New Zealand National Security: Challenges, Trends and Issues

Introduction

William Hoverd

CHANGING NEW ZEALAND NATIONAL SECURITY DYNAMICS

The very concept of ‘national security’ is something that is contested and must be continually negotiated.¹ This is precisely because the concept addresses a field of uncertainty and a shifting domain of concerns for a state, rather than something more concise.² This is a volume dedicated to New Zealand national security. It sets out to survey the broad, often ambiguous, domain of challenges, trends and issues surrounding securing the interests and the sovereignty of this nation state. It will explore and broaden our understanding of how New Zealand national security is constituted; it will strengthen understandings of some of the structures and agencies that enact national security; and it will highlight various areas where there are potential gaps, risks and inconsistencies for the future of national security.

This volume emerges at a time when representatives of the New Zealand security sector³ and the media have been requesting a more informed and transparent public discussion of national security.⁴ It takes a multidisciplinary look at national security, with chapters covering international relations, political science, history, sociology and philosophy. Indeed, while many of the contributors draw on close relationships with the security sector or are current or former security sector representatives, this book is not bound by government security discourse. Rather, it intentionally set outs to critically enquire how the state has maintained and constructed, and continues to construct, national security. This critical enquiry is essential because alongside the calls for improved security dialogue between the government and the public,⁵ New Zealand’s security landscape is becoming much less benign⁶ and, thus, increased public funds are being devoted to the sector’s various budgets.⁷ The future direction of national security action, legislation and discourse is a shared concern of government, academia and the New Zealand public, all of whom need to consider, and ultimately decide on, what sort of country they want to live in and the extent to which their government should secure the integrity of that nation.

Traditionally, New Zealand has been able to leverage its geographical isolation, its small population and its reputation as a balanced international actor to protect its national security from traditional threats — i.e., direct conflict with other nation states. Today, questions must be asked about our ability to rely on geographic isolation and our reputation to protect and sustain a safe society. This is because contemporary national security is inextricably linked to a nation’s global interconnectedness, and New Zealand’s interests are increasingly transnational. Moreover, the contemporary threat environment transcends physical boundaries through the use of social media and through a simultaneously increased mobility and economic alienation of the world’s population. This volume initiates an overdue conversation about New Zealand national security in an interconnected world. It provides an introduction to New Zealand’s national security, and offers a deeper understanding of various pertinent security issues, to inform broader whole-of-society conversations around the future of New Zealand national security. In order to facilitate these goals, this introduction sets out to do the following:

Familiarise the reader with the contemporary security environment, and provide an overview of future national security trends, challenges and issues;

provide a brief overview of New Zealand’s recent security history;

explain how contemporary New Zealand’s national security is defined; and

provide an overview of each chapter’s discussion of national security.

THE CONTEMPORARY SECURITY ENVIRONMENT

To begin, we turn to the headline new threat potentially posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to New Zealand’s national security. The emergence of ISIL has resulted in security concerns around radicalisation and counterterrorism sensationalised as national security concerns even if, in actual fact, ISIL may not necessarily constitute the biggest threat or series of risks to this nation. ISIL can now deliver direct threats to nation states across the globe through its mastery of and investment in social media, where it has been successfully recruiting disaffected individuals to either travel to join ISIL or to incite attacks up on their own domestic population. In Australia, several radicalisation events directly or indirectly inspired by ISIL have occurred in Sydney and Melbourne since 2014.⁸ Without doubt, the Australian radicalisation events have been a catalyst for increased New Zealand national security action.⁹ Here, a series of domestic security funding and security-related legislation has been enacted since 2014,¹⁰ and the ongoing rotation of deployments of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) into the Building Partner Capacity training mission in Camp Taji, Iraq, has been a response to assist with the Western Coalition’s degradation of ISIL.¹¹ Interrelated with fears around radicalisation and the degradation of ISIL, the war in Syria has led to widespread humanitarian problems across Europe that have resulted in refugees spilling across borders, and to recent terror events in Brussels,¹² Paris¹³ and Berlin.¹⁴ These have renewed xenophobic views that refugees and migrants are a source of domestic threat to potential host nations. It would be naïve and irresponsible to assume that New Zealand’s security agencies have not increased their domestic counterterrorism capabilities to prevent and respond to the possibility of any such domestic event occurring here. Importantly, fears around ISIL-inspired radicalisation show how security is interconnected: conflict in Syria and Iraq has and continues to inspire attacks inside Western nations.

