Chinese naval exercises and Cook Islands deal used to push military spending plans
As Western elites signal plans to massively hike defence spending, fearmongering over China's presence in the South Pacific seeks to condition the public to acquiesce.
Naval drills by China and its latest Pacific nation strategic partnership deal have sparked a sustained media frenzy and buttressed plans for big military spending hikes in New Zealand.
The movements of the Chinese navy off Australia’s east coast and a live-fire ‘incident’ of alleged short-notice last week also led to calls for an increase in Australia’s naval assets, with media platforming think tank ‘experts’ linked to the security state to comment on the situation.
It followed weeks of intense Western media scrutiny over a strategic partnership agreement between China and New Zealand’s former colony, the Cook Islands, which included a deal to develop port and wharf facilities and to explore the nation’s mineral-rich seafloor. New Zealand objected to not being consulted about the agreements reached, arguing a constitutional obligation existed to do so, as the deal may conflict with its own strategic and security interests.
Western elites have been calling for NATO-connected nations to massively increase defence spending in the face of threats to US hegemony, or the rules-based international order, as they refer to it.
New Zealand is currently developing its military capacity to be able to join Australia as the United State’s and NATO’s primarily strategic ally in the region, as a Western effort to surround and contain China, the US’ biggest competitor, continues.
On Friday, February 21 three Chinese naval vessels involved in live-fire exercises in the middle of the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand caused a furore when it was claimed inadequate warning of their activities had been responsible for several commercial aircraft being forced to change flight paths.
Canberra said the flights were diverted following broadcast warnings from the naval vessels. China’s Foreign Ministry accused Australia of making “unreasonable accusations” and “deliberately hyping” the exercises. A Ministry spokesman said the naval exercises "upheld safety standards and professional operations throughout in accordance with relevant international laws and international practices".
The vessels moved into Pacific waters on Saturday and carried out a similar drill as New Zealand’s military observed.
Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong raised the issue with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in South Africa on Friday. New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters was scheduled to meet Wang Yi in Beijing during a three-day visit this week and was expected to do the same.
Despite the exercises not breaching international law or endangering aircraft, media pundits and some politicians on both sides of the Tasman characterised the actions as threatening, arguing it underlined the need for increased military spending.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) defence correspondent Andrew Green called it a “wake-up call” for the country’s armed forces, while former Australian Home Affairs boss Mike Pezzullo bizarrely told the broadcaster the Chinese ships were “practising” a naval bombardment of Sydney.
Professor Rory Medcalf, head of the ANU National Security College, told the ABC: "It would be hard to find a more tangible sign of the need for Australia to increase defence spending and to sustain our campaign of statecraft aimed at stopping China establishing a military base in the Pacific.”
On the other side of the Tasman, Professor Anne-Marie Brady, a Global Fellow of the Kissinger Institute on China and the US and a Senior Fellow at hawkish thinktank, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), told New Zealand’s national broadcaster the small South Pacific nation should respond with its own “show of force”.
She said the naval exercises were intimidatory and urged more military spending to counter China’s threat to “change the strategic order” and put New Zealand military “boots on the ground” in other Pacific islands.
What media didn’t focus on was the apparent double standards of both countries. China has been warning the West not to stoke tensions in the South China Sea, parts of which remain contested by several Asian nations.
However, on September 25 last year New Zealand’s HMNZS Aotearoa and Australian vessel HMAS Sydney sailed through the Taiwan Strait, a stretch of ocean 130km at its narrowest point that separates China from Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing claims as an integral part of its territory under the One China Policy, recognised by the UN and most member states.
New Zealand Defence Minister Judith Collins at the time dismissed the naval movement as ‘routine’ and denied it was a provocation.
A Carrier Strike Group, led by the UK and involving other NATO nations, has also been assigned to the Asia-Pacific region this year to patrol alongside the Japanese forces and other NATO partners.
