Foreign policy challenge NZ must be wary of

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Jacinda Ardern has affirmed that a close relationship with the US is “fundamental” to New Zealand’s foreign policy outlook. Photo: Lynn Grieveson Newsroom

The more the unrelenting US-China competition foreshadowed in contemporary US planning becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, the more New Zealand and its partners need to encourage a regional environment less dominated by the ambitions of the big two, writes Robert Ayson for Newsroom today.

It’s not impossible to find foreign policy convergence between the Ardern Government and the Trump Administration. New Zealand’s Prime Minister recently said her Government ‘accepts’ the reasons for the limited use of force against Syria, which was led by the United States with contributions from the United Kingdom and France. New Zealand and the US have both endorsed the evolving dialogue between South and North Korea. And while Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un may not be able to make the region great again, Wellington will have taken some comfort that preparations for their meeting have delayed the chance of violence on the peninsula.Yet the areas of divergence make for quite a list. In her first major foreign policy speech as Prime Minister, Ardern affirmed that a close relationship with the US was “fundamental” to New Zealand’s foreign policy outlook. But she also pinpointed two specific areas of difference. One was climate change. The Trump Administration’s withdrawal from the Paris agreement stands in contrast to Ardern’s pitch that this issue is the nuclear-free movement for her generation.

Continue to the full article || may 01, 2018 |||

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