If we ask the question, what might constitute a weightier set of security risks to New Zealand than ISIL, we quickly discover that biosecurity and epidemics are two potentially devastating examples. Protecting against threats to New Zealand’s interrelated environmental, trade and maritime domains is a colossal and essential task. Another general and often overlooked trend for the future of national security will be how the state addresses the implications of rapid technological change. Technology is evolving faster than the capability of national security apparatus to deal with the potential threats posed by new technology. In the cyber domain, tactical offence is easier to undertake than the construction of cyber defences; unfortunately, the relative cost of doing cyber evil is low and the likelihood of punishment for doing that evil is also low. Indeed, the capability of various nations and non-state actors in the cyber domain is variable and, as a result, this realm offers new potential for power imbalances. Cyber threats impact on the infrastructure of a nation,¹⁵ as they have the potential to impact on various commercial services such as legal, accounting, IT, architecture, engineering, film and digital services — all of which are now earning over NZ$4 billion in export revenue.¹⁶ Well-informed strategic thinking in this space is still weak¹⁷ and, when it does happen, it often ends up returning responsibility for cyber security to subsets of information practitioners and specialists within organisations, when instead it needs to be a broader national security policy question given that cyber security impacts many parts of our lives. When it comes to cyber security, in terms of informed comprehensive national policies and a whole-of-society approach, New Zealand lacks the knowledge, policy and technological infrastructure to protect this domain, and as such it represents a large series of vulnerabilities.¹⁸

The role of the New Zealand government is to respond to the changing global, trade and technological environment in order to protect sovereignty, human rights, individual freedoms and the safety of the population to ensure a prosperous economy and healthy nation.¹⁹ To paraphrase Attorney General and minister responsible for the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) and New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS), Christopher Finlayson, national security has become a core government interest, and consequently presents new time and resource demands.²⁰ Until 2014 the Prime Minister had sole ministerial responsibility for the intelligence agencies portfolios.²¹ Indeed, the October 2014 separation in parliamentary ministerial responsibilities for national security indicates the increased complexity and workload involved in this area, and reflects the need for a separation of responsibility between the Prime Minister and the minister responsible for the GCSB and NZSIS.²² Since 2011, a string of events has reduced public confidence in the prime ministerial oversight of this portfolio.²³ These include the intelligence agencies being portrayed as lacking in oversight and being accused of perhaps acting too independently, and potentially outside the law in the case of Kim Dotcom,²⁴ or at the political behest of the Prime Minister in the case of providing leaked documents to political blogger Cameron Slater,²⁵ or misrepresenting a security challenge such as the jihadi brides to justify particular actions and spending.²⁶ It is no accident that there have been recent changes in chief executive at the GCSB (Andrew Hampton, April 2016)²⁷ and director of the NZSIS (Rebecca Kitteridge, 2013),²⁸ where senior public servants have been appointed in combination with the development of increasingly robust security oversight by the Office of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.²⁹ This refreshed oversight function and the changes in leadership are intended to ensure better governance and effective provision of national security, and are likely intended to begin the repair of a fracture that emerged between public trust and confidence in the integrity and governance of the nation’s intelligence agencies.

