Plan puts meat on ‘Pacific Reset’ bones
The Defence department will today release its plan for how it will join with the Pacific and ‘‘like-minded’’ nations to fight the ‘‘complex disrupters’’ facing the region which include climate change, transnational organised crime, and resource competition.
The Advancing Pacific Partnerships report – to be launched by Minister of Defence Ron Mark this morning – is the next step in the Government’s Defence strategy in the Pacific. It follows on from the department’s Defence Capability Plan, which was released in June, setting out indicative investment in the New Zealand Defence Force through to 2030.
In practical terms, the report broadly sets out Defence’s plans to enact the so-called ‘Pacific Reset’, launched by Foreign Minister Winston Peters at Sydney’s Lowy Institute in 2018. That confirms a greater focus on Defence’s role in, particularly, partnering with Pacific nations and respond to the changing geopolitical environment caused by climate change. New Zealand’s aim is to be able to get to the Pacific quickly in the event of disasters to broker conflict resolution caused by scarcer resources if required.
‘‘We can’t take things for granted in the Pacific. The security environment in the region is changing very quickly and we haven’t always been responsive and sensitive to the needs of our Pacific partners’’, Professor Rouben Azizian, Director of the
Centre for Defence and Security Studies at Massey University told Stuff.
The report is also about New Zealand’s role in helping Pacific nations protect their fisheries and mining resources.
‘‘This is where the document is most important because it aligns defence capability requirements with the resource protection needs of the Pacific nations’’
A key policy aim of the Pacific Reset is to direct significant resources to help secure a ‘‘stable, prosperous and resilient Pacific’’. A recently released Cabinet External Relations and Security Committee minute said that ‘‘the increased tempo of the activity in the Pacific under the Pacific Reset should be considered the new normal for New Zealand’s regional engagement.’’
‘‘This is our commitment to partnering with the Pacific and
recognises our powerful links to the region,’’ Defence Minister Ron Mark said.
In part the report responds to ‘‘the emergence and rapid growth of external influences, primarily China although China isn’t mentioned in the document directly,’’ Azizian said. The report frequently mentions ‘‘likeminded’’ nations, code for democratic countries in the region that back the liberal rules-based international order, rather than authoritarian China or even Russia, which donated container-loads of arms to Fiji in early 2016.
The other objective is to support collaborative security architecture that is based on particular values such as good governance. An effective regional security architecture makes the region as a whole more resilient and focused on common goals rather than external priorities, Azizian said.