Professor Richard Jackson of Otago University said he did not see a sign New Zealand might seize the chance to set a truly independent foreign defence policy. Photo: SERGEY SHESTAK / AFP
An expert in international relations says the Ukraine and Gaza wars and other disruption could end up in the destruction of the whole international order.
The US and Russian Presidents talked overnight about ending the war in Ukraine.
Professor Richard Jackson of Otago University said Donald Trump added a whole new huge wildcard to global security.
"There's so much instability and so much going on and ... you know, his style and vision for the international system is so disruptive, I mean, I think we're possibly seeing the kind of destruction and reconstruction of the entire sort of post-war international order," Jackson said in a wide-ranging interview with RNZ about the mass of geopolitical risks New Zealand faces.
The dramatic developments on Ukraine came when Defence Minister Judith Collins was in Germany for security meetings.
Collins said before she left New Zealand relied on a "safe and interconnected world" so Ukraine, the Middle East and rising tensions in the Indopacific mattered to it.
"We are committed to reinvigorating our security relationships, to playing our part, and working with like-minded partners to uphold the international rules-based system and democratic values," she said in a statement.
Collins oversaw several quiet moves last year to align New Zealand more closely with US defence and national security strategies including on emerging military technologies.
The country was now considered by the US to be part of its military-industrial base.
New Zealand is now considered by the US to be part of its military-industrial base. Photo: JIM WATSON / AFP
"There is... a split that's emerging which is not often talked about," Jackson said.
The core Anglophone countries - the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - along with Nato were "pulling together and they're now sort of circling the wagons".
Collins and the government were ideologically attuned to this and "quietly working away, I think, to solidify moving in that direction".
But that should be debated, he said.
The current dispute with the Cook Islands over a deal with China was symptomatic of the split putting New Zealand on the wrong side of small states and the 'global south'.
"In this unstable environment, New Zealand policymakers - and I have to say without much public debate or fanfare - are quietly kind of reconfirming our old, I guess, imperial or colonial kind of identity of being closely aligned with the Anglosphere powers."
Jackson said the split put pressure on Foreign Minister Winston Peters' Pacific-friendly policy stance; he was perhaps "walking a tightrope" between "at least rhetorical commitment to the Pacific" and siding with the smaller states, and "maintaining a seat at the big table".
But at the big table, "hypocrisies" had been laid bare by the Gaza war.
New Zealand had gone along with a small group of Western states that only seemed to care about international law and norms when it suited them, such as in its failure to speak up against the Trump plan for a US-owned 'Riviera' in Palestinians' homeland, Jackson said.
"We are being tarred with that brush."
Collins oversaw several quiet moves last year to align New Zealand more closely with US defence and national security strategies including on emerging military technologies. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
New Zealand had also repeatedly expressed its agreement with the US contention that the Indopacific region was much more volatile.
Collins had said the region was "deteriorating at a rate not seen in decades", at a meeting with local tech firms last year when she called on them to team up with the NZDF.
This volatility had been the underlying rationale for expanding Aukus Pillar Two, a military tech-sharing alliance New Zealand was considering joining - though China had warned against doing that.
"We're right in the middle, actually, or even at the early stages of a very major arms race," said Jackson, who held the position of 'leading thinker and chair in peace and conflict studies' at Otago and who just co-wrote a book Abolishing the Military: Arguments and Alternatives.
The tech arms race - driven by advances in AI - was a recipe for big defence spending when combined with the government's decades-long "faith" in warfare systems that consistently under-delivered, in the service of Western or partner military operations that had repeatedly failed, whether in Afghanistan, the Middle East or elsewhere.
Added to that was Trump's pressure for Nato and other countries to boost defence spending to two percent of GDP and beyond - "there could very well be some pressure to do that [here]," Jackson said.
An Ukrainian serviceman walks down a street in the frontline city of Bakhmut, Donetsk. Photo: ANATOLII STEPANOV / AFP
This exhibited itself overnight when the US defence secretary Pete Hegseth - like Collins in Europe - laid out a hard line for any security guarantees to Ukraine: They must "be backed by capable European and non-European troops", Hegseth said.
Was all of that as grim as it looked, RNZ asked.
"I think it is, you know," Jackson replied.
"If we make a ledger on, you know, the pressures on one side and then the counter pressures on the other, the only counter pressure I can see at the moment is ... the kind of economic austerity that we're in."
He saw no sign the new defence capability plan - that is months overdue - would resist the pressures.
Nor did he see a sign New Zealand might seize the chance to set a truly independent foreign defence policy.
Instead, the stage was set by geopolitical instability combining with the AI arms race - which might even end up delivering very cheap high-tech weaponry, if China's latest experiments in generative AI were anything to go by.
"This is going to transform warfare," Jackson said.
"To my mind, there's a big question mark here about should we really be joining up and investing billions."
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