With the rise of new security threats and risks, as well as new governance³⁰ and oversight structures, New Zealand’s security agencies’ processes, official statements and operations now have more public visibility, and have experienced growing public scrutiny — internationally and domestically — of their actions and functions.³¹ This change in visibility offers considerable opportunities for public discussion and scholarly research into a variety of interrelated topics, such as the public perception of intelligence agencies and functions, scrutiny of various leaks and responsibility frameworks, trade security, biosecurity, cyber threats, understanding the border, military action, and state relationships, as well as analysis of the blurry distinction between domestic and international security. In all of this work, the notion of interrelatedness is, and will continue to be, a key term because security events, threats and risks emerge from complex contexts that are sourced from and reach across a variety of causal factors.

Traditionally, government agencies have had siloed domains of responsibility from which to respond to security challenges, but to address the new security environment and security problems, whole-of-government responses will be increasingly common.³² The term ‘whole-of-government’ is increasingly being used to describe the ideal type of government response to these challenges. However, one must be careful when encountering this term as it is an ideal approach, and its use obscures the fact that little thought is given to the practical extent to which various agencies are prepared to share resources, trust each other, or have the expertise, frameworks or the capacity to properly cooperate with each other. The extent to which whole-of-government approaches can be successful, or are even ideal approaches, will be an important question to explore for the future. Today, the domain of New Zealand national security is more complex and messier than it has ever been. Before we turn to discuss the contemporary national security trends, challenges and issues, we need to cover the context in which New Zealand security has emerged. We begin with a brief overview of New Zealand’s recent international security history before going on to a deeper discussion of contemporary definitions of New Zealand’s national security, concluding with a discussion of the volume’s chapter content.

A BRIEF SECURITY OVERVIEW

The contemporary national security environment is embedded within the construction of New Zealand’s international security throughout the twentieth century. In the early twentieth century, New Zealand’s security history was rooted in its membership of the British Empire and Commonwealth, leading to its participation in the Boer War, the First World War and the Second World War. In the second half of that century, as New Zealand’s international commitments extended to maintaining a relationship with the United States, it contributed combat forces to Korea and Vietnam and was a member of the defence alliance between Australia, New Zealand and the United States (ANZUS). In the 1980s, the New Zealand electorate became increasingly supportive of anti-nuclear policies, which in late 1985 led to an intractable division with the United States (and subsequent freeze of New Zealand’s membership of ANZUS) when New Zealand refused to let nuclear-powered or armed naval ships into its territorial waters.³³ This anti-nuclear sentiment was aggravated by concerns about French nuclear testing in the Pacific and the subsequent French Intelligence Service bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour in July 1985.³⁴

As a consequence of the ANZUS alliance freeze, between 1986 and the late 1990s New Zealand, in terms of defence, intelligence and foreign affairs, appeared to be somewhat left to its own regional interests, outside of its close relationship with Australia³⁵ and the Five Power Defence Arrangements established in 1971 with the purpose of consulting partner nations, in the event of a threat of an armed attack on either Singapore or Malaysia, to decide on an appropriate response. This apparent isolation led to a radical rethink of the capabilities and purpose of the New Zealand Defence Force in the 1987 Defence White Paper,³⁶ which was furthered by the 2001 scrapping of the Royal New Zealand Airforce’s Skyhawk A-4 Combat Arm.³⁷ Today, when it comes to mapping New Zealand’s security context, one unique and defining question will be whether the New Zealand public’s continuing strong support for remaining nuclear-free still stands.³⁸ This particular anti-nuclear social commitment has in the past influenced and impacted on the government’s existing international security capabilities and commitments; whether it continues to do so will likely be up for debate again in the near future.

