Questions over NZ’s connection in standoff
UNITED States President Donald Trump was too spineless to discuss face to face with other G20 leaders his withdrawal of the US from the Paris Climate Change Agreement, arranging a meeting with Russian President Putin at the time when climate change was on the agenda. But he’s willing to bully, from a distance, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, saying he might do ‘‘severe things’’ to it and is ‘‘happy [!] to use force’’, and to send American supersonic bombers to practise pinpoint bombing near the DPRK, following its launch of what may have been an intercontinental ballistic missile, possibly capable of reaching Alaska.
Mr Trump has sent three carrier strike groups to the region, in a failed attempt to deter North Korean nuclear and missile tests. Each group consists of an aircraft carrier, with several other vessels to supply and protect it. In June one of those escorts, the guided missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald, collided with a Philippines container ship, killing seven sailors and suffering significant damage.
The frigate HMNZS Te Kaha was in Asian waters at the time, and the New Zealand Government offered its use, to replace the Fitzgerald, in escorting the carrier USS Nimitz.
When announcing the deployment Defence Minister Mark Mitchell compared it to the help given by USS Sampson (a sistership of Fitzgerald) at the time of the Kaikoura earthquake. It’s not the first time New Zealand has filled an unexpected need in another country’s fleet. In 1982, when Britain urgently organised a task force to recapture the Falkland Islands after the Argentinian invasion, New Zealand sent a frigate to work with the Royal Navy.
But this situation is different from both those occasions, and from the combined training exercises in which the New Zealand and US navies have more recently taken part. The Kaikoura earthquake assistance was a nonmilitary humanitarian deployment, and in 1982 the New Zealand frigate went, not to join the task force, but to police the Persian Gulf, allowing a Royal Navy ship to be redeployed to the South Atlantic.
This attachment isn’t just a training exercise. Te Kaha is tasked with actively protecting a carrier that may, at any time, be involved — perhaps as a first striker, possibly without warning — in hostilities with the DPRK. That suggests that New Zealand could, without any formal decision to that effect, find itself fighting the DPRK.
New Zealand ships have fought the DPRK before, in a conflict in which neither side declared war on the other (officially the New Zealanders were part of a United Nations ‘‘police action’’) and from which no peace has been formally concluded, though fighting ended with an armistice. But they undertook that action because of a deliberate decision by the government, not by being dragged into it accidentally.
Unprovoked, Kim Jongun is most unlikely to attack the US naval force — his aim is to build the DPRK’s nuclear and missile capacity so that the risks to the US from attacking it are too great to be taken lightly. He knows that any nuclear attack on the US could lead to an obliterative response, but if he believes the US is launching a first strike he might be goaded into a war, and with China next door there’s risk of a conflagration spreading. While the obvious way forward is careful negotiation, as South Korea realises, Mr Trump seems to have less selfcontrol than the most immature adolescent — he might start such a war on an impulse.
New Zealand forces, for moral, legal, and realpolitik reasons, should not be taking part in operations which either threaten or carry out an attack on the DPRK. It was, perhaps, reasonable for Te Kaha to fill a gap in an emergency, but that was announced on June 26. The time that’s elapsed since then has surely been enough for the world’s strongest naval power to find a replacement for Fitzgerald.
The Government hasn’t said whether a date to conclude Te Kaha’s deployment as an escort for Nimitz has been agreed with the US. Is Te Kaha still guarding Nimitz? When will a US ship relieve it? Why don’t we know?
Is the US dragging out Te Kaha’s 7th Fleet attachment indefinitely, so New Zealand forces become involved if fighting does start?