For three decades we treated defence as a peace dividend to be spent down, not an insurance policy to be maintained. Every government did it, to some degree, because the neighbourhood felt safe and there were always more pressing places to put the money.

That neighbourhood no longer feels safe. Strategic competition has arrived in the Pacific Islands region we have long treated as our own backyard, and it arrived while the Defence Force was hollowed out from thirty years of deferral.

The 2025 Defence Capability Plan is the first serious attempt in a generation to reverse that. Twelve billion dollars of capability investment over four years, and an aspiration to lift spending beyond 2 percent of GDP by the early 2030s, is a genuinely significant commitment.

But I would ask readers not to treat it as a settled matter, because it isn’t one. It is a down payment on a much longer project, and the record shows exactly how this story usually ends: capability rebuilt over a decade, then dismantled again inside two budget cycles the moment the danger feels distant.

The case for sustaining it is not really a defence argument at all. A credible force is what gives our diplomacy something to stand on, gives our intelligence sharing its value to partners, and gives an exporting nation like ours some security over the sea lanes and markets it cannot otherwise control.

Small, exposed states — Singapore, Finland, Denmark, Israel, each in very different circumstances — have shown for decades that this is achievable without illusions of defeating a major power outright; what it takes is sustained, whole-of-nation commitment rather than a single term’s enthusiasm.

Two things will decide whether the 2025 Plan is remembered as the turning point or the next false start. First, whether successive governments hold the line on funding and pace through to 2040, rather than quietly retreating the moment a quiet year arrives.

Second, whether the Defence Force and Ministry of Defence supply leadership capable of delivering the Plan at the speed the environment now demands, not the speed bureaucracies find comfortable.

Both are choices, made afresh every year. I would rather we made them deliberately than relearn, at some future cost, why we should have.

To learn more about John's research, read the full research note, watch the webinar and read about it in our latest NZ Herald column.