An additional consequence of the ANZUS alliance freeze was that in terms of security New Zealand focused primarily on regional security in the 1990s, and this affected our security capabilities, particularly in terms of defence capability focus, asset acquisition and long-term spending priorities.³⁹ Planning and acquisition decisions made in earlier decades still have consequences in later decades in terms of military capability — for instance, the number of Anzac-class frigates in the navy, or the types of aircraft we choose to invest in.⁴⁰ In the 1990s (extending into the 2000s), the New Zealand Defence Force and New Zealand Police⁴¹ played active deployment roles in Southeast Asia–Pacific-based regional conflicts or tensions around the arc of instability⁴² in Bougainville, the Solomon Islands and East Timor.⁴³ In the early 2000s, the Maritime Patrol Review also reshaped naval assets, with a stronger focus on supporting civilian patrol and surveillance needs.⁴⁴ In 2003, the New Zealand government refused to support the war in Iraq with anything other than a team of army engineers,⁴⁵ but it did deploy a provincial reconstruction team to Bamyan Province, north of Kabul in Afghanistan, for successive rotations between 2003 and 2013.⁴⁶ Over this same period, it also committed the New Zealand Special Air Service (NZSAS) to serve an active duty counterinsurgency and training role in Afghanistan.⁴⁷ In the latter part of the 2000s, post 9/11, New Zealand has reinvigorated its regional commitments to Asia and the Pacific,⁴⁸ and it has re-established a revised regional Pacific security relationship with the United States through the Wellington (2010)⁴⁹ and Washington (2012) declarations,⁵⁰ which together formalised a regional cooperation partnership and a renewed defence relationship. This relationship allows New Zealand’s military to participate and train with US forces without having to let nuclear-powered ships into its territorial waters.⁵¹ This proved welcome when the USS Sampson, HMAS Darwin and the HMCS Vancouver were committed to assisting with disaster relief following the Kaikoura earthquake in November 2016.⁵²

Today, New Zealand must carefully balance its free-trade agreement with China with its military commitment to the United States,⁵³ its regional commitment to its neighbours, and maintaining its reputation as a fair and balanced international actor through roles such as being elected as a member of the United Nations Security Council between 2015 and 2016.⁵⁴ In February 2015, New Zealand committed the NZDF to a non-combat training deployment to Iraq for two years as part of the international coalition against ISIL.⁵⁵ These commitments have led to a change in focus for NZDF priorities and acquisitions between the 2010⁵⁶ and the 2016⁵⁷ Defence White Papers, where we see the recent developments of the formalisation of the renewed relationship with the United States and the emergence of ISIL.

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, our changing defence deployments and relationships suggest that we need to think about defence in terms of regional security and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR), but also in terms of being ready to meet the demands of irregular and asymmetric warfare, counterinsurgency,⁵⁸ and building capacity with our partners in terms of counterinsurgency training that focuses on securing the threats posed by non-state actors hidden within civilian populations.⁵⁹ These are potentially substantial demands for a relatively small professional military establishment with limited equipment. The capacity for NZDF to undertake more than one of these roles at any one time, in any considerable manner, might be problematic.

Additional funding has recently been given to New Zealand’s intelligence services.⁶⁰ In October 2014, immediately after the Sydney anti-terror raids, the NZSIS was given an additional $7 million in funding to combat the threat of foreign fighters to New Zealand.⁶¹ And in May 2015 it was announced that the GCSB and the NZSIS were — partially in response to the ISIL threat — to receive another $20 million in funding to support their internal procedures and operations, to ensure against threats from cyberterrorism, counterterrorism and domestic security.⁶² Interestingly, while New Zealand’s foreign military relationships have waxed and waned between the 1980s and the 2000s, successive governments’ commitment to the Five Eyes signals intelligence network has not wavered,⁶³ and since the Washington Declaration of 2012, the New Zealand government has visibly increased its commitment to its intelligence agencies and therefore, by proxy, its commitment to the Five Eyes network.⁶⁴

Until the mid-1990s, little was publicly understood about New Zealand’s intelligence commitments and agencies. However, in 1997 investigative journalist Nicky Hager released Secret Power: New Zealand’s Role in the International Spy Network, which was the first book worldwide to publicly document the multilateral echelon signals intelligence network more commonly known as the Five Eyes.⁶⁵ More recently, New Zealand’s Five Eyes involvement has come under domestic and international scrutiny through the 2013 allegations of Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald⁶⁶ and through the GCSB’s illegal 2012 domestic surveillance of internet entrepreneur and Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom.⁶⁷ Throughout this period the covert security surveillance apparatus of the state has come under increasing public scrutiny both domestically and internationally as the ethics of New Zealand’s active participation in the Five Eyes network have been questioned.⁶⁸

