MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 1966. The Burden Of Defence West Of Wellington
The British Prime Minister last month tested America’s reaction to Britain’s intentions to trim its defence expenditure, especially expenditure overseas. The outcome of Mr Wilson’s meeting with President Johnson was an apparently amicable understanding that Britain would continue to maintain forces between Europe and Hong Kong but would cut the cost of these commitments to match its ability to pay for them. The New Zealand Government will feel the repercussions of this plan at Canberra this month, when the Minister of Defence (Mr Eyre) and Australian Ministers meet the British Defence Minister (Mr Healey). By then Mr Healey will have visited Washington with the British Foreign Minister (Mr Stewart) to discuss details of defence policy, weapons, aircraft, and ships.
The main topic at Canberra will be the sharing of defence responsibilities in South-east Asia. America is satisfied that the A.N.Z.U.S. Pact takes care of the Pacific region. Britain and the United States are considering how to share the cost of bases in the Indian Ocean and may conclude that these should extend as far as Australia. Between these oceans, Britain is spending about £l5 million a year in Hong Kong and about £260 million in Singapore and Malaysia. British policy makers and defence planners have doubts as to whether all this expenditure abroad is contributing effectively to Britain’s security. Mr Healey does not believe that the deployment of military forces is an efficient way of protecting Britain’s commercial interests. Many Britons are beginning to envy France’s freedom from military commitments overseas. Mr Healey has said “ ... we might well discover that the losses we would “ risk by relying solely on diplomacy would probably “be less than the cost of maintaining a military “ establishment overseas at anything like the present “ level ”. Since he said this in 1964 the level has been raised, but not to protect economic interests. Nor does Mr Healey regard the containment of the Communist advance as the prime objective of British forces overseas. In the same speech he said: “If we “ are honest we must admit that many of the conflicts “ in Asia and Africa jn which we have been called on “ recently to intervene have nothing whatever to “ do with international communism ... I believe the “ real justification for the British military presence “ in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East is that Britain “ can make an indispensable contribution to the “ stability of these great continents, a contribution “ which, at the moment, no other country in the “ world is capable of making, certainly in the vast “ area between Suez and Singapore ”,
Mr Healey is not now likely to exclude Australia and New Zealand from this theory. To the extent that the security of Australia and New Zealand depends on the stability of South-east Asia—whether or not the threat to stability is Communist expansion —New Zealand has a responsibility to take a fair share of the military burden. Mr Enoch Powell, the Conservative Party defence spokesman, said recently that the eventual limits of the Russian and Chinese empires might be fixed by a balance of forces which was itself Asian and African. Russia and China already were in a state of mutual suspicion and antagonism, he said, and the ultimate balance might be delayed by the Western military presence. This is a long-term view, too speculative for comfort today. The worst of the Indonesian confrontation policy may have passed: but the policy remains. Exclusively Asian resistance to Chinese pressures will be comparatively feeble for many years. The development of Chinese nuclear weapons and the uncertainty of the outcome of Russian and Chinese disputes make his forecast a dangerous one on which to base a defence policy.
Rationalisation of defence efforts east of Suez and some trimming of British expenditure in Germany should go part of the way towards holding Britain’s defence budget to a bearable £2OOO million (at 1964 prices) a year for the next five years. The Canberra meeting will undoubtedly attempt to further this rationalisation. But effectively to reduce the overseas content of British defence costs Mr Healey will ask New Zealand and Australia to do more—and to serve their own interests as well. Britain’s population is now about 22 times the population of New Zealand: it is relatively static while New Zealand’s is growing rapidly. Britain’s gross national product is about 18 times that of New Zealand. Yet Britain spends 50 times more on defence. It is possible for a large industrial country to spend proportionately more on defence without serious discomfort: and it is true that New Zealand’s defence expenditure involves a greater drain on overseas funds because most equipment must be bought abroad and that over-employment restricts recruitment into our armed services. Mr Eyre’s most notable achievement as Minister of Defence has been, like that of his peace-time predecessors, keeping expenditure low. The policy is wrong. A fairer share of the defence burden will mean fewer luxury imports, higher taxation, and a greater diversion of manpower to the armed services—although, with the exception of the Army, the lack of equipment is more serious than the lack of men. A fairer share of the burden will mean greater stability for the British economy—a point of economic importance to the Dominion. First and foremost, if Britain must reduce its defence costs, our extra effort will help to ensure our own security as well as the security and peace of our South-east Asian neighbours until their internal stability and an international balance are achieved.
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Press, Volume CV, Issue 30954, 10 January 1966, Page 10
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917MONDAY, JANUARY 10, 1966. The Burden Of Defence West Of Wellington Press, Volume CV, Issue 30954, 10 January 1966, Page 10
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