In the national interest: Fighting blind

American intelligence ban is taking a heavy toll on New Zealand's defence ability, reports GREG ANSLEY in the final of our series.


The twin forces of principle and technology are threatening to hamstring the New Zealand Defence Force as it heads into turbulent times.

The clash between a non-nuclear policy forged in the Cold War and the military's new digital age has already been felt in East Timor, where New Zealand was excluded from some Australian intelligence.

As the Anzacs begin a new operation in the Solomons, sources have warned that New Zealand could be pushed further into the cold on all three levels at which the military operates - strategic, operational and tactical.

Even the ability to train and exercise with Australia, our closest and most important security partner, could be impaired.

Analysts say that the loss of intelligence as a result of the Anzus split with the United States means the New Zealand expertise and experience needed to understand emerging security issues could disappear.

"We're not in the strategic game any more," said David Dickens, former director of the Centre for Strategic Studies and now a private consultant.

Because the distinction between intelligence and operational information has been blurred by the digital revolution, the difficulties are now starting to flow down to operational and tactical levels, where troops are on the ground.

The problem has grown since the USS Buchanan was turned away from New Zealand in 1985 in the first test of the nation's non-nuclear policy.

The Americans shut off the vast flow of security intelligence that came as part of the Anzus alliance, and told Australia not to pass on information it continued to receive.

That will not change unless New Zealand changes its non-nuclear laws.

In the early days the US ban was a time-consuming problem, but one relatively easily managed because intelligence and operational information were separate.

But accelerating leaps in the technology of gathering, analysing and distributing intelligence are turning the two streams into one, making it almost impossible to separate banned US material from messages to troops in the field.

This has the potential to limit New Zealand's ability to operate in regional coalitions, and it could also affect transtasman training.

New Zealand's security and foreign affairs priorities are in an increasingly unstable region, requiring close and effective co-operation with other nations in a broad range of areas.

Our key ally is Australia. After the protection of its own territory and people, the second-highest priority of New Zealand's defence policy is the transtasman alliance, followed by stability in the South Pacific - a task inevitably tackled in conjunction with Canberra.

Said one Australian source: "At present, if it's just Australia and New Zealand operating or training together, the two forces can work around it. But will they still be able to work around it in five or 10 years?"

Establishing the limits and costs to New Zealand of the US ban is almost impossible in the sealed-off world of intelligence, but there is evidence of significant pain.

New Zealand is still part of the worldwide electronic listening network operated by the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which collects and passes on raw intelligence in an automated system known as Echelon.

The Government Communications Security Bureau feeds material into the network from its satellite station at Waihopai, near Blenheim, but receives back only what is considered necessary for it to know.

One source says the US has refused New Zealand requests for information originating from Waihopai.

The source says the lock-out from American intelligence has been so complete that while New Zealand in the early years at least knew what it was missing, it now has no real grasp of what is being withheld.

David Dickens said the effect had been twofold.

"We were frozen out of strategic intelligence. That meant we didn't really know what was going on, we didn't have a full picture, and that affects our interests."

It has also affected the management of defence.

"At the strategic level we've now got whole slices of command coming through who have never worked in a genuinely strategic environment.

"They don't understand really big-picture warfare and conflict management, and how that impacts on the armed forces."

The Anzus split has so far been less serious at the operational and tactical levels - the sending of forces abroad on such regional missions as East Timor, or in US-led coalitions in Iraq, naval patrols in the Gulf and Afghanistan.

The US still feeds New Zealand intelligence concerning the South Pacific - although sources say this is fairly narrowly defined - and gives operational intelligence needed by troops on the ground or ships at sea.

"When we need it, we generally get it," one senior New Zealand source said.

Hugh White, a former intelligence analyst and senior defence strategist who now heads the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, agrees that the US will supply intelligence required by New Zealand troops.

"It would be strange not to, and the Americans may have their idiosyncrasies but they're not stupid," he said.

White also says the effect of the US intelligence blackout is far less serious, for the moment, when Australians and New Zealanders operate together in places such as East Timor and the Solomons.

"The inability to handle US stuff ... is not that big an issue, because a lot of what you're dealing with is either what the company or battalion intelligence officer has scraped together by talking to people down at the local market, or what you're picking up from what our own national collection capabilities, national signals intelligence or whatever may have found out," he said.

