Explainer – New Zealand woke up on 12 September 2001 to a world order that had abruptly changed overnight.

While most of the country slept, terrorist attacks in New York City and elsewhere in America left nearly 3000 people dead and led to decades of conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This week marks 25 years since the 9/11 attacks, which changed air travel forever, but also led to major reassessments of New Zealand’s place in the world and how we work with other nations.

“I think New Zealand politics and foreign policy became less complacent after 9/11,” said Grant Morris, a historian and associate professor of law at Victoria University.

“The attacks proved that no nation was safe from large-scale terrorist attacks. If NYC could be attacked this way, then every city and nation is potentially vulnerable.”

The events of 9/11 led to what would become New Zealand’s longest overseas military deployment as it joined the US-led action in Afghanistan against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Beginning in December 2001, the Labour-led government agreed to send NZ Special Air Service (NZSAS) troops.

Prime Minister Helen Clark said after the attacks that “It is important that the international community now work together to fight the scourge of terrorism. New Zealand will do whatever it can to help.”

Morris said the lasting impact of 9/11 for New Zealand is the awareness of “the constant and continuing threat of terrorist attacks around the Western world (including in Australia and NZ)”.

The nature of conflict itself shifted as a result of 9/11, he said.

“It marked a movement from more traditional warfare against known enemies to a much greater focus on asymmetric warfare and counter-terrorism.”

Around 3500 troops served and 10 NZ service personnel died during operations that lasted almost 20 years before the withdrawal in May 2021.

Veterans Affairs New Zealand says that troops in the Bamiyan province and elsewhere “rebuilt infrastructure, new schools, developed the local agriculture, contributed to renewable energy projects as well as community health projects. They enhanced the lives of many Afghanis”.

However, there were also concerns about civilians harmed during the deployment, and the death of a child in an incident involving SAS, which was all investigated in the Operation Burnham inquiry.

Ultimately, the Taliban has since regained power in Afghanistan, which left many questioning the point of the conflict.

“Unfortunately, the humanitarian and security gains made in Bamiyan could not be preserved after the Taliban’s military victory and the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan in September 2021,” said Robert Patman, a professor of international relations at Otago University.

One foreign policy expert said the world became too focused on fighting Islamic extremism at the cost of other issues.

“NZ’s security focus also shifted in accordance with US priorities,” said Paul Buchanan, a security analyst and director of the non-partisan geopolitical consultancy 36th Parallel Assessments.

“Our commitment to the anti-Islamicist cause saw NZ lose troops in Afghanistan and cause casualties there and elsewhere.”

While it did join the Afghanistan coalition, New Zealand opted not to send combat forces to join the US-led operation in Iraq in 2003, although some were later deployed in training and reconstruction efforts.

At the time, Helen Clark criticised the failure of diplomacy to avoid military action in Iraq.

“A new and dangerous precedent is being set,” she said in a statement to Parliament. “It may be possible to justify one’s friends taking such action, but where then is our moral authority when other nations use the precedent which is being set?”

“The bottom line is that 9/11 pushed NZ solidly into the US-led alliance system even if not in formal name,” Buchanan said.

“New Zealand stood to gain if it was seen as a ‘good international citizen’ prepared to shoulder its burden of collective security in the era of transnational terrorism,” Patman said.

Patman said after 9/11, it’s now clear that the rules-based order that came into place after World War II began to gradually fall apart.

“The post-9/11 era had been marked by the steady erosion of an international rules-based order, enshrined in institutions like the United Nations and norms such as multilateralism.

“The US’s illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003, Putin’s annexation of Crimea and subsequent full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, war crimes in Gaza, and Trump’s Iran war have been some major landmarks.”

Patman said given America’s current foreign policy moves, the same kind of coalition isn’t likely to happen again soon.

“I cannot see New Zealand participating in an arrangement led by an ‘America First’ administration in Washington, but given that most security problems require multilateral solutions it is entirely possible New Zealand will contribute assistance to other international military operations.

“For example, the NZDF has been helping Ukraine with military training in Europe since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.”

“The Afghanistan experience has made New Zealand and others more cautious about large, open-ended wars of nation-building,” geopolitical analyst Dr Geoffrey Miller said.

“In the future, it’s more likely that New Zealand will offer niche, high-value contributions in areas such as special forces, intelligence and logistics, as we’ve seen in some of New Zealand’s recent targeted contributions in the Middle East.”

The very different reactions by New Zealand to joining the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq established new guidelines for our foreign policy, he believes.

“In hindsight, the fallout from the 9/11 attacks – and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq – did New Zealand foreign policymakers a favour,” Miller wrote in a 2021 piece for RNZ.

“Afghanistan gave New Zealand an opening to show the US what it had to offer, while Iraq clearly showed New Zealand the limits of that engagement.”

Before 9/11, New Zealand and America’s relationship had been somewhat frosty since clashes over our nuclear-free policies in the 1980s.

