Introduction: The Emergence of New Zealand's Relationship with Southeast Asia

Summary

New Zealand's relationship with Southeast Asia has evolved significantly since the end of World War II (WWII). With the exception of New Zealand and Australian pressure on Great Britain to shore up the Singapore base prior to WWII New Zealand did not have interests in Southeast Asia beyond the continuation of British power in the region. The end of the War in the Pacific dragged New Zealand into a relationship with the countries of Southeast Asia. This interest was based on meeting future threats that might come through a weak and unstable Southeast Asia. In the 1950s a New Zealand Minister of External Affairs, T.C. Webb, characterized Southeast Asia as “like so many stepping stones leading down to Australia and New Zealand”. Asia as a whole appeared to be a large threatening continent, in which communism was taking hold. Furthermore, New Zealand's policy-makers believed the Southeast Asian region was being destabilized through external subversion as part of a Cold War confrontation with China and the Soviet Union.

Thus, in the immediate post-war decades, New Zealand foreign policy in Southeast Asia was concerned with security in Southeast Asia. The stability of struggling regimes throughout the region was of grave concern throughout the first half of the Cold War. Wellington went along with a two-pronged plan formulated by the western allies to promote regional stability. First, New Zealand's contribution to the Colombo Plan, initially designed to channel aid to commonwealth Asia and later to much of non-communist Asia, assisted with developmental aid projects in South and Southeast Asia in order to provide social cohesion and economic security for the emerging post-colonial nations. In 1951, F.W. Doidge, Minister of External Affairs, observed that giving aid to the wider region emerged from New Zealand's desire to “stem the tide of Communism”. While force had been necessary in some contexts (like Korea), Doidge argued, helping the “teeming masses” out of their poverty was a better means to check communism in the long term. Secondly, New Zealand signed an array of regional defence arrangements including the Canberra Pact with Australia, the Commonwealth Strategic Reserve, ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand, United States) and the South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).