alternatehistory.com

I recently saw the film adaption of Tomorrow When the War Began, and I'm contemplating reading the books, but it inspired me to write my own story of an unlikely invasion.

But I want this invasion to be of New Zealand. Now, even though the author of those books never reveals who the invaders of Australia actually were, except that they were Asian, we can almost assume that they're Indonesian (poor East Asian nation north of Australia in need of natural resources? Perhaps.). Of course we can theorise all we want on that, but I'd rather avoid the ambiguity of this in my story, so I came here to ask - with the exception of North Korea (God knows how they'd do it), is there any likely Asian nation that for any reason would want to invade New Zealand between, say, 2004 and 2012?

NZ has a lot of natural gas reserves, which are very useful, plus fantastic farming opportunities and a lot of potential living space. New Zealand isn't useless, is what I'm saying.

Much like in Tomorrow, my story begins with my main character being in a remote location far from the action to begin with, namely the Cook Islands (Rarotonga, to be precise), but when he returns home with his uncle and cousins via sailboat, they realise that Lyttleton Harbour is on fire, or was (lots of smoke). They dock beside some foreign (help me out here) war vessel and make land, but then they see some foreign soldiers. Thinking quickly, the main character's uncle tells the cousins to stay hidden, so they run and watch from the debris of a destroyed shop. The uncle approaches one of the soldiers and asks what's going on, blah, blah, blah is arrested, etc.

Unlike tomorrow, my characters don't take the guerilla war offensive thing so hardcore, and a lot goes wrong for them (deaths, captures, etc.).

But like I said, is there any country that could potentially want to invade NZ for any reason during this time period? I thought maybe a South American country could work as well, but I don't know enough about them militarily. NZ would be royally screwed in the beginning, but there'd be Australians and Commonwealth nations to help us out.

This story doesn't have to be accurate down to the bone, as it is a work of fiction. If no country can potentially do it, then I can happily make it up as I go. But I thought I'd see what all you guys think.
Top