Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Defence Minister Richard Marles and their Kiwi counterparts need to discuss nuclear deterrence, not just non-proliferation, when they meet in Auckland for the second 2+2 Australia-New Zealand ministerial consultations (ANZMIN) today.
The growing salience of nuclear weapons in the Indo-Pacific will force difficult choices in the coming years. Australia and New Zealand will handle these challenges differently because they have different perspectives on US extended deterrence, but the deteriorating strategic environment in the Indo-Pacific means different views shouldn’t stop the cross-Tasman neighbours discussing the issue.
Talking about nuclear deterrence is harder for Wellington because antinuclear sentiment is stronger in New Zealand than Australia. While New Zealand-United States military cooperation has picked up in recent years, Wellington is unlikely to formally recover US protection under the ANZUS treaty while it sticks to its policy—in place since the 1980s—of refusing entry to nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered vessels. That policy will also apply to the conventionally armed, nuclear-powered submarines that Australia will acquire through AUKUS.
Wellington has also narrowed its legal room for manoeuvre by ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which prevents New Zealand claiming US nuclear protection. New Zealand also advocates for countries to join the TPNW, tapping a rich vein of antinuclear sentiment among Pacific island countries.
Canberra has greater leeway to support the US nuclear umbrella because it has not signed the TPNW, although the current Labor government favours signing in the unlikely event that Australia’s strategic circumstances become conducive to doing so.
For decades, Australian governments have minimised public debate over nuclear deterrence by keeping declarations of support for the US nuclear umbrella muted, while championing multilateral initiatives on non-proliferation and disarmament short of a nuclear ban treaty.
Successive Australian defence ministers have justified the role that facilities like Pine Gap and North West Cape play in the US nuclear umbrella as a contribution to stability and non-proliferation. And defence officials have told parliament that Australia respects the US policy of not disclosing the location of its nuclear weapons, exploiting caveats that allow US nuclear forces to pass through Australia without breaching Canberra’s legal obligations within the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone.
But the rapidly changing strategic landscape of the Indo-Pacific is making it harder for Wellington and Canberra to maintain nuclear policies that were fixed at the tail end of the Cold War.
As China’s nuclear arsenal and superiority in regional missile forces grows, Beijing could mimic Moscow’s use of nuclear threats in pursuit of its revisionist aims, which include territorial gains, breaking up the US alliances and expelling US forces from the Western Pacific. The growing collaboration between Beijing, Moscow and Pyongyang could also facilitate nuclear coercion.
The second Trump administration is likely to expand the US nuclear arsenal to counter threats from Russia, China and North Korea. Trump may accelerate the development of a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile (SLCM-N), which could be deployed on US Navy attack submarines and perhaps some surface warships that have not carried nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War. Trump may also consider stationing US nuclear weapons in South Korea, although this week’s brief declaration of martial law in Seoul might dampen the prospects of sharing US nuclear weapons with the South Korean military.
Trump will be clear that allies must accept risk and pay more for their defence in exchange for US protection. This will affect Canberra and Wellington differently because the US presently only recognises its obligations to Australia under the ANZUS Treaty. Even so, Trump and his team may still float ideas that are untethered to legal frameworks, such as storing nuclear weapons on Australian soil or expecting US Navy ships that might be carrying nuclear weapons to have access through New Zealand’s ports and waters.
Canberra and Wellington share a strong interest in discussing nuclear matters privately, but antinuclear sentiment and laws, especially in New Zealand, circumscribe how much can be said publicly. The inaugural ANZMIN joint statement in February this year focused on non-proliferation and arms control, overlooking nuclear deterrence, and the joint statement issued after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met with his Kiwi counterpart Christopher Luxon in August ignored nuclear issues.
Even so, Australian and New Zealand ministers could say more together about nuclear deterrence without straying into legal grey area. For instance, they could call out Russia’s nuclear threats, China’s non-transparent nuclear build-up and the way both countries are undermining UN sanctions on North Korea. Ministers could also question how Beijing can credibly advocate internationally for no first use of nuclear weapons when China is refusing to establish hotlines for crisis management and ‘entangles’ its nuclear and conventional forces in dangerous ways. Ministers could also highlight the humanitarian consequences of nuclear testing in predominantly Muslim regions of China and the former Soviet Union, rather than focusing solely on historic testing in the Pacific region by the US, Britain and France.
Australia and New Zealand must adjust to living in a region in which nuclear weapons will play a greater role than they have in the past. To face reality, one must find the courage to talk about it.