Earlier this month a Chinese fighter jet swooped towards an Australian maritime patrol above the South China Sea after what Beijing said was a deliberate intrusion into its airspace, prompting protests from Australia about "unsafe and unprofessional" actions by the People’s Liberation Army.
The media-facilitated threat inflation conveniently served both governments, now faced with selling more military spending hikes to their respective wary publics, many of whom remain sceptical of the supposed threat their nations’ top trading partner poses to the region.
Collins told media a “big budget” investment in defence was in order to the military “to step up our game” in light of the latest incident.
The Defence Minister had already signalled a significant defence increase one week before, at the Munich Security Conference on Sunday, February 16.
It was also the central focus of Western elites attending the annual security policy three-day event, pushed by the likes of NATO General Secretary Mark Rutte and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Von der Leyen said EU spending on defence needed to increase from 2 percent of GDP to over 3 percent, vastly lifting the 320 billion Euro currently spent on defence annually.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned that hikes may need to be financed through loans, as citizens would not stand for billions in cuts to public services from domestic budgets to fund them.
Collins joined the chorus, arguing that Western nations could “no longer rely on the taxpayers of one nation” to protect the liberal rules-based international order, either in the “merging theatres” of the Indo-Pacific or Europe.
The need for huge military spending hikes to face down the supposed threat of autocratic expansionist regimes has been pushed into the media and information space from the corridors of power for months, both within the United States and from within North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) member states.
Last month US President Donald said NATO members should lift their defence budgets to 5 per cent of GDP.
Lamenting the loss of US hegemonic will to assert itself, former M16 boss Sir Alex Younger last week told the BBC that Europe must use its wealth to lift military spending substantially, so it could exercise hard power against Russia in a world increasingly ruled by strong men.
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon this week said New Zealand planned to lift defence spending, the details of which would be featured in a 15-year Defence Capability Plan to be published within the coming months.
With its economy is recession, inequality rising and public services being cut, the government will need more than a Chinese naval exercise to face down flak for pushing defence spending towards 2 percent.
“If the government was serious about regional security and New Zealand’s influence in the Pacific, they would invest in development and diplomacy,” New Zealand foreign policy group Te Kuaka said on Monday, February 24.
New Zealand has increasingly followed the lead of Australia in foreign policy in recent times, signalling it is willing to join the techno-military Pillar II dimension of AUKUS.
Its trans-Tasman neighbour has allowed the US to build military air bases and facilities in its Northern Territory to act as a spearhead in any war with China.
Australia’s total defence spending this year is expected to reach $55.7 billion, or 2.02 per cent of GDP.
Australia has spent billions on missile systems and other modern weaponry, on top of its purchase of nuclear submarines as part of its AUKUS involvement – estimated to cost up to $368 billion over the next 30 years.
The government has also promised to lift defence spending by $50 billion over the next 10 years, reaching 2.3 per cent of GDP. It will also decide on a new $11 billion naval frigate design later in the year.
However, think tanks and politicians have been pushing for that figure to reach at least 3 percent and fast. The naval panic will only make those calls louder.
Cook Islands deal reaction
It comes after the Western establishment sounded the alarm after the Cook Islands - a protectorate of New Zealand - signed a wide-ranging strategic partnership deal with China earlier this month, the terms of which are laid out in three memorandums of understanding (MOU).
It was also used to suggest a hidden military threat posed by China’s increased economic and diplomatic engagement in the region.
The Cook Islands, with a population of approximately 20,000, has been self-governing territory in “free association” with New Zealand since 1964.
New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters claimed his government was not adequately consulted over the agreement, which he argued was a constitutional requirement when it came to issues of security and the strategic interests of New Zealand.
Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown had assured Peters there was nothing of concern in the deal signed on February 14 and that his nation had a right to pursue its own interests and enter into treaties with non-Western partners.
A no-confidence vote against Brown the over deals struck was defeated 13-9 in the Cook Islands Parliament on Wednesday, February 26.
