The Pacific chessboard, and NZ’s place in the US-China power struggle

Monday, 24 February 2025

A file photo of Taiwanese soldiers posing in front of their country’s flag during a training drill. China’s intention to eventually reclaim the island as its own is a key factor in the rapidly changing strategic chessboard across the Pacific, Reuben Steff explains.

Dr Reuben Steff is a senior lecturer at the University of Waikato, where he teaches courses on New Zealand foreign policy, international relations and global security.

OPINION: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen” – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

Little over a week ago, US President Donald Trump pledged to “immediately” begin negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine War following a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin; Trump then called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” who was largely responsible for the war; Europe suffered the indignity of being left out of the first stage of US-Russian negotiations, and then were called out by US Vice-President JD Vance for not listening to their people; in New Zealand’s immediate region, Kiribati (recipient of $300 million of NZ aid over the past three years) and the Cook Islands have made decisions at odds with Wellington’s interests; and China just sent warships down the east coast of Australia, which conducted live-firing exercises and forced a number of trans-Tasman commercial airline flights to be diverted. Defence Minister Judith Collins described the vessels as having “enormous strike power” andwent on to say this should be a “wake-up call” for us as, “it’s real evidence that our distance means nothing now”.

What on earth is happening? And how are these things connected?

Let’s step back and recognise that a notable international structural shift is underway.

NATO troops conduct large-scale combat exercises in Romania, testing rapid deployment amid concerns over shifting US security commitments under President Trump.

Specifically, what we are seeing is an attempt by Trump to de-escalate in Eastern Europe, freeing up resources and attention to allow a shift in Washington’s strategic focus to the priority theatre – the Pacific.

Why? Because China is a near-superpower seeking to shift the regional, and eventually global, balance of power in its favour.

Washington and Beijing’s strategies and ambitions are colliding.

This implicates New Zealand’s geographic location – and ultimately, our direct geostrategic security – in the South Pacific.

This is a hard realisation for New Zealanders. After all, our distance far from Eurasia and luck of being on the right side of history throughout the 21st century has bestowed upon us a level of freedom from fear and threat few other countries experience.

As such, the notion of an external threat is foreign to the contemporary New Zealand mindset.

There are three reasons this must change – and fast.

Firstly, New Zealand is part of the Third Island Chain. Essentially, strategists organise the islands of the Pacific into three strategically interrelated concentric arcs extending outwards from East Asia.

A file photo of Chinese President Xi Jinping speaking after reviewing the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy fleet in the South China Sea. As China has increased its sea power, so too has the significance of the South Pacific in a possible future invasion of Taiwan, Reuben Steff explains.

The first goes from Alaska south to Japan, Taiwan (an island the Chinese Communist Party considers a breakaway province) and the South China Sea.

The second extends outwards into the Pacific across to Guam (a US territory), Palau (a country “freely associated” with the US) and down to the eastern portion of the Indonesian archipelago.

The third stretches into the middle of the Pacific Ocean to Hawaii and then down to the South Pacific and New Zealand.

China’s strategy is designed to allow it to eventually operate globally via their aircraft carrier battle groups out and through the Third Island Chain. As part of this, it is now seeking military positions and nodes within the First Island Chain, but also beyond into the second and third for its Navy to dock and operate out of (its submarines also operate in these areas).

As such, its naval vessels off the coast of Australia are a sign of things to come, and an obvious show from Beijing that it can cut off from the world. It will seek to normalise these activities – as it has its increasingly sophisticated military manoeuvres around Taiwan.

On this score, securing positions beyond the first chain in the second and third is vital for Beijing should it seek to invade the island – they will be used to try prevent resupply to Taiwan, and complicate any naval response from the US and its allies.

In this context the South Pacific becomes a “soft underbelly” – a flanking position – for the archipelagic lines of defence to New Zealand’s north. This includes Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and of course the bases, logistics and vital sea-lines-of-communication of the critical lynchpin – the United States – that run from its western coast through to Hawaii, Guam, and then to the allies.

Cooks Island Prime Minister Mark Brown, whose recent deals with China need to be viewed as part of a far larger strategic play with global implications, according to Reuben Steff.

Recent controversies over Kiribati, the Cook Islands, and before them the Solomon Islands, Fiji and Vanuatu, need to be viewed in this broader strategic context.

Furthermore, we must recognise that as Trump prepares to direct greater attention to the Pacific, China has a large incentive to try to strengthen its position now, flex its influence throughout the region (the Cooks and Kiribati?) to show it has leverage, and to ultimately complicate the US shift, and intimidate New Zealand and Australia.

The second factor we must address is our historical amnesia – we were on the chopping block during World War II. Had the US lost the Battle of Midway against Imperial Japan (which bombed Australia and conducted overflights of New Zealand), a battle many military historians believed the US should have lost, it’s not outside the realm of possibility Australia and New Zealand would have been invaded and drawn into the Axis powers’ brutal “new order”.

In other words, vast oceanic distances can be crossed. They have before and may very well be again.

The third reason is that things have rapidly and radically changed in recent years as the relative balance of power has shifted between the US and its allies (the status quo powers who have sought to uphold the existent rules-based order), and a set of revisionist near-allies in the form of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea.

The latter seek to alter and even replace the existing system with one that benefits them and reflects their values.

Defence Minister Judith Collins had to admit a stark reality when the question arose of what New Zealand could do about Chinese naval vessels sailing close to our waters.

They – especially Russia and China – are strategically coordinating efforts across multiple dimensions. This results in “grey zone” warfare, attempts to undermine Westerners’ faith in their own democracies via a propaganda war (see Anna Applebaum’s research on this), foreign interference, and military-technological support for one another’s militaries – and military adventures, like in Ukraine.

We’ve seen this story before: status-quo powers, having won the last major conflict or confrontation (in this case the Cold War, which ended in 1991), become decadent and complacent. Meanwhile revisionist rising powers, dissatisfied with their lot, rise to aggressively challenge the existent order.

This draws us to an extremely uncomfortable fact for New Zealand. While values and norms are important, ultimately the international rules-based order is not an abstraction that exists only in our minds – it is underpinned by material power, and the willingness of the status-quo states to uphold and defend it.

Can New Zealand contribute and stand up for itself?

At present we have mostly words or what is known as “soft power”. We have prioritised this and neglected the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF).

Consequently, Defence Minister Judith Collins explained that there is “nothing we can do except monitor” the Chinese vessels in the Tasman Sea and if they were to head towards Auckland. Apparently, a Defence Capability Plan (set for release in June 2024 but repeatedly delayed) is meant to begin rejuvenating the NZDF, but each day that goes by our position grows worse and our strategic depth comes into question.

I do not seek to be alarmist for the sake of it, but we must recognise that the evidence and trend-lines suggest the Pacific – including our own part of it – is now a strategic theatre and involved in a game with high-stakes.

History will not be kind if we do not take appropriate action with urgency.

Reuben Steff is the author of New Zealand's Geopolitics and the US-China Competition (2025, Palgrave-Macmillan).