Different nightmares, shared dreams? Australia and New Zealand's intuitive alliance
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2024
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Powles, A.
Wallis, J.
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Australian Journal of International Affairs, 2024; 78(5):536-560
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Anna Powles and Joanne Wallis
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What does this apparent relegation of the strategic significance of Australia’s relationship with New Zealand to a partnership in Australia’s 2023 Defence Strategic Review tell us about the status of the Australia-New Zealand alliance? Based on interviews and roundtables with leaders, officials, and academics in both countries in late 2023 and early 2024, we argue that the depth and breadth of Australia and New Zealand’s defence, economic, regulatory, and people-to-people cooperation and integration has made their relationship ‘intuitive’. That is, Australia and New Zealand’s relationship has come to be seen as part of the natural order of things, so that the two countries see each other as a natural, permanent partner, parting company with whom is unthinkable. But we also argue that this may prevent the two neighbours from recognising and responding to tensions. To address this, we examine differences between the two countries’ perceptions of themselves, their strategic interests, and their alliance, and find that the management of expectations will continue to generate tensions. While we conclude that these tensions will not fundamentally undermine the relationship, we acknowledge that it has not yet been seriously tested, for example by conflict in East Asia.
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Published online: 23 Oct 2024
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© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.