Donald Trump’s sweeping election victory has set the stage for this year’s APEC summit in Peru.

At least 14 leaders have so far confirmed their attendance at the leaders’ summit in Lima from November 15-16. China’s Xi Jinping, Japan’s new Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and Canada’s Justin Trudeau will all be in Peru – as will New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon.

Peru is a particularly enthusiastic Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum member and is hosting events for the third time since it joined in 1998. The 2024 meeting shares one important parallel with previous APEC gatherings held in Peru in 2008 and 2016: it will directly follow a US election that brought a new President into the White House.

Donald Trump’s overwhelming win and the economic plans for his upcoming term – which include general global tariffs of 10-20 per cent, with a 60 per cent tariff on Chinese goods – will invariably dominate sideline conversations throughout APEC leaders’ week.

For New Zealand, APEC might be the beginning of a rethink of its wider approach that has sought to align Wellington more closely with Washington. The shift has brought New Zealand to the cusp of joining Pillar II of the AUKUS defence pact that currently involves Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Trump’s return to the White House may mean everything is now back on the table.

A year after taking office, Christopher Luxon has yet to visit China – and neither has Winston Peters, New Zealand’s foreign minister. Peters is also expected at APEC, as is Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi. It will be interesting to see how the New Zealand ministers interact with their Chinese counterparts during their time in Peru.

For China, New Zealand’s biggest trading partner, APEC will be a chance to showcase an alternative and very much pro-trade vision. While in Peru, Xi is set to inaugurate a new Chinese-backed megaport in Chancay, some 80 kilometres north of Lima.

Chancay will be a gamechanger for Peru, but its impact will also be felt further afield. From opening, the port will be able to accommodate new megaships carrying up to 18,000 twenty-foot equivalent container units (TEUs). Future expansion will upgrade capacity to 24,000 TEUs. For comparison, the biggest container ship ever to call in New Zealand carried 11,294 TEUs.

The aim is for Chancay to become a transhipment hub for much of Latin America.

For New Zealand, the new ‘go big or go home’ mentality of global shipping could be a major opportunity to become a new air, sea and services hub. In 2021, a report for the New Zealand China Council estimated the direct economic benefits of a potential ‘Southern Link’, taking advantage of New Zealand’s location half-way between Asia and Latin America, could total $NZ1.87 billion over its first decade.

Back in Lima, APEC’s 35th anniversary summit is a chance for some reflection. Against a backdrop of geopolitical polarisation, the bloc’s unusual inclusivity (a product of post-Cold War optimism) is now a major selling point. The group’s 21 members from around the Pacific Rim include both China and Taiwan, along with Japan, Russia and the United States.

The pay-off from APEC has been substantial for Wellington. Collectively, APEC economies represent 38% of the world’s population and more than 60% of global GDP.

Arguably, the biggest single success has been the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a free trade deal between 11 countries that are all also APEC members. The CPTPP has its origins in bilateral talks held between Singapore and New Zealand on the sidelines of the APEC gathering in Auckland in 1999. Chile and Brunei then made it the P4, before other APEC members became interested, ultimately leading to the CPTPP that entered into force in 2018.

For New Zealand, the CPTPP has opened up traditionally protectionist markets such as Canada and Japan. It also almost gave New Zealand lucrative free trade access to the United States – but Donald Trump withdrew from the pact upon taking office in 2017.

APEC has also helped smaller members like New Zealand to build stronger ties with Latin America. Mexico, Chile and Peru all joined APEC in the 1990s, before a moratorium on new members put a halt to further expansion. All three are also in the CPTPP.

But as APEC begins in Peru, there is a sense that New Zealand’s ties with Latin America have never quite lived up to their full potential. While New Zealand enjoys $NZ3 billion of two-way trade with Latin America, just a single direct airlink connects the two continents – a six-weekly flight to Chile from Latam Airlines. A short-lived second service from Air New Zealand to Argentina was suspended in 2020 and never resurfaced after the pandemic.

At the political level, New Zealand’s focus on Latin America has been inconsistent. On the positive side, New Zealand became an observer to the ‘Pacific Alliance’ grouping of Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru in 2012 and began negotiations on a free trade agreement with the bloc in 2017. And when Peru last hosted APEC in 2016, New Zealand could be relied upon to send ministers and officials to key meetings of trade and finance ministers that come earlier in the full-year calendar of APEC events.

This time around, land information minister Chris Penk was dispatched to May’s trade ministers’ gathering – and apparently no New Zealand minister at all went to the finance ministers’ meeting held last month.

The apparent reduced commitment so far in 2024 is somewhat disappointing, especially since New Zealand itself knows how important APEC can be. A founding member since 1989, Wellington itself last hosted APEC in 2021 and pulled out all the stops to make the event a success, despite the Covid-19 pandemic forcing a switch to a virtual format.

Then there is last month’s unfortunate closure of the Latin America Centre of Asia-Pacific Excellence (CAPE) – New Zealand’s only real centre of academic capability for the continent. The decision to shut the Latin America CAPE was made by the outgoing Labour Government in 2023. But the move was not reversed by Luxon’s centre-right coalition, even though it was a National Party-led government that had established the centre in 2017.

More optimistically, New Zealand is at least planning to attend in full force in Lima this month.

In addition to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and foreign minister Winston Peters, trade minister Todd McClay is also expected in Peru. For all three ministers, APEC will be a chance to meet more of their counterparts. And for the Prime Minister, a chance to shake hands with China’s Xi Jinping beckons.

Luxon has made infrastructure a key focus of his domestic programme. At the international level, the new opportunities from the Southern Link proposal and the Chancay port could be attractive. Immediately prior to APEC, McClay is leading a trade delegation to the China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai.

In terms of Latin America, the Peru trip will complement a visit by McClay to Brazil in October, when the trade minister attended a G20 trade and investment ministerial meeting as an invited guest. Elsewhere in Brazil, McClay was accompanied by Auckland mayor Wayne Brown, who promoted the Southern Link concept and the idea of a new flight via Auckland linking São Paulo with China.

Donald Trump’s comprehensive US election victory will be firmly on the minds of leaders who are heading to Peru. As Trump looks set to steer the United States in a more protectionist direction, this year’s APEC will be a reminder that there are plenty of worthwhile options to do business elsewhere.

APEC could unlock a world of fresh and exciting opportunities, particularly when it comes to New Zealand’s ties with Latin America.

The summit in Peru could also see Wellington reenergise its engagement with Beijing.

And as Donald Trump prepares to re-enter the White House, it may also prompt a reassessment of New Zealand’s overall foreign policy trajectory.

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Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

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New Zealand’s new free trade agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council is a major win for both sides.

Todd McClay, New Zealand’s trade minister, announced the long-awaited deal on Thursday with his counterparts in Doha, Qatar. It is a remarkable, yet also surprising sudden success: the genesis of the agreement lies in talks that began in 2006.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is made up of six countries that are among the world’s richest – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). For New Zealand, the Gulf states are both highly lucrative markets in themselves, but also an invaluable gateway to the wider Middle East.

Even without a free trade agreement (FTA), the bloc is already New Zealand’s seventh-biggest export market, buying $NZ2.6 billion of exports in the year to June. New Zealand’s dairy and meat products are particularly strong sellers in the Gulf, boosted by an appetite for luxury and a quest for food security in desert climates. The Gulf mainly exports oil-based products to New Zealand in exchange, making for a highly complementary partnership.

While tariffs for selling into the GCC are not high – most goods attract a tariff of just five per cent – the FTA will carry a cachet worth far more than its face value. The deal with New Zealand is just the third free trade agreement to be agreed by the GCC. And the Gulf’s only two existing FTAs – with Singapore and the European Free Trade Association (or EFTA, a grouping of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) – were signed more than 15 years ago.

New Zealand began its own negotiations with the GCC around the same time as Singapore and EFTA, and initially made rapid progress. After formal negotiations began in 2007, an agreement at the officials’ level was reached just two years later, in October 2009.

The deal was expected to be signed at ministerial level in the first half of 2010 – probably during a planned visit by New Zealand Prime Minister John Key to the Gulf in April of that year. However, Key never made it. After three personnel were killed in a Royal New Zealand Air Force helicopter crash near Wellington on April 25, Anzac Day, the Prime Minister cut short his overseas trip to attend the funerals at home.

Key’s absence certainly did not help, but it wasn’t the real reason why the FTA ran aground. Saudi Arabia, the biggest of the Gulf states by both area and population, was never on the PM’s draft itinerary. Tim Groser, the then New Zealand trade minister, headed to Riyadh and found himself at the receiving end of understandable Saudi disappointment and frustration over New Zealand’s ongoing moratorium on live sheep exports that had been in place since 2003.

A prominent Saudi businessman, Sheikh Hmood Ali Al Khalaf, felt hard done by after investing heavily in a New Zealand farm that focused on live exports to the Gulf. For years, New Zealand had suggested that live exports could eventually resume, but talks between Wellington and Riyadh had gone nowhere.

New Zealand’s relations with influential Saudi Arabia hit an all-time low point after the 2010 troubles. But New Zealand’s foreign minister at the time, Murray McCully, was determined to find a way forward that would make the GCC free trade deal possible. Working with officials, he hatched a plan that became known as the ‘Saudi Arabia Food Security Partnership’, or more informally, the ‘Saudi sheep deal’.

The idea rested on a simple principle: while New Zealand had banned live sheep exports for slaughter, at the time they were still permitted for breeding. McCully’s plan was to send live sheep to eastern Saudi Arabia for a breeding programme on a model farm that would also showcase the best of New Zealand’s agricultural technology and farming practices.

The New Zealand taxpayer funded the deal to the tune of $NZ11.5 million. But unintended consequences, including the deaths of hundreds of lambs in the Saudi desert, were revealed by New Zealand media in 2015. The Saudi sheep deal caused a political firestorm in New Zealand that dragged on for months. Political pressure from opposition parties even led to an official inquiry by the Auditor-General, who eventually cleared the foreign minister and others of any wrongdoing in late 2016.

Still, the Saudis appeared greatly impressed by the efforts put in by McCully to improve the relationship – and probably also by the amount of political capital that he was willing to burn on the sheep scheme. Saudi Arabia opened an embassy in Wellington in 2017, reciprocating New Zealand’s own mission in Riyadh that had opened in 1985. New Zealand’s bilateral relations with Saudi Arabia were firmly on the mend – but the FTA remained tantalisingly out of reach.

This time, relations between the Gulf countries themselves had hit the rocks. In 2017, a feud that had been slowly brewing since the 2011 Arab Spring culminated in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the UAE suddenly cutting off all trade and diplomatic ties with fellow GCC member Qatar. The extreme boycott – which saw Qatari nationals expelled from the three other Gulf countries overnight – was not lifted until 2021. Intra-Gulf relations have slowly but steadily healed since then, as evidenced by the decision to conclude the NZ-GCC FTA in Qatar.

After a decade-long hiatus, the formal GCC FTA negotiation process with New Zealand suddenly resumed in March 2022. But even as recently as last year, a free trade agreement with the GCC still seemed like a more long-term goal, judging from the non-committal signals coming out of Riyadh when New Zealand’s then trade minister Damien O’Connor visited the GCC Secretariat in August 2023.

Meanwhile, with progress on the GCC deal seemingly deadlocked, New Zealand had become more open to other options. In late 2021, the UAE invited New Zealand the chance to negotiate a bilateral Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). New Zealand initially demurred, worried that a side-agreement with the UAE would upset the wider GCC and particularly Saudi Arabia.

Still, the CEPA was attractive because it would at least deliver FTA-like benefits – as well as expanded cooperation in other areas such as investment – with a powerful GCC member. The UAE remains New Zealand’s biggest export market in the Gulf, although Saudi Arabia is not far behind. After rapidly signing CEPAs with countries ranging from India to Israel, the UAE concluded negotiations on a CEPA with New Zealand in September 2024.

Behind the scenes, Abu Dhabi’s new CEPA strategy clearly became a catalyst for reviving the wider GCC FTA process. The UAE ignited a desire for greater progress amongst the other five fiercely competitive GCC members. They did not want, and could not afford to be left behind in the race for new trade deals. New Zealand’s GCC FTA was back on the table.

It has now been quickly sewn up. A vital clue that a deal had been reached came during September’s announcement of the UAE CEPA in Wellington. In response to media questioning on how the CEPA would impact the GCC FTA, UAE trade minister His Excellency Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi said ‘We work on both tracks and usually the minute we conclude the bilateral, it speeds up the GCC track. So I’m sure this is going to even move the GCC track much faster’.

And so it has turned out.

Ironically, the same intra-Gulf rivalry that had once hindered the completion of the FTA has become a major factor in its success. On the New Zealand end, it also has probably not hurt that a centre-right government led by the National Party is back in power – the same party that had invested so much time and energy into the agreement under Murray McCully in the mid-2010s. Still, the FTA is a bipartisan achievement: the groundbreaking work in engaging with the Gulf in early 2000s was undertaken by the Labour Party’s long-serving foreign and then trade minister, Phil Goff.

From the GCC perspective, successfully concluding a new deal with a small Western country will help to build confidence and credibility as the bloc looks to sign deals with much bigger fish such as the United Kingdom and the European Union.

While New Zealand has traditionally focused its interests on Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Wellington’s interest in the other Gulf states is growing. Qatar’s Prime Minister, His Excellency Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, visited Wellington on a surprise trip in August during which the FTA was almost certainly the main topic of discussion.

There will no doubt be opportunities to build valuable and much-needed deeper ties with Qatar and the other three GCC members – Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman – in the years to come.

Above all, New Zealand’s free trade agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council has been a lesson in strategic patience.

A new chapter is beginning – and exciting opportunities await.

The Gulf is calling.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

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Change is coming to America.

Next month’s elections are likely to pave the way for an overhaul of US foreign policy – regardless of whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris wins the presidency.

Decisions made in Washington will also have a direct impact on Wellington. While the Biden administration started its term with a strong, even dominant focus on the Indo-Pacific, Washington has inevitably become preoccupied by turmoil elsewhere – most recently in the Middle East, where a wider regional war centred on Iran and Israel is arguably already underway.

One year on from the October 7 attacks by Hamas, there is some suggestion that Harris would take a harder line on Israel than Joe Biden if she is elected as president. In her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in August, Harris said ‘the scale of suffering is heartbreaking’. She added that Palestinians deserved to ‘realise their right to dignity’ and achieve ‘self-determination’. Harris also skipped Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress in July. And a leaked draft of a speech she gave in March reportedly suggested that Harris wanted to make more critical remarks of Israel than she was ultimately allowed to deliver.

However, the jury is still out on the extent to which Harris truly differs from Biden. After all, in the DNC speech, she also declared ‘I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself’ – language that would not seem out of place in a speech by Joe Biden, or even Donald Trump. And Harris still met with Netanyahu privately in July – hardly giving him the cold shoulder.

