New Zealand and the search for security 1944-1954: 'a modest and moderate collaboration'

Abstract

In the decade which followed the Second World War, New Zealand foreign policy was preoccupied with issues of national security. The war had revealed not only that New Zealand could be threatened by Asian hostility, but also that British power could no longer be relied upon for protection. Successive New Zealand governments therefore looked for ways to reinforce the security of New Zealand. Their central objective was to seek a modest and moderate collaboration with key allies. As a result of this search for security, New Zealand foreign policy was transformed in the decade 1944-1954. Not only did politicians and officials engage in an ever-increasing round of international meetings and conferences, but the formal international obligations of the Dominion grew at a remarkable rate. New Zealand began the decade signing the Australian - New Zealand Agreement, and ended the decade a member of the South East Asia Collective Defence Treaty. In the intervening years the Dominion had become party to the ANZAM arrangement and the ANZUS treaty, and had joined the Colombo Plan. New Zealanders also played a not insignificant part in the formation and operation of the United Nations, the occupation of Japan, the Japanese peace treaty, and the Korean war. This rapid growth in the complexity of New Zealand foreign policy sprang from two sources. The first was the policy of collaboration, which involved the Dominion in a range of international activities at which New Zealand leaders would have balked had they not been in the company of key allies. The second source was a sense of institutional confidence and growing expertise. New Zealand officials and politicians had learned diplomatic skills and acquired international recognition during the Second World War, and the creation of the Department of External Affairs in 1943 meant that Dominion had both the experience and the machinery to take a much wider interest in world affairs. By 1954, links with the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, although cherished and still very important, were no longer predominant. New Zealand's main strategic commitment remained in the Middle East, but the shifting frontiers of the cold war and the prospect of regional rather than global conflict had forced New Zealand policymakers to take greater account of events in the Pacific. This was reinforced by New Zealand's traditional policy of collaboration: both the United Kingdom and the United States had also become more involved in Pacific affairs. And as the focus of New Zealand foreign policy shifted increasingly to the Pacific region, so the relative importance of the United States as an ally increased. But New Zealand's interests remained world-wide, and this was reflected in the policy of collaboration. There was never any question of reducing links with the United Kingdom and Europe in favour of those with the United States and the Pacific. Instead, in what was sometimes to prove a delicate balancing act, New Zealand policymakers looked to accommodate both old allies and new as they adapted to the succession of the United States to Britain's position of pre-eminent world power.