New Zealand’s sovereign interests stretch into the Pacific Ocean and down into Antarctica. New Zealand’s coastal waters are extended by a number of islands, including the Chathams, the Kermadecs and a variety of subantarctic islands. New Zealand has two dependencies — Tokelau (10 km²) in the Pacific and the Ross Dependency (450,000 km²) in Antarctica. In the Pacific, Niue (260 km²) and the Cook Islands (232km²) are self-governing states in free association with New Zealand, which means that while they are relatively autonomous, with their permission New Zealand acts on their behalf in foreign affairs and defence matters. The combination of Pacific and Antarctic territory results in an economic exclusive zone (EEZ) for New Zealand of over 4 million square kilometres, which is the fourth largest EEZ in the world. This large coastal territory requires substantial investment in surveillance and physical protection to secure the resources and safety of the peoples within these boundaries. Recent security issues in this region include environmental security, natural disaster relief, and trade/resource security. For example, in March 2015 the amphibious sealift vessel HMNZS Canterbury was deployed to Vanuatu to assist with the aftermath of the damage caused by Tropical Cyclone Pam,⁶⁹ and in January 2015 the offshore patrol vessel HMNZS Wellington unsuccessfully engaged three fishing trawlers with obscured international ownership that were suspected of illegally harvesting Antarctic toothfish.⁷⁰ Beyond the borders of the EEZ, New Zealand’s regional security extends further into the South Pacific through its membership of the Pacific Islands Forum and now the Washington Declaration, which is an agreement on practical cooperation between the United States and New Zealand in the Pacific region.

In terms of New Zealand’s regional security, despite how we might portray ourselves, we are not always perceived by our Pacific neighbours as helpful benefactors with a pastoral role in the region (see Azizian, San Pablo-Baviera and Powles in this volume). Indeed, many of our South Pacific neighbours, such as Fiji, have been actively looking for new partners — including China and Russia — to express their autonomy. China is seen as an emerging economic and military power in the region: its economic influence is clearly stretching across the South Pacific, and its naval power growth is approaching bluewater capability — the point where it can project power into other regions (see Azizian, Chapter 1). China’s expansion of airbases in the South China Sea has, in combination with the US Pacific Pivot, where the United States has suggested it will act more overtly in the Pacific, contributed to a general build-up of military tension between China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan and the United States (see San Pablo-Baviera, Chapter 2). This has led to informal discussions in New Zealand regarding how we choose between our economic partner (China) and our military ally (the United States).⁷¹ The sheer fact that we are now having that conversation shows how successful China has been in spreading its economic influence to impact on New Zealand’s decisionmaking.

Moreover, we must question the extent to which New Zealand is now inextricably linked to the US military and the Five Eyes intelligence networks. This could possibly, despite vehement reassurance to the contrary from the Prime Minister,⁷² lead to future questions about the extent of our autonomy to maintain independent foreign policy. Our active membership in the Five Eyes and the resumption of military cooperation with the United States through the Wellington and Washington declarations⁷³ aligns New Zealand as an active international actor with allegiance to and cooperation with the great Western powers. On the other hand, China clearly has the ability to influence our trade,⁷⁴ as demonstrated by recent concerns around Fonterra exports,⁷⁵ fruit exports⁷⁶ and Chinese steel imports.⁷⁷ The nation is increasingly reliant on, and benefits from, Chinese tourism, investment and business relationships. The difficulties around trade security are discussed by Hoadley (Chapter 7) and Nicklin (Chapter 8). What emerges from these discussions is that New Zealand’s national security is inextricably interconnected with our intelligence, military and trade partners, and the negotiation of this delicate balance will continue to define New Zealand’s safety and national security.