For his part, Trump appears to be straightforward, casting himself as a ‘protector’ of Israel and depicting Iran as the root cause of the wars and instability that are plaguing the region. His pledge in September’s TV debate of ‘I will get that settled and fast’ is almost certainly more of a reference to a desire to use crushing military might than to employ negotiations.

While ongoing turmoil is likely to ensure the Middle East remains the primary geopolitical theatre in the near-term, the picture is more nuanced when it comes to Ukraine.

That war may be entering its endgame – regardless of who wins the presidency. At the DNC, Harris simply said ‘as President, I will stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies’. This sounds firm, but it is also vaguer than the ‘as long as it takes’ messaging that was used earlier in the war, including by Harris herself as recently as February. And in the recent TV debate, Harris largely preferred to talk about her record in past support for Ukraine than what she would do in the future.

If Harris is likely to try and gradually wind things up, Trump is even less invested in Kyiv’s cause. His lines in the TV debate of ‘I want the war to stop’ and ‘I’ll get the war with Ukraine and Russia ended’ – along with references to personal relationships with Vladimir Putin and Voldymyr Zelensky – underline the preference for dealmaking. The Trump version of this negotiated outcome is likely to be faster and less favourable to Ukraine.

Still, both candidates will be influenced by what happens on the battlefield over the coming months. If Kyiv’s incursion into Kursk bears fruit and Ukrainian losses elsewhere such as the town of Vuhledar remain the exception, the US and its allies may be persuaded to back Ukraine for a little longer. Other actors will also matter, whether allies – Germany is seeking to cut its military aid for Ukraine by half –or Congress, where a $US61 billion funding package for Ukraine in April succeeded only after lengthy horsetrading and the inclusion of a potential TikTok ban to target China.

This brings us to the Indo-Pacific region – the third theatre – and New Zealand. Under the Biden administration, Wellington has moved steadily towards Washington in the way it sees the world. This shift accelerated hugely after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In the immediate aftermath of the invasion, New Zealand introduced unprecedented autonomous sanctions against Russia, sent troops to Europe to support the war effort and forged closer ties with NATO.

The new thinking was also fuelled by news of a security pact between China and Solomon Islands that was signed in April 2022. The following month, Jacinda Ardern headed to the White House and signed New Zealand up to a lengthy joint statement with the United States that warned that ‘a persistent military presence in the Pacific by a state that does not share our values or security interests would fundamentally alter the strategic balance of the region’.

Since that May 2022 visit, New Zealand has joined new US vehicles aimed at countering China’s influence such as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) and Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP). Existing structures have also been strengthened and given new meaning, including the Pacific Islands Forum. And a parade of senior US officials have visited New Zealand, including Kurt Campbell, now the Deputy Secretary of State and previously the White House’s Indo-Pacific coordinator.

The alliance-focused approach has been a hallmark of Joe Biden generally, whose formative experiences came during the Cold War. In Ukraine, NATO’s role has been central, while in Asia, a wider range of ‘minilaterals’ have been stress-tested. These include the Quad (Australia, India, Japan and the US), but also US-Japan-South Korea and US-Japan-Philippines summits. Then there are also existing structures such as ASEAN, APEC and the East Asia Summit. Kamala Harris has attended gatherings for all three of these formats, the latter two of which also include China.

Of all of these initiatives, Aukus probably represents the centrepiece of Washington’s efforts in the Indo-Pacific. Initially launched in 2021 as nuclear-powered submarine building project for Australia, Aukus has morphed into a wider concept that constitutes the most hawkish element in Washington’s response to Beijing. With particular encouragement from Kurt Campbell, New Zealand has slowly but surely crept closer to Aukus. After Christopher Luxon became Prime Minister in late 2023, New Zealand’s position shifted to ‘exploring’ potential involvement in the supposedly non-nuclear ‘Pillar II’ component of the pact.

The process has also been helped by the fact that New Zealand’s current foreign minister, Winston Peters, is particularly amenable to Washington’s desire to forge closer ties with Wellington. The most recent development came in mid-September, when Aukus leaders announced the beginning of formal consultations with New Zealand (as well as with Canada and South Korea) ‘to identify possibilities for collaboration on advanced capabilities under AUKUS Pillar II’.

It is unlikely to be a coincidence that this announcement came just a few weeks after Kurt Campbell made another visit to New Zealand. Campbell, who recently called China’s rise ‘the most significant challenge in our history’, is a particularly influential figure and long-term architect of US strategy to counter Beijing. Campbell has risen steadily through the ranks and reportedly gets on well with Kamala Harris. If Harris wins, he could potentially become the next US Secretary of State – or at least receive another senior role – putting him in pole position to conclude the expansion of Aukus. New Zealand would probably move quickly to join Pillar II under this scenario.

If Donald Trump claims election victory, Campbell will be watching from the sidelines. But Aukus itself could well survive, despite being closely associated with Biden. After all, the Trump administration successfully repurposed an existing vehicle in its first term, the Quad, to challenge China. In the same vein, Aukus could easily be reshaped in Trump’s more bombastic and aggressive image.

New Zealand is already factoring both election outcomes into its calculations, judging by the delay of a new ‘Defence Capability Plan’ until after the US election. Foreign minister Winston Peters, the leader of the New Zealand First party and cut from a more populist cloth, would probably be happy to continue with Aukus under Trump.

But it would be a different story for Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who prefers to cultivate a more moderate centre-right image.

Moreover, if Trump’s testy relations with NATO are anything to go by, New Zealand would probably be expected to contribute far more to a Trump-led Aukus – in terms of defence spending, personnel contributions and hawkish rhetoric.

For New Zealand, which has traditionally enjoyed good relations with Beijing and relies on China as its biggest export market, this would carry enormous risks.

Aukus is already an anti-China vehicle, but Donald Trump would take it to the next level.

New Zealand might continue to align itself more closely with the United States.

But it would come at a cost.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

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New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are moving closer together – at record pace.

Just a year after agreeing to enter initial talks, Wellington and Abu Dhabi have concluded negotiations on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (or CEPA for short).

The deal will go down as one of New Zealand’s fastest trade negotiations. It is arguably the biggest breakthrough for New Zealand’s relations with the Middle East since negotiations began in 2006 on a wider free trade agreement (FTA) with the six-country Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

The CEPA is not a substitute for the wider deal with the GCC – which in addition to the UAE also includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.  But the new bilateral arrangement with the UAE will still be incredibly valuable. After all, the UAE is already New Zealand’s biggest export market in the Middle East, with goods and services worth $NZ1.12 billion sold there in the year to June 2024.

Consumers in the UAE, which has a population of around 10 million, have a particularly strong appetite for New Zealand’s high-quality food products – especially dairy, meat and fruit. The UAE is already New Zealand’s fourth-biggest market for milk powder. The quest for food security is a major theme in all six Gulf countries, driven by climate change, growing populations and recent experiences of supply chain ruptures during the Covid-19 pandemic.

There is a strong geostrategic element to the UAE’s previous choices for CEPA partners. So far, agreements have come into force with Cambodia, Georgia, India, Indonesia, Israel and Türkiye. And earlier this month, it was announced that negotiations had concluded with Australia.

For the UAE, the agreements with both Australia and New Zealand will provide a useful combined gateway as geopolitical competition between the United States and China in the Indo-Pacific continues to build. In the future, we could see more ideas like last year’s tripartite agreement between the UAE, New Zealand and Fiji to jointly implement a renewable energy project on three Fijian islands.

The dual ‘down under’ CEPAs will also complement the two deals with Cambodia and Indonesia – both ASEAN members – that have already entered into force in the wider Asia-Pacific region. And overall, the four agreements also reflect a general Gulf interest in ‘looking East’ in a bid to diversify ties beyond traditional partners in Europe and North America – particularly the United States.

A June 2023 briefing paper prepared by New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) and released under the Official Information Act (OIA) shows that the UAE invited New Zealand to be one of its inaugural CEPA partners as early as November 2021. At the time, Expo 2020 was being held in Dubai with a significant Kiwi contribution. Intriguingly, the paper suggests that New Zealand initially played hard-to-get, offering only ‘holding responses, noting that we remain focused on concluding negotiations with the GCC as a whole’.

New Zealand officials were clearly concerned that negotiating a side deal with the UAE could put a deal with the GCC at risk. By September 2023, Wellington had changed its mind – a view that was probably encouraged by Australia’s own positive experience of CEPA talks with the UAE that began in early 2022.

While the main attraction for Wellington clearly lies in boosting export volumes and reducing non-tariff barriers – and New Zealand’s foreign ministry describes the CEPA as a ‘free trade agreement’ – another key benefit may be investment. New Zealand’s new centre-right government has made no secret of its desire to prioritise new infrastructure investment – particularly in roading – while the UAE is home to three of the world’s biggest sovereign wealth funds: Mubadala, the Emirates Investment Authority (EIA) and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA).

Remarkably, the UAE CEPA negotiations seem to have helped, rather than hindered New Zealand’s relations with the GCC and the other fiercely competitive Gulf states. In August, Qatar’s Prime Minister and foreign minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani travelled to Wellington – a first for a Qatari leader. And earlier this month, Todd McClay, New Zealand’s trade minister, headed to Riyadh on a little-publicised but crucial visit.

McClay’s trip prompted a particularly warm and substantive Arabic-language post on social media by Majid Al-Kassabi, the Saudi commerce minister. Dr. Al-Kassabi reported that the pair had ‘discussed ways to enhance our trade relations, most notably the negotiations for the Free Trade Agreement between the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and New Zealand and to benefit from our experiences in implementing economic reforms to enhance competitiveness and enable ease of doing business’.

For now, however, the spotlight will remain very much on the UAE. And while there is much to be celebrated about the CEPA, there will also be some challenges. The UAE’s Ambassador to New Zealand recently addressed the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade select committee at the New Zealand Parliament. While the reception for His Excellency Mr. Rashed Matar Alqemzi was generally very warm and welcoming, the Ambassador was also quizzed by David Parker, the opposition Labour Party’s foreign affairs spokesperson, on claims that the UAE is providing arms to parties involved in Sudan’s civil war.

Abu Dhabi categorically denies the allegations, which have received greater publicity since US rapper Macklemore cancelled a concert in Dubai in August as a protest, including a local report that aired on Television New Zealand (TVNZ). Earlier this month, Anwar Gargash – a high-profile former UAE minister of state for foreign affairs and now a senior diplomatic advisor to the country’s president – posted ‘there is no military solution in Sudan & warring parties must work towards finding a peaceful solution to the conflict through dialogue & diplomacy’. In Wellington, the Ambassador told the committee the UAE followed international law and pointed to Abu Dhabi’s significant humanitarian efforts: ‘if you see what we contributed in Sudan, it will give you the right answer to your questions’.

Meanwhile, on the CEPA itself, there have been strong words of support from trade-focused groups such as Export New Zealand and the New Zealand International Business Forum. But there are also more critical voices, such as the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, which advised against a CEPA in a lengthy submission due to ‘significant concerns about the UAE’s labour rights and standards’, in relation to the treatment of migrant workers.

These issues are serious, but by no means insurmountable. After all, New Zealand has significant experience in navigating similar matters from its longstanding relationship with China, with which it signed a groundbreaking free trade agreement in 2008. And with neither country being perfect, deeper engagement will provide more opportunities to listen and learn from each other in discussion and dialogue behind closed doors. With UAE minister of state for foreign trade Dr. Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi in New Zealand this week for the conclusion announcement, it seems a likely bet that the formal signing will come as a part of a reciprocal New Zealand ministerial visit to the UAE.

If so, New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon could well head to Abu Dhabi himself. It would be the first time since 2015 that a New Zealand Prime Minister has visited the Gulf. In written answers to questions this week, the UAE’s Ambassador in Wellington, His Excellency Mr. Rashed Matar Alqemzi, extended a ‘warm welcome’ to future New Zealand ministerial visitors. The Ambassador also noted that any further ‘potential high-level visits’ by the PM or foreign minister Winston Peters would help to ‘advance shared trade and economic interests…delivering real benefits to both countries’.

If Winston Peters and Christopher Luxon do head to the Middle East, it would also be a ideal opportunity to learn the views of counterparts in the UAE about the ongoing war in Gaza, which is approaching its grim one-year milestone with seemingly only escalation in sight. There is an opportunity for Wellington to work with Abu Dhabi more closely on peacemaking efforts: New Zealand last week again broke with its ‘Five Eyes’ English-speaking partners, supporting a UN General Assembly resolution that called on Israel to end ‘its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory’.

New Zealand’s relations with the UAE are already thriving – but now they are moving to the next level.

It is the beginning of a new chapter.

And it could be the start of something even bigger.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

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New Zealand is not just on the same page, but is now in lockstep with Australia.

That was the general theme of keynote foreign policy address by New Zealand’s Prime Minister to a Sydney thinktank on Thursday.

Christopher Luxon’s 20-minute speech took a decisively hawkish tone.

The Lowy Institute address restated and reiterated recent positioning both from Winston Peters, his foreign minister, and from a similar speech that Luxon had given in Tokyo in June.

Indeed, Luxon was lavish in his praise for Peters, who he said was ‘among the most activist and impactful of New Zealand’s foreign ministers in a generation’ and was ‘reshaping our foreign policy’.

Importantly, Luxon once again repeated Peters’ line that Wellington was undertaking a ‘foreign policy reset’. This served as a further prime ministerial endorsement of Peters as New Zealand crafts, in Luxon’s words, a ‘return to the fine tradition of Kiwi activism on the world stage’.

But Luxon’s appearance in Sydney was more than just a rubber-stamping affair.

The PM identified three areas of cooperation for New Zealand’s bilateral ties with Australia, but notably prioritised the defence relationship.

On the Aukus pact, the PM said ‘we welcome Aukus as an initiative to enhance regional security and stability’ and added that Wellington was ‘exploring with the Aukus partners how we could potentially participate in Pillar II’.

Luxon’s second area focused on the Pacific, where New Zealand and Australia would be ‘steadfast partners in support of our fellow Pacific Islands Forum members’.

The third and final area focused on economics and expanding bilateral economic integration between the already closely-linked Australia and New Zealand.

The PM described these efforts as ‘about scraping the barnacles off the bottom of the boat, so the boat goes faster’.

Australia is New Zealand’s third-biggest export market (behind China and the United States) and second-biggest two-way trading partner, with $NZ31 billion of two-way trade being recorded between the two nations in the year to March 2024.

Throughout the speech and in the subsequent Q&A with Lowy Institute executive director Michael Fullilove, Christopher Luxon sought to link economics and trade with his security-focused aims.

