| By Geoffrey Miller
Is New Zealand suddenly softening its more pro-Western foreign policy – and its tougher line on China?
After months of inching towards the West, Jacinda Ardern’s set-piece speeches on her Europe trip last week seem to have been crafted to try and keep observers guessing.
At the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Madrid, the New Zealand Prime Minister gave a speech that – in tone at least – seemed designed to evoke memories of the direction that her Labour predecessor David Lange had taken in the 1980s.
Lange built his foreign policy on the trinity of Labour’s nuclear-free policy of 1984, France’s bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour in 1985 and the US’s formal suspension of its obligations to New Zealand under the ANZUS Treaty in 1986.
At the outset of her three-minute speech to NATO leaders in Spain, Ardern said ‘New Zealand is not here to expand our military alliances. We are here to contribute to a world that lessens the need for anyone to call on them’.
The remarks vaguely recalled the fiery tone taken by Lange when New Zealand’s role with NATO came up at the Oxford Union debate in 1985: ‘This country, New Zealand, is not going to contribute to a nuclear alliance. This country, New Zealand, never has’.
Ardern followed up on her opening remarks by pointing to New Zealand’s ‘fiercely held independent foreign policy’ that she said should not be judged against ‘political ideology’.
The Prime Minister also rebuffed the idea that Russia’s war should be seen as a ‘as a war of the West vs Russia, or even democracy vs autocracy’.
This particular line was surprising, given that it could easily be interpreted as a rebuke of US President Joe Biden.
After all, the US President made ‘the battle between democracy and autocracy’ a theme of his State of the Union and Warsaw speeches in March. He has also used similar framing elsewhere, such as when he organised the inaugural ‘Summit for Democracy’ last December, which Ardern herself attended.
Ardern’s pledge not to join a military alliance might seem like a significant concession to China, which tends to see the rise of new Western-led groupings in the Indo-Pacific as plots against it.
Of course, plenty of wriggle room remains on that front. Even if New Zealand were to join either of the two most hawkish groups – AUKUS (Australia, the UK and the US) or the Quad (Australia, India, Japan and the US) – it would technically not be signing up to a formal defence alliance.
Ardern also seemed to take a softer approach when she spoke to Chatham House in London on Friday. Her prepared speech did include relatively mild criticism of China – which she called ‘assertive’ – but she managed to avoid mentioning China by name entirely during the much longer 40-minute Q&A session that followed.
This wasn’t for a lack of effort on the part of her questioners: Ardern was quizzed twice on the rather sensitive matter of how New Zealand would respond if China invaded Taiwan.
In her answers, Ardern largely talked around the issue and generally preferred to bring the discussion back to Russia and Ukraine itself – far safer ground. Noting that she would be ‘loath to assume any particular trajectory’, she also deployed the strategic soundbites of ‘diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy’ and ‘dialogue, dialogue, dialogue’.
Did New Zealand effectively blink last week and return to its old, pre-Ukraine hedging strategy of satisfying the West one week – and China the next?
Time will tell, but Beijing will be far more interested in Ardern’s actions than her rhetoric.
After all, Ardern was invited to attend last week’s Madrid summit precisely because the alliance wanted Asia-Pacific countries standing alongside it when NATO called out China in its new ‘Strategic Concept’.
To that end, NATO’s new blueprint did not mince words. The line of ‘China’s stated ambitions and coercive policies challenge our interests, security and values’ served as just the opener for several paragraphs of very specific and pointed critique of Beijing’s military, nuclear and economic policies.
And as if to underline New Zealand’s true stance, foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta released a statement on Friday – while Ardern was still in Europe – that called out China for ‘continued erosion of rights, freedom and autonomy in Hong Kong’.
Moreover, the many and varied steps that New Zealand has taken this year to align itself more closely with the West remain. Ardern’s foreign policy U-turn in March that saw New Zealand impose sanctions on Russia has been followed by the Prime Minister choosing to visit countries that are also clearly in the Western camp: Australia, Belgium, Japan, Singapore, Spain and the United States.
In its relations with the US, New Zealand has joined Washington’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) and – even more significantly – the new Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP) initiative. The latter group – made up of Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the US and the US – pledges to co-operate for ‘prosperity, resilience, and security in the Pacific’ and seems squarely aimed at countering China in the region.
In fact, as Richard Harman points out, the PBP is of such a delicate nature that Wellington has almost pretended it does not exist: a White House statement remains the only official announcement of New Zealand’s involvement.
The Partners in the Blue Pacific announcement came a month after Jacinda Ardern visited Joe Biden in the White House at the end of May, a key outcome of which was Wellington’s joint statement with Washington that itemised a long list of typical US complaints about China.
