France, Germany, and Finland are among the Western European countries boosting their defense spending after President Trump made clear that we couldn’t simply endlessly sustain a Pax Americana unless our allies began pulling their weight. But, interestingly enough, so is New Zealand.
New Zealand said on Monday it would boost defence spending by NZ$9 billion ($5 billion) over the next four years and aim to nearly double spending as a proportion of GDP to 2% in the next 8 years.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said at the release of the country’s Defence Capability Plan that New Zealand’s defence spending was too low at a time of rapidly increasing global tensions.
New Zealand is not normally anyone’s first thought of a front-line nation. The only real threat in that quarter, unless someone is actually thinking long-term about Muslim countries in Asia (not to mention the insurgent migrants) is China.
Some of the plans are revealing.
Of note in the blueprint is the plan to buy new missile systems “to respond to hostile vessels at a greater range” in the next four years.
There are also indications the defence force will expand its martime strike capabilities to deliver “long range strikes from multiple domains” from 2029 to 2039.
New Zealand had a responsibility to resource the Defence Force to ensure the country’s national interests could be defended, “whether in our near region, in defence of the realm in the South Pacific, in our alliance with Australia or in support of collective security efforts with our partners”.
Setting aside the generic buzzwords, New Zealand wants to upgrade its navy and be ready to fight off naval threats in the region.
And it’s looking at collective security.
This is part of a larger trend in which President Trump has forced allied nations to take a closer look at their value proposition as allies and also be ready to deal with a world in which America isn’t always there to leap to their rescue.
