Nik Dirga
Digital Explainer Editor
Explainer
– New Zealand woke up on 12 September 2001 to a world order
that had abruptly changed overnight.
While most of the
country slept, terrorist attacks in New York City and
elsewhere in America left
nearly 3000 people dead and led to decades of conflict
in Afghanistan and Iraq.
This week marks 25 years
since the 9/11 attacks, which
changed air travel forever, but also led to major
reassessments of New Zealand’s place in the world and how we
work with other nations.
“I think New Zealand politics
and foreign policy became less complacent after 9/11,” said
Grant Morris, a historian and associate professor of law at
Victoria University.
“The attacks proved that no
nation was safe from large-scale terrorist attacks. If NYC
could be attacked this way, then every city and nation is
potentially vulnerable.”
How it changed our foreign
policy
The events of 9/11 led to what would become New
Zealand’s longest overseas military deployment as it
joined the US-led action in Afghanistan against the Taliban
and al-Qaeda.
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Beginning in December 2001, the
Labour-led government agreed to send NZ Special Air Service
(NZSAS) troops.
Prime Minister Helen Clark said
after the attacks that “It is important that the
international community now work together to fight the
scourge of terrorism. New Zealand will do whatever it can to
help.”
Morris said the lasting impact of 9/11 for New
Zealand is the awareness of “the constant and continuing
threat of terrorist attacks around the Western world
(including in Australia and NZ)”.
The nature of
conflict itself shifted as a result of 9/11, he
said.
“It marked a movement from more traditional
warfare against known enemies to a much greater focus on
asymmetric warfare and counter-terrorism.”
Around 3500
troops served and 10 NZ service personnel died during
operations that lasted almost 20 years before the
withdrawal in May 2021.
Veterans Affairs New
Zealand says
that troops in the Bamiyan province and elsewhere
“rebuilt infrastructure, new schools, developed the local
agriculture, contributed to renewable energy projects as
well as community health projects. They enhanced the lives
of many Afghanis”.
However, there were also concerns
about civilians
harmed during the deployment, and the death of a child
in an incident involving SAS, which was all investigated in
the
Operation Burnham inquiry.
Ultimately, the Taliban
has since
regained power in Afghanistan, which left many
questioning the point of the conflict.
“Unfortunately,
the humanitarian and security gains made in Bamiyan could
not be preserved after the Taliban’s military victory and
the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in September
2021,” said Robert Patman, a professor of international
relations at Otago University.
One foreign policy
expert said the world became too focused on fighting Islamic
extremism at the cost of other issues.
“NZ’s security
focus also shifted in accordance with US priorities,” said
Paul Buchanan, a security analyst and director of the
non-partisan geopolitical consultancy 36th Parallel
Assessments.
“Our commitment to the anti-Islamicist
cause saw NZ lose troops in Afghanistan and cause casualties
there and elsewhere.”
Joining the ‘War on
Terror’
While it did join the Afghanistan coalition,
New Zealand opted not
to send combat forces to join the US-led operation in
Iraq in 2003, although some were later deployed in training
and reconstruction efforts.
At the time, Helen Clark
criticised the failure of diplomacy to avoid military action
in Iraq.
“A new and dangerous precedent is being set,”
she said in a statement
to Parliament. “It may be possible to justify one’s
friends taking such action, but where then is our moral
authority when other nations use the precedent which is
being set?”
“The bottom line is that 9/11 pushed NZ
solidly into the US-led alliance system even if not in
formal name,” Buchanan said.
“New Zealand stood to
gain if it was seen as a ‘good international citizen’
prepared to shoulder its burden of collective security in
the era of transnational terrorism,” Patman
said.
Patman said after 9/11, it’s now clear that the
rules-based order that came into place after World War II
began to gradually fall apart.
“The post-9/11 era had
been marked by the steady erosion of an international
rules-based order, enshrined in institutions like the United
Nations and norms such as multilateralism.
“The US’s
illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, Putin’s annexation of
Crimea and subsequent full-scale invasion of Ukraine in
2022, war crimes in Gaza, and Trump’s Iran war have been
some major landmarks.”
Patman said given America’s
current foreign policy moves, the same kind of coalition
isn’t likely to happen again soon.
“I cannot see New
Zealand participating in an arrangement led by an ‘America
First’ administration in Washington, but given that most
security problems require multilateral solutions it is
entirely possible New Zealand will contribute assistance to
other international military operations.
“For example,
the NZDF has been helping Ukraine with military training in
Europe since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in
2022.”
“The Afghanistan experience has made New
Zealand and others more cautious about large, open-ended
wars of nation-building,” geopolitical analyst Dr Geoffrey
Miller said.
“In the future, it’s more likely that New
Zealand will offer niche, high-value contributions in areas
such as special forces, intelligence and logistics, as we’ve
seen in some of New Zealand’s recent targeted contributions
in the Middle East.”
The very different reactions by
New Zealand to joining the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq
established new guidelines for our foreign policy, he
believes.
“In hindsight, the fallout from the 9/11
attacks – and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq – did
New Zealand foreign policymakers a favour,” Miller wrote
in a 2021 piece for RNZ.
“Afghanistan gave New
Zealand an opening to show the US what it had to offer,
while Iraq clearly showed New Zealand the limits of that
engagement.”