In the address itself, Luxon said ‘we can’t achieve prosperity without security’, while in the Q&A, the PM observed that the war in Ukraine had shown ‘you can’t simply have separate economic interests from your security interest’.

The purpose of the linkage is twofold: first, it justifies Luxon’s relatively busy international travel schedule to any voters who might question why a PM who campaigned on domestic economic priorities is frequently out of the country.

Second, and more importantly, linking economics with security provides an explanation and underpinning for some rather hardline foreign policy shifts.

In the Q&A, Luxon was categorically clear that he believed the days of New Zealand’s ‘independent foreign policy’ were over.

The independent foreign policy is the name given to a largely bipartisan approach forged by Wellington since Washington suspended its defence obligations to New Zealand under the Anzus Treaty in 1986, following a dispute that arose over the nuclear-free policy introduced by New Zealand’s then Fourth Labour Government.

With the end of the Cold War fortuitously just around the corner, Wellington was able to break free of blocs and successfully develop solid, trade-focused relations with China and others in the Global South – while gradually patching up ties with the United States.

But in Sydney, Luxon gently mocked the idea of an independent foreign policy, describing it as a ‘nonsense’. The PM sought to redefine the concept in narrow terms: ‘there’s 195 countries in the world with eight billion people in it, and each of those 195 countries also has an independent foreign policy’.

This intentionally narrow and somewhat dubious interpretation of the cornerstone independent foreign policy doctrine took its cue from a December 2023 speech by Winston Peters to New Zealand-based foreign diplomats – once again underlining the fact that the Prime Minister and foreign minister were united.

But this was not the only interesting point to come out of the Q&A.

On Ukraine, Luxon said ‘it’s a war that Ukraine has to win and we have to back them up in order to help them to do that, and it’s absolutely essential’.

Luxon characterised Wellington’s support for Kyiv – and also New Zealand’s involvement in a US-UK-led coalition undertaking airstrikes against Houthi rebels in Yemen – as the country putting its money where its mouth is: ‘You can believe your values, but you’ve actually got to follow it through with actions as well’.

The New Zealand PM then went even further, drawing a straight line between Ukraine and Asia: ‘Ukraine could happen in a flashpoint across our Indo-Pacific region as well’.

When it came to Aukus Pillar II, Luxon restated a familiar ‘open to exploring’ line – a variation of which has been used by New Zealand leaders for at least a year, including by Luxon’s predecessor, Labour’s Chris Hipkins.

But the PM also linked the decision-making process with the forthcoming launch of New Zealand’s new ‘Defence Capability Plan’ – which appears to have been delayed until late 2024 or even early 2025.

The blueprint had originally been promised for June this year, then September. In the speech itself, Luxon spoke only of the ‘coming months’.

The delay might seem surprising in the context of Luxon’s pledge to bring ‘more energy, more urgency and a sharper focus’ to New Zealand’s foreign policy.

But it makes more sense when contemplating the US election date of November 5. Wellington may be hedging its bets on its interest in Aukus, given the potential for Donald Trump to re-enter the White House.

Still, Luxon was crystal clear about his ambition when it came to defence, saying ‘we want to be a force multiplier for Australia’.

These words will be music to Canberra’s ears.

But they could put New Zealand on a collision course with China.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

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As tensions in the Middle East rise further, New Zealand’s approach to the region continues to evolve.

Neither Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, nor foreign minister Winston Peters were immediately keen to comment publicly about Israel’s assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

On social media, Luxon instead promoted the Government’s recently introduced tax cuts, while Peters posted on the launch of a new shortwave radio transmitter for Radio New Zealand’s Pacific-focused service, a key plank of Wellington’s public diplomacy efforts.

But it would be wrong to call New Zealand reticent when it comes to the war in Gaza as a whole.

Indeed, Peters was quick to publicly condemn last weekend’s attack by Hezbollah on Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, killing at least 12 children. The assault has fuelled the latest round of Middle East escalation. On X, Peters said the rising tensions meant a ceasefire was ‘more urgent’ and called on ‘all involved to exercise restraint and de-escalate’.

And Peters has often talked frankly about the deteriorating Middle East situation, even in speeches that have mainly focused on other matters. During a visit to Tokyo in July, for instance, Peters spoke of the ‘utter catastrophe still unfolding in Gaza’ that had ‘further destabilised global security’.

In May, New Zealand’s foreign minister issued a statement calling for an ‘immediate cessation of armed conflict, the release of hostages, and a focus on meeting the immediate humanitarian needs of the people in Gaza’. Meanwhile, in a broader address to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs (NZIIA) the same month, Winston Peters said Wellington was ‘deeply concerned that miscalculation by either Israel or Iran could widen the conflict’.

Peters was speaking after unprecedented direct strikes between Iran and Israel in April. But his words remain just as relevant today, following Majdal Shams and Israel’s subsequent targeted killings of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukur in Beirut and Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.

At leader level, Christopher Luxon has also spoken out strongly at times. In late July, the New Zealand PM released a new joint statement with his counterparts from Australia and Canada. The statement was the third of its kind and followed similar combined calls by Canberra, Ottawa and Wellington in December and February.

But this time, the statement was unusually blunt, and focused heavily on the prospect of the situation becoming even worse. The trio said they were ‘gravely concerned about the prospect of further escalation across the region’ and wanted to avoid a war between Hezbollah and Israel that could ‘put tens of thousands of civilians in Lebanon and Israel at risk’.

There have also been occasions when New Zealand’s chief foreign policymakers have preferred to keep a low profile. Two examples of this came in July, when Peters – who runs a dedicated social media account for his foreign affairs portfolio on X – chose to leave the expression of particular criticisms of Israel up to an organisational account run by New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT).

In the posts, New Zealand condemned Israel’s planned legalisation of five settlements in the West Bank and a resolution passed by the Knesset that opposed a Palestinian state.

Of course, while Wellington’s words are important, it is arguably even more important to look at its actions.

To this end, it is worth considering the travel patterns of both Winston Peters and Christopher Luxon over the past nine months. Both men have maintained – at least by New Zealand standards – a relatively busy international schedule. Peters has visited around 30 countries since taking office in November 2023, while Luxon has visited no fewer than nine countries over the same period.

Of these trips, only two have been to the wider Middle East, both by the foreign minister and both in April. Winston Peters met with his Egyptian counterpart Sameh Shoukry on a brief stopover in Cairo on the way to Europe and the United States, while he also visited Türkiye later the same month to represent New Zealand at annual commemorations marking the country’s participation in World War I.

These trips were undoubtedly valuable in learning the views of regional actors. Egypt borders Gaza and continues to play a major role in efforts to broker a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. And while in Istanbul, New Zealand’s foreign minister held talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in addition to Peters’ direct counterpart, Hakan Fidan.

But overall, both Christopher Luxon and Winston Peters have clearly focused their attention on the Indo-Pacific. New Zealand’s Prime Minister and foreign minister have both made high-profile trips to the United States, while in Asia, they have each visited Japan, the Philippines and Singapore. In the Pacific, shared destinations include Fiji, Niue, Papua New Guinea. Meanwhile, Winston Peters has visited many other ASEAN and Pacific Islands Forum members.

Of course, more ministers are involved in New Zealand’s foreign policy than just the foreign minister and Prime Minister. For example, trade minister Todd McClay has visited the Gulf states at least three times, with Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates (UAE) a particular focus. While McClay’s trips are officially about trade, the visits will have also provided McClay with useful wider regional insights that he can share with his Cabinet colleagues back in Wellington.

Still, the missing link in the picture is a dedicated fact-finding mission or two by Winston Peters to the Middle East, with the purpose of learning the views of more key regional actors. By doing so, Peters would be following to some extent in the footsteps of Penny Wong, his Australian counterpart who toured Israel, the West Bank, Jordan and the UAE over a week in January.

For Peters, the natural place to start would be the Gulf, to which New Zealand recently extended a Bahrain-based deployment of six military personnel to Operation Poseidon Archer, the US-UK led bombing campaign against Yemen’s Houthi movement in response to the group’s attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

Elsewhere in the Gulf, Qatar would be another obvious stopping point for Peters, given Doha’s central role in mediation efforts. And Oman and Kuwait – two other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members – would also have useful experiences and views to share with Wellington, given their geopolitical positioning and interests.

Like so many before it, New Zealand may be understandably wary of getting its fingers burned by seeking to become more involved in the Middle East’s problems. But remaining on the sidelines carries its own risks: quite aside from the moral dimension, turmoil in the Middle East has already distracted global attention from the issues faced by the Indo-Pacific.

No-one is suggesting that New Zealand can single-handedly bring peace to the Middle East.

But by working in concert with others, both inside and outside the region, it can certainly play its part.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

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Christopher Luxon is finding his foreign policy feet.

Now eight months into the job, New Zealand’s Prime Minister is in Washington DC this week to attend the NATO summit.

It is the third year in a row that Wellington has been invited to the annual gathering of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the West’s premier political and military alliance.

This year’s meeting – already carrying special weight by commemorating the 75^th anniversary of NATO’s founding – looks set to be the most substantive summit yet in terms of New Zealand’s involvement.

New plans are being unveiled for NATO’s cooperation with its ‘Indo-Pacific 4’ (or ‘IP4’) partners: Australia, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea. Four joint projects from the IP4 and NATO will focus on Ukraine, artificial intelligence, disinformation and cybersecurity, according to US officials.

This marks new territory for New Zealand – and something of a turnaround.

While it sent two Prime Ministers to NATO, New Zealand’s previous Labour Government had delayed formalising expanded bilateral links with the alliance.

Australia, Japan and South Korea all finalised ‘Individually Tailored Partnership Programmes’ (or ITPPs) with NATO by last year – but New Zealand’s formal ties remained a work in progress.

This may have been driven by a degree of caution on the part of Jacinda Ardern and Chris Hipkins, who attended NATO as New Zealand Prime Ministers in 2022 and 2023 respectively.

Both Ardern and Hipkins were proponents of New Zealand’s ‘independent foreign policy’. The doctrine, developed after the US downgraded ties with New Zealand in the 1980s, has seen New Zealand build strong relations with China.

A major reason for NATO’s invitation to the IP4 to its Madrid summit in 2022 was to support the launch of the alliance’s new long-term blueprint. The Strategic Concept openly called out China for its ‘stated ambitions and coercive policies’ and pinpointed Beijing as a source of ‘systemic challenges’ for the alliance.

After Ardern attended the 2022 NATO gathering, the Chinese Embassy in Wellington issued a statement noting Beijing’s opposition to ‘all kinds of military alliances, bloc politics, or exclusive small groups’.

Two years on, New Zealand has a new centre-right government. Winston Peters, Luxon’s foreign minister, signalled in April that an ITPP was very much still on its way. Peters himself is known for his pro-US views and more hawkish stance towards China.

China’s reaction to the new NATO-IP4 joint projects remains to be seen. But Beijing is unlikely to be mollified by the fact that the plans avoid any direct mention of China, given the trajectory of closer IP4-NATO cooperation.

Stronger ties with NATO may present particular geopolitical risks for Wellington. NATO is solely a political and military alliance; no companion trade deals are on offer. China has been New Zealand’s biggest trading partner since 2017, while access to most North American and European markets remains heavily restricted for New Zealand exporters.

Aware of the sensitivities of NATO’s interest in China, Christopher Luxon has been keen this week to put the focus on Ukraine – the subject of one of the new NATO-IP4 cooperation projects and tying in with this year’s overall summit theme, ‘Ukraine and transatlantic security’.

To that end, New Zealand’s Prime Minister has announced a modest new $NZ16 million package of aid for Kyiv, of which $NZ4 million appears to be for weaponry. The funds come on top of a $NZ26 million package announced in February, of which $NZ6.5 million was allocated for lethal aid.

The arms contributions are significant because under the previous Labour Government, Wellington had become reluctant to send Ukraine additional lethal aid (or money to purchase it) after making a one-off $NZ7.5 million contribution in April 2022.

After this week’s announcement, Luxon wrote on social media: ‘New Zealand understands that while we are distant from Ukraine, what happens there affects us all, and we are prepared to stand with Ukraine for the long haul’.

It was the Prime Minister’s second Ukraine-related post for the week.

By contrast, there was little publicity this week of New Zealand’s participation in a joint briefing published by a large number of NATO and IP4 security agencies, including New Zealand’s National Cyber Security Centre. The 28-page publication focused on the ‘tradecraft’ used in relation to Australia by ‘APT40’, defined as a ‘People’s Republic of China (PRC) state-sponsored cyber group’.

Given the advisory’s target and its authors, it seems very unlikely to be a coincidence that the document was released just prior to the NATO summit.

Stepping back, it is worth reflecting how this week’s NATO focus has shifted the spotlight away from the debate over whether Wellington will join AUKUS – the high-level defence pact that currently involves Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Much ink has been spilled over the merits and drawbacks of New Zealand becoming a member of the ostensibly technology-focused ‘Pillar II’ strand of AUKUS.

With time running out for New Zealand to join AUKUS before US elections in November, New Zealand’s Prime Minister may be turning the page.

For Christopher Luxon, AUKUS may not be needed at all.

A deeper partnership with NATO could be more than enough.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

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Don’t put it all at risk.

That’s likely to be the take-home message for New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in his meetings with Li Qiang, the Chinese Premier.

Li’s visit to Wellington this week is the highest-ranking visit by a Chinese official since 2017. The trip down under – Li is also visiting Australia – constitutes something of a charm offensive by Beijing. Pandas are on the agenda for Li’s stop in Adelaide.

China’s advance publicity for the trip has accentuated the positives and downplayed points of disagreement. The Chinese foreign ministry’s official spokesperson reminded journalists of the ‘enormous benefits’ of Wellington’s relationship with Beijing.

A pledge to discuss ‘international and regional issues of mutual interest’ was the only faint hint that thornier issues – such as New Zealand’s contemplation of joining ‘Pillar II’ of the AUKUS pact – might also be discussed behind the scenes.

This ‘good cop’ approach continued after Li touched down in Wellington. In his first comments made after his arrival in New Zealand, released in a written statement, the Chinese Premier was upbeat about the health of the bilateral relationship.

Showering New Zealand with praise – ‘China-New Zealand relations have always stood at the forefront of China’s relations with the developed world’ – Li suggested there could be ‘an even brighter future’ if the momentum between the two countries were maintained.

Coincidentally, a promise of ‘brighter future’ was also the theme of the New Zealand National Party’s 2008 election campaign that ushered in John Key as New Zealand’s Prime Minister. That vote heralded the start of the golden years for trade with China, riding the waves of a pioneering free trade agreement signed by Helen Clark’s Labour-led Government just before Key’s victory.

Xi Jinping visited New Zealand in 2014, resulting in the signing of a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership. Meanwhile, China became New Zealand’s biggest trading partner in 2017, the same year that Li Qiang’s predecessor visited the country.

