Narrative Alignment and Misalignment: NATO as a Global Actor as Seen from Australia and New Zealand

ABSTRACT

In the wake of the Afghan missions, this article assesses the appetite in Australia and New Zealand for an ongoing relationship with NATO. Australia and New Zealand share many commonalities in their cultural, political, and economic profiles. Yet their identities in the realm of defense and security differ subtly, which has important implications for the reception of NATO’s strategic narratives in the Indo-Asia-Pacific region. Drawing on strategic narrative theory (SNT), we assess perceptions of NATO in Australia and New Zealand. By collecting and analyzing empirical data from political, academic, and military elites, we find that there is a keen desire for an on-going partnership with NATO, particularly in maintaining interoperability and in the area of “emerging security challenges.” Although the findings were mostly positive for NATO, New Zealand elites were more reticent about NATO involvement than those in Australia, where elites saw NATO and the Global Partnership as a potentially useful – if under-utilized – asset in areas of non-traditional security cooperation.

Notes

^1. Alister Miskimmon, Ben O’Loughlin, and Laura Roselle, Strategic Narratives: Communication Power and the New World Order (Oxford: Routledge, 2013), 7; Laura Roselle, Alister Miskimmon, and Ben O’Loughlin, “Strategic Narrative: A New Means to Understand Soft Power,” Media, War & Conflict 7, no. 1 (2014): 76.

^2. Alister Miskimmon, Ben O’Loughlin, and Laura Roselle, “Strategic Narratives: A Response,” Critical Studies on Security 3, no. 3 (2015): 341 [emphasis added].

^3. The project also involved ten interviews with media elites in both New Zealand and Australia, but these are not included in this article because the questionnaire differed for the media cohort.

^4. See Roselle, Miskimmon, and O’Loughlin, “Strategic Narrative”: 70–84.

^5. “Individual Partnership and Cooperation Agreement between New Zealand and NATO,” 2012. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_88720.htm. Accessed 24 August 2017.

^6. North Atlantic Treaty Organization, “Joint Press Point by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Bill English,” January 12, 2017. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_139970.htm?selectedLocale=en. Accessed 24 August 2017.

^7. Stephan Frühling, “Australia and NATO: Six Decades of Cooperation,” in NATO and Asia Pacific, edited by Alexander Moens and Brooke A. Smith-Windsor (Rome: NATO Defence College, 2016), 146.

^8. North Atlantic Treaty Organization, “Individual Partnership and Cooperation Program between Australia and NATO,” 2013. http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_104922.htm. Accessed 24 August 2017.

^9. Matt Seigel, “Australian PM Announces Afghanistan Troop Increase on Kabul Visit,” Reuters, January 17, 2016, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-australia-idUSKCN0UV11W. Accessed 24 August 2017.

^10. David Auerswald and Stephen Saideman, NATO in Afghanistan: Fighting Together, Fighting Alone (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kindle Edition), 2014, 177.

^11. Ibid., 80.

^12. Frühling, “Australia and NATO”, 151.

^13. Ibid.

^14. Ibid., 152.

^15. See for example, Stefanie Babst, “Public Diplomacy and the NATO Brand: The Alliance’s Ongoing Battle for Hearts and Minds in an Ever More Clustered Media Environment” 4, no. 9 (September 2010, Business Ukraine), http://www.nato.int/nidc/docs/Public_Diplomacy_and_the_NATO_brand.pdf.

^16. For a discussion of this point related to the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, and Denmark, see: Jens Ringsmose and Berit Kaja Børgesen, “Shaping Public Attitudes Towards the Deployment of Military Power: NATO, Afghanistan and the use of Strategic Narratives,” European Security 20, no. 4 (2011), 505–528.

^17. Department of Defense, 2016 Defence White Paper (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2016), 45.

^18. Junior Security Academic, Melbourne, October 6, 2015.

^19. Senior Security Academic II, Melbourne, June 15, 2015.

^20. Senior Security Academic, Canberra, February 25, 2016.

^21. Senior Defense Analyst, Canberra, October 29, 2015.

^22. Military-Government Advisor, Canberra, October 29, 2015.

^23. Senior Security Academic, Melbourne, September 29, 2015.

^24. Senior Defense Analyst, Canberra, October 29, 2015.

^25. Senior Defense Policy Analyst, Canberra, August 18, 2015.

^26. Senior Defense Policy Analyst, Canberra, August 18, 2015.

^27. Strategic Think Tank Director, September 7, 2015.

^28. Senior Security Academic II, Melbourne, September 29, 2015.

^29. Senior Security Academic III, Melbourne, 2015 (nd).

