The United States and New Zealand are continuing to improve their previously strained military relationship and increased collaboration was announced during a top-level meeting on 28 October.
US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and New Zealand Minister of Defence Jonathan Coleman agreed to participate in more multinational defence exercises together and took another step towards resolving a long-standing row over port visits.
“Today I authorised a New Zealand navy ship to dock at Pearl Harbor for [‘Rim of the Pacific’] ‘RIMPAC 2014′ and extended that invitation to Minister Coleman,” Hagel announced following the meetings at the Pentagon. He noted that the port visit would mark the first New Zealand navy ship to dock at Pearl Harbor in more than 30 years.
New Zealand had declined docking permission to a US guided-missile destroyer in 1985 because it was a nuclear-capable vessel, and the episode led to the suspension of the US-New Zealand component of the ANZUS defence treaty and caused a general collapse in their defence relationship.
However, in the past three years the two states have worked to strengthen defence ties, and in 2012 Leon Panetta made the first visit by a US secretary of defence to Auckland in three decades and announced, among other things, an end to the US ban on port visits by New Zealand naval vessels.
During the 28 October meeting other measures for specific collaboration were determined.
“Near-term steps include military-to-military talks next month in Honolulu, New Zealand’s deployment of a frigate to a multinational anti-piracy coalition in the Gulf of Aden, and the United States’ upcoming participation in what will be New Zealand’s largest-ever multinational and interagency exercise,” Hagel said.
The two defence leaders agreed to bolster their states’ peacekeeping efforts in the Asia-Pacific region, with New Zealand furnishing ‘military instructors’ to the US-led Global Peacekeeping Operations Initiative beginning in 2014, according to a joint statement.
For humanitarian and disaster relief collaboration, the states are to join in the United States’ ‘Pacific Partnership’ and New Zealand’s ‘Tropic Twilight’.
Some of the specific near-term events Hagel spoke of include military-to-military talks in Honolulu in November, US participation in Exercise ‘Southern Katipo’, New Zealand’s deployment of frigate HMNZS Te Mana in the anti-piracy Combined Maritime Forces in the Gulf of Aden, and ‘RIMPAC 2014′.
The two states’ defence relationship, though strained, has not kept them from working together entirely.
“New Zealand and the United States have worked side-by-side in Afghanistan over the last 10 years, including in the context of New Zealand’s Provincial Reconstruction Team in Bamyan Province,” according to the joint statement. That team concluded its mission in April and the International Security Assistance Force October 2013 records show that New Zealand has 11 troops still deployed in Afghanistan.
