Gerald Hensley: Daydream diplomacy and the myth of NZ independence

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addressing the 76th session of the United Nations General Assembly in September, 2021, at UN headquarters. Photo / Peter Foley, Pool via AP

OPINION

When you think about it, our obsession with independence as the main feature of our foreign policy is odd.

In speeches by politicians and academics, the term foreign policy rarely appears without the word “independent” in front of it. All nation-states have an independent foreign policy but only we seem to feel the need to buttonhole everyone we meet to point this out.

We have been independent for over a century.

Geography means that few if any countries face less of a threat to their independence than New Zealand. That we continue to assert it with some vehemence suggests that something is wrong, that we have lost confidence in ourselves.

Take, as an example, the Nato gathering to which Jacinda Ardern was invited when still Prime Minister. Her message to them, at least as reported, was that we are not just independent, but “fiercely independent”. Perhaps the gathering suppressed a smile at the thought of one of the freest countries in the world being so anxious about this, but our independent thinking has developed an important corollary, that we are not just independent but unattached as well.

The message that Ms Ardern’s Nato audience might have taken home is that it may suit us for a time to work with Nato but, if circumstances change, we are independent and will go our own way. Telling a group of friends that we cannot be counted on to stick with them is a peculiar way to win their support.

Illustration / Rod Emmerson

As a recent newspaper article puts it, “taking an independent stance doesn’t mean we won’t work with other countries, just that we will decide when it is and isn’t in our interests to do so”.

This appeals to our nationalism but diplomacy is not a pick ‘n’ mix opportunity, it works by a network of mutual obligations.

Any country in which we are interested will want to know what they might get in return, what we are doing to advance their interests. International friendships are not chess pieces on a board, they are organic, growing gradually as common interests build trust.

The growth of trust takes time.

For this reason alone, the idea of New Zealand as the playboy of the Western world, open to offers and able to choose its partners free from the demands of our traditional friends is a delusion.

A few years ago we dipped a cautious toe in this new freedom when China tore up the international treaty guaranteeing Hong Kong liberty. Our four closest friends denounced this lawless act but we decided not to join them. Indeed, our Foreign Minister complained, not of China’s action but of being pressured by our friends.

The moment passed and I think we were shamed by the ease with which fear of China made us discard deeply-held principles.

No one said so but it was clear that experimenting with an innovative and independent foreign policy was not possible. We avidly watch American TV programmes and follow American politics but Xi Jinping’s re-election and policies are of interest only to experts. We are prisoners of our history and geography which will always limit our choice of diplomatic friends.

Daydream diplomacy, however still holds us.

A meeting of defence ministers in Singapore was recently addressed by our representative, Andrew Little. Although he is an intelligent and widely respected minister, he found himself asserting New Zealand’s anti-nuclear stance is “not wishful thinking”. It must have struck others in the room as almost the definition of wishful thinking.

For 40 years, New Zealand, with no threat, no nuclear arms and therefore nothing to give up, has marched along bravely behind the banner of nuclear disarmament while not a single country joined us. To press on with a policy that failed to achieve anything in nearly 50 years might be seen as deeply eccentric.

Gerald Hensley. Photo / Mark Mitchell, File

Nuclear disarmament, however, is felt like independence to be an important part of our self-image, a banner too sacred to be doubted by results. It is another sign of the way in which our foreign policy has become, not a way of communicating with the outside world, but of talking comfortably among ourselves.

This mattered less before the long peace began to wobble, with a major war in Ukraine and an equally major one threatened in Taiwan.

Now the Asia-Pacific region has begun what looks like the first serious effort to organise a collective defence. In Singapore, every representative except New Zealand worked to create a network of defence understandings and agreements, not led by the United States but designed to wrap the US in a lattice of regional commitments.

What is emerging is a platform of collective security in the face of the region’s widespread fear of China. As this takes shape, New Zealand will have to do more than say that its anti-nuclear stance is not wishful thinking. We need to recognise we have got on the wrong track.

We need to recover the old boundaries of a realistic foreign policy, repair the mildewed relationship with Australia, pay much more attention to the Asean countries and stop regarding the South China Sea and Taiwan as faraway problems.

The obsession with independence and nuclear disarmament is the sound of people in the dark, whistling to keep up their spirits.