomon Islands), and was not invited to join the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan even though another PIC military, that of Tonga, joined the coalition. Fijian officers and officer candidates are barred from Commonwealth and US military training and exercises, so have increasingly turned to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) for military training and education exchanges and, in a limited way, operational exercises. Because military service has traditionally been seen as an avenue for upward mobility and a major source of hard currency income for lower class families (since international service entailed payment in US dollar or Euro rates), the prohibitions on international peace-keeping was a major source of concern for the Baimimarama regime. It has solved the problem by allowing RFMF personnel to serve in foreign militaries such as that of the UK or with private security companies (PMCs) in conflict zones. In addition, the Fijian Defense Ministry and RFMF are involved in a private-public security partnership in the form of Fiji Defence Logistics (FDL), which offers logistical and operational support to private and public agencies abroad. These three vehicles of military labor absorption had had the dual effect of guaranteeing hard currency remittances (which are a third of the GDP) while providing career opportunities for officers and soldiers otherwise sitting idle in barracks at home (since even very generous bureaucratic placement of military personnel cannot absorb all of the excess capacity and requires a different skill set than that possessed by most RFMF soldiers).

At present the RFMF retains a strong internal focus, to the point of armed intervention in domestic security matters. The concerns with regard to its Fijian military professionalism are two-fold:

• will it continue to retain an active, if not dominant position in any future civilian government, and if so, in what way?
• what will be the effect of prolonged involvement in government on the RFDF fighting capability?

Bilateral military-to-military ties with the PRC are a potential avenue for reconciling the two concerns because the Chinese model of civil-military relations presumes a dominant role for the military in conjunction with a strong party and allied state bureaucracy. A future military-backed civilian party that was led by a retired military officer and supported by the military “colonists” within the state bureaucracy would, if elected on open and competitive grounds, be eligible for resumed international security duties, thereby restoring its combat orientation and edge. Even so, difficulties in agreeing to a framework for the holding of elections and international opposition to military involvement in a post-2014 government make the transition to a so-called “professional revolutionary” typology of military institutionalism problematic (but not impossible).

The Papuan New Guinea Defence Forces (PNGDF) are a classic example of military praetorianism. Larger conflicts in civil and political society are played out within the officer  and non-commissioned officer corps.  This has impinged on corporate autonomy, standards of training and operational readiness. Army-dominant and formally organized around the concept of external defense, in practice the PNGDF has since independence been largely dedicated to internal security functions, including counter-insurgency operations such as those against Bougainville secessionists in the early 1990s that resulted in numerous human rights violations and atrocities against civilians and which precipitated the infamous “Sandline Affair” where private mercenaries attempted to put down the insurrection after PNGDF failures, only to be ordered out of the country by the government of the day.

Although in comparative terms, relative to other branches of the PNG state, the PNGDF is considered to be moderately stable, internal factionalization, low levels of recruitment and retention, budgetary constraints and limited professional training and education opportunities have impeded the professional development and orientation of the armed institution as a whole. Australia continues to provide training and education liaison services for PNG defense personnel and PNG military officers have begun to participate in limited military outreach programs offered by the PRC. Even so, ongoing political crises and simmering social tensions reverberate within the military institution to the point that it remains an open question as to its reliability as a cohesive combat organization.

Tonga represents a novelty in that it is undergoing the transition from a praetorian to a new professional military. Traditionally inward-oriented and at the service of the King (something seen in its deployment during the Nuku’alofa riots in 2006), the Tongan Defence Services (TDS) have during the last decade participated in international security operations, most notably as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom (2004-2008) and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan (2011-present). Since 2002 TDS personnel have also participated in the RAMSI peace-keeping and enforcement mission in the Solomon Islands. With a very small complement of 500 soldiers, this means that the majority of uniformed personnel have overseas combat and peace-keeping experience, making them arguably the most field tested of all of the current PIC militaries. Tonga has defense cooperation agreements with Australia, New Zealand, the US, the UK, and more recently India and China. In 2011 the PRC and Tonga signed a military aid grant agreement by which the PRC would transfer several million dollars worth of non-lethal military equipment to Tonga free of charge. Tongan military officers attend training and educational exchange programs with all of these defense partners, and exercise regularly with Australian, US and New Zealand defense forces in search and rescue (SAR) and humanitarian assistance operations.

Exposure to combat operations with larger professional military forces such as those of the US and the UK are considered to be a significant step towards the corporate professionalization of the TDS as well as an impediment to its involvement in domestic politics short of a national emergency.  In fact, the orientation of the TDS towards traditional military professionalism and foreign field experience is consonant with the gradual liberalization of the Tongan political system under King (George) Tupou V and expected to continue under King  (Aho’eitu) Tupou VI. This places the TDS in stark contrast to the Fijian and Papua New Guinea defense forces, both of which are deeply embroiled in domestic politics that some believe impacts negatively on their operational readiness, corporate cohesion and command discipline.

Analysis: Geopolitics and strategic balancing in the South China Sea.

China has been asserting its territorial claims very aggressively and the United States and associated South East Asian countries have responded.

Most recently China and the Philippines have clashed over the Scarborough Shoal, which itself follows on long-standing arguments about the Spratley Islands (which are also claimed by Vietnam and Malaysia).

In fact, there are six countries with overlapping claims in the South China Sea (Peoples Republic of China (PRC), Viet Nam, Brunei, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia).

This has led to what are known as “nested” security games in the region where the larger US-PRC strategic competition (the big game) is the backdrop to the various bilateral and multilateral disputes.