Key was famously bullish on China and has maintained personal relationships with the country’s leaders since he resigned in 2016 and resumed a business career.

But while the 2010s boom brought talk of New Zealand being a ‘rockstar economy’, seven years on, New Zealand is now in recession. And new trade figures for the year ending in March 2024 show that New Zealand’s trade with China has – relatively speaking – hit turbulence.

The numbers show that trade in both directions fell for the first time since the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership was signed. Most troubling for Christopher Luxon will be that New Zealand’s goods exports to China – which are dominated by primary products such as dairy, meat and wood products – fell by almost nine per cent, from $NZ20.07 billion to $NZ18.34 billion.

In the overall trade figures, this fall was somewhat masked by a post-pandemic recovery in the export of services – particularly travel, as Chinese tourists regained the ability to visit New Zealand. Nevertheless, overall exports still fell by around two per cent, from $NZ21.39 to $NZ20.09 billion.

There will be no better opportunity than Li’s visit for Christopher Luxon to talk to about ways to turn this somewhat troubling economic trend around. After all, Luxon focused heavily on economic matters during his election campaign in 2023 – pledging to get New Zealand ‘back on track’.

And while Luxon has also focused on the need for trade diversification – which has included programmes to boost ties with India and the Gulf states – a sudden drop in trade with China during a recessionary climate and rising unemployment is probably not what the New Zealand Prime Minister had in mind.

As would be expected, the Chinese Premier’s visit to Wellington is a carefully-choreographed and economically-focused mission – at least on the surface. For the charm offensive to work, it has to be genuine.

But behind the scenes, New Zealand’s position on Aukus will remain the elephant in the room. The pact was not specifically mentioned in China’s official accounts of foreign minister Wang Yi’s visit to Wellington in March – but New Zealand counterpart Winston Peters later confirmed that Wang had raised the matter.

And in May, Chinese Ambassador to New Zealand Wang Xiaolong was unusually forthright on Aukus. The Ambassador repeatedly referred to the arrangement as a ‘military alliance’ – a label clearly at odds with Aukus-friendly characterisations of the pact as a technology-sharing partnership.

The Ambassador said Aukus was ‘clearly and unabashedly designed to maintain US hegemony and contain other countries’ development’, adding that ‘joining such an alliance will not make any country more secure or make the Asia-Pacific region more stable’. He closed by noting his hope that any decision by New Zealand on Aukus would be ‘taking fully into account its own long-term fundamental interests’.

This is undoubtedly plain speaking. China would not be happy if New Zealand became involved with Aukus, to put it mildly.

But Li Qiang’s trip to New Zealand is about the big picture.

Its chief purpose is to remind Christopher Luxon of just how important China is to New Zealand, both economically and beyond.

It is a goodwill tour with a subtext.

There is also a lot to lose.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

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The gloves are off.

That might seem to be the undertone of surprisingly tough talk from New Zealand’s foreign and trade ministers.

Winston Peters, the foreign minister, may be facing legal action after making allegations about former Australian foreign minister Bob Carr on Radio New Zealand.

Carr had made highly critical comments about Pillar II of the Aukus pact, which New Zealand is contemplating joining, at a conference held by New Zealand’s Labour Party opposition in Wellington in mid-April.

Meanwhile, trade minister Todd McClay has engaged in some plain speaking of his own. In a press release on Thursday, McClay called Canada’s refusal to comply with a ruling in New Zealand’s favour on ‘tariff rate quotas’ by the disputes settlement body of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) ‘cynical’ and ‘disappointing’.

The minister said he was seeking legal advice, as New Zealand had ‘no intention of backing down’.

Canada has been allocating a large share of its preferential duty quotas for dairy products to its own domestic processors. This has heavily limited the ability of lower-cost exporters such as New Zealand to enter the Canadian market.

To outsiders, it might seem surprising that Australia and Canada are on the receiving end of the remarks made by the New Zealand ministers. All three countries are members of the Five Eyes – and Australia is New Zealand’s only formal ally. And New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon sought out his counterparts from both Australia and Canada in December and February to issue joint statements on Gaza.

However, the exceptions probably prove the rule.

Bob Carr is from the same Labor Party as Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. However, no love appears to be lost between Carr and the current Australian Labor Party leadership when it comes to foreign policy issues. In 2021, Albanese was heavily critical of an internal party motion supported by Carr which called for a boycott of Israel.

In trade, the picture is more complex. It is true that New Zealand, where there is largely a bipartisan consensus on the merits of free trade, has a long track record of speaking up for itself when it feels hard done by – even against close partners.

Most famously, this included successfully taking a World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute in 2007 against Australia over the country’s long-standing de facto ban on importing New Zealand apples. The WTO case is now largely forgotten. When it is remembered, it usually as a technocratic measure that did not affect wider bilateral relations.

Indeed, New Zealand’s other previous WTO cases have mostly been against other Western countries with which it has generally had improving relations – including Canada, the European Communities and the United States.

Over the years, New Zealand governments have openly expressed frustrations and trumpeted successes on the trade front. However, as trade issues increasingly become entangled with wider geopolitical concerns – witness the rise of ‘friendshoring’ in arrangements such as the US-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) – this general approach may be changing.

For example, New Zealand largely kept quiet after the WTO ruled in 2022 that US steel and aluminium tariffs introduced under the Trump administration contravened the rules of the global trade body. When pressed in a media interview, then trade minister Damien O’Connor would only say ‘it is an anomaly in what is otherwise a very positive and valuable relationship’.

New Zealand is a third party to WTO disputes against the metals tariffs lodged by other countries. Moreover, the case was an important point of principle: the US refused to comply with the ruling, citing a national security exception in the dispute settlement process. The issue also helps to explain why the United States continues to block the appointment of judges to the WTO’s Appellate Body.

No real progress was made on the dispute settlement issue at the WTO’s Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi in February, at which Todd McClay served as deputy chair. But McClay avoided mentioning the failure in his press release after the event, instead focusing on successes such as an extension to a moratorium on digital duties (for which McClay had led negotiations) and a string of bilateral meetings.

In other foreign policy areas, too, Wellington is being careful about how and when it raises its voice.

At times, New Zealand has openly expressed frustration with Israel over its actions in Gaza. For example, foreign minister Winston Peters used social media to condemn the Israeli strike that killed seven aid workers for the World Central Kitchen charity on 1 April. And Christopher Luxon, the Prime Minister, soon followed this up by calling the strike ‘utterly unacceptable’.

On the other hand, both Peters and Luxon were less responsive about the Israeli strike on Iran’s embassy in Damascus the same day. The incident was particularly significant because diplomatic missions are normally deemed to be sacrosanct under the 1961 Vienna Convention.

When pressed in a radio interview on 16 April, Peters said: ‘Of course we condemn that action now, because it’s actually illegal, but the other point is that there were countless actions from the other side well before that and on an ongoing basis. But shouting out who’s wrong here will not help.’

The Damascus precedent became even more pertinent after Ecuadorian authorities raided Mexico’s embassy in Quito on 5 April – an action which did bring condemnation and a warning from New Zealand for ‘states to uphold their obligations under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations’.

Another example of careful wording could be found in Winston Peters’ speech to the UN, in which Peters decried the use of the veto in the Security Council – but carefully avoided naming and shaming the countries responsible.

Doing so might have been uncomfortable, given that the United States has used its veto power three times since the war in Gaza began in October. Peters is currently trying to align New Zealand more closely with the United States in other foreign policy issues and met with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken shortly after making his speech in New York.

This also sheds light on why New Zealand appears to have kept quiet about the US view that the UN Security Council resolution adopted in March which calls for a ceasefire is ‘non-binding’.

Still, amongst the gloom, there is always a silver lining.

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This could be a watershed week for New Zealand’s international relations.

Winston Peters, the foreign minister, is heading to Washington DC for a full week of meetings.

The surprisingly lengthy trip just happens to coincide with a major trilateral summit of leaders from the United States, Japan and the Philippines.

And a media report at the weekend suggested a wider Aukus ‘Pillar II’ announcement is imminent. The original Aukus partners are Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Rahm Emanuel, the US Ambassador to Japan, wrote late last week that Japan was ‘about to become the first additional Pillar II partner’.

In recent weeks, policymakers have been keen to downplay New Zealand’s immediate Aukus membership prospects. Judith Collins, New Zealand’s defence minister, said there was ‘no guarantee’ that New Zealand would join the arrangement, while US Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security Bonnie Jenkins was similarly non-committal during a visit to Wellington in March.

That said, diplomatic smoke signals suggest something is afoot: on top of Jenkins’ visit, Collins recently had a phone call with US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin, while US Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell spoke to officials at New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

The Aukus debate is incredibly important. But it is worth keeping it in perspective.

A reshaping of New Zealand’s foreign policy is also coming slowly but surely in other ways.

On the first leg of his now five-country trip, Peters confirmed that New Zealand is finalising an ‘Individually Tailored Partnership Programme’ (ITPP) with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato).

The ITPP plans were first revealed nearly a year ago by New Zealand’s then Labour foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta. But while Chris Hipkins, then Prime Minister, attended July’s Nato summit in Lithuania, the ITPP largely disappeared from view.

This contrasted with Australia, Japan and South Korea, which all agreed new partnerships with the West’s premier political and military alliance.

Based on Peters’ reference to the ‘coming months’, it now seems a near-certainty that New Zealand’s ITPP will be finalised in time for Christopher Luxon to attend this year’s Nato leaders’ meeting in Washington DC in July.

The decision to use the ITPP agreement structure – as opposed to institutionalising the ‘Indo-Pacific 4’ (or IP4) nomenclature that is sometimes used to refer to the group informally – may have been at least partly motivated by New Zealand’s sensitivities over China.

Nato’s inclusion of China as a ‘systemic challenge’ in its long-term ‘Strategic Concept’, released in 2022, was a major reason why the alliance sought to revitalise its partnerships with countries situated well beyond the North Atlantic.

China’s response to New Zealand’s finalised ITPP will be intriguing. Last year, Wang Xiaolong, China’s ambassador in Wellington, issued a lengthy statement after Hipkins attended Nato’s gathering in Vilnius. Wang closed by warning New Zealand to ‘refrain from opening the door to the devil’.

In addition to Aukus and Nato, it is worth recalling New Zealand’s involvement in other groupings that have recently either emerged or reemerged. These include the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) and Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP) groupings – but also the Five Eyes and the Anzus Treaty.

New Zealand was a founding member of both the IPEF and PBP groupings that were launched in the first half of 2022. The arrangements came in the febrile aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and subsequent revelations of a security agreement between China and Solomon Islands.

The IPEF includes 14 countries from around the Indo-Pacific, but notably excludes China. Meanwhile, the PBP includes Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and United States as members, with Canada, Germany and South Korea involved as ‘partners’.

Both arrangements are modest on the surface, but hold significant potential. The ‘IPEF Supply Chain Agreement’ that came into force in February 2024, for example, is clearly a starting point for reducing overall economic dependence on China – especially in strategic areas. The agreement suggests a particular focus on ‘sectors and goods critical to national security, public health and safety’. The details are still to be worked out by an ‘IPEF Supply Chain Council’.

Like the IPEF, the PBP is another practical way for the West to counter Chinese influence. The PBP is particularly useful for expressing commitment to previously-neglected Pacific countries. A joint statement issued after a PBP foreign minister meeting in September 2023 mainly focused on providing support to Pacific countries on issues such as illegal fishing and climate change. However, it also emphasised cybersecurity and pledged support for a new Pacific Cyber Capacity and Coordination Conference.

Meanwhile, the ‘Five Eyes’ grouping of the five English-speaking countries of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and US continues to rise in prominence – both formally and informally. The arrangement is probably at its strongest when focusing on intelligence sharing, its original purpose, as seen in the recent spying allegations that were made against China.

But informally, the Five Eyes label also refers to increased cooperation amongst the five trusted Anglosphere members in other areas. This cooperation does not always involve the United States. Sometimes the smaller Five Eyes partners have worked together and put pressure on Washington and London. For example, the Prime Ministers of Australia, Canada and New Zealand issued joint statements calling for a ceasefire in Gaza in December 2023 and February 2024.

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Timing is everything.

And from China’s perspective, this week’s visit by its foreign minister to New Zealand could be coming at just the right moment.

The visit by Wang Yi to Wellington will be his first since 2017.

Anniversaries are important to Beijing. It is more than just a happy coincidence that the visit is taking place during the tenth anniversary year of the signing of a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between China and New Zealand.

That agreement, signed during a visit to Wellington by Xi Jinping in November 2014, marked the start of glory days for bilateral trade. New Zealand’s exports to China have roughly doubled in value since Xi’s visit. They now stand at nearly $NZ21 billion annually. Imports are not far behind, but there is still a trade surplus of some $NZ3 billion in New Zealand’s favour.

Indeed, China has been New Zealand’s biggest two-way trading partner since 2017. A consistent flow of agricultural exports to China – especially milk powder and meat – helped to keep New Zealand afloat during the Covid-19 pandemic while both countries’ borders were closed.

However, New Zealand’s exports to China fell last year for the first time (except for covid-affected 2020) since the 2014 pact was signed. Goods exports took a particular tumble, falling $NZ1.7 billion from 2022 levels in the year to December 2023. Only a post-pandemic recovery in services exports, driven by travel, was able to mask a greater fall. But it was not enough to prevent a $NZ500 million drop overall.

The removal of China’s last remaining tariffs on New Zealand dairy products at the start of 2024 may provide some hope for improvement this year.

But forecasts for China’s economy are mixed and a bumpy post-Covid 19 recovery seems likely. After an expansion of 5.2 per cent in 2023, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts China’s economy will grow by only 4.6 per cent this year and 4.1 per cent in 2025.

Given its food-focused exports, New Zealand is particularly vulnerable to sluggish Chinese economic growth. Tourism is also affected: visitor numbers from China for November 2023 were just 52 per cent of those seen during the same month four years earlier, before the pandemic.

A visit by Wang Yi cannot solve these wider macroeconomic problems. But it will put New Zealand’s crucial relationship with China in the spotlight.

There is every chance the trip could set the stage for an anniversary year visit to Wellington by Xi Jinping later in 2024.

However, whether this occurs will be highly dependent on New Zealand’s next steps in relation to Aukus.

It can be taken as read that Wang will have strong words for Winston Peters, his New Zealand counterpart, about Wellington’s apparent enthusiasm to entertain joining ‘Pillar II’ of the new pact.

The tea leaves are still being read after Labour lost power in the October 2023 election and a new three-way, centre-right coalition led by the National Party’s Christopher Luxon took office the following month.

