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 75th 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’.
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 international analyst and writes on current New Zealand foreign policy and related geopolitical issues. He has lived in Germany and the Middle East and is a learner of Arabic and Russian. This article was first published HERE
4 comments:
Frankly this move to embrace NATO is not the best for New Zealand.
It is an excuse to drag us in to a body that is along way from us and they clearly wish to exert influence one world policies on our country.
As for giving $16 to Ukraine. I myself and many of my friends are struggling to survive following the recent floods.
But no, we can't help kiwis get back on their feet.
We should be disassociating ourselves from this terrorist alliance.
“ New Zealand’s ‘independent foreign policy’. The doctrine, developed after the US downgraded ties with New Zealand in the 1980s …”
Not something that ‘just happened.’
The Lange Labour Government pissed on our American allies, and reaped the rewards.
FOUNDED, FUNDED AND DIRECTED FROM MOSCOW I
The claim that anti-nuclear is “a cornerstone of our national identity” needs to be rigorously deconstructed.
Far from being a statement of national identity, New Zealand's anti-nuclear stance of the 1980s was actually a triumph of Soviet foreign policy that served the Soviet Union’s strategic agenda of breaking apart the ANZUS pact providing for joint regional defence against Communist imperialism.
Observers of the "peace" movement since the 1950s often noted its ongoing failure to call upon the Soviet Bloc and its client states to disarm, and its continual blackening of America as the threat to world peace.
There is a simple explanation. The "peace" movement in every Western country was a slew of treasonous hate groups, founded, funded and directed from Moscow.
It is soon apparent that New Zealand’s much-vaunted anti-nuclear stance is part of a much bigger picture.
A permanent Communist objective has always been to tilt the balance of world military power in favour of Communist armed might.
Communists in Western countries were instructed wherever possible to create a dialectical conflict between “warmongers” and “peaceniks” in the service of this objective.
Leftists claim to hate war, but their opposition to armed conflict is situational, and depends entirely on the political affiliation of who is fighting whom.
For example, the Communist Party of the USA ("CPUSA") pressed for America to enter the Spanish Civil War against Franco and his Fascist allies, because the Soviet Union and Spain’s Communists were lined up on the other side.
Hitler and Stalin later signed a mutual non-aggression pact, and the CPUSA suddenly decided the USA should stay out of European affairs, even as the Nazis were gobbling up Austria, the Sudetenland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Norway.
That all changed as soon as Germany invaded the Soviet Union.
During the Cold War, these same people, devoted as ever to advancing the interests of the Soviet Union, insisted America should unilaterally disarm and turn its atomic arsenal into plowshares.
Or maybe Luxon is there to get the latest in NATO's Cognitive Warfare doctrine.
Look it up.
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