Introduction

During the course of the twentieth century New Zealand's defence relationship with Southeast Asia varied considerably in form and importance. From a situation of being virtually ignored, the region moved for a time to the centre of New Zealand's defence effort before again becoming relatively insignificant. Both perceptions and realities depended on a colonial status shared at first by both New Zealand and most territories of the region and from which they all eventually moved to independence.

For the first half of the century Southeast Asia, so far as New Zealand gave it any attention at all, was a means to an end. New Zealanders perceived the region through the lens of imperial security. The various territories, mainly under the sway of Western powers, aroused no sense of threat. Nonetheless Southeast Asia came to occupy a key position in New Zealand defence preparations. It did so because of its importance to imperial strategy for the protection of Australia, New Zealand, and other British territories in the Pacific. Later, the region was seen as a barrier to the southward movement of forces potentially hostile to Australia and New Zealand, an area in which a national defence effort was demanded. Southeast Asia seemed potentially threatening because of the perceived danger that it might succumb to these forces or join them.

In the latter stages of the century New Zealand engaged with Southeast Asia in its own right. It was a very different region, composed of independent countries that emerged from the wave of decolonization that reshaped the post–World War II world. There was a change of attitude from seeing Asia as a threat — a perception of the region that was generally pessimistic and unfavourable, focusing on the poverty and susceptibility to outside influences of the local populations — to one of economic opportunity. But as the century ended the rise of Muslim extremist movements began to cause a new concern, presenting a threat that clearly could not be met merely by resort to traditional military responses.

Singapore Strategy

Southeast Asia first aroused New Zealand's security attention after World War I. The focus was narrow, for it encompassed little more than the island of Singapore at first, though eventually the security of Singapore demanded a widening of the scope of British defence planning to encompass the surrounding territories, especially on the Malayan peninsula.