DEFINING NEW ZEALAND NATIONAL SECURITY

National Security is the condition which permits the citizens of a state to go about their daily business confidently, free from fear and able to make the most of opportunities to advance their way of life. It encompasses the preparedness, protection and preservation of people, and of property and information tangible and intangible. New Zealand takes an ‘all hazards — all risks’ approach to national security, and has done so since a Cabinet decision to this effect in 2001. This approach acknowledges New Zealand’s exposure to a variety of hazards as well as traditional security threats, any of which could significantly disrupt the conditions required for a safe and prosperous nation. National Security considerations for New Zealand include state and armed conflict, transnational organised crime, cyber-security incidents, natural hazards, biosecurity incidents and pandemics.⁷⁸

The concept of national security is a broad one …⁷⁹

Theoreticians of international security studies have, in the main, given up trying to reduce the notion of national security to a precise definition.⁸⁰ Yet for a nation state, and the agents of that state, this is a luxury they cannot afford, given that some form of operative and coordinative definition is needed around which to formulate identification of and responses to risks and threats to that ‘national security’. Within New Zealand, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) is responsible for coordinating the nation’s security. Crucially, the DPMC definition moves beyond what it describes as the ‘traditional definition of security as solely the preserve of defence, law enforcement and intelligence agencies’.⁸¹ Instead, ‘national security’ is defined by DPMC as ‘all hazards — all risks’, constituted by five risk drivers that identify the current and future challenges to New Zealand’s sovereign integrity: 1) societal pressures, 2) economic risks, 3) environmental hazards, 4) security trends and 5) technological challenges.⁸² This widening of security risk drivers moves us beyond traditional state-centric understandings of national security, where the risks come from outside the nation, to one where risks are now understood to be generated from a range of interconnected possibilities, including human and non-human factors derived from either state-based actors or non-state actors. Indeed, DPMC’s definition, by moving beyond the traditional notions of security, allows the government to address the security risks that might emerge from natural hazards, individual actors, transnational crime, pandemics, infrastructure failure, commodity and price shocks, and biosecurity risks. Recent events include the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, Operation Concord (the 1080 baby milk formula contamination threat in 2014), concerns about the transmission and spread of the Zika (2016) and Ebola (2014) viruses, the grounding of the TS Rena on the Astrolabe Reef in 2011, the provision of security for the 2015 Cricket World Cup, and the coordination of the disaster relief for the Kaikoura earthquake (2016).⁸³

Arguably, this DPMC understanding does not define national security sufficiently for certain operational purposes (see Johanson, Chapter 11). The definition’s weakness, and its strength, are that its broad scope creates the opportunity for many non-traditional threats and risks to be securitised. A narrower definition would have the effect of defining and codifying what is and what is not national security, clearly delineating possible security interactions and potentially limiting the purview of government. While the current approach offers the flexibility to evolve to meet new challenges, it potentially lacks a clear process and understanding of what constitutes a security threat.

The practical ramifications of DPMC’s broad definition of security means that to understand New Zealand national security and its resultant challenges we must expand our understanding of the agencies that constitute the ‘security sector’. The traditional security agencies of the NZDF, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, New Zealand Police, the DPMC, NZSIS and the GCSB need to be supplemented by the New Zealand Customs Service, the Ministry for Primary Industries, the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management, Maritime New Zealand, the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment, the New Zealand Fire Service, the Ministry of Health and various district health boards, and Aviation Security. This expanded understanding of national security results in new framing of security in other security documents; for example, the Defence White Paper 2016 portrays Defence (the Ministry of Defence and the NZDF) as being ‘one part of a whole-of-government approach to New Zealand’s security’.⁸⁴ The whole-of-government focus leads the Defence White Paper 2016 to name 20 government departments and agencies with which it has national security relationships.⁸⁵ Likewise, DPMC’s 2016 National Security System outlines a process where a variety of boards and committees are constituted by representatives of many of the agencies (mentioned previously), who monitor and delegate responsibility to a lead government agency that manages a particular assigned risk.⁸⁶ Examples include: the Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management being the lead agency for geological risks, meteorological risks and infrastructure failure; the Ministry for Primary Industry being responsible for drought, pests and food safety; and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade being the lead agency for responding to offshore humanitarian disasters.⁸⁷

