Covid-19 should not make us oblivious to other security threats
Aliya Danzeisen, Anjum Rahman, and Frances Cook QC outline the Islamic Women's Council's submission to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch Mosque Attacks.
OPINION: It’s a distant memory now – the mid-2010s when Isis was ascendant and the attacks across Europe, the United States and even Australia catapulted terrorism into a priority place in many countries’ national security strategies.
Beyond Isis, ethno-nationalist, extreme Left, extreme Right and single-issue causes were already perpetrating terrorism, but none had succeeded the way Isis did in grabbing the media’s attention.
On March 15, 2019, modern-age terrorism struck home. The New Zealand media and public protested that our security sector agencies missed the gunman preparing to do what hindsight made obvious he was going to. This was a remarkable irony, because New Zealanders had buried their heads in the sand on national security issues for decades and, frankly, still do.
Lynne Sladky/AP
Covid-19 has killed more Americans than World War I did. (File photo)
Covid-19 is by far the most dangerous global security threat since World War II. In less than a year, it has killed more Americans than World War I. Globally, it has killed more people than terrorists have done in the past 100 years.
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In this respect, Covid-19 has shown the relative threat terrorism actually presents. It is clearly far less than the hysterically amplified fears that sparked the misnamed and ultimately counter-productive “war on terror”. Nevertheless, the threat of terrorism was always more real, despite the complacency of “she’ll be right” New Zealanders, who had assumed before 2019 that it would never be a problem for us.
Back in those days, security sector leaders occasionally talked about the need to prepare for a pandemic. Ebola and Sars viruses had given us grounds to be on guard, but when the possibility of a global pandemic was voiced, did we hear it?
Getty-Images
A US Navy fighter in the South China Sea. A military standoff with China could have a big impact on New Zealanders’ standard of living, quite apart from any military consequences, writes John Battersby. (File photo)
Political, military, cyber – threats to our security abound
The silence of New Zealanders at the recent removal of political and social rights in Hong Kong is disturbing. It’s as if we do not care, content to dismiss Hong Kong’s autonomy as a product of colonisation, therefore undeserving of the rights that we assume we deserve.
The People’s Republic of China has built artificial islands in the Pacific Ocean, advanced territorial claims against several of its smaller neighbours, and is distributing cash like lollies among Pacific Islands – including those whose people have New Zealand citizenship.
This has already forced an acceleration of military spending by other regional powers and likely initiated an arms race in the Asia-Pacific region. Putting aside the obvious military consequences of all this, if there is a new Cold War standoff in the Pacific, New Zealand’s economic reliance on China may see us no longer able to enjoy the developed world lifestyle that we do. We are far more careful now in our “criticism” of Chinese policy than we were in the 1980s of the Americans, who we knew would tolerate our dissent.
Eugene Sergeev/123RF
Cyber crime remains a big threat to global security, and has not gone away since the emergence of Covid-19. (File photo)
Organised crime syndicates usually lack the ambitions of terrorists, are often inherently conservative and do not care for political change, because they seek to convert rather than subvert political systems. They are not beyond dealing with terrorists or using violence in the manner terrorists do.
Like terrorists, they exploit poverty and disadvantaged communities, bribe political and bureaucratic stakeholders, and take advantage of uncontrolled borders, causing huge social damage if unchecked.
The cyber domain permeates through all of the above, wickedly compounding already complex security problems, making the systems we need to operate our public and private sectors vulnerable to criminal, and even external state interference. Cyber is the ultimate transnational criminal, terrorist and hostile state-actor workspace.
In simple terms, terrorism has not gone away with the emergence of Covid-19. Instead New Zealanders are being confronted with a kaleidoscope of current and emerging dynamic risks, some more severe and immediate than others. There is no right or wrong way to look at national security risk; the prominence of one doesn’t make the others disappear – something entirely new could emerge without warning.
We need to look harder at, and listen better to, the world around us. Sea levels are rising around our coastlines, the air we breathe is warming, and a dynamic future is germinating right here, right now. Understanding the security of that future will not result from one-dimensional thinking.
* Dr John Battersby is an expert in terrorism and counterterrorism, a teaching fellow in Massey University’s Centre for Defence and Security Studies, and managing editor of the National Security Journal.
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