Greece. Crete. North Africa. The Pacific. Battle honours carried by New Zealand units and etched into memorials across New Zealand mark campaigns fought between 1940 and 1943. They were paid for in blood and treasure by a generation that had, in the relative calm of the 1920s and 1930s, allowed hard-won military capability to be run down. The question now is whether we are about to make the same mistake again.

For three decades after the Cold War ended, New Zealand treated defence funding as a peace dividend to be spent rather than an insurance policy to be maintained. Governments of both colours drew down capability, deferred replacement, and let the Defence Force hollow out, even as they occasionally sent it, under-resourced, into expeditionary commitments abroad. That pattern held until strategic competition returned to our own neighbourhood.  In recent years, the Chinese have conducted naval excises, established new base agreements and contested infrastructure in the Pacific region we have long regarded, with some complacency, as our strategic backyard.

The Defence Capability Plan released in April 2025 is the first serious attempt in a generation to correct that pattern. It commits $12 billion to capability investment over four years. It sets out an aspiration to lift defence spending beyond two percent of GDP by the early 2030s. It is the greatest commitment to upgrading the military uplift this country has attempted since before I first put on a uniform. Its merits are considerable, but it is just a downpayment on what is necessary.

A credible Defence Force is not only about the ability to fight, though that must never be in doubt. It is also the foundation of our diplomacy – diplomats are taken more seriously when the country they represent can back its words with something more than good intentions. It lends weight to our intelligence relationships – partners share information more readily with a force that can act on it. Crucially, it secures our trade and supply chains.  An economy as exposed as ours — dependent on access to sea lanes and distant markets — has a direct stake in a credible military, whether exporters realise it or not. Defence, diplomacy, intelligence and economic security rise or fall together.

Other small, exposed states demonstrate that limited resources, applied with discipline and sustained across political cycles, produce disproportionate strategic weight. Singapore built a citizen army and a defence-industrial base knowing that its survival could never be assumed. Finland never let go of its whole-of-society approach to resilience, even though decades during which the rest of Europe thought the need for territorial defence was history. Denmark and Israel, in very different circumstances but both with small populations and real exposure, share a national consensus that security capability is non-negotiable. 

New Zealand does not need, and could never afford, a force capable of defeating a major power outright. No credible plan would propose that. What it needs, and what these other small nations show is achievable, is a force capable enough to protect its maritime approaches, carry its share of Pacific responsibility, and contribute meaningfully to partnerships so that our voice in the region is backed by more than sentiment.

That is why the 2025 plan is so important. But it will fail if we treat it the way we have every previous defence uplift. It cannot be seen as a four-year programme to be wound back the moment the fiscal cycle tightens or the government changes. Dismantling military capability, as we have proven more than once, takes only a couple of budgets. Rebuilding it takes the better part of a decade. 

Two things are required for this plan to avoid the fate of its predecessors. First, successive governments — of whatever stripe — must have the discipline to sustain the investment and the trajectory through to 2040, resisting the temptation to treat a quiet year as evidence the danger has passed. Second, the Defence Force and the Ministry of Defence must supply the strategic and transformational leadership necessary to deliver the plan at the pace the strategic environment demands, not at the pace bureaucracies find comfortable.

The Defence Capability Plan is the necessary foundation of a national security strategy this country urgently needs. It is an investment in our sovereignty, our diplomatic standing and our economic security all at once.

We are entering a more dangerous and unpredictable period than most living New Zealanders have experienced. The next generation of ANZACs will not thank us if we leave them to rebuild defence capability in a crisis. We owe it to the generation whose names carry those battle honours to remember what their campaigns cost them and our nation. 

As Pericles said twenty-five centuries ago, prosperity can only belong to the free, and freedom is the sure possession of those alone who have the courage to defend it. The 2025 Defence Capability Plan gives New Zealand a chance to take hold of that courage. Whether we do so is now entirely up to us.