US President Donald Trump. Photo: JIM WATSON / AFP
Analysis: Fresh from his quickfire moves on trade tariffs, will US President Trump's next target be defence?
And what will New Zealand do, considering it has the lowest defence spending, proportionately, of any of the core Five Eyes security group?
If Trump goes hard on defence like he has on trade, New Zealand stands exposed. It would have to double spending just to get to the target he likes - 2 percent of GDP.
Canada also has low defence spending, but pledged just last week under US pressure to hurry to 2 percent in just two years, instead of five.
Experts like David Capie, head of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, are getting to grips with what has changed.
"New Zealand will be keen to sort of avoid the eye of Sauron that can fall onto seemingly any country," he said.
Even in his first term, Trump was central to pushing NATO members towards 2 percent - and now talk in Europe is of 3 percent, while the US president has even floated the idea of 5 percent.
It seems the only way is up. Al Gillespie, professor of international law at the University of Waikato, said that was the trend regardless of Trump.
Al Gillespie. Photo: Wayne Mead
"The expectation will be that we match the fund in this area. Comparable countries like Australia are now past the 2 percent target and many would view that we are a laggard in this race."
Commentator and former defence minister Wayne Mapp agrees.
"Everyone else is noticing that we're not, sort of, even trying to match."
The head of NATO told this week's EU summit in Brussels that military spending must rise as the world is "increasingly more dangerous".
But will Trump force the pace such that Defence Minister Judith Collins notices, ahead of Budget 2025? Chief editor of local Line of Defence magazine Nicholas Dynon doubts it.
"I think Trump's got other priorities geopolitically and in terms of what he might regard as military freeloaders, and that's specifically looking at Europe and the members of NATO."
He did not see the dial moving towards 2 percent here this year because the economic outlook is too bleak.
"It's no wonder that the National-led government thought it prudent at that point... to delay the DCP's original mid-2024 release."
The DCP, or Defence Capability Plan, will reveal much more about this with its 20-year priorities - but is still months away from release, Collins told RNZ last week.
Judith Collins. Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
It might come out pre-Budget, observers think.
Mapp expected the plan could offer two tracks - a high-cost track, and a low-cost track "that is just replacing like with like".
He pointed out that just one big buy - like the P8 Poseidons - could rapidly push up the spend proportionately. And that now it was the navy's turn.
"Frigates are sort of a $3 or $4 billion item, and that's just getting two of them... getting exactly what we've got now. If you wanted to sort of increase to three, well, you know, you're going to be making a big difference."
Collins put the delays over the capability plan down to tougher geopolitics, such as China testing missiles, though critics expressed disbelief at that.
Honorary professor Peter Greener in a recent article in Line of Defence said colleagues who thought the government was kicking the can down the road, were right.
"The delay in the release of the DCP makes no sense,"
On the question if 2025 would be when the country moved to 2 percent spending, Greener told RNZ: "The answer must be no."
"Whilst a promise to increase spending may come in the current term of government, I see little hope of any actual money. President Trump may prove me wrong."
Meantime, Pacific historian and AUT law lecturer Dr Marco de Jong wondered who was calling the shots.
"I just want to know who's driving the conversation," de Jong said. "We've seen in the US, attempts to leverage alliance structures and recruit Silicon Valley capital. And I worry that the conversation is being driven not by the national interest but really is an attempt to subsidise the military-industrial complex."
Capie said it was "not really a question of what Trump is going to tell us, what we should do".
"The reason we should be doing this, and the reason we should be making these hard decisions around expenditure, is because of our own interests."
'Wicked problems'
Dynon called squaring defence demands with available dollars a series of "wicked problems". Especially when emerging technologies in satellite targeting, kamikaze drones and hypersonics were now the stuff of the Ukraine war, Gillespie said tech developments meant budgets would have to be not just bigger, but more flexible.
"There is a silence in New Zealand around this right now. But you only have to look at what's happening in Europe or in the Indo-Pacific and there is an arms race of the type we've not seen for decades going on, and we have not yet joined this.
"We need to be reticent and cautious about dealing with it. But at the same time, we can't put our head in the sand and assume it isn't happening."
One way to pay our way may be if space capabilities were to count towards defence spending. Researcher on international affairs and space, Marcal Sanmarti, noted that was already happening.
"The (New Zealand) Space Agency recommended the minister that if we wanted the space sector to grow in New Zealand, the New Zealand Defence Force should be more involved."
Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
