While Covid-19 is still having a dramatic impact on the world, the pandemic has worsened rather than altered the existing fault-lines in Great Power rivalry – and the Government is continuing to adjust its outlook as a result, Sam Sachdeva reports
As countries around the globe battle Covid-19 variants and hopes of a swift return to reality recede, the Otago Foreign Policy School’s focus on foreign policy in a ‘post-Covid era’ might seem a touch premature.
But in many ways there was no better time to consider the path ahead for New Zealand, as the world sits in a limbo of sorts between the initial outbreak and the move to a new normal.
Addressing the University of Otago conference, Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta laid out a fairly grim picture of “an age of uncertainty and risk” with the global recovery taking place within a context of deteriorating stability and security.
But as Mahuta said, Covid-19 is not the root cause of the situation the world is in; instead, it has merely “lain bare the challenges and exacerbated that which was starting to occur long before Covid arrived in our world”.
Chief among those pre-existing challenges is the Great Power rivalry between the United States and China, a topic which invariably came up.
She had warm words for the US, “an essential security and defence partner, an important economic partner, and a leading source of the innovation and technology we need to keep improving the standard of living for all peoples”.
China was labelled one of our most significant relationships, but along with predictable talk about the trade relationship and human rights concerns came the comment that bilateral ties had “moved beyond a relationship of firsts” and onto a more mature footing.
It may simply be a statement of the obvious, that after being the first Western nation to sign a free trade deal with China and achieve other ‘firsts’, there is little new ground that can be broken.
But it could also be read as a warning that New Zealand will not be as quick to jump headfirst into Chinese-led initiatives as in the past (take the Belt and Road Initiative, one of the “five firsts” but which has led to little obvious benefit for either side).
Indo-Pacific takes centre stage
Another interesting component of Mahuta’s speech came in its references to the Asia-Pacific – to be more specific, the lack thereof.
The phrase received zero mentions in her remarks, while the Indo-Pacific – a term which to some carries a greater emphasis on security and the American worldview – came up three times.
That emphasis is backed up by her ministry: MFAT’s most recent Budget appropriations and strategic intentions frame New Zealand’s work as occurring within the Indo-, rather than Asia-, Pacific.
Speaking to Newsroom after her remarks, Mahuta noted she had inherited the new, broader view of the region from Winston Peters’ time in the hot seat and believed it was no bad thing given the need to work more closely with India.
“It doesn't cut off the opportunity to work with the ASEAN economies, doesn't cut off our opportunity to work with China, but it broadens our ambition across the whole region.”
At one level, focusing so closely on which four letters precede the word ‘-Pacific’ may seem unnecessarily pedantic, particularly as the Indo-Pacific has become more commonly used in previously sceptical settings such as ASEAN.
But given MFAT found the matter significant enough to issue a 2019 ministerial briefing on how and when to use which terms, after Peters had initially indicated a preference for an Asia-Pacific framing, the fact our foreign policy discourse has tilted heavily towards one direction is significant.
Mahuta’s comment is the strongest signal yet that New Zealand could be open to joining some sort of ‘Quad-plus’ arrangement – although given it came in the unscripted part of her appearance, whether it flows through to official government policy remains to be seen.
There is also the problem that there is no single view of the Indo-Pacific, with perspectives ranging from an ASEAN-centred iteration to America’s ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacific’ and more in-between. Indeed, Indonesian Ambassador Tantowi Yahya made that point well when he asked one speaker at the school: “Which Indo-Pacific are you referring to?”
The Government may need to further define and refine New Zealand’s own view of the Indo-Pacific, with some early steps in that direction taken by Mahuta in a speech to the India New Zealand Business Council Summit last month.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is likely to shed further light on the topic next week, when she delivers the keynote address at an NZ Institute of International Affairs conference specifically focused on the Indo-Pacific.
In the meantime, some ASEAN members’ eyebrows may have been raised by Mahuta agreeing with a suggestion that New Zealand should be working more closely with the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad for short.
The grouping of the United States, Australia, Japan and India is viewed by many as an effort to counter China’s growing assertiveness in the region, and causes discomfort with some countries like Indonesia.
Mahuta’s comment is the strongest signal yet that New Zealand could be open to joining some sort of ‘Quad-plus’ arrangement – although given it came in the unscripted part of her appearance, whether it flows through to official government policy remains to be seen.
Trump diminished, American concern endures
The continued use of ‘Indo-Pacific’, a term popularised during Donald Trump’s presidency, also shows that while Trump’s influence may have diminished after electoral defeat, American concern about China’s rise has endured.
Daniel Twining, president of the International Republican Institute and a former foreign policy adviser to John McCain, told Newsroom senior members of Joe Biden’s administration had told him they agreed with the Trump administration’s national security and defence strategies.
“I think a lot of people are surprised by how the Biden team has embraced, not any kind of Trump approach, but just that we've had a national consensus emerge that China is a dangerous adversary...largely because of China's own actions, not because somehow we did something that changed the way Americans think about it.”
In his speech to the school, Twining said the region’s history as the home of “the greatest economic miracle in human history” following the end of World War II was being threatened by democratic backsliding, territorial conflicts and growing power imbalances – driven by one nation in particular.
“The China factor really is at the center of a number of the drivers of growing instability, and thinking about what has made this Asian operating system so successful from an economic and security perspective, it feels increasingly like China in particular is putting that system at risk.”
“As damaging as the trade war was, and it indeed produced a lot of havoc, tech competition and restrictions are likely to have far more far-reaching consequences."
Mireya Solis, the director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies, had a similarly grim outlook in her remarks on the state of global trade.
“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the open rules-based system faces an existential crisis, and I do not use those words lightly,” Solis started off, saying US-China trade tensions showed no signs of abating and could in fact worsen as retaliation moved beyond mere tariff hikes.
“As damaging as the trade war was, and it indeed produced a lot of havoc, tech competition and restrictions are likely to have far more far-reaching consequences,” she said, referring to American concerns about intellectual property theft and the national security risks posed by Chinese telecommunications firms.
It is little wonder then that US-China tension is “a new structural reality for international relations”, as University of Waikato foreign policy lecturer Reuben Steff put it, with some sort of military conflict no longer inconceivable.
“We should bear in mind within 12 of 16 cases of the past 500 years, when...a rising power threatens to overtake an existing hegemon it has led to conflict between them.”
With that dynamic set to endure for the foreseeable future, Mahuta and the Government will be spending plenty more time contemplating its effect on New Zealand and the Indo-, or Asia-, Pacific.