On the Pacific, Ardern has sided with the Western position that essentially seeks to keep China out of the region. In April, she said there was ‘no need’ for Solomon Islands to sign a security deal with China. Citing the Pacific Islands Forum’s Biketawa Declaration – a mutual regional support pledge signed after the Fiji coup in 2000 – Ardern expressed the view that the arrangement between Beijing and Honiara crossed a ‘very clear line’.
Since then, Ardern has also been careful to show unity with Canberra by repeating Australian lines of ‘our backyard’ and ‘Pacific family’ to describe New Zealand’s own relationship with the Pacific.
More broadly, the Prime Minister and her foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta, have talked up the role of the Pacific Islands Forum – which Ardern described at Chatham House as ‘the place for discussing and determining regional security needs’.
Later this week, Nanaia Mahuta is scheduled to attend the Forum’s foreign ministers’ meeting in Fiji, which will be followed by Ardern’s participation in the leaders’ summit next week.
Effectively, the Pacific Islands Forum will be the West’s chance to make a counter offer to China’s multilateral ambitions for the region that foreign minister Wang Yi unveiled on his tour of the Pacific in May.
New Zealand’s Pacific-focused, post-Ukraine tilt towards the West might now seem locked in: China’s security deal with Solomon Islands that was first leaked in March and it subsequent even grander plans for the region arguably forced Wellington’s hand.
But that does not mean there is no room, or no time, or no reason for a major rethink.
Last week’s mediocre free trade deal with the EU – which gave New Zealand only minor gains in the crucial meat and dairy sectors that make up 40 percent of its exports – only underlined the simple fact that New Zealand needs China more than ever.
The EU and the US are unwilling – or unable – to put their money where their mouths are.
They are failing to match their rhetoric of solidarity with the kinds of high-quality trade deals that New Zealand would need as any kind of China substitute.
By contrast, China remains a willing and able buyer of a massive 33 per cent of New Zealand’s exports, especially of the butter, cheese and beef that the EU would rather exclude from the bloc on protectionist grounds.
For the foreseeable future, China will remain New Zealand’s biggest trading partner – by far.
There is no Plan B.
Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s international analyst and writes on current New Zealand foreign policy and related geopolitical issues. He has lived in Germany and the Middle East and is a learner of Arabic and Russian. |
Ardern’s policy is not necessarily shifting. She has two different audiences to appease. On the one hand her “like minded traditional partners” in the Five Eyes states who are demanding her commitment to military confrontation with the Russian Federation and the PRC, and on the other the people of Aotearoa who expect an ostensibly “independent” foreign policy, departure from military alliances even if stopping short of strict neutrality, and a firm adherence to the letter and spirit of the non-nuclear policy.
While Ardern’s popularity has been on the rise in Washington, London, Brussels and Canberra, in Aotearoa it is plummeting, and the ambiguity of the past few days is designed to calm the growing disquiet at home.
New Zealanders, of course, face a dilemma. The Labour Party had made itself the standard bearer for foreign policies which had broad grass roots support, and actually originated as popular initiatives rather than from within the machinery of the colonialist system. Now the people of Aotearoa will have to look outside the colonialist political system for the implementation of policies which truly reflect their national identity. Meanwhile, Ardern has the unenviable task of persuading the people of Aotearoa that total subjection to the geo-political designs of the Five Eyes is a valid expression of a “fiercely independent foreign policy”.
Exactly Geoff. NZ has long been the “house boy” of the Anglophile 5 Eyes arrangement. USA and UK top tier, Canada and Australia deputy dogs, and NZ, lowly data collector, doormat and snitch.
What does one think about when waiting in a green room about to read out a prepared speech to The UN? Can one even think properly when surrounded by such desolate views. Only myth and marram seem to raise a stire.
Is it more likely that one stairs at the past and gaze into better days and founder memories back when one had more youth, purpose and excitement and less aches and pains in bones and muscles.
I imagine when Jacinda sits in her aeroplane seat she sits and meditates a lot on her past. I’m also sure she’s interrupted periodically by Cindy fans screaming her name out across social media.
Unfortunately for all those who love to scream out at Cindy these telepathic nonsense that they are just a small part of Jacinda Arderns very interesting life full of hard knocks she will need to recall if she is to survive the upcoming trade wars with China.
The South Pacific Leaders Forum has no clear leader, no goals, no glory to which to leverage and an older, wiser, experienced, component and creative Jacinda must be ready.
Jacinda does have the greatest challenge of all! Which is??? Baby sitting the future of The UN, nuclear disarmament and potentially the world.
Luckily there are no better people better suited for nuclear disarmament than a New Zealand Prime Minister. Luckily we have one and we must aid her in her mission.