A restart of the relationship with
America
Before 9/11, New Zealand and America’s
relationship had been somewhat frosty since clashes over our
nuclear-free
policies in the 1980s.
American nuclear-powered
naval ships were barred from entry and as a result, New
Zealand was effectively suspended from the ANZUS treaty
between NZ, Australia and the United States.
“We part
company as friends, but we part company, as far as the
alliance is concerned,” US Secretary of State George Shultz
said
at the time in 1986.
The 2001 attacks marked the
finish for the “cold war” between the US and New Zealand,
Buchanan said.
“9/11 marked the end of the era of
official estrangement between NZ and the US over the 1985
non-nuclear declaration.”
“It brought a thawing in
NZ-US security relations, and NZ foreign policy and security
elites sought to capitalise on the moment by offering
specialist services (like the NZSAS) and closer cooperation
within Five
Eyes as part of the so-called ‘War on
Terror’.”
Miller said the biggest impact of 9/11 for
New Zealand is that it “reopened and then locked in a closer
security relationship with the United
States”.
“Effectively it broke the ice and provided an
initial, highly compelling practical reason for military
engagement – the need for international cooperation against
terrorism.
“Over time, the US-New Zealand cooperation
built out into other areas and a more general reset,” Miller
said.
Buchanan said that in his opinion, New Zealand
too often ended up following the US lead.
“The NZ
intelligence community became obsessed with jihadists much
in the way the Cold War focused on ‘reds under beds’,” he
said.
Buchanan cited examples of abuses of Muslim
civil rights, including the case of Algerian refugee Ahmed
Zaoui, who was called a security risk when seeking
asylum here but was ultimately granted New Zealand
citizenship.
Buchanan criticised the actions of the
government and security forces over Zaoui’s case, calling it
an example of overreaction to the threat of
jihadists.
“A man and his family lost several years of
their lives together. NZ lost some of its honesty and
innocence as well.
“The obsessive focus on jihadists,
both foreign and domestic, imagined more than real, not only
made the (intelligence community) dishonest in its annual
threat assessments issued during the first decade or so
after 9/11. It also completely missed or discounted the
signs that rightwing extremists were very present and in
fact organising in NZ and that they were linked to violent
events in Europe and North America.”
He cited the 2019
Christchurch mosque massacre, which was perpetrated by an
Australian white supremacist.
“As it turns out, they
were watching the victims, not the killer even though he was
hiding in plain sight.”
How it changed our
politics
The political after-effects of 9/11 also
could have brought down one of our own governments – the
Alliance Party, the coalition partner supporting Clark’s
Labour-led government circa 1999-2002, broke apart when
members disagreed about New Zealand sending troops to
Afghanistan.
Its leader, the late Jim Anderton, who
was deputy prime minister at the time, agreed with Clark’s
call to support the American action in Afghanistan. But
other members of the Alliance group were strongly against
it, and the
party soon splintered.
Directly as a result of
Alliance breaking up, Clark called
for an early election held in July 2002, and her
government successfully went on to easily win a second term
– forming a coalition with Anderton’s new Progressive
Party.
How does 9/11 still shadow US/NZ relations
today?
Of course, the current occupant of the White
House has stamped an added aura of unpredictability on US/NZ
relations.
“All New Zealand governments since 1945
have supported the vision of an international rules-based
order and the decline of that prospect seriously impacts the
ability of Wellington to navigate the world and sustain an
independent foreign policy based on principles and
international law,” Patman said.
“It’s true that the
Donald Trump era with its tariffs and bombastic rhetoric has
made Wellington’s current relationship with Washington more
challenging,” Miller said.
“Still, these tensions have
not undone the security relationship that 9/11
restarted.”
Miller cited the recent deal between
the US and NZ to fund and build a new NZ$101 million
port on Penrhyn atoll in the Cook Islands.
“The new
port project isn’t being done out of charity – rather, it’s
a sign of how New Zealand-United States cooperation has
gradually shifted since 2001 from the original terrorism
focus to geopolitical competition.”
Buchanan, however,
said that deal also served a military
purpose.
“Although NZ calls it a development project,
it is a military port construction project first and
foremost that is designed to counter (China’s) military
expansion into the South Pacific.”
“In the longer
term, and essentially from 2016 on, 9/11 has helped create a
much [more] challenging security environment for New
Zealand,” Patman said.
He cited the competition
between the US and China, the rise of far-right populism and
Trump’s election.
When it comes to trade, New Zealand
has broadened to include deals with India and the European
Union, as well as continuing close ties with
China.
Buchanan said he felt New Zealand’s image of
having an “independent” foreign policy was a
misrepresentation.
“It is something that the NZ
foreign policy elite tell the NZ public and with which they
comfort themselves as supposed ‘honest brokers’, but the
truth is that the rest of the world knows that we follow the
US and Australian lead when it comes to security affairs,
including the diplomatic activities tied to them.
“If
Australia and the US are in bed together when it comes to
military and intelligence ties, then NZ is the pillow on
which they rest their heads.”
That “rules-based order”
seems to have firmly
been brushed aside this year, many analysts have said.
But the future remains impossible to predict, even as the
long-term ripples of 9/11’s reshaping of world politics
continue to echo.
“In the end, New Zealand knows that
Donald Trump will only be in office for another couple of
years – it’s anyone’s guess what will happen after that,”
Miller
said.
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