OPINION:
Jacinda Ardern graced New Zealand with a short stopover on Monday — squeezing in a quick Cabinet meeting between last week's visit to Australia and this week's South Pacific Forum in Suva.
Since April, the Prime Minister has been constantly on the move.
That month she symbolically chose Singapore, New Zealand's fellow Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) founder, and Japan, now the pact's leader, for her first post-Covid foreign foray.
In May she led a trade mission to the US, received thunderous applause at Harvard and was received warmly by President Biden in the Oval Office.
In June she held an introductory meeting in Sydney with new Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, attended the Nato Summit in Madrid, made her captain's call in Brussels to lock in the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU and did the rounds in London.
The same month, she hosted Samoan Prime Minister Fiamē Naomi Mata'afa in New Zealand.
Halfway through July, the Prime Minister has already completed her second and much more substantial visit to Australia. In Suva, the US finally seems to have responded to then Foreign Minister Winston Peters' unmistakable 2018 call at Georgetown University for it to do more to check China in our neighbourhood.
Before Christmas, Ardern hopes for a second trade mission to Asia, including China.
Assuming they take place in person for the first time since 2019, the Prime Minister is also expected at this year's UN General Assembly in New York, the Apec Summit in Bangkok and the East Asia Summit in Phnom Penh.
Whether New Delhi also makes the cut will indicate whether Ardern thinks the proposed FTA with India is more than a pipe dream.
Ardern's all-consuming focus on international relations is not only welcome, but necessary in the current climate.
After two years as a hermit kingdom, it is essential to rebuild diplomatic, trade and tourism ties — and New Zealand has no better salesperson than the Prime Minister.
On matters especially important to Ardern, Covid has slowed international progress on climate change and her Christchurch Call to eliminate terrorist and other violent extremist content online.
Urgent repairs are also needed after the Trump Administration trashed multilateral institutions vital to New Zealand's interests like the World Trade Organisation and withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Yet even those things pale into insignificance compared with what might yet be the 21st century equivalent of 1939's Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact — Russia and China's declaration in February that their friendship now has "no limits" or "forbidden areas". It is, they say, now "superior to the political and military alliances of the Cold War".
The danger became manifest within weeks when Russia began expanding westward into Europe by invading Ukraine, threatening a nuclear first strike if anyone intervened.
In the east, China continues to sabre-rattle in the South China Sea and expand its military footprint across the Pacific. In our region of the South Pacific, the first two dominos have already fallen — the Solomon Islands and Kiribati.
If that isn't a failure of New Zealand's foreign policy going back not just five years but well before, we may as well pack up our Foreign Ministry and international aid programme and conclude that nothing we do can make a difference.
Given her global name recognition and Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta's apparent aversion to frequent international travel, Ardern has done the right thing by New Zealand by stepping up.
Yet her international activity still lacks a clear, coherent and consistent message.
Her speeches give the impression of being written by different people — perhaps the defence establishment one day, the Foreign Ministry the next and by her political strategists on a third.
The inconsistencies led veteran journalist Richard Harman, who has reported on New Zealand foreign policy since Rob Muldoon met Ronald Reagan at the White House, to suggest wryly in his Politik newsletter that the Prime Minister might be pursuing "strategic ambiguity" — a term describing the US appearing to offer Taiwan a security guarantee without saying it clearly enough to undermine its formal One China position.
Thus, in Singapore the Prime Minister emphasised co-operation under the Five Power Defence Arrangement, which also includes Australia, Malaysia and the UK, and welcomed the Singapore Armed Forces returning to Waiouru for artillery exercises.
In Tokyo, she and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced stronger defence co-operation and intelligence sharing.
In Washington, she and Biden issued a hawkish statement called "A 21st Century Partnership for the Pacific, the Indo-Pacific and the World". Soon after, the White House announced that Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the UK and the US have established the Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP) alliance, about which the Beehive is not keen to say much.
At her first Albanese meeting, Ardern spoke of Australia and New Zealand working together in the Pacific on "an increasingly contested strategic environment" — code for checking China.
At the second, she emphasised "an increasingly uncertain and risky geostrategic environment" and said "having close friends that share values and work together is more essential than ever for the security and wellbeing of our citizens and the region".
At Nato, Ardern went further, naming China and accusing it of becoming "more assertive and more willing to challenge international rules and norms". She told Nato, a US-led nuclear-based military alliance, that "we must respond to the actions we see" and use diplomacy "until it has proven to fail".
This put Ardern under direct attack from China, which said her comments were "misguided", "wrong", "not helpful" and "regrettable".
Apparently in response to China's pressure, Ardern softened her message last week, earning her a big tick from Beijing.
Even while in Europe, Ardern had a bob each way, depending on the audience. She told the liberal London audience at Chatham House that New Zealand is "fiercely independent", seeking "relationships with those who share our values" and "dialogue with those who don't".
In Madrid, she announced a "Global Values Partnership" with Spain, which she says is "a reflection of the shared vision between Spain and New Zealand for the world".
Spain and New Zealand, she said, would "address global challenges based on values-based foreign policy".
This probably doesn't mean anything.
Values like free speech, liberal democracy, the rule of law, self-determination, free trade, the rules-based multilateral system and even no first use of nuclear weapons are broadly shared in the South Pacific, southeast Asia, parts of northeast Asia, North America and Europe.
They aren't shared by Moscow and Beijing, never have been and probably never will be.
Why not just say so?
- Matthew Hooton is an Auckland-based public relations consultant.
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