Amid intensifying regional challenges and weakening multilateral systems, the trans-Tasman alliance must evolve from habit into a deliberately integrated, credible, and strategically agile instrument for regional stability.
Each Anzac Day, Australia and New Zealand (NZ) commemorate a shared military history forged in fire. This year also marks the 75th anniversary of the ANZUS Treaty, the trilateral pact that still underpins the trans-Tasman alliance.
Today, that alliance confronts a new strategic test. The Indo-Pacific is entering a period of overlapping instability—climate disruption, intensifying strategic rivalry, and a fraying rules-based order—that is reshaping regional security. In this environment, the trans-Tasman partnership must become a deliberately integrated strategic instrument, and delay carries growing risk.
A Region Under Strain
As Rory Medcalf observes, the Indo-Pacific is both a place and an idea. It represents a connected maritime system stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. It is also a strategic framing of the world’s economic engine room and centre of gravity for growth. This prosperity rests on increasingly fragile foundations.
Three pressures are converging.
First, climate change is a present destabiliser. In our immediate neighbourhood, Pacific leaders consistently identify it as their primary security concern. Rising seas, extreme weather, and resource stress erode governance capacity and heighten vulnerability to external influence. Failure to align security engagement with climate priorities risks alienating partners and opening seams that revisionist actors can exploit.
Second, strategic competition between the US and China has intensified. China’s military modernisation and coercive diplomacy reflect a determination to shape the regional order more closely to its interests. Meanwhile, political volatility in Washington has injected uncertainty into alliance structures that have underwritten stability for decades. As Hugh White has long cautioned, Australia cannot assume the permanence of US primacy. This competition plays out as an incremental erosion of a global balance that has long been favourable to Australia and NZ.
Third, global institutions are faltering. Paralysis in multilateral forums such as the United Nations Security Council and the World Trade Organisation has reduced predictability for middle and smaller powers. Evelyn Goh reminds us that stability depends not only on power, but on shared understandings and restraint. When the global systems upholding those norms fray, stability relies more heavily on credible regional partnerships described by some as the “middle power moment”.
For Australia and NZ, these pressures are immediate. The South-West Pacific, long viewed as strategically benign, is now a contested space. Chinese naval activity in the Tasman Sea has underscored how close major power manoeuvres now sit to Australasian waters Geography alone is no longer a sufficient deterrent.
Rethinking Deterrence
Traditional “hub-and-spokes” alliance models are ill-suited to this complexity. Deterrence in the Indo-Pacific must be geometric rather than linear: a web of overlapping principles.
For Australia and NZ, this geometry has three pillars.
Distributed denial. Dispersed, interoperable forces complicate adversary planning and raise the cost of coercion. Australia’s emerging “strategy of denial” and NZ’s forward Pacific presence are complementary. But complementarity only deters if it is visibly integrated. As John Blaxland observes, credibility is built through demonstrated coordination, not through parallel effort.
Institutional legitimacy as strategic capital. Political legitimacy is central to deterrence. A dense network of regional partnerships increases the diplomatic cost of coercion. Wellington’s Pacific relationships and emphasis on partnership, including principles derived from Te Tiriti o Waitangi, offer distinctive strengths that can amplify both nations’ regional engagement.
Economic-security integration. In the Indo-Pacific, trade, infrastructure, and maritime security are now deeply enmeshed in geopolitical strategy. Australia and NZ must seek regionally attuned strategies that acknowledge this economic-security entanglement to reinforce both resilience and credibility.
Yet this geometry requires scaffolding. Without institutional depth, alignment remains rhetorical.
The Complacency Risk
The Australia–NZ relationship is uniquely close; “friends, family, and formal allies”, according to the Prime Ministers . Defence interoperability at the tactical level is strong. Intelligence sharing is deep. Cultural ties are dense.
Yet, as Wallis and Powles observe, closeness can breed complacency.
Strategic asymmetry is growing. Australia’s defence budget and warfighting focus, particularly under AUKUS, far outpace NZ’s more modest capability trajectory. Wellington increasingly aligns procurement and planning with Canberra, yet Australian strategy documents rarely reciprocate the emphasis. Australia’s Indo-Pacific outlook versus NZ’s Pacific-centric framing risks divergent threat perception without deliberate coordination.
Also concerning is the “frozen middle” practitioners describe: the gap between high-level rhetoric and frontline integration. Tactical familiarity and political warmth cannot substitute for integrated campaigning, planning, processes, and aligned procurement.
In crisis, ambiguity about roles, thresholds, and expectations could slow coordinated action precisely when speed is essential.
From Sentiment to Structure
If deeper integration is necessary, what should it look like?
At the centre should be an Anzac Joint Operating Concept (AJOC): a shared framework guiding how both countries plan, operate, and adapt together across the security spectrum. Not a new treaty or bureaucracy, but a living operating system aligning campaign planning, capability development, digital interoperability, and joint assessments.
An AJOC would be a dashboard and a compass. It would define shared strategic effects, establish pre-agreed coordination mechanisms for contingencies, align procurement timelines and training pipelines, and embed joint assessment functions to transform intelligence sharing into shared foresight. It converts complementarity into coherence, while preserving sovereign decision-making.
Operational integration must also be matched by political architecture. Australia should align its national power with a National Security Strategy; NZ should anchor its defence capability planning more explicitly in a national military strategy. A biennial bilateral strategic review would institutionalise adaptation. A standing trans-Tasman security council (building on ANZMIN) could provide continuity across electoral cycles.
Crucially, deeper integration must be anchored in Pacific legitimacy. A joint Anzac Pacific Strategy, aligned with regional priorities, would signal that trans-Tasman coordination strengthens, rather than sidelines, Pacific voices.
A Moment of Opportunity
Alliances are not static inheritances; they are instruments that evolve or atrophy. Seventy-five years after ANZUS, Australia and NZ face a different strategic landscape. Increasingly complex security challenges rise against a backdrop of fractured systems of resilience. Declining multilateralism empowers regional partnerships.
The trans-Tasman alliance stands at a moment of opportunity. With deliberate institutional reform, clearer strategic alignment, and a shared operating framework, it can become one of the Indo-Pacific’s most credible middle-power anchors: regionally legitimate, operationally coherent, and strategically agile.
Amidst a polycrisis, inertia carries a cost. Purposeful integration, by contrast, offers leverage. A stronger Anzac alliance is both achievable and timely; an investment in regional stability that reflects shared interests, shared values, and a shared future.
Daniel Garnett holds a Master of International Security from Massey University. He is a former board member of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs in Palmerston North, and a serving member of the New Zealand Defence Force. He is currently on an exchange with the Royal Australian Air Force in Canberra.
This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.