A joint statement issued by Australia and New Zealand after the countries’ foreign and defence ministers met in Melbourne in early February claimed Aukus was making ‘a positive contribution toward maintaining peace, security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific.’

Reaction from the Chinese Embassy in Wellington to the text was typically furious. In an apparent reference to another section of the joint statement which expressed ‘grave concerns about human rights violations in Xinjiang’, a spokesperson argued that ‘groundless accusations have been made on China’s internal affairs’.

Meanwhile, on Aukus, the Embassy asserted that the pact ran counter to ‘the common interests of regional countries pursuing peace, stability and common security’. The spokesperson asked ‘relevant countries’ to ‘cherish the hard-won environment for peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region, and be prudent with their words and action to maintain peace, stability and development’.

An indirect, yet ultimately harder-hitting rebuke came from the Chinese Ambassador to New Zealand himself, Wang Xiaolong. Lamenting a lack of options after a last-minute cancellation of a flight to Auckland the day after the joint statement was issued, the Ambassador posted on X: ‘Stuck at Wellington airport clueless as to what to do due to the cancellation of my flight to Auckland and the lack of alternatives. Right now, I am really missing the high-speed trains back in China.’

The displeasure could not be clearer.

Earlier, New Zealand’s new government had sought to move swiftly on Aukus, particularly after Labour itself had laid the groundwork for the new Government by issuing a set of three hawkish defence blueprints just months before the election.

In December, Judith Collins, the defence minister, said that a failure to join Aukus in some form was ‘a real opportunity lost by the previous government’. Christopher Luxon then appeared to back her, telling media: ‘we’re interested in exploring Pillar II, particularly in Aukus, and the new technologies and the opportunities that may mean for New Zealand’. Meanwhile, Winston Peters called for greater NZ-US cooperation in the Pacific, saying ‘we will not achieve our shared ambitions if we allow time to drift’.

However, the Aukus tide may be turning.

Bonnie Jenkins, the US Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, visited New Zealand in early March and told media: ‘we’re still in the process of having discussions about additional partners’, adding ‘that’s not where we’re at right now’.

Speech notes for an address to be given by Jenkins also seemed restrained.

The lack of a concrete Aukus membership offer is not a new argument. In May 2023, New Zealand’s then Labour Prime Minister Chris Hipkins called the idea of joining ‘purely hypothetical’.

However, gradual shifts in language since then – culminating with Luxon’s comments in December – had suggested that a more specific proposal was afoot.

A looming US election was also a logical reason for New Zealand to act on Aukus sooner rather than later.

But perhaps nothing had ever really changed. A new government in Wellington might have been getting ahead of itself.

Alternatively, it could be that a rethink is now going on in Canberra, London and Washington over the merits of asking Wellington – or others – to become involved with Aukus at all.

In New Zealand itself, opposition to the deal also appears to be increasing in intensity. Labour is appearing to back away from its ‘open to conversations’ approach to Aukus that was set by former Prime Minister Chris Hipkins during a visit by Anthony Blinken to New Zealand in July.

In February, Phil Twyford, the party’s associate foreign affairs spokesperson, described Aukus as an ‘offensive warfighting alliance against China’. And David Parker, Labour’s main spokesperson, said ‘we're not convinced we should be positioning China as a foe’.

The same month, high-profile former Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark co-wrote an opinion piece in the New Zealand Herald newspaper with Don Brash, a former right-wing rival. The strongly-worded article called on Luxon to ‘reassert New Zealand’s independent foreign policy by making it clear that we want no part of Aukus’.

Finally, questions are being asked in Australia about the future of the original purpose of Aukus – to give Canberra nuclear-powered submarines – following a US decision to cut production of ‘Virginia’ class submarines in half from 2025.

Adding to the uncertainty is Donald Trump’s presumptive nominee status in the US presidential election campaign. A survey conducted in August 2023 found 37 per cent of Australians thought Canberra should pull out of the wider Anzus alliance if Trump wins in November. Meanwhile, Trump’s own stance on the Aukus deal remains unknown.

If all is not well with ‘Pillar I’ of Aukus, it is hard to see an expansion to ‘Pillar II’ in the short-term.

For China’s Wang Yi, the potential wavering over Aukus is an opportunity.

The clock is certainly ticking, but no final decisions have been made.

There is still time for Beijing to make its case to Wellington.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

This article can be republished for free under a Creative Commons copyright-free license. Attributions should include a link to the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)

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New Zealand’s new trade minister is a busy man.

Just weeks after taking office in late November, Todd McClay was also elected as vice-chair for the upcoming 13^th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

A major gathering of trade ministers from the WTO’s 166 members, ‘MC13’ will take place from February 26-29 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) capital of Abu Dhabi.

This is not the first time McClay has held the vice-chair role – he was also chosen for the job when he last served as trade minister in 2017.

McClay will be one of three vice-chairs at the summit, to be chaired by UAE trade minister Dr Thani bin Ahmed Al Zeyoudi.

After accepting the role in December, the New Zealand minister said his priorities included removing fisheries subsidies, reforms to the WTO’s dispute settlement process and getting ‘a better deal for agricultural exporters’.

New Zealand, a big food producer, was a major winner in the 1990s ‘Uruguay Round’ of the WTO’s forerunner, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). That deal put limits on state subsidies for agricultural products.

But as more countries joined the WTO, momentum began to dissipate. From the early 2000s, New Zealand increasingly focused on signing bilateral trade agreements instead. The first of these was signed with Singapore in 2000 and the latest, with the European Union (EU), was signed last year.

Still, the sheer size of the WTO means that the potential gains there remain immense. While bigger agreements have remained elusive, from New Zealand’s perspective there are still enough occasional small but significant wins to sustain a belief in the WTO’s overall mission.

For example, trade ministers agreed to eliminate export subsidies on agricultural exports entirely at the WTO’s 10^th Ministerial Conference held in Nairobi in 2015.

This kind of success perhaps explains why McClay is taking on what some might see as a thankless job for the second time.

McClay may need to hold some difficult conversations in Abu Dhabi.

This is because India and the United States – two countries with which Wellington currently wants much closer relations – are probably currently the two biggest single barriers to progress at the WTO.

Since 2017, the United States has blocked the appointment of new judges to the WTO’s Appellate Body over a belief that its rulings were overly unfair to it. The strategy has effectively rendered the WTO dispute settlement process pointless, as there is no way for appeals to be heard.

Notably, Joe Biden has continued with an approach closely associated with Donald Trump.

For its part, India’s position on ‘public stockholding’ –governments paying farmers above-market prices for grain in the name of food security – is one of the big agricultural stumbling blocks.

Essentially, India and around 80 other developing countries would like to see changes to the WTO’s 1995 ‘Agreement on Agriculture’ to legitimise the public stock holding process. This agreement, achieved in the Uruguay Round, limits farming subsidies in developing countries to no more than 10 per cent of the value of agricultural production.

By contrast, developed countries – represented in the WTO by the ‘Cairns Group’ that includes New Zealand as a member – tend to see the public stockholding programmes as distortionary and as chipping away at the letter and spirit of the 1995 agreement.

While very different in nature, both the Appellate Body and public stockholding issues threaten to undermine the drive for trade liberalisation backed by New Zealand and embodied by the WTO.

In the year to September 2023, the total value of New Zealand’s total goods exports to the world fell slightly for the first time in nearly a decade. Globally, world trade declined by around five per cent last year – while trade barriers are being imposed at an ever-increasing rate.

WTO reform could help to reverse the trend.

But so far, New Zealand officials have been reluctant to publicly call out their friends over their approach to the WTO.

A statement released by India’s Ministry of Commerce & Industry after Todd McClay met his counterpart Piyush Goyal in December said that the pair ‘assured each other of co-operation and mutual understanding for a positive approach to reach a decision’ in Abu Dhabi over the public stockholding issue.

McClay did not mention the WTO in a trade-focused speech he gave in Delhi in December, instead highlighting India’s involvement in the US-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF), a far more exclusive trade arrangement that Washington has developed as a part of an economic coalition to challenge China.

Meanwhile, a joint statement issued by New Zealand and the United States after then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern visited the White House in 2022 somewhat ironically praised the ‘free and open rules-based global trade system built on high standards and long-standing principles’, before pledging a ‘commitment to reform and strengthen the World Trade Organization (WTO)’.

Following a change in New Zealand’s government from the centre-left to the centre-right, there are now even more reasons not to rock the boat.

In a speech to the US Business Summit just days after becoming foreign minister in November, Winston Peters said ‘there are few relationships that matter more to New Zealand than our relationship with the United States’.

Both countries are looking to work together more closely on defence, particularly in the Pacific and New Zealand is now seriously considering joining the ‘second pillar’ of the AUKUS defence pact.

Against this backdrop of deepening NZ-US relations, US intransigence over the Appellate Body issue is something of an inconvenient truth.

To that end, Peters similarly made no mention of the WTO issues in his speech.

Meanwhile, Christopher Luxon called for much stronger ties with India on the election campaign trail last year. He is expected to follow through on a pledge to visit the country during his first year in office.

This is partly driven by New Zealand’s desire to forge closer trade links with what is now the world’s most populous nation, particularly after neighbouring Australia signed a limited free trade deal with India in 2022.

But it is also motivated by the current desire amongst Western countries to see India as a potential counterweight to China. The ‘Indo-Pacific’ terminology now in favour in Western capitals is one reflection of this, as is the ‘Quad’ arrangement that links Australia, India, Japan and the United States.

While attention has so far focused on New Zealand’s potential role in AUKUS, New Zealand may also become the subject of renewed interest from the Quad. Wellington joined a trial ‘Quad Plus’ meeting on Covid-19 response in 2020, when Winston Peters was last serving as foreign minister.

Trade is increasingly clashing with geopolitics, but back in Abu Dhabi, there are some reasons for optimism.

The UAE’s hosting of the summit may provide an opportunity to push for bold moves forward.

Al Zeyoudi, the chair, is framing MC13 as a ‘pivotal meeting that is set to define the future of trade’, and the UAE is unlikely to be happy with a stalemate or merely nonbinding commitments.

Moreover, WTO ministers committed at the last Ministerial Conference in 2022 to restoring a functioning dispute settlement process by 2024.

It may be a case of now or never when it comes to making progress – despite big elections being held in both India and the United States this year.

The consolation prize could be an expansion of a fisheries deal agreed upon in 2022 which tackled state subsidies for illegal fishing. The agreement is now well on the way toward entry into force, which requires ratification from two-thirds of the WTO’s membership.

A deal in Abu Dhabi could extend this ban to overfishing in general.

While another fisheries deal would not resolve the other big obstacles at the WTO, it would still be a step forward.

For Todd McClay, the WTO meeting may also bring other benefits – such as an opportunity to build closer ties with the trade-friendly UAE.

The UAE invited New Zealand to enter talks on a bilateral Closer Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) last year. The move was partly driven by a lack of progress on New Zealand’s free trade deal with the wider six-country Gulf Cooperation Council that has been in the works since 2006.

McClay travelled to the UAE in January to discuss both bilateral engagement and MC13 with the UAE’s Al Zeyoudi – a chance for valuable one-on-one face time.

Overall, it must be said that expectations for the WTO’s Ministerial Conference are low.

But this could be an advantage.

We could see some surprises.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

This article can be republished for free under a Creative Commons copyright-free license. Attributions should include a link to the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)

New Zealand is reshaping its foreign policy via the Middle East.

A decision to provide intelligence support for future US and UK airstrikes on Yemen is highly symbolic.

The Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, announced the deployment of the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) troops to support the US-led military response to the attacks on commercial shipping from Houthis in Yemen that began on November 19.

In announcing the contribution, Luxon played down its uniqueness, saying ‘choosing to support action in the Middle East is not unusual for New Zealand’. This was immediately echoed by his foreign minister, Winston Peters, who argued the ‘support for maritime security in the Middle East is not new’.

A ‘fact sheet’ released by the Government compared the NZDF contribution to other multilateral efforts in the Middle East such as the UN Truce Supervision Organisation (UNTSO) mission that has been ongoing since 1954.

The fact sheet also pointed to New Zealand’s role in the Bahrain-based Combined Maritime Forces (CMF), a mission for which Wellington has provided support in some form since 2008 and continuously since 2013.

The CMF brings together 40 countries in four separate Combined Task Forces (CTF). While all of these overlap to some extent, New Zealand has traditionally focused its contribution of up to 12 personnel on CTF 150, which concentrates more on criminal activities such as piracy, narcotics and smuggling.

To date, New Zealand has not been involved in CTF 153, ‘Red Sea Maritime Security’, a relatively new mission that was established in April 2022. CTF 153 is now serving as the umbrella for ‘Operation Prosperity Guardian’, a new naval patrol mission involving over 20 countries announced in December by US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin.

New Zealand’s announcement made no mention of Operation Prosperity Guardian.

Instead, the NZDF contribution appears to be for the much smaller and far more elite coalition that is backing joint US-UK airstrikes on Yemen.

US Central Command (Centcom) listed Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands as support partners for a second round of joint US-UK airstrikes conducted earlier this week.

They are the same countries that participated in the first wave of joint airstrikes, against 60 Houthi targets, on January 11.

New Zealand signed a joint statement in support of that operation, but was not otherwise involved in it.

Following Tuesday’s announcement, New Zealand can now expect to be included on the list of supporting countries for future airstrikes. So far, the aim of these has been to destroy Houthi infrastructure such as missile systems, radar units and other military facilities.

In between the joint missions, the US has also conducted smaller airstrikes against Houthi infrastructure on its own, according to Centcom.

The bombings constitute the sharper, more hawkish end of Washington’s military response to the Houthis.

Luxon suggested on Tuesday that New Zealand’s contribution would be intelligence-related and would support ‘precision targeting’ in any future airstrikes.

To some extent this will be driven simply by New Zealand’s limited capabilities, given that Wellington disbanded the combat wing of its airforce in 2001.

Still, while New Zealand’s efforts will be small and almost certainly desk-bound, they are in a very different league to New Zealand’s long-running peacekeeping efforts in Egypt and Lebanon, or even the largely deterrence-driven naval mission based out of Bahrain.

Put simply, New Zealand will be one of just a handful of countries that are bombing Yemen.

As Richard Harman points out, many countries willing to participate in Operation Prosperity Guardian, such as Singapore, are staying well away from involvement in the airstrikes.

The military involvement represents a huge shift for New Zealand’s independent foreign policy – and is uncharted territory when it comes to the Middle East.

Unlike Australia, New Zealand strongly opposed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Wellington did deploy troops to the anti-ISIS coalition in February 2015 – with then Prime Minister John Key shouting at opponents in Parliament to ‘get some guts and join the right side’.

But that operation was at the invitation of the Iraqi government – and New Zealand was joining a broad-based international coalition that brought together dozens of countries from the outset.

