Frank Greenall: Diplomacy a foreign concept

IN THE HOT SEAT: Foreign Minister Gerry Brownlee. PHOTO/FILE

JUST A couple of days into office as New Zealand's new Foreign Minister, Gerry "Bomber" Brownlee, firmly wrapped up this year's Bull in the China Shop Foreign Policy award.

No sooner had Big Gerry eased himself into the hot seat than he was firing off a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, mewling for New Zealand to be clasped once more to the warm bosom of the Israeli Government's good graces. This, of course, was referencing Israel's sending New Zealand to Coventry for co-sponsoring the UN Security Council Resolution 2334, calling for the cessation of Israeli settlement programmes.

Even more extraordinarily, in a later RNZ interview, Gerry justified his epic Epistle to the Judeans on the grounds that the value of Security Council resolutions was in the "willingness of the parties who are having the resolution imposed upon them to accept what's in it," and as such the resolution was "premature".

Implicit in this view is a shape-shifting concept of biblical proportions: namely, that no UN resolution should ever be passed unless the party being chastised agrees that the chastisement directed at it is a splendidly good idea.

As such, on principle Gerry would also have been opposed to, say, New Zealand's support earlier the same year for Security Council Resolution 2253, calling for sanctions against Isis and Al-Qaeda in Iraq and the Levant. Or even just last month, the adoption of UN Resolution 2349 seeking to address Boko Haram atrocities.

Frank Greenall

It's doubtful the extremist parties in question would have put their hands together to applaud and welcome resolutions whose intent was to terminate their own grossly unsavoury activities.

Resolution 2334 itself has well entrenched both supporters and detractors. But just as a matter of process we should be very concerned by the elephant-in-the-room approach of a minister now NZ foreign policy's front-of-house.

As you may recall, New Zealand spent an estimated several million dollars and many thousands of Foreign Office hours in seeking another term on the Security Council -- something that had been a "number one" NZ foreign policy priority for National since taking office six years previously.

"We nailed it", then Foreign Minister Murray McCully exalted from New York. Accompanying pictures showed scenes such as NZ's Ambassador to the UN, ex-Prime Minister Jim McLay, with head in hands reeling at the momentous announcement. Other heavyweight envoys included another ex-PM, Jim Bolger, and former Foreign Minister and Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations, Don McKinnon.

The then Prime Minister John Key was equally ecstatic. "We have worked very hard on the bid for close to a decade because we believe new Zealand can make a positive difference to world affairs and provide a unique and independent voice at the world's top table," he declaimed.

Something even more extraordinary was to come. During our two-year tenure we actually helped broker what arguably qualified as a rare, meaningful United Nations Resolution.

But as of last week, according to Gerry, it was all now just one big mistake!

So, did all this forethought, time, energy and expense suddenly get short shrift after sombre consideration by the National government's new leader? Apparently not. In the wake of the Brownlee epistle, Bill English reiterated that Resolution 2334 did indeed reflect the NZ Government position on the Israeli/Palestinian question.

If English is not dissembling, then Brownlee is doing an excellent impersonation of the up-river, jungle-fevered, rogue figure Colonel Kurtz, as featured in Apocalypse Now.

If so, comeuppance was swift. But unlike the grisly fate of the film character, played by Marlon Brando (machete-ed to death by Martin Sheen), Brownlee only had to very publicly eat a big slice of dead rat pie as proffered by his Australian counterpart, Julie Bishop, over the NZ students in Oz tertiary fees issue. Yum, gagged Foreign Minister Kurtz.