DON BRASH: IT’S NO LONGER SAFE TO BE AN AMERICAN ALLY

For all my now-rather-long adult life, there has been a largely unquestioned assumption that the best way for New Zealand to get along in the world is to be an ally of the United States.

And an ally we’ve been since at least December 1941 when, after being attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbour, the United States entered the Second World War.

New Zealand was a formal treaty ally of the US from 1951 when the Australia, New Zealand and United States Security Treaty (ANZUS) was signed.

The defence relationship was consolidated when the South East Asia Treaty Organisation (SEATO) was signed, along with Australia, France, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand and the United Kingdom in 1954.

And further strengthened when New Zealand was invited to join what became the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group of Anglophone countries – Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States – in 1956.

New Zealand sent troops to fight alongside the Americans in Korea in 1950 and, more reluctantly, in Vietnam in 1965.

Things got a bit tense between us in the mid-eighties when the Lange Government made it clear that nuclear-armed vessels were not welcome in our ports, and it’s therefore a moot point whether there is any longer any kind of formal alliance between New Zealand and the United States, but we are still a member in good standing of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group. 

The Ardern Government started a pattern of New Zealand’s attending NATO meetings in Europe, and the current Coalition Government has made no secret of its desire to strengthen our military relationship with the United States, buying American military hardware and sending New Zealand military personnel and assets to take part in US-led military exercises.

In the last couple of years, we have talked up our desire for a closer military relationship with the Philippines, a country in a potentially ugly confrontation with China and with a formal military alliance with the US, and have sent naval ships through the Taiwan Strait on at least two occasions, despite knowing that that would be seen as an aggressively unfriendly act by our largest trading partner.

Is this increasing military closeness to the US in our national interest?

It’s important to remember that no country enters a military alliance unless it believes that it is in its own national interest to do so.  And that is as true for the US as it is for New Zealand.

The US was the decisive factor in the defeat of Germany in the First World War, but did not enter that fray until April 1917, when the war had been raging for well over two years.

The US entered the Second World War in December 1941 after it was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbour, again more than two years after the start of that war – after the Battle of Britain, after the fall of France, and after the Soviet Union had entered the war.

American involvement in major military conflict has been less than totally satisfactory in the years since 1945: fought to a stalemate in Korea; forced to withdraw from Vietnam having mistaken a war for independence from France as the rise of China; forced to withdraw from Afghanistan after some two decades without any lasting improvement in the situation in that country; forced to acknowledge that their invasion of Iraq was based on the false premise that Saddam Hussein had developed nuclear weapons.

And now?  Tragically for the world, and in particular for the countries which have long regarded the US as an ally and a friend, the US President is behaving like an 18^th century warlord:

·        imposing tariffs on friend and foe alike in the mistaken belief that the American trade deficit “proves” that other countries are exploiting the US in some way, instead of that trade deficit being the inevitable result of the enormous fiscal deficit which Trump is responsible for;

·        asserting American hegemony over the entire western hemisphere in a 21^st century update of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823;

·        sinking umpteen small craft in the Caribbean on the suspicion that they may have been carrying drugs to the US;

·        kidnapping the President of Venezuela and his wife and asserting that Venezuelan oil belongs to the US;

·        preventing oil from reaching Cuba for months, apparently in the hope that by applying enough pressure on ordinary Cuban citizens they would rise up and overthrow the regime;

·        demanding that Denmark, a NATO ally, hand over Greenland to the US, and threatening all kinds of dire consequences if Denmark refused; and

·        sending the US Vice President to Hungary on the eve of an election in that country to bolster the election prospects of the incumbent pro-Russian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, a man who has persistently voted against providing European support to Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.

And now, apparently at the behest of Israel, Trump has attacked Iran for the second time in a year while negotiations were in train, threatening to wipe out Iranian ports and power plants, sending them back to the “Stone Ages” and ending Iranian civilization unless – well, it is not quite clear what his original aims were, or what his current aims are.  But he invokes God’s help in this ambition, adding blasphemy to his other sins.

And who pays the price for this lunacy?  Almost all of mankind, as the availability of oil and fertilizer is drastically affected and trade in other goods is impaired. 

But apart from the Iranians and the Lebanese, those most directly affected are probably America’s allies.  Those in the Gulf – Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain – have suddenly become targets and have apparently suffered quite considerable damage to oil and gas facilities. 

European members of NATO are being abused by Mr Trump for not immediately, and without question, coming to America’s military aid, even though they were never consulted about the wisdom of attacking Iran and even though NATO is supposedly a defensive alliance, where members agree to come to each other’s aid when they are attacked – as several European countries did after the US was attacked on September 11, 2001.

There must be serious doubt about whether NATO can survive, given the evident hostility of Mr Trump and given his obvious endorsement of the most pro-Russian Prime Minister in Europe.

What does this mean for New Zealand?  I fail to see any upside of being in a defence relationship with the US where both our friends and our enemies are chosen by what suits the US President. 

In December 2012, Kurt Campbell, then the US Assistant Secretary of State, told Audrey Young of the New Zealand Herald that “we do not want countries to feel that they need to choose [between the US and China]; we want countries that have both a strong relationship with China and a strong relationship with the United States… Not only do we encourage strong dialogue and engagement, for instance between New Zealand and China, we are counting on it.”

That is not the song the US Administration is currently singing.  They want us lined up alongside them so that, if the US President decides for whatever reason to have a military confrontation with China, we will be expected to tag along whether we knew in advance of such plans or not.  Going to war against our largest trading partner, with which we have no reason to be at war, is just nuts.

The most immediate issue which we would need to confront if we were to distance ourselves militarily from the US is our relationship with Australia, the only country with which we have a formal alliance.  I would favour that alliance were it not for the fact that Australia itself is tightly bound to the US militarily. 

Of course, just as it’s nuts for us to be in a military alliance with the US, so also is it nuts for Australia to be in such an alliance.  The US has conned Australia into spending a vast fortune on nuclear-powered submarines which only make sense in the context of a military confrontation with China in the South China Sea – they make no sense as a means of defending Australia, as former Australian Prime Minister Paull Keating has made abundantly clear.

But we would be better to have no alliance with Australia than have an alliance which would oblige us to come to Australia’s defence in a war of America’s choosing.

There’s a more general point about military alliances: almost inevitably, the militarily strongest partner in any alliance will decide when or whether to get involved in a military conflict.  The weaker party will be dragged along with little or no ability to determine the course of events.  That would certainly be the case if we were in a formal alliance with the US.

Don Brash

9 April 2026