As US-China tensions show no signs of abating, one Kiwi academic says New Zealand could play a crucial role in finding an 'off-ramp' before we hit the next Cold War
New Zealand diplomats taking to the high seas to mediate Great Power conflict between the United States and China?
It may seem far-fetched, but drastic times call for drastic measures in the eyes of Reuben Steff, a senior lecturer in foreign policy at the University of Waikato and former member of MFAT’s international security and disarmament division.
Speaking to the Otago Foreign Policy School this weekend, Steff outlined a new approach New Zealand could take in response to Great Power tensions.
Steff said the country had relied on “asymmetric hedging” to date, aligning itself with the US and Australia on some security and military issues while maintaining a distance on others.
While that was the best approach if it could be maintained, there was a risk New Zealand could be pushed by either the US or China to take more significant actions on an issue and face retaliation from the other side as a result.
To alleviate some of the ill-will on both sides of the rivalry, Steff said New Zealand and others could adopt an approach of “strategic liberalism”.
Such a perspective would require an assumption that a new Cold War was not inevitable if there was active diplomacy, and that countries should not try to explicitly exclude other nations from trade, military and other large groupings in the Indo-Pacific.
“That's not an academic point: If we start excluding other states in creating these groupings ... to essentially contain them, you just feed paranoia and suspicion on the other side, and they are then going to go about creating their own parallel sets of institutions and therefore there won’t be an international system.”
As part of his proposed approach, Steff said the Government should consider establishing a new “centre of excellence” on Great Power competition and Indo-Pacific security, possibly in collaboration with Australian organisations.
In addition, New Zealand could offer to take up a “circuit-breaker role” in US-China and Australia-China tensions by offering to provide a neutral location for confidence-building discussions.
“Perhaps this could take the form of a US-China high-level summit to be held on the Waitangi Trust treaty grounds, or on a Royal New Zealand Navy naval frigate at sea.”
Steff said New Zealand could also encourage both countries to undertake what he described as “smart appeasement”, making concessions in areas where they had relative advantages.
“In the South China Sea, the onus is very much on Beijing to bring something to the table now, they seem to have locked down that sea in their military sphere of influence…
“The onus is maybe on the US and its allies, though, to do better to try and reassure China that we do not have any malign intentions, that regime change is not going to return to the forefront of US foreign policy at some point.”
New Zealand should also seek observer or associate status with the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, which was “the new game in town” when it came to maritime security in the Indo-Pacific.
"The risks are pretty low ... [that] if you throw some big ideas out there, that they'll really come back to bite us." Instead, we might make some breakthroughs here or there and if nothing else, I think we'll be able to tell ourselves we did the best we could before the situation got really bad."
While that could seem to cut against the idea of a strategic liberalism approach, Steff said the Government could suggest China be invited to observe some of the Quad grouping’s naval manoeuvres, as has happened with 2015 military exercises involving Five Eyes members and Pacific countries in the South Island.
Steff said New Zealand should also be careful “not to fall into an ideological trap of our own making”, and uphold ideals of free speech, the rule of law and democratic elections without trying to force those principles on others.
“Our liberal democracy is not for export to other nations: I don't think we should be seeking to transform the world in our image, we have enough evidence after 9/11 at how badly that can go. And if we assume long-term cooperation and partnership is dependent upon the nature of regimes, they eventually will just dig in, we will dig in and we will lead into a new Cold War.”
While the framework was Steff at his most idealistic, he said New Zealand needed to look for any ‘off-ramp’ it could to avoid a new Cold War, while capitalising on the soft power it had accrued from the response to Covid-19 and the Christchurch terror attack.
"The risks are pretty low... [that] if you throw some big ideas out there, that they'll really come back to bite us." Instead, we might make some breakthroughs here or there and if nothing else, I think we'll be able to tell ourselves we did the best we could before the situation got really bad – we did try to lead the nations of the Indo-Pacific down a more positive and cooperative approach.”
