Threat of full-scale war puts tight focus on NZ defence approach
European diplomats in Wellington say privately that their continent now feels like 1938. In Brussels, the European Union’s Foreign Minister, Josep Borrell, warned on Tuesday that “Russia threatens Europe” and that full-scale war was looming.
“A high-intensity, conventional war in Europe is no longer a fantasy,” he said.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk — previously an advocate of “the politics of love” — says Europe is now in a pre-war era and he is rapidly upgrading his military, now spending over 4 per cent of GDP on defence.
Germany and France are considering reintroducing conscription, also being talked about openly by military leaders in the United Kingdom. Denmark has extended conscription to women for the first time.
In Scandinavia, Sweden reintroduced conscription ahead of its application to join Nato. Finland, which has also joined Nato, already had it. Since January, conscription has been in place in all three Baltic states.
Across Europe, Nato members are increasing defence budgets at the fastest rate since the alliance was formed in 1949, up 11 per cent just last year.
Their combined annual defence spending will pass US$380 billion ($634b) in 2024, the first time it will collectively exceed the Nato target of 2 per cent of GDP. Including the US and Canada, annual Nato defence spending is approaching US$1.2 trillion.
Among Nato’s four closest friends in the Indo-Pacific, Japan and South Korea have both increased their defence budgets to over US$50b and Australia to US$30b. All three will soon be above the 2 per cent of GDP Nato guideline.
As Nato’s fourth Indo-Pacific friend, New Zealand will need to follow suit, unless we wish to adopt neutrality in a dangerous world.
That seems to be preferred by former Prime Minister Helen Clark, who has criticised Winston Peters for engaging so closely with the US — ironically just as her socialdemocratic friends in Scandinavia take the opposite path — but it’s not the preference of either the old or new Government.
Last year, Labour invested around US$3.3b in defence, a small increase and a little over 1 per cent of GDP. Despite a difficult fiscal outlook, Defence Minister Judith Collins will be expected by our friends and allies to double that.
They have a case, pointing out that if New Zealand could spend $30b more in 2023/4 than during the height of Covid and now afford billions in tax cuts, then at least a few billion should be invested to keep our place in their wider democratic alliance.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s descent into an expansionist dictator since the catastrophic 2003 US invasion of Iraq has driven most of the growing fear. He has described the fall of the Soviet empire as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, a big call given the long period of war from 1914 to 1945 that killed over 100 million people.
Putin wants that empire restored before he dies.
Encouraging him is the likely reelection of Donald Trump as US President, now openly talking about withdrawing the US from Nato and removing its security guarantee.
Trump has previously been unenthusiastic about the US alliances with Japan and South Korea. While
Australia thinks the submarine part of Aukus would survive a second Trump presidency, the deal’s socalled Pillar 2 would be much less likely to proceed.
Trump has also promised to start a trade war not just against China but against the US’s European and East Asian allies. That would almost certainly cause the final collapse of the already wounded World Trade Organisation.
Combined, this would effectively be Trump signalling to Putin, now in his 70s, that he can help himself in Eastern Europe.
With the US disengaged, Putin might be somewhat deterred by France and the UK still having a limited number of nuclear weapons. But they know that using even one would see the total destruction of Western Europe by a Russian nuclear arsenal at least 10 times as great.
Putin did not hesitate to threaten its use to deter Nato support for Ukraine, warning Western Europe of “consequences greater than any you have faced in history” — another big call given the events of 1914-45.
In theory, a Nato without the US would still be obliged to declare war on Russia should it take even a square mile of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, which were part of the Soviet empire. But Putin would probably be right in thinking that another threat of his “consequences greater than any you have faced in history” would keep them in check.
It’s almost impossible to imagine France, the UK and their European allies really being prepared to risk nuclear annihilation in defence of a million or so Estonians. Yet, if they’re not, then what is there to stop Putin then having a crack at Latvia, Lithuania or even Poland?
Elsewhere, Nato would certainly not risk catastrophe if Putin had another go at Georgia or Azerbaijan, Armenia or Kazakhstan and, through it, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.
We might hope such ambitions are beyond him given his troubles in Ukraine and the Soviet Union’s inability to conquer Afghanistan. But in neither case did Russia fully mobilise as it did after being attacked by Germany in 1941.
Even without full mobilisation, Russia has held its own against Ukraine, the most powerful of its former vassal states of the Soviet empire that Putin wants to rebuild before he dies. Being defeated by Afghanistan is something Russia has in common with the British Empire and the US.
If, as Poland fears, a high-intensity, conventional war in Europe broke out, the further danger is that China would see an opportunity to advance its ambitions over Taiwan and elsewhere, similar to how Japan took advantage of war in Europe in the 1940s.
Perhaps, as Clark seems to suggest, we would be better to keep out of all this, certainly producing enough food to survive even if global trade were to collapse. But if we prefer, as the Ardern-Hipkins and Luxon Governments appear to, to instead seek security by remaining part of the Western defence network, that comes with a price — first in money and treasure, and perhaps later in blood.
It might thus make sense for us to start having the sorts of serious conversations that are under way in Europe, Japan and South Korea, rather than just blundering unintentionally into a hopeless halfway house. Or we could remain preoccupied with whether the next electoral bribe to the median voter will be called a tax cut or a Working for Families handout.
A high-intensity, conventional war in Europe is no longer a fantasy. EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell
Disclosure: matthew hooton has over 30 years’ experience in political and corporate communications and strategy for clients in Australasia, Asia, Europe and North America, including the National and Act parties, and the Mayor of Auckland.