On Tuesday, Winston Peters forcefully rejected any connection between New Zealand’s new military contribution and the war in Gaza, saying ‘any suggestion our ongoing support for maritime security in the Middle East is connected to recent developments in Israel and the Gaza Strip, is wrong’.

However, the Houthis have clearly linked their attacks with the war in Gaza and have pledged to continue for as long as the war goes on.

There is little doubt that the war between Hamas and Israel is exacerbating conflict throughout the Middle East – with outbreaks of tit-for-tat attacks happening everywhere from Lebanon to Pakistan.

On the Arab street, there has been an outpouring of sympathy and solidarity for the Palestinian cause – matched in equal measure by anger towards Israel.

While the airstrikes on Yemen may help international shipping in the very short term, they will also galvanise support for the Houthis.

Ultimately, the root causes of the instability will need to be addressed if there is to be any sustainable solution.

This includes Yemen’s own disastrous humanitarian situation, following years of civil war, but also the war in Gaza and the lack of a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Shortly before the New Zealand military contribution to the Yemen airstrikes was announced, Peters posted on X that ‘New Zealand is deeply concerned at recent comments by members of the Israeli Government that fuel tensions & imperil the two state solution. New Zealand has always supported a two state solution - and has consistently engaged w/Israel & the Palestinians on that basis’.

https://twitter.com/NewZealandMFA/status/1749538284873912591

Peters’ diagnosis of the need for a long-term, two-state political solution is not wrong – and New Zealand’s good reputation in the Middle East and its traditionally independent stance still puts Wellington in a good position to play a small, yet very useful diplomatic role.

But as New Zealand backs the airstrikes against the Houthis, the window of opportunity to take the dialogue and de-escalation pathway may be gradually closing.

It is hard to overstate the significance of New Zealand’s new military deployment to the Middle East.

The troop numbers are small – but the potential ramifications are enormous.

Wellington is drawing a line in the sand.

And it could be the beginning of the end for New Zealand’s independent foreign policy.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

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New Zealand’s international relations are under new management.

And Winston Peters, the new foreign minister, is already setting a change agenda.

As expected, this includes a more pro-US positioning when it comes to the Pacific – where Peters will be picking up where he left off. Peters sought to align New Zealand more closely with the United States under his ‘Pacific Reset’ policy that he launched while serving as foreign minister under Jacinda Ardern’s Labour-New Zealand First coalition government from 2017-2020.

Peters is wasting no time in getting back on the foreign affairs horse.

Just three days after being sworn in as a minster, he gave his first speech on foreign policy at the US Business Summit in Auckland last week.

Peters was lavish in his praise for the US in his address, arguing that Washington had been ‘instrumental in the Pacific's success’. But he noted that ‘there is more to do and not a moment to lose. We will not achieve our shared ambitions if we allow time to drift.’ Adding that ‘speed and intensity’ would be needed, Peters said ‘the good news is that New Zealand stands ready to play its part.’

The early timing of the speech itself is a sign that New Zealand’s new, yet very familiar foreign affairs minister is unlikely to wait around when it comes to taking major decisions.

It was an important, agenda-setting address.

There were strong hints that New Zealand’s new Government wants to move swiftly when it comes to Wellington’s potential involvement in in ‘Pillar II’ of the AUKUS defence pact that currently involves Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Peters’ disclosed in the Q&A to the speech that he had already talked to Judith Collins, the new defence minister, about New Zealand’s AUKUS stance.

The previous Labour government’s position was that AUKUS remained a hypothetical question while no formal offer existed for New Zealand to join ‘Pillar II’ of the high-level defence pact that currently involves Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

But while playing for time in an election year, the then Prime Minister Chris Hipkins signalled in July that New Zealand was at least ‘open to conversations’ about joining the pact in some form. And Labour’s expedited release of three major defence strategy documents in August, just prior to the election campaign, laid the groundwork for at least formal consideration of involvement in AUKUS.

The reports also paved the way for New Zealand to spend vastly more on its military and to take a more security-focused approach to the Pacific – recommendations that Peters will probably be keen to implement.

Wellington and Washington have been becoming closer since at least November 2010, when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited New Zealand’s capital to sign the ‘Wellington Declaration’. The relatively short agreement served to clear the air after decades of chequered bilateral relations stemming from the Fourth Labour Government’s introduction of a nuclear-free policy in the 1980s.

Going nuclear-free (which prevented visits from US warships) saw New Zealand cast out as a US ally. Washington formally suspended its obligations to Wellington under the ANZUS defence treaty in 1986. But nearly 40 years on, US-NZ relations are rapidly deepening, a trend that has been accelerated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Western concerns over China’s rise in the Indo-Pacific.

Since February 2022, New Zealand has imposed sanctions on Russia, joined US-led groupings such as Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP) and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) and sent its Prime Ministers to successive NATO summits. And in May 2022, Jacinda Ardern visited Joe Biden at the White House, where a 3000-word joint statement called for ‘new resolve and closer cooperation’.

Meanwhile, a string of senior US officials have visited New Zealand just this year, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Kritenbrink and the White House’s Indo-Pacific coordinator, Kurt Campbell (who Joe Biden recently nominated to become his new Deputy Secretary of State).

If New Zealand does join AUKUS, it could spell the effective end of the country’s ‘independent foreign policy’. The ANZUS break-up of the late 1980s, the end of the Cold War and the acceleration of globalisation had allowed New Zealand to free itself from blocs. Wellington talked to anyone and everyone, building solid, trade-focused relations with China and others in the Global South – while not neglecting Western partners, including the United States.

Peters may think the current geopolitical environment justifies a new approach.

If he does, he should prepare for significant pushback. Helen Clark, who was Prime Minister during Winston Peters’ first term as foreign minister from 2005-8, posted on Friday that New Zealand was now ‘veering towards signing up’ to AUKUS despite bipartisan support over decades for the independent foreign policy stance.

This added to criticism from Clark earlier in the year, including in August, when she argued the new defence blueprint showed New Zealand was ‘abandoning its capacity to think for itself & instead is cutting & pasting from 5 Eyes’ partners’.

It should also be remembered that Winston Peters, while undoubtedly powerful and highly experienced, is only one Government minister. The views of Judith Collins – the defence minister – remain unknown in any detail, while the foreign policy positions of Christopher Luxon seem more centrist than radical.

Moreover, with the US now firmly focused on the war between Hamas and Israel – and its own presidential election year fast approaching – it is far from guaranteed that the hypothetical AUKUS question will turn into a concrete one for New Zealand anytime soon.

Moreover, Peters’ initial ministerial comments on New Zealand’s own position towards the Middle East suggest there is plenty of room for nuance. Calling the death toll in Gaza ‘horrific’, Peters welcomed a short-lived extension to the ceasefire on Friday, but called for all parties to ‘work urgently towards a long-term ceasefire’.

And in a radio interview earlier last week, Peters said ‘the ceasefire is not good enough, we’re going to have find a way forward through this and a peaceful solution – that’s what New Zealand and the Western world has got to put its focus on’.  Peters added ‘internationally we need to be talking to people across the political divide who are making sense on this matter’.

Talking to all sides and playing a small role in facilitating a sustainable political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would very much be in keeping with New Zealand’s independent foreign policy approach – and Winston Peters is already speaking out strongly about the war.

With Christopher Luxon passing up on the opportunity to attend COP28 in Dubai at the weekend, Winston Peters will have the chance to make the Government’s first ministerial trip to the Middle East to begin this dialogue. The Gulf states would be a natural starting point for these discussions.

Meanwhile, on Ukraine – the war that helped to speed up New Zealand’s alignment with the US in 2022 – Peters was open to the idea of New Zealand upgrading its military support to Ukraine by sending Kyiv light armoured vehicles (LAVs). While noting that the decision was not up to him alone, he added ‘if we can help we should be doing the best we can’.

Labour had denied a request from Ukraine to provide the LAVs in 2022 and of late had preferred to make financial contributions to Kyiv’s war effort – the most recent being a $NZ4.7 million package announced by Chris Hipkins in July at the NATO leaders’ summit in Lithuania.

It all adds up to a complex picture.

Winston Peters has no shortage of global issues to address.

And there could be some major changes ahead for New Zealand foreign policy.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

This article can be republished for free under a Creative Commons copyright-free license. Attributions should include a link to the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)

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The COP28 countdown is on.

Over 100 world leaders are expected to attend this year’s UN Climate Change Conference in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which starts next Thursday.

Among the VIPs confirmed for the Dubai summit are the UK’s Rishi Sunak and Brazil's Lula da Silva – along with King Charles and Pope Francis.

On the other hand, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping are both unlikely to join in – and neither is Australia’s Anthony Albanese.

It remains to be seen which camp New Zealand’s new Prime Minister will fall into. Christopher Luxon is only expected to be formally sworn in as PM on Monday, following the conclusion of several weeks of coalition negotiations to form a new government.

But in theory, this would still leave plenty of time for Luxon to fly to the ‘World Climate Action Summit’ opening event for world leaders, which is being held from December 1-2.

Luxon positioned his National Party firmly in the centre during the election campaign, committing New Zealand to meeting its emissions reductions targets and telling sceptics ‘you can’t be a climate denier or a climate minimalist in 2023’.

Beyond the issue of climate change itself, COP28 would be a valuable initial networking and relationship-forming opportunity for New Zealand’s new Prime Minister. And to some extent, the Dubai gathering would be a make-up affair for Luxon, after he missed the APEC summit in San Francisco in mid-November due to the ongoing coalition negotiations.

It is safe to say that the ongoing war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas will be a major topic of sideline conversations at this year’s COP.

While Luxon missed the chance to meet Xi and Biden at APEC, COP28 would be a good chance for Luxon to hear the views of a range of other world leaders – particularly voices from across the Middle East.

Somewhat surprisingly, New Zealand’s former PM Jacinda Ardern never went to a COP summit during her six years in office. The last time a New Zealand PM was represented was in 2015, when John Key attended COP21 in Paris.

Coincidentally, 2015 was also the year that Key visited the Gulf states on a three-country tour of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE that sought to jumpstart New Zealand’s bid to strike a free trade deal with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The bloc’s membership also includes Bahrain, Oman and Qatar.

In September, New Zealand’s then Labour government began talks with the UAE on a new bilateral Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement – or CEPA. The CEPA could be a stepping stone to finalising a wider free trade agreement with the GCC that has been in the works since 2006.

With trade opportunities in the Gulf beckoning and no end in sight to the war in Gaza, the Middle East is likely to be higher up the foreign affairs agenda for New Zealand than might have previously been thought.

On the climate front, COP28’s head appointed by host UAE, Dr Sultan al Jaber, has emphasised ‘inclusivity’ as a key plank of this year’s event. Bringing together a wide range of countries around the table, despite deepening geopolitical polarisation driven by the Gaza and Ukraine wars and tensions in the Indo-Pacific, may be the summit’s most impressive achievement.

Israel pledged in July to send a 1000-strong delegation to Dubai, led by both its Prime Minister and President. The size will now be greatly reduced – but, remarkably, Israel is still coming and will still have a pavilion at COP28. While the war has strained relations between the UAE and Israel that were normalised under the Abraham Accords in 2020, diplomatic ties remain in place.

Speaking shortly prior to the outbreak of the war that began on October 7, the UAE’s Ambassador to New Zealand, His Excellency Mr. Rashed Matar Alqemzi, told me in an interview that ‘we are bringing the world together’ and emphasised the welcome being extended by COP28 to women, religious organisations, youth and indigenous peoples.

In New Zealand’s case, this includes Māori, whose role at Expo 2020 in Dubai was ‘greatly valued’ according to Alqemzi. New Zealand’s Iwi Chairs Forum, a coalition of Māori tribal leaders, was given the task of leading a ‘Festival of Indigenous and Tribal Ideas’ during the Expo. Two years on, COP28 will be held on the same Expo 2020 site on Dubai’s southern fringe.

The aim for ‘full inclusivity’ is more controversial, however, when it refers to the involvement of oil companies and their executives at the summit – including Dr Sultan Al Jaber himself, who also heads the UAE’s state-owned oil company, ADNOC.

Since he was given the role in January, Al Jaber’s appointment has frequently been criticised by climate campaigners, with one likening it to putting a tobacco company in charge of the World Health Organization.

The counter-argument – as put by Al Jaber himself in a speech to oil company executives in October – is that fossil fuel producers are ‘central to the solution’ and need to stop ‘blocking progress’.

While these words are unlikely to convince campaigners who see greenwashing, there is some cause for optimism ahead of COP28.

A recent agenda for the summit released by Al Jaber called for a ‘responsible phase-down of unabated fossil fuels’ – a reference to the burning of oil, gas and coal without the use of carbon capture technology.

The call to ‘phase-down’ the use of at least some fossil fuels altogether represents a small, yet significant shift from earlier this year, when Al Jaber was called out by former UN climate head Christiana Figueres for speaking merely of ‘phasing out fossil fuel emissions’.

On the other hand, ‘phase-down’ is weaker than the total ‘phase-out’ language used by a recent UN report and agreed upon by the EU as its negotiating position for COP28.

The debate over phasing-down vs. phasing-out is unlikely to go away any time soon.

The need for speed has to be balanced with fairness – especially for the world’s poorest.

In his agenda, Al Jaber called for global emissions reductions of 22 gigatons – almost half the current level – by 2030, but also for a ‘just energy transition’ that ensures energy supplies remain affordable and reliable to all.

Threading this needle will not be easy.

Some parallels might be drawn with New Zealand’s own attempts to reduce agricultural emissions, which make up half of the country’s greenhouse gases – mainly due to the methane produced by livestock.

After originally pledging to bring farming into the country’s Emissions Trading Scheme, Jacinda Ardern’s Labour-led Government agreed in 2019 to work with industry groups on an alternative pricing model and technologies to reduce agricultural emissions.

A deal was announced at the end of 2022, but it collapsed this year with key industry players and Christopher Luxon’s National Party withdrawing their support. Now in Government, National is delaying the introduction of a pricing system until 2030 – well beyond Sultan Al Jaber’s deadline for action.

At the global level, agriculture is a small contributor when it comes to emissions.

By far the lion’s share comes from the burning of fossil fuels – oil, gas and coal.

While the Gulf may be looking to a future beyond oil – and focusing on education, services and technology – the fact remains that there are plenty of players with a lot to lose and everything to gain from delaying the decarbonisation process.

New Zealand’s chequered experience with a joint government-industry effort to reduce agricultural emissions may offer a salutary lesson.

Keeping everyone at the table is harder than it looks.

Still, it is worth keeping the bigger picture in mind.

Al Jaber’s drive for inclusiveness is very much in keeping with the UAE’s current overall foreign policy stance.

