Mfat chief Chris Seed (centre) warned the world was becoming more threatening. Photo / File- Jason Walls
Mfat chief Chris Seed (centre) warned the world was becoming more threatening. Photo / File- Jason Walls
The country’s top diplomat has warned the world is becoming more insecure and threatening - particularly for small countries like New Zealand.
He detailed work the ministry was doing bolstering NZ against the threat of foreign interference.
Chris Seed, chief executive and Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade told Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade select committee that the world was “seeing a shift from rules to power”.
“The world is tricky. Trends are pretty challenging for all states, but particularly for small states.
“We are seeing three big things happening: We are seeing a shift from rules to power - relative power is more important and resort to hard power is more evident.
“The shift from economics to security - relationships are being re-categorised, re-prioritised based on a security element. You see more militarisation, more securitisation of everything from defence forces to supply chains.
“There is a move from efficiency to resilience - a move from just-in-time economies and supply chains to just-in-case and that is pretty tricky for small countries because it tends to lead to protectionist tendencies,” Seed said.
Seed was asked about the work the MFAT was doing to make NZ resilient to economic coercion, which involves states using economic threats to achieve their diplomatic aims.
He would not say which country was the most threatening when it came to economic coercion - China is widely assumed to be the country most likely to engage in economic coercion.
“The response to it is not to target particular countries, but to build a system that is in one sense country agnostic,” Seed said.
“It’s not for me to disclose here that any one country is higher up the list than others,” Seed said.
Later in the committee meeting, Seed noted that China had used economic coercion against other countries.
He listed the experience of Lithuania and Norway, which faced trade issues in retaliation to their stance on Taiwan and awarding the Nobel peace prize to a Chinese dissident.
He said there was a “very public dispute between Australia and China and this included a range of trade measures that we felt were not acceptable”.
“That’s why we joined as a third party in at least two of the Australian disputes in the WTO,” Seed said.
Seed spoke to the broader issue of national security.
“Assessments have made clear the concern and the need to strengthen the resilience of the state, whether it’s the Parliament, electoral law, supply chains, technologies and how we ensure that our diaspora communities in NZ feel safe and protected,” he said.
The committee also discussed the prospects of securing a free trade agreement with India - one of NZ’s most significant markets.
Australia had recently been able to secure a limited agreement with India.
MFAT Deputy Secretary Trade and Economic Vangelis Vitalis said NZ was in a difficult position when it came to trade agreements with India because of the significance of the dairy sector in both countries.
“India is a critical partner of ours and the Australians have a free trade agreement. That FTA does not include dairy… it is impossible for NZ to do an FTA that does not include dairy… because it is such a significant part of our export profile,” Vitalis said.