New Zealand’s traditional security agencies have focused on securing the physical safety of the nation’s sovereignty and population in terms of relying on geographical isolation, securing certain access points at the border and upholding international law. The primary physical points of entry to the New Zealand border are through our ports and airports but, as an island nation, there is an extensive shoreline and EEZ to protect. Among others, New Zealand Customs, the NZDF and the New Zealand Police all have an unambiguous responsibility to coordinate in order to protect this border. With a broader list of agencies responsible for national security, interconnectedness becomes a defining attribute, given that many of them, outside of the civil emergency response agencies, are directly focused on protecting and facilitating the production of border flows of goods and people across increasingly complex global supply chains. Complex supply chains have created opportunities for transnational criminals who are not isolated to operate within one particular state; these types of transnational crimes include methamphetamine and human trafficking, as well as biosecurity concerns about protecting the production of our primary industries.

This broadening of our understanding of security also requires a conceptual expansion of who our new national and international partners might be in such a security dialogue. To whom and what are we interconnected? What opportunities and costs do these connections bring? The refocus on protecting and securing the border is one aspect of this new dialogue (see Nicklin, Chapter 8). New Zealand’s interests are now inextricably interconnected with the need to cooperate with myriad non-traditional partners. And while these interests exist within our borders, they also flow out into the world, where the threats to security exist. Our national security can be impacted on outside of our borders. Trade security, illegal immigration, transnational crime and illegal fishing are everyday sources of this type of potential insecurity. Importantly, these interests are not restricted to our physical borders: they are transnational, interconnected, and extend into the non-physical space of markets and the internet. Concerns around ISIL propaganda circulating in social media and cyber threats to data (see Lan, Chapter 4) and functionality extend the national border into the very data streams that fuel the workstations of every business and public institution, as well as into the very homes of New Zealanders, young and old. Consequently, securing the nation at the border represents a shifting liminal physical and non-physical zone where the interconnectedness of international and domestic threats manifest.

In this volume, we situate our content in three parts around this liminal border space. Part 1, ‘International, regional and subregional security trends’, frames New Zealand’s national security into its regional context. Part 2, ‘New Zealand’s emerging security challenges’, addresses the interconnected issues found in and across the liminal spaces of the New Zealand border, whether it be maritime, cyber, or the frameworks and groups that protect these spaces. Part 3, ‘Issues in New Zealand security’, addresses a number of local security concerns and agendas that are occurring within the country, whether they be security threats, policy challenges or issues facing the academic study of New Zealand security.

PART 1: INTERNATIONAL, REGIONAL AND SUBREGIONAL SECURITY TRENDS

This section locates New Zealand’s national security within its broader regional and geographical context. The conversation begins by focusing on the Asia-Pacific region before looking at the political and cyber challenges facing nation states. In Chapter 1, ‘Security and strategy in the Asia-Pacific: Challenges and opportunities for New Zealand’, Professor Rouben Azizian argues that the security order in the Asia-Pacific still includes elements of competition and cooperation; and he suggests that the rise of Asian powers undermines the traditional security pre-eminence of the United States and presents both challenges and opportunities for regional stability. Consequently, for Azizian, the regional security architecture remains a contested structure that is shaped by the competing interests of major powers. Therefore, the new Asia-Pacific strategic environment poses major challenges to New Zealand’s hitherto pragmatic and balanced foreign policy position. Azizian argues that this is due to the fact that navigating between competing regional interests and separating economic and security priorities is becoming increasingly problematic. He argues that New Zealand’s greater regional thinking, in terms of national security, requires a more innovative and strategic approach. He suggests that, over the long term, New Zealand would benefit from taking a more proactive role in shaping regional security architecture and developing a comprehensive and inclusive national security strategy. After Azizian has placed New Zealand into its broader Asia-Pacific regional context, the