^30. Senior Defense Policy Analyst II, Canberra, August 18, 2015.

^31. International Law Academic, Canberra, October 7, 2015.

^32. Security Think Tank Analyst I, October 7, 2015.

^33. Strategic Think Tank Director, September 7, 2015.

^34. Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, “Australia’s Trade at a Glance,” http://dfat.gov.au/trade/resources/trade-at-a-glance/Pages/goods-by-country.aspx (accessed March 20, 2017).

^35. Former Senior Government Member, Canberra, September 7, 2015.

^36. Security Academic, Canberra, August 18, 2015.

^37. International Relations Expert, Melbourne, February 26, 2016.

^38. Perhaps surprisingly, Australia and New Zealand’s intervention in East Timor, and the two countries’ relations with Indonesia, were not mentioned prominently in interview responses.

^39. Former Senior Government Member, Canberra, September 7, 2015.

^40. Security Think Tank Analyst I, Canberra, October 7, 2015.

^41. Former Senior Government Member, Canberra, September 7, 2015.

^42. Senior Security Academic II, Canberra, August 18, 2015.

^43. See for example, Senior Security Academic I, Melbourne, September 29, 2015.

^44. Former Ambassador, Canberra, August 18, 2015.

^45. Strategic Think Tank Director, September 7, 2015.

^46. Senior International Relations Academic, Melbourne, December 15, 2015 .

^47. Ministry of Defense, Defence White Paper 2016 (Wellington: New Zealand Government), 35.

^48. Ibid., 11.

^49. Laurent Goetschel, Ed., Small States Inside and Outside the European Union (London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998), 15.

^50. Former NZ Defense Official, Wellington, February 10, 2016.

^51. Academic, Wellington, January 25, 2016.

^52. Defense Academic, Wellington, February 25, 2016.

^53. Defense Academic, Wellington, January 27, 2016.

^54. Former MFAT Official, Wellington, February 10, 2016.

^55. Former NZ Defense Official, Wellington, February 10, 2016.

^56. Former MFAT Official, Wellington, February 10, 2016.

^57. Academic, Wellington, August 13, 2015.

^58. Former MFAT Official, Wellington, February 10, 2016.

^59. Academic, Wellington, August 13, 2015.

^60. Former NZ Government Minister, Christchurch, January 2016.

^61. Former MFAT Official, Wellington, February 10, 2016.

^62. Defense Academic, Wellington, February 4, 2016.

^63. Former Government Minister, Wellington, Februart 10, 2016.

^64. Former MFAT Official, Wellington, February 10, 2016.

^65. Former MFAT Official II, Wellington, February 10, 2016.

^66. Former NZ DefenSe Official, Wellington, February 10, 2016.

^67. Former Government Official, Christchurch, October 15, 2015.

^68. Former NZ Defense Official, Wellington, February 10, 2016.

^69. Former MFAT Official, Wellington, September 28, 2015.

^70. Former MFAT Official, Wellington, January 19, 2016.

^71. Defense Academic, Wellington, August 4, 2015.

^72. Defense Academic, Wellington, January 27, 2016.

^73. Former Defense Official, Wellington, February 10, 2016.

^74. Defense Academic, Wellington, February 25, 2016.

^75. Defense Academic, Wellington, February 4, 2016.

^76. Australian Government, Defence White Paper, 125.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ben Wellings

Dr. Ben Wellings is a senior lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Monash University in Melbourne. He is currently researching the place of the Anglosphere in the post-Cold War global order and the relationship between security, nationalism, and European integration.

Serena Kelly

Dr. Serena Kelly is a lecturer in European and European Union Studies and a Research Fellow at the National Centre for Research on Europe, University of Canterbury. She is currently leading a research project on post-Brexit perceptions of the UK in New Zealand.

Bruce Wilson

Dr. Joe Burton is a senior lecturer in the Political Science and Public Policy Programme and the New Zealand Institute for Security and Crime Science, University of Waikato. His research focuses on regional responses to transnational security challenges, most notably cyber security, with a focus on the Euro-Atlantic and Asia-Pacific regions.

Joe Burton

Professor Bruce Wilson is the director of the European Union Centre at RMIT University. He provides insights to EU–Australian relations and academic studies on the European Union, encouraging mobility for staff and students, and builds partnerships between Australian universities, businesses, and organizations and their European counterparts. He leads a major research program on comparative regional policy.

Martin Holland

Professor Martin Holland holds New Zealand’s only Jean Monnet Chair (ad personam), is director of both the National Centre for Research on Europe at the University of Canterbury and of European Union Centres Network in New Zealand, and is an active member of a number of international EU research networks.