But huge advances in technology, allowing the automation and networking of intelligence collection and distribution, are beginning to affect the information shared across the Tasman.

"It would be wrong to say it is not a complicating factor for Australia, because it is," a senior New Zealand source said.

The problem lies in the revolution in military affairs, in which new technology to link intelligence flows to computers used for command, control, communications, surveillance and reconnaissance.

This mass of data flows through the system down to battlefield laptops, creating increasing difficulties in filtering out US information from data for New Zealand.

"While closer defence relations draw us closer at the policy level, we are being forced apart at the nitty gritty level by security and intelligence sharing problems," one Australian source said.

"If someone is not allowed to see part of the information, he can't see most of the network. At times, even if you can sift out the closed data, what's left is often not worth the effort."

Australian sources say the networking dilemma required the transfer of the New Zealand officer serving on exchange at Headquarters Australian Theatre in Sydney from the key joint planning branch, to the training and development branch.

His Australian counterpart in Wellington still serves in joint planning there.

In East Timor, where Anzac troops otherwise operated well together guarding the border with Indonesian West Timor, problems arose because the Australians had information they were not allowed to pass on to the New Zealanders.

"The problem arose with the integrated intelligence staff, which in effect became all-Australian because Kiwis attached to border headquarters were not allowed to see the details," one source said.

Hugh White said Australia's problem in filtering out US information from data for New Zealand consumption was not new.

"What is new is that a gradual but relentless thickening of the network, automation of systems, building of more connections and all of the rest of it does have the potential to make the problem more complex." he said.

"But it also has the potential to make some new tools to solve it ... so it's not as though all the news is bad."

Personal friendships and long-lasting professional contacts have been a major means of bypassing barriers.

Brigadier Lou Gardiner, former Land Force Commander and now defence adviser in Canberra, for example, has good friends at the highest levels in Canberra and ready access to Australian Defence Force chief General Peter Cosgrove, a strong Anzac advocate.

But most of these bonds were forged by the Vietnam generation, now reaching retirement age.

Similar bonding has been renewed by junior officers in East Timor, Bougainville and now the Solomons, but a senior New Zealand source said it would be years before these friendships bore fruit at high levels.

Associated with this is the cost of keeping pace.

The 2000 Australian defence white paper put the cost of maintaining existing information capabilities at A$1.3 billion ($1.46 billion) a year - roughly equivalent to the entire New Zealand defence vote in this year's Budget.

Canberra will spend another A$1.9 billion on new systems in the next 10 years, and a further A$600 million to operate them.

The New Zealand Defence Force's long-term development plan includes spending between $400 million and $600 million on new communications, command, control, surveillance, sensor and other systems.

The much larger Australian economy is having trouble keeping pace.

Says an Australian study: "There is a possibility that if the relationship [with the US] is not carefully managed at its Australian end, escalating costs might make it so expensive as to become unsustainable."

And, reflecting on the split caused by New Zealand's non-nuclear policy, it added: "One could speculate that, nuclear issues aside, it would have become increasingly difficult for New Zealand to sustain its alliance with the US on simple grounds of escalating costs."

Within New Zealand, the military's problems have been largely buried by overwhelming public and political support for the non-nuclear policy, and the absence of any clear harm to the country.

But although they have learned to live with it, defence forces on both sides of the Tasman would like the policy dropped.

So would others, saying the potential benefits of a return to the American fold include the likelihood of a more sympathetic ear for Wellington's bid for a free-trade agreement with the US.

But Terence O'Brien, former New Zealand Ambassador to the United Nations, sees no reason to dump the policy.

"New Zealand's non-nuclear policy is in effect the ideal non-proliferation policy in a world where proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is one of the key security issues of the time," he said. "I don't believe that the non-military reasons - trade or economics - are so compelling as to oblige some reconsideration of that."

But nor does O'Brien believe the non-nuclear policy buys us other friends elsewhere: "That can be overstated too."

Across the Tasman, Hugh White reflects a more pragmatic Australian view.

"I think we've now recognised that the differences between the US and New Zealand over the nuclear issue are here to stay, so there's no good holding your breath.

"You just have to make the investments required to ensure that you have the network capabilities which allow you to handle these problems."