The New Zealand government is studying the terms of the agreement. China says meshes with the Pacific region’s ‘2050 Blue Pacific Continent’ strategy, adopted by the Pacific Islands Forum in 2019, to bring about a “resilient Pacific Region of peace, harmony, social inclusion and prosperity’ for all pacific peoples”.
The Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat was asked to comment, but had not replied to questions by the time of publication.
What concerns New Zealand is aspects of the economic and technical cooperation, exploitation of marine resources and deep-sea mining, with fears China will have wide-ranging access to the Cook Islands 200-mile (370km) exclusive economic zone around each of its 15 islands. One MOU outlines a five-year agreement with China to cooperate in exploring and researching the Pacific nation's seabed mineral riches. Brown has insisted any future mining would be subject to strict regulatory control, although no licenses had been issued.
After addressing the Munich event, Collins revealed New Zealand’s neocolonial concerns, posting on X (formerly Twitter): “I advised the MSC that the Blue Pacific is sparsely populated with an underwater continent with enormous wealth on the seabed. The mineral wealth around the ‘ring of fire’ is such that it is like having an enormous treasury with a very small lock.
“Old style ‘cold war’ commentators are naive to think that the Pacific is without threat.”
Western security analysts claimed port and wharf development mentioned within the Cook Islands deals could be used to bolster China’s naval presence in the region.
New Zealand’s National Security Strategy, for example, views China’s efforts to build ports and airports across the Pacific with suspicion, arguing these could have duo civilian and military purposes.
Earlier this month, New Zealand also “bared its teeth”, as Peters put it, by threatening to withdraw the use of the New Zealand passport to Cook Islanders if their government went ahead with plans to issue its own passport.
University of Canterbury Professor and director of the Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, Steven Ratuva, believes the approach by New Zealand and the West risks further alienation from Pacific nations, who are increasingly inclined to look forwards China following broken promises by Biden to invest in the region, as well as neglect and negative climate policies that disproportionately affect them.
“As a result, we’ve seen Pacific countries becoming more assertive, and questioning the regional order that has kept them subservient to the whims of Australia, New Zealand and the US since the Cold War,” he wrote in E-Tangata.
“This compels them to seek alternative partnerships, and China seems, in their eyes, an attractive option. It’s the geopolitical game-theory approach of playing competing powers against each other for maximum return.
“We shouldn’t, therefore, be surprised at the behaviour of… the Cook Islands in blatantly ignoring New Zealand’s overtures. Others could also follow.”
Conversely, such a shift by Pacific nations may also trigger even more stern responses by Western sub-imperial powers, with one media outlet reporting New Zealand may now impose explicit security or “strategic trust” clauses in deals with Pacific nations, similar to those used by Australia after the Solomon Islands signed its strategic partnership deal with China in 2023.
Former Associate Minister for Foreign Affairs Matt Robson also pointed to what he saw as a neo-colonial mentality at work.
Robson, who was also responsible for foreign aid as minister in Helen Clark’s Labour coalition government in the 2000s, told In Context New Zealand was still attempting to use aid to control former colonies for the benefit of its own interests and those of its Five Eyes Western security partners.
“Winston Peters thinks he is back in the days when the white masters could give orders to the colonies. Those days have gone,” he said.
He said the relationship between the Cook Islands and New Zealand was unequal and it was correct for the Cook Islands, like other Pacific nations, to assert its own interests, which they were perfectly capable of doing.
“The Cook Islands, as far as I know, was never consulted on New Zealand becoming one of NATO’s global partners in the Pacific in NATO’s containment policy and threatened war against China.
“China is offering genuine cooperation and treating the Cook Island as an equal. Foreign Minister Peters should do the same.”
This increased defence spending drive feels like imperialist tribute. “Protection” money for the military and industrial complex mafia.
Any genuine foreign threat is coming from this government’s opening up Aotearoa’s assets to unscrupulous foreign interests.
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