Despite pressure from Western capitals, Abu Dhabi has steadfastly maintained relations with Moscow since Russia invaded Ukraine – and the UAE has resisted the temptation to cut its newly forged diplomatic ties with Israel, despite overwhelming backing on the ‘Arab street’ for the Palestinian cause.

Meanwhile, with COP28 just around the corner, Ambassador Alqemzi says his message for the summit’s critics is ‘let’s see what the UAE will do – and then we can talk again’.

It is a pivotal time for the Middle East.

Christopher Luxon could learn a great deal in Dubai.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. Disclosure: Geoffrey attended the recent Global Media Congress in the UAE as a guest of the organisers, the Emirates News Agency.

This article can be republished for free under a Creative Commons copyright-free license. Attributions should include a link to the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)

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New Zealand’s new Government will need to hit the ground running on foreign affairs.

Determining New Zealand’s full response to the war in Gaza and the fallout in the wider Middle East will be the first major test for whoever takes the foreign minister’s role.

New Zealand has been run by a Labour caretaker administration since elections were held on October 14.  But the final results are now in – and once coalition negotiations are out of the way, a new right-leaning government will take office.

During the transition period, caretaker Labour Prime Minister Chris Hipkins and outgoing foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta have respected the convention of saying as little as possible while waiting for their successors.

When Labour has spoken out on foreign affairs, it has been after consultation with the National Party leader and soon-to-be Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon.

Luxon has characterised the new war in the Middle East as ‘sad and tragic on both sides’ – a phrasing that reflects New Zealand’s overall balanced position towards the conflict so far.

One possible exception to the low-key approach was New Zealand’s decision to cast a vote in favour of a resolution in the UN General Assembly that called for a ‘humanitarian truce’ in Gaza.

Many of New Zealand’s closest Pacific and Western partners either abstained on the resolution (e.g. Australia, Canada and the UK) or opposed it altogether (such as the United States, Tonga and Fiji).

It seems likely that New Zealand’s own vote in favour was decided by a narrow margin.

Carolyn Schwalger, New Zealand’s ambassador to the UN, said New Zealand’s support came despite Wellington being ‘deeply disappointed’ by the resolution’s failure to directly condemn Hamas.

Luxon later largely echoed Schwalger in a media interview, stressing the need to ‘prioritise the protection of civilians’, but condemning Hamas and emphasising Israel’s right to defend itself.

Still, New Zealand’s vote in favour suggests there is still life to the country’s ‘independent foreign policy’, even as Wellington creeps closer to Washington at a broader level.

It will now be up to the new Government to decide what happens next.

To command a majority in Parliament, Christopher Luxon’s National Party will need a deal with two other parties. These are the Act Party, led by David Seymour, and Winston Peters’ New Zealand First.

Of the two smaller parties, New Zealand First is likely to play a particularly crucial role in determining the shape of New Zealand’s international relations.

Winston Peters has served as foreign minister twice before – but only under Labour-led governments. He held the role under Helen Clark from 2005-2008 and again under Jacinda Ardern from 2017-2020.

Peters is said to want the foreign minister’s job again – which would come as little surprise.

Of course, the rumours could still prove to be incorrect.

Now aged 78, Peters may not want the burden of travel himself.

Other options include Judith Collins, a former National leader, and Gerry Brownlee.

However, Brownlee is a likely candidate for Speaker. For her part, Collins easily has the experience for foreign affairs, having been in Parliament since 2002.

If Collins is not chosen, the defence portfolio would be a worthy alternative option, especially as New Zealand looks to make some major decisions on military spending.

Surprisingly, no woman has ever served as New Zealand’s defence minister. A role model for Collins could be Ursula von der Leyen, a centre-right politician who served as Germany’s first-ever female defence minister from 2013-19 and went on to become a high-profile president of the European Commission.

Yet another option could be for Peters to claim the foreign minister job for his New Zealand First deputy, Shane Jones, who served as a roving ‘Ambassador for Pacific Economic Development’ in the foreign ministry from 2014-2017.

The position was somewhat controversially created for Jones by the then National-led government after Jones quit as a Labour MP, before he later reemerged as a key figure in New Zealand First.

Even if it passes up on the foreign affairs portfolio, New Zealand First is likely to be influential and outspoken on international relations issues.

An ‘agree to disagree’ clause in New Zealand First’s coalition agreement with Labour in 2017 prevented New Zealand First from being muzzled under usual collective Cabinet responsibility provisions.

Peters’ past speeches provide some clues as to how he might respond to current developments.

During his first term as foreign minister, Peters observed at the UN shortly after Israel’s 32-day war with Hezbollah in 2006 that conflicts in the Middle East had largely been left to fester, resulting in ‘an unstable environment where extremism, injustice and despair flourish’.

Peters told the UN General Assembly that peacekeeping efforts – such as the strengthening of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) following the 2006 war – were only a stopgap solution and would be ‘doomed to failure unless the underlying political and security issues are addressed’.

More recently, as tensions between the US and Iran mounted, Peters observed in a speech to the Otago Foreign Policy School in 2019 that it was in New Zealand's interest to stop 'flashpoints escalating' and commended Washington for avoiding 'retaliatory strikes'. The speech built on an earlier statement in which Peters called for ‘caution, restraint and commonsense’ from all involved.

A 2023 election campaign speech by Peters that was dedicated to foreign affairs provides some wider insights into New Zealand First’s foreign affairs and defence priorities.

These include picking up on New Zealand First’s efforts from 2017-2020 to boost New Zealand’s foreign aid and defence budgets. At the time, Peters secured an additional $NZ714m in funding for foreign aid - largely targeted at the Pacific as part of his ‘Pacific Reset’ policy. Meanwhile, military spending was boosted by around $NZ4 billion over the same three-year period.

Peters also gained funding for 50 more diplomats – a feat he seems keen to build on.

Contrasting New Zealand with two other small states - Singapore and Ireland – Peters argued New Zealand needed ‘highly active diplomacy’ which in his view had been ‘shockingly not pursed with vigour’ since 2020.

This was probably partly a jibe at the outgoing foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta, who came under pressure during her tenure for a perceived reluctance to travel frequently.

Peters’ contrast with Singapore and Ireland also surfaced in a campaign interview, with some eviscerating criticism: 'Ireland has two-and-a-half-times more diplomats offshore, so does Singapore - maybe they know something about exporting and trade that we should be practising, rather than this eternal idiotic statement that New Zealand is ‘punching above its weight’’.

As foreign minister, Peter oversaw the opening of new diplomatic posts in Cairo (2007), Dublin (2018), Stockholm (2008 and 2018 – the latter a reopening). But not all of these were his idea.

On the substance, Ireland already has around 100 diplomatic missions globally – twice the number maintained by New Zealand – and is currently expanding its diplomatic footprint even further under an initiative dubbed ‘Global Ireland 2025’.

It remains to be seen whether Peters will be in a position to replicate the ‘Global Ireland 2025’ plan in New Zealand – and what exactly he would seek to achieve with more diplomatic resources.

Opening up more missions in the Middle East would help to give New Zealand the eyes and ears it needs to understand and respond more effectively to events in the region. As the current war shows, these frequently have a global impact.

Another focus might be to boost diplomats’ access to foreign language training, which has been dealt a blow by recent cuts to languages by New Zealand universities.

Nevertheless, stepping up engagement in the Pacific is probably going to be the bigger long-term priority for New Zealand First.

In a 2006 speech, Winston Peters remarked that the Pacific’s ‘strategic significance presents opportunity and challenge’ and the threats included ‘chequebook diplomacy’ – probably an early veiled barb at China.

Fast-forward to 2023, and the New Zealand First leader seems keen to pick up on the ‘Pacific Reset’ policy he launched in March 2018.

In his September campaign speech, Peters recapitulated how as foreign minister he had sought to work more closely with Pacific countries themselves, as well as boosting engagement with the US and Japan – on top of the foreign aid and defence budget boosts.

But Peters warned he was ‘seriously concerned that the momentum we started has fallen by the wayside since 2020’.

After a successful election campaign, the New Zealand First leader is now in a position to change that.

Christopher Luxon needs Winston Peters to form a government.

And a shakeup of New Zealand’s international relations seems likely.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. He is currently working on a PhD at the University of Otago on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

This article can be republished for free under a Creative Commons copyright-free license. Attributions should include a link to the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)

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The weekend's surprise and brutal attack on Israel by Hamas fighters has the potential to reshape the Middle East - and will only further increase global geopolitical instability. As of Sunday night NZT, the initial 24 hours of the assault by Hamas on Israel had already taken at least 250 Israeli lives - easily making it the bloodiest day for Israel since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In addition, dozens of Israelis have been kidnapped and taken back to Gaza to be used as bargaining chips. While there will be a range of motivations for why Hamas chose to act in the way it did now, the symbolic timing of Hamas' assault - almost 50 years to the day after Yom Kippur - is unlikely to be a coincidence.

In recent years, Western countries such as New Zealand have largely taken their eye off the region to focus on the war in Ukraine and rising geopolitical tensions in the Indo-Pacific. A staple of New Zealand's world news diet in decades past, of late the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has only rarely made the headlines. When it has, New Zealand has preferred not to become involved to any real extent beyond expressing sympathy with the victims. For example, when conflict broke out over Gaza in 2021, Jacinda Ardern cut an image that resembled more that of an observer or commentator, rather than of a participant in international affairs.

The new Hamas assault is a reminder of the continued power of the Middle East to shock and surprise. While it is too early to tell how the conflict will exactly unfold, one of the most concerning aspects will be the extent to which other nation-states become involved - particularly Iran, a close supporter of Hamas. The risk is that the war could spiral out of control and become a wider conflict with an even greater global impact, in an echo (or, potentially, an even more dangerous version) of the Yom Kippur War of 1973. 

Determining New Zealand's response to the new war in the Middle East will be one of the new New Zealand government's first challenges - and as shown by the fierce reaction to the initial lack of direct condemnation of the Hamas assault by Nanaia Mahuta, it will not be an easy path to navigate. A sustainable and durable two-state solution is the only long-term answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But with Israel now defending itself against a vicious and horrific attack by Hamas, and planning a new ground invasion of Gaza, this will not be on the table in the near future. 

However, New Zealand should resist the temptation to lose hope or to see the war as simply someone else's problem. As a small democracy far from the epicentre of the conflict, New Zealand could eventually play a role in peacemaking efforts - if it wanted to. We should not forget that as horrific as the Yom Kippur War in 1973 was, the Camp David Accords came just five years later in 1978. These led to Egypt signing a peace treaty with Israel, a settlement that has endured. The darkest moment can sometimes come before the dawn. There will absolutely be a need for de-escalation, dialogue and diplomacy in the days, weeks, months and years ahead - and countries will be sorely needed to lead and support these efforts.

For now, these ambitions may seem like a pipe dream. But as the war in Ukraine has shown, even distant wars can have an outsized impact, even half a world away. Crude oil prices have already risen sharply this year - and combined with a strengthening US dollar, these have caused New Zealand petrol prices to head back up to levels last seen in the immediate aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The pain caused by rising inflation and the cost-of-living crisis - the number one issue of the election campaign - may not be over yet.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. He is currently working on a PhD on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

This article can be republished for free under a Creative Commons copyright-free license. Attributions should include a link to the Democracy Project (https://democracyproject.nz)

Change is coming.

A shakeup of the ministers responsible for New Zealand’s international relations seems almost guaranteed, irrespective of the country’s election result on October 14.

Coalition politics are likely to play a key role in appointments related to foreign affairs.

On current opinion polling, a government led by the centre-right National Party would probably need to work with both the right-wing Act and more centrist New Zealand First if it wants to govern with a stable majority.

Winston Peters, New Zealand First’s leader, has already served as foreign minister twice before: once from 2005-2008 and then again from 2017-2020 – in both cases working under Labour-led governments.

In his most recent stint in the role, from 2017-2020, Peters secured hundreds of millions of dollars of additional funding for the foreign ministry as part of what he called the ‘Pacific Reset’. That repositioning sought to boost New Zealand’s (and, by extension, Peters’) influence and align Wellington more closely with Washington to counter China in the region.

The New Zealand First leader’s willingness to forge closer ties with the Trump administration put Winston Peters somewhat at odds with his Prime Minister, Labour’s Jacinda Ardern. Ardern was generally happy to keep her distance from the US during her first term.

Five-and-a-half years on from its original unveiling in March 2018, the Pacific Reset may now seem like a well-worn narrative. But at the time, Peters was ahead of the curve. The fact that a Pacific focus has since become fashionable amongst Western decision-makers arguably makes it only more likely that Peters will want to pick up where he left off, if given the chance.

Still, there is always a chance of other scenarios coming to pass.

National’s current foreign affairs spokesperson, Gerry Brownlee, has held the job once before – albeit only for a few months in 2017. However, Brownlee has kept a low profile in the portfolio of late, issuing his last press release on foreign matters in November 2022, according to National’s website. Moreover, as one of National’s most senior MPs, he is understood to be a likely choice to become Parliament’s next Speaker.

Another rumoured option for the foreign affairs or defence roles is Judith Collins. Collins is currently the party’s science and technology spokesperson and has not previously held a foreign affairs-related portfolio. But she is also a former party leader and trained lawyer. Her personal brand as being on National’s right would in theory make her a good fit with New Zealand’s current drift towards a more hawkish foreign policy.

Balancing this out is the fact that Collins made headlines in 2014 in relation to her husband’s close business linkages with China. Given the importance of the China trade to New Zealand, particularly the farmers who make up a good portion of National’s base, the ability to see both sides would be a clear advantage. It would also be in keeping with the even-handed approach generally expected of New Zealand foreign ministers.

A wildcard for foreign minister – particularly if New Zealand First fails to make it into Parliament – could be Act’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Brooke van Velden. While both Collins and Peters are senior MPs, van Velden has served only a single term and is in her early 30s. Still, she has made a bigger impact than most new MPs. In 2021, she proposed a Parliamentary motion that would have described China’s treatment of Uyghurs as ‘genocide’. And in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, she quickly drew parallels between Europe and Asia, deploying the line ‘it could be Ukraine today and Taiwan tomorrow’. Van Velden would be an interesting outside choice, but she would probably need to moderate her ideology and tone if she were given the job.

This leaves the defence and trade roles. The current trend towards securitisation of foreign policy means that the defence portfolio, normally a lower-profile position in New Zealand than in many other countries, will continue to hold the increased status that it has gained under Andrew Little, the current Labour minister. The incoming government will need to decide on the implementation of New Zealand’s inaugural Defence Policy and Strategy Statement and National Security Strategy – including the controversial question of whether New Zealand should join the ‘second pillar’ of AUKUS.

