Paul Buchanan: Self-interest rules in the world today

Debate about supporting "traditional allies" opens questions about New Zealand's role in the new world order, specifically whether it should maintain the friendships and alliances it forged before the end of the Cold War.

Winston Churchill held that nations have interests, not friends. Friendships are often fickle and of variable duration, subject to betrayal and alienation by the attentions of others.

Colin Powell's statement that New Zealand and the US are "very, very close friends" can, therefore, be taken as a warning or dismissal, but not as indication of a durable relationship.

Interests may be long or short-term, defined in many ways. Definition of interest determines choice of allies. Allies may be tactical or strategic depending on the nature of the interest being served, but there is nothing traditional or unique about any alliance.

Alliances are renewed over time as interests are served. Others are expanded, contracted or disbanded depending on the changing nature of the national interests involved in the equation. Nato offers one example of an evolving alliance based on changing regional and national security interests. Anzus was another.

New Zealand's "traditional allies" are legacies of the colonial, Cold War and Commonwealth eras. With the loosening of Commonwealth ties, the end of the Cold War and globalisation of production and exchange in a rapidly changing security environment dominated by a single military power, coupled with increased orientation towards Asia as a source of labour and capital, our national interests may differ from those of previous years.

So may those of our allies. This is not to say that alliances made under the mantle of British protection - which served British interests first rather than those of New Zealand - should not be retained.

There might be reasons New Zealand should seek alliances with its traditional benefactors and trading partners. But it should not be automatically assumed that what is "traditional" in terms of alliances best serves New Zealand's national interests today.

Our interests may have been served by joining the "coalition of the unwilling". With a public majority opposed to the war even after the fall of Baghdad, and with a commitment to the principles of multilateralism embodied in the United Nations, New Zealand may see the doctrine of unilateral pre-emptive war as inimical to its interests.

The issue is not that the war was good and just and should or should not be supported. The question is whether our interests, as defined today, were served by it.

Some say New Zealand should have supported the war because trade relations with the United States would improve as a result. They point to Australia, with the visit by John Howard to the US demonstrating the goodwill and rewards accrued as a result of its involvement in Iraq. But the connection between trade and security is overdrawn.

Consider the perspective of American interests. What interests are served by the US favouring New Zealand as a trading partner over larger countries such as Brazil or Indonesia?

We have the gross national product of the smallest American states, and those states have voters that US candidates must appeal to. New Zealand will barely make a dent on the American market as an exporter or importer of goods and services.

Australia, on the other hand, is a rapidly growing economy with large-scale production and continental-sized potential. This represents a target of opportunity for the US market - both coming and going - whether or not the Australians deployed troops in Iraq.

Resting on the threshold of entry to the American market, it was in Australia's interest to support the US when a host of nations, some of whom are direct trade competitors, opposed the war.

Even if New Zealand sided with the US in the war, there were no guarantees that trade rewards would be forthcoming. The only promise Mr Howard received was that President George W. Bush would send a bill to Congress in favour of granting Australia most-favoured nation status before the end of this year. That means that it will not be considered until after the presidential elections in November next year.

Thus a free-trade agreement has to wait until the outcome of events 18 months away - and that outcome is not assured.

The major foreign policy issue right now is that we live in a unipolar world. This poses new challenges for the international system and the small states within it. But there are problems with unipolarism, so we should not feel too comfortable in a world dominated by one master.

In the field of international relations, history shows that the most stable international system is one in which there is a balance of power. Two or more nations hold each other in check by offsetting their military, economic and political power - much as we consider the division of government into executive, legislature and judiciary to be a system of checks and balances.

With power dispersed in the economic, military and political realms, nations adopt more negotiated and compromise-oriented approaches towards their foreign relations, leading to peace and stability of the system. Homeostasis, in a word. This system can be bipolar, multipolar, tightly aligned into blocs or loosely assembled, but the bottom line is that it involves more than one nation triumphant.

The most unstable systems are two: those in which the balance of power is disputed, in which actors jostle for dominance within a fluid hierarchy, much as animals establish a ranking system; and those in which one power dominates all others.

In the first situation, war becomes the system regulator, and the outcomes result in a new or reaffirmed status quo. In the second, war becomes the means by which vassals usurp the dominant power, usually over a long period in what becomes a process of attrition.

Where the empire is reliant on military might, and where it has little political support, it has poor chances of surviving resistance to it over time.

This should give us pause, not to consider the utility of the US as the new empire and the need to find a balance in pursuit of stability but on our interests in a world that is in flux until balance is established.

Rather than adhering by rote to tradition when considering New Zealand's role in this world in the making, we should consider a path less chosen. At that point, the concept of interest should prevail.

* Buchanan, a former US Defence Department analyst, lectures at Auckland University.

Herald Feature: Iraq