American nuclear-powered naval ships were barred from entry and as a result, New Zealand was effectively suspended from the ANZUS treaty between NZ, Australia and the United States.

“We part company as friends, but we part company, as far as the alliance is concerned,” US Secretary of State George Shultz said at the time in 1986.

The 2001 attacks marked the finish for the “cold war” between the US and New Zealand, Buchanan said.

“9/11 marked the end of the era of official estrangement between NZ and the US over the 1985 non-nuclear declaration.”

“It brought a thawing in NZ-US security relations, and NZ foreign policy and security elites sought to capitalise on the moment by offering specialist services (like the NZSAS) and closer cooperation within Five Eyes as part of the so-called ‘War on Terror’.”

Miller said the biggest impact of 9/11 for New Zealand is that it “reopened and then locked in a closer security relationship with the United States”.

“Effectively it broke the ice and provided an initial, highly compelling practical reason for military engagement – the need for international cooperation against terrorism.

“Over time, the US-New Zealand cooperation built out into other areas and a more general reset,” Miller said.

Buchanan said that in his opinion, New Zealand too often ended up following the US lead.

“The NZ intelligence community became obsessed with jihadists much in the way the Cold War focused on ‘reds under beds’,” he said.

Buchanan cited examples of abuses of Muslim civil rights, including the case of Algerian refugee Ahmed Zaoui, who was called a security risk when seeking asylum here but was ultimately granted New Zealand citizenship.

Buchanan criticised the actions of the government and security forces over Zaoui’s case, calling it an example of overreaction to the threat of jihadists.

“A man and his family lost several years of their lives together. NZ lost some of its honesty and innocence as well.

“The obsessive focus on jihadists, both foreign and domestic, imagined more than real, not only made the (intelligence community) dishonest in its annual threat assessments issued during the first decade or so after 9/11. It also completely missed or discounted the signs that rightwing extremists were very present and in fact organising in NZ and that they were linked to violent events in Europe and North America.”

He cited the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre, which was perpetrated by an Australian white supremacist.

“As it turns out, they were watching the victims, not the killer even though he was hiding in plain sight.”

The political after-effects of 9/11 also could have brought down one of our own governments – the Alliance Party, the coalition partner supporting Clark’s Labour-led government circa 1999-2002, broke apart when members disagreed about New Zealand sending troops to Afghanistan.

Its leader, the late Jim Anderton, who was deputy prime minister at the time, agreed with Clark’s call to support the American action in Afghanistan. But other members of the Alliance group were strongly against it, and the party soon splintered.

Directly as a result of Alliance breaking up, Clark called for an early election held in July 2002, and her government successfully went on to easily win a second term – forming a coalition with Anderton’s new Progressive Party.

Of course, the current occupant of the White House has stamped an added aura of unpredictability on US/NZ relations.

“All New Zealand governments since 1945 have supported the vision of an international rules-based order and the decline of that prospect seriously impacts the ability of Wellington to navigate the world and sustain an independent foreign policy based on principles and international law,” Patman said.

“It’s true that the Donald Trump era with its tariffs and bombastic rhetoric has made Wellington’s current relationship with Washington more challenging,” Miller said.

“Still, these tensions have not undone the security relationship that 9/11 restarted.”

Miller cited the recent deal between the US and NZ to fund and build a new NZ$101 million port on Penrhyn atoll in the Cook Islands.

“The new port project isn’t being done out of charity – rather, it’s a sign of how New Zealand-United States cooperation has gradually shifted since 2001 from the original terrorism focus to geopolitical competition.”

Buchanan, however, said that deal also served a military purpose.

“Although NZ calls it a development project, it is a military port construction project first and foremost that is designed to counter (China’s) military expansion into the South Pacific.”

“In the longer term, and essentially from 2016 on, 9/11 has helped create a much [more] challenging security environment for New Zealand,” Patman said.

He cited the competition between the US and China, the rise of far-right populism and Trump’s election.

When it comes to trade, New Zealand has broadened to include deals with India and the European Union, as well as continuing close ties with China.

Buchanan said he felt New Zealand’s image of having an “independent” foreign policy was a misrepresentation.

“It is something that the NZ foreign policy elite tell the NZ public and with which they comfort themselves as supposed ‘honest brokers’, but the truth is that the rest of the world knows that we follow the US and Australian lead when it comes to security affairs, including the diplomatic activities tied to them.

“If Australia and the US are in bed together when it comes to military and intelligence ties, then NZ is the pillow on which they rest their heads.”

That “rules-based order” seems to have firmly been brushed aside this year, many analysts have said. But the future remains impossible to predict, even as the long-term ripples of 9/11’s reshaping of world politics continue to echo.

“In the end, New Zealand knows that Donald Trump will only be in office for another couple of years – it’s anyone’s guess what will happen after that,” Miller said.

Source: RNZ