Until recently, National’s defence spokesperson was Tim van de Molen, who has military experience in the New Zealand Army Territorials. However, van de Molen lost the job in August after he was censured by Parliament for threatening another MP. In the meantime, the portfolio has been reallocated to Gerry Brownlee.

In government, Judith Collins could take on defence, either because foreign affairs is taken by New Zealand First, or perhaps in addition to it, given the growing integration between the two portfolios. Alternatively, Chris Penk – a former officer in the Royal New Zealand Navy who also served in submarines for the Australian Defence Force – would be a logical choice for defence.

Trade seems relatively straightforward. Todd McClay, National’s current spokesperson, has held the job once before (from 2015-2017, at the tail-end of National’s last term in government). A former diplomat, McClay would be the obvious MP to appoint as trade minister again. The position has never previously been outsourced to a coalition partner, unlike both foreign affairs and defence.

We also need to consider the possibilities should a Labour-led government be returned to power. Defence and trade would probably see the respective current ministers of Andrew Little and Damien O’Connor continuing in their jobs – providing they make it back into Parliament. Backup choices would invariably rely upon MPs with safe seats. One contender would be Megan Woods, a senior Labour member who currently holds various ministerial portfolios including infrastructure and energy.

Meanwhile, it is possible that Labour’s Nanaia Mahuta could continue in the foreign affairs role, should she retain her seat in a head-to-head race with Te Pāti Māori. But another option is that James Shaw would claim the portfolio for the Green Party. Shaw has served as climate change minister since 2017, keeping the role even after Labour won an absolute majority in 2020. Shaw, the Greens’ co-leader, has been the subject of internal party manoeuvrings and would probably be happy to take on the prestigious foreign affairs role for what would almost certainly be his final term in government.

Of course, we should not forget that the Prime Minister also holds a very influential role in New Zealand foreign policymaking. This was demonstrated particularly clearly during Labour’s current second term, when Jacinda Ardern often overshadowed Mahuta by using her own international clout. For his part, Chris Hipkins – who took over from Ardern in January – used his own recent trip to China to shore up relations with Beijing. Following a meeting with Xi Jinping, Hipkins repeatedly characterised the encounter as ‘warm and constructive’.

The exact foreign policy views of Christopher Luxon, the National Party leader who could become Prime Minister in a few weeks’ time, remain largely unknown. However, Luxon did signal earlier this year that he wanted to take New Zealand’s relationship with India more seriously – promising to visit the country during his first year in office. And last year, he praised Jacinda Ardern’s visit to the White House, arguing ‘it's great for New Zealand that the prime minister's out there deepening the relationship with the US and meeting with President Biden’.

Regardless of whether Chris Hipkins or Christopher Luxon is Prime Minister after October 14, one early engagement for New Zealand’s leader will be to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco in mid-November.

Foreign affairs might be taking its traditional backseat during New Zealand’s election campaign.

But whatever the election outcome, an international relations reset is likely.

Get ready for some new faces.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. He is currently working on a PhD on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

A sign of things to come.

That might be the best way to interpret New Zealand trade minister Damien O’Connor’s recent foray into the Middle East.

O’Connor stopped off in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi on a brief, yet important trip that comes as New Zealand prepares for its October 14 election.

The biggest takeaway was that New Zealand would enter preliminary talks with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on a new Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) – mirroring a new approach announced by Australia in 2022.

Wellington is also following in the footsteps of countries that have already signed similar deals with the UAE, including India, Indonesia, Israel and Turkey.

O’Connor’s trip to the Gulf last week piggybacked on a higher-profile mission to New Delhi. This leg of the trip dovetailed with a sizeable New Zealand business delegation that was organised independently and led by the India New Zealand Business Council (INZBC).

The INZBC’s chair, Michael Fox, heralded the delegation as a way to ‘reframe the bilateral relationship’.

An added benefit of New Zealand’s done-and-dusted free trade deals with the United Kingdom and European Union is renewed interest and capacity to focus on parts of the world that it had previously neglected.

At a political level, Wellington has certainly begun to take India more seriously this year, after being stung by criticism of what appeared to be an under-appreciation of the world’s new most populous nation.

Keen to display a long-term commitment, there is new-found eagerness from New Zealand to undertake bilateral visits, sign lower-level agreements and de-emphasise any expectations of quick wins on trade.

To this end, Nanaia Mahuta, the foreign minister, visited India for the first time in February – while her Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, accepted an invitation to visit India from Narendra Modi at a later date. Hipkins was also responding to pressure from his main rival for Prime Minister – Christopher Luxon – who had promised to visit India during the first year of his term, if elected in October.

There are lessons from the India experience that can also be usefully applied to New Zealand’s relationship with the six wealthy Gulf states.

This is not just because both countries visited by O’Connor – Saudi Arabia and the UAE – are set to join the BRICS grouping as soon as 2024. India is itself a founding member of the BRICS, which also includes four other key influencers in the Global South – China, Brazil, Russia and South Africa.

Both Saudi Arabia and the UAE are important trading partners for New Zealand, both in their own right and as cornerstone members of the six-country Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Founded in 1981, the GCC’s customs union became fully operational in 2015. When taken as a whole, it is New Zealand’s eight-biggest export market.

New Zealand’s exports to the bloc are growing rapidly, a trend that should come as no surprise.

After all, Saudi Arabia – the biggest Gulf state by population, at around 36 million – is pursuing an ambitious ‘Vision 2030’ programme focusing on the country’s future beyond oil. The plan includes the building of a new city, Neom, on the Red Sea. Meanwhile, a new airline – Riyadh Air – aims to bring millions of new visitors to Saudi Arabia and become a massive new global hub for connecting traffic.

In the neighbouring UAE, a major current focus is on the hosting of this year’s COP28 climate change summit in Dubai. The meeting has faced criticism because its head, Sultan al Jaber, is also the chief executive of the UAE’s biggest oil company.

Not to be deterred, al Jaber has countered that oil and gas companies – as major greenhouse gas emitters – need to be seen as ‘part of the solution’ and invited to the negotiating table.

The UAE’s ambition for inclusiveness is also manifesting itself in other foreign policy areas. In just a few short years, the UAE has normalised or restored relations with previous regional rivals and foes such as Iran, Israel, Turkey and Qatar.

Moreover, Abu Dhabi is continuing to resist Western pressure to take sides in the war on Ukraine and is instead continuing to advocate for dialogue. To this end, the UAE’s president, Mohamed bin Zayed, visited Russia in June, with one of his key advisers arguing ‘this polarisation has to be broken’.

New Zealand has long-standing friendly ties with the UAE, but the relationship has warmed particularly over roughly the past decade. Wellington opened an embassy in Abu Dhabi in 2011, a move that was reciprocated by the UAE in 2015.

In trade terms, New Zealand sees the UAE as the ideal gateway to the Gulf – playing a similar role as Singapore does for New Zealand in Asia. The CEPA talks are a useful next step – and Wellington will probably only benefit from the UAE’s current drive for openness and engagement with a wide range of partners.

However, the signals from O’Connor’s first stop at the GCC secretariat in Riyadh were less encouraging.

Accounts of the meeting – whether from the GCC itself, Arabic-language media, or from O’Connor himself – were not particularly optimistic.

New Zealand is trying to restart efforts on a free trade deal with the GCC that was agreed to in principle in 2009, yet never signed.  Wellington wants to renegotiate the agreement to include labour rights and environmental provisions, while the GCC has reportedly countered by offering reduced market access for New Zealand’s exports.

None of the six GCC countries are democracies and there will always be some tensions over human rights issues. However, the GCC states are evolving and New Zealand also brings considerable experience from its relations with other countries – notably China – in navigating and addressing such differences.

More broadly, there may be a temptation on New Zealand’s part simply to put the wider GCC deal in the too-hard basket, given the potential of the useful and more straightforward arrangement with the UAE.

This would be a mistake.

But the truth is that New Zealand needs to start putting in the hard yards.

As with India, New Zealand’s best bet for the Gulf is probably to park its free trade ambitions and focus on building the relationship across a wide range of areas.

Superb preconditions for greater engagement already exist: New Zealand enjoys direct air links with two GCC countries – Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

The immediate focus should go on developing a deeper understanding of the region. More could be made of people-to-people ties and academic and cultural exchanges, including Arabic language programmes.

While Arabic is taught by a number of Australian universities, it is not offered by any New Zealand institution – the only one of the six official UN languages left out.

At a government level, there probably need to be more ministerial visits with no expectations of immediate return.

The last visit to the Gulf by a New Zealand Prime Minister was made by John Key in 2015, when he visited Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

If there is to be an eventual deal, more ministerial visits will need to be made to all six GCC countries – including the bloc’s three other member states of Bahrain, Oman and Qatar.

With New Zealand’s election campaign now in full swing, Damien O’Connor’s trip to the Middle East could end up being something of a personal swansong.

But whatever the election outcome, one thing is clear.

The Gulf is not going away.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. He is currently working on a PhD on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

The BRICS are back.

Johannesburg will this week host the 15^th annual summit of the BRICS, an acronym for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

The loose grouping may be about to become tighter – and bigger.

Some 40 countries have expressed interest in joining the BRICS, which already represent over 40 per cent of the world’s population and 30 per cent of global GDP when measured using purchasing power parity (PPP).

Potential new BRICS members span the globe, from Africa to Asia and Latin America. Candidates and formal applicants include Argentina, Egypt, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The timing of the surge in interest might seem surprising.

After all, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has seen Vladimir Putin become a pariah in the West – and problematic even elsewhere, thanks to the arrest warrant for the Russian president issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in March.

South Africa and the ICC’s 122 other member states are obliged to enforce the warrant – which explains why it was decided ‘by mutual agreement’ that Putin would attend this week’s summit only virtually.

This does not mean the Global South wants to completely isolate Russia. Heads of state from 17 African countries – including South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa and Egypt’s Abdel Fattah el-Sisi – attended a Russia-Africa summit in Moscow in July.

Ramaphosa is among those working the diplomatic track to try and find a pathway to peace in Ukraine. He is not the only one: in early August, Saudi Arabia also hosted talks in Jeddah that included representatives from more than 40 countries – including China, India, the US and Ukraine itself. On this occasion at least, Russia was not invited.

It remains to be seen whether the BRICS can – or want to – transform themselves into a larger grouping of Global South countries.

For New Zealand, the potential for an enlarged BRICS poses something of a dilemma.

Until now, the BRICS has been mainly an informal grouping. There is no BRICS secretariat.

However, if the BRICS decide to expand their club and adopt more formal structures, New Zealand would almost certainly rule out engagement because of Russia’s involvement.

Wellington has firmly backed the Western position on Ukraine since the war began, placing sanctions on Moscow and sending military support to Kyiv.

At the leader level, a visit to China in June by New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has been the exception that proves the rule.

The travel patterns of Hipkins and his predecessor, Jacinda Ardern, have heavily favoured Western destinations such as Australia, EU countries, the UK and the US. Only a handful of trips have been to countries that would be considered part of the Global South.

The picture looks a little different when it comes to the travel schedule for Nanaia Mahuta, New Zealand’s foreign minister.

This year, Mahuta has visited three of the BRICS countries – India, China and South Africa. She has also visited Indonesia – for ASEAN meetings – and, in the Pacific, Fiji and Vanuatu.

To be fair, these destinations have been part of a wider travel schedule in 2023 that has also included Brussels for a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting, as well as stops in Japan and Singapore. Mahuta also recently met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken when he visited Wellington.

Still, there might be something to the notion that Mahuta might be more ‘BRICS-friendly’ than other ministers in the Labour Cabinet. This includes the more pro-Western Hipkins and Ardern, and the Government’s notably hawkish defence minister, Andrew Little.

For example, Mahuta has attempted to put the brakes on New Zealand joining Pillar II of AUKUS. During Blinken’s visit, she told media ‘I’ll be really clear, we’re not contemplating joining AUKUS’, at odds with her own Prime Minister’s line that New Zealand was ‘open to conversations’ on the matter.

And in June, Mahuta gave a speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs (NZIIA) conference in which she rejected ‘binary choices’ and said New Zealand’s ‘global partnerships are not exclusively with those mirroring our views’.

Of course, rhetoric is one thing – and actions quite another.

Mahuta has yet to visit Latin America, for instance. In fact, aside from John Key’s attendance at an APEC summit in Peru in 2016, no New Zealand Prime Minister has made an official visit to Latin America since 2013.

Moreover, the Government recently announced that funding for the Latin America Centre of Asia-Pacific Excellence (CAPE) – New Zealand’s only real centre of government capability for engagement with the continent – would be cut entirely from mid-2024. Given the opportunities, the decision appears perplexing at best.

New Zealand’s engagement with the Middle East is also worth considering. Mahuta visited the United Arab Emirates and Qatar as part of her inaugural foreign trip in November 2021, while Damien O’Connor, the trade minister, quietly visited Riyadh last year to chair the first meetings of New Zealand’s Joint Ministerial Commission with Saudi Arabia since 2018.

On the other hand, New Zealand Prime Ministers generally prefer to change planes in the Gulf on their way to Europe without making a stopover – a lost opportunity. The last leader to visit the region was John Key in 2015.

Further west, Helen Clark was the last Prime Minister to visit Egypt – which has officially applied to join the BRICS – in 2007, when she opened New Zealand’s embassy in Cairo.

Morocco has also been suggested as a potential BRICS member, although a report at the weekend rejected earlier suggestions that Rabat had made an official application. The country is home to Africa’s largest port, while Marrakech is hosting the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in October.

The BRICS contenders are clearly still hedging their bets.

After all, the biggest achievement of the BRICS so far has been financial in nature: the BRICS-backed New Development Bank (NDB) was launched in 2015 and has provided loans of more than $US30 billion to date.

This is still small when compared with the World Bank, but the NDB is growing and could become an important player in climate finance. There are parallels with China’s Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) that counts New Zealand as one of its members.

The BRICS want to issue more loans in local currencies, circumventing the US dollar that currently underpins much of the international system. A common BRICS currency could be an ultimate end goal.

It is unlikely that New Zealand would be a fan of every BRICS aspiration – and Russia’s inclusion perhaps makes the bloc too hot to handle, at least for the time being.

But the BRICS could yet turn into something akin to APEC, an economic-focused bloc of countries big and small, from different continents.

This could entail all manner of meetings and summits – an outcome that could provide valuable and more effective face-time opportunities for Wellington.

As things stand, New Zealand is too small for the G7 or G20. It is in the wrong region to join a geographically-focused bloc such as ASEAN or the EU. And APEC – while having laudable aims –has lost momentum as geopolitical tensions between its members continue to build.

One thing is clear.

Fifteen years on, the BRICS are not going away.

New Zealand needs to think more about them.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical 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. He is currently working on a PhD on New Zealand’s relations with the Gulf states.

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