Author     Christine Bogle

Last week, Tongans were taken by surprise by a sudden proclamation from the king, Tupou VI, that, following consideration of advice from the Speaker, Parliament was dissolved immediately and commanding fresh elections be held on 16 November, a year ahead of schedule. The move underscored the complications involved in embedding the country’s new democracy.
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In 2010 Tonga made a historic switch to a more democratic system, following a process instigated by then King George Tupou V (who reigned 2006-2012). Under his predecessor, King Tupou IV, a pro-democracy movement had grown up, calling for political reform. An increasing tempo of protest had built up, culminating in the tragic riots of 16 November 2006, which occurred despite the new king’s having by then already declared his commitment to democratisation.

Author: Jo Sprat
New Zealand goes to the polls on 23 September, presenting a time of opportunity for policy renewal. What would a post-election agenda for New Zealand’s international development cooperation efforts look like? What is an appropriate response to the evolving global context, what New Zealanders want, and what we know works?
 
The current National-party led government’s core foreign policy priority is to boost New Zealand exports. While there are other foci, such as security and global rules, trade dominates New Zealand’s foreign policy. New Zealand’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) is aligned with efforts to advertise, brand and sell New Zealand across the world. This approach undermines quality development cooperation efforts. We now have a mediocre Aid Programme, in a world where the challenges for global prosperity and peace demand more of New Zealand. 

Author    Robert Ayson

It’s no surprise that New Zealand strongly endorsed the UN Security Council’s latest sanctions against North Korea. One stone accounted for three birds. The first is Wellington’s concern that Kim Jong-Un’s nuclear program threatens regional stability and the prospects for nuclear disarmament. The second is that a response authorized by the Council is a big tick in the international legitimacy and rules-based system boxes. The third is that this response reflected US-China cooperation. That’s not only good for Wellington’s view of regional order, but also for hopes that President Trump may be thinking twice about setting off a trade war with China.
 
But as New Zealand’s diplomats will know, we have been here before. North Korea has already rejected the new measures and is unlikely to show much sign of slowing its missile and nuclear programs. China may have approved the additional sanctions. And its Foreign Minister criticized North Korea on the sidelines of a recent ASEAN Regional Forum meeting in Manila. But few expect Beijing to place maximum pressure on its wayward ally: for all its faults, North Korea remains a buffer state for China. And even if Beijing did maximize the economic pressure, few would expect Pyongyang to suddenly stop in its proliferation tracks. Barring regime collapse, the world will be dealing with North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs for some time to come.

Author    Charles Finny

​Last week I attended an excellent symposium at Victoria University of Wellington on the likely relationship between Donald Trump’s United States and Xi Jinping’s China and what evolving Sino-US ties might mean for the wider region, including Australia and New Zealand.
 
The keynote speaker was the former head of the Singaporean Foreign Service, Ambassador Bilahari Kausikan. His comments were most contentious on the US-China-DPRK issue.

In summary, Ambassador Kausikan said that China can’t put sufficient pressure on North Korea to stop its nuclear and missile programmes as this will cause the regime to collapse and this will in turn put the focus on China’s own regime.  The US can’t attack the DPRK militarily as the consequences for South Korea and Japan would be devastating (including potentially millions dead).  He also doubted that attempts to negotiate a peace treaty with the DPRK would be successful.

Author       Terence Wood

Murray McCully's time as New Zealand's foreign minister is at an end. On 1 May he'll be replaced by Gerry Brownlee. It's hard to know what Mr. Brownlee will mean for New Zealand's approach to foreign aid, but it's easy to assess Mr. McCully's legacy. He brought change, and he claims to have brought development when before there was only pseudo-expertise and waste. But the changes he made were either unneeded or harmful, and the development achievements he claims either haven't occurred or can't be attributed to him.
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McCully will be remembered for reintegrating New Zealand's semi-autonomous aid agency into the foreign ministry for no good reason. But the smaller injuries he inflicted on New Zealand aid were every bit as important. He took a well-functioning humanitarian emergency fund for NGOs and replaced it with one that was only able to get money out the door when stories of its dysfunction made it into the media. He killed off a similarly efficient fund for non-emergency NGO work. McCully's botched humanitarian emergency fund was eventually repaired. But, as the latest OECD review pointed out, New Zealand still wants for an effective general NGO funding tool.

Author     Robert Ayson

​We don’t have a lot to go on to evaluate New Zealand’s response so far to the heightened state of tension between North Korea and the United States. Pretty much the only direct evidence comes from the first two minutes of a radio interview given by Bill English earlier this week.
 
But the Prime Minister said enough for us to detect an approach that seems consistent with New Zealand’s existing line on North Korea’s troubling nuclear program. Perhaps the most obvious and important of these is that New Zealand would like to see this problem dealt with peacefully through diplomatic channels and in accordance with United Nations resolutions. A second is that North Korea is violating its international legal obligations, a point that echoes Foreign Minister McCully’s condemnation last month of North Korean missile testing. A third is that New Zealand welcomes signs of US-China collaboration, including indications that China is willing to increase economic pressure on North Korea. 

Author    Robert Ayson

Donald Trump’s Presidency began with a foreign policy decision forged in the furnace of America’s domestic politics. The abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership certainly has had implications for New Zealand. But it would have been unwise at the time, and is even less wise now, to conclude from this single step that all the new Administration’s external policy preferences would be reversals of what we had come to expect from Washington.
 
Yet there were reasons to wonder if at least some of the established settings would change as Trump arrived at the White House. The President-elect seemed to be angling for a change to Washington’s longstanding one China policy. But that has proven to be little more than a transitory thought. Rex Tillerson’s recent China visit is instructive here. We don’t know how robust things got in private discussions, but the Secretary of State’s language (using formulations we have come to expect from Beijing rather than Washington) cannot have been more welcome to Xi Jinping.

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Author     Peter Greener

​Over the weekend of 25-26 February 2017, tens of thousands were thrilled by flying displays hosted at RNZAF Base Ohakea on the eightieth anniversary of the founding of the Royal New Zealand Air Force. The RNZAF opened the Air Tattoo with a 'Thunder formation' led by a Boeing B757, with two Lockheed Martin Hercules C-130 LEPs and a Lockheed Martin P-3K2 Orion. They looked impressive as they flew overhead and remain very capable aircraft. But with the oldest of these aircraft now 52 years old, all three types are due to be replaced by about 2026. The importance of making the right decision cannot be overstated. 
 
Last June’s Defence White Paper 2016 contained little information about specific future capability purchases, and there was hope that this would be rectified with the release of the subsequent Defence Capability Plan in November. But notwithstanding the DCP’s claim that it was 'significantly more detailed than previous versions', details remain elusive. Whilst defining capability requirements is central to decision making, the public remain interested in the actual platforms, the aircraft, that might help fulfil those requirements. So what replacements are we likely to see?

Author     B K Greener

​In the last few weeks two major incidents have highlighted an ongoing dilemma. On November 4 the government announced the NZDF would, as had been forecast a few months earlier, start training the Iraqi Federal Police. An extension of the Building Partner Capacity Programme, this declaration was met with little public comment. More recently, a range of national and international military assets have been used to respond to the November 14 earthquakes that rocked New Zealand and caused devastation in and around Kaikoura. This time the public response has been overwhelmingly positive. However, these two incidents underscore an over reliance on utilising the military to respond to a range of issues. We need to have a conversation about this.
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Let’s start with police training. In Iraq, Bob Perito pointed out in 2006, that “the U.S. military’s takeover of indigenous police training was unprecedented”. In previous operations this responsibility had fallen to the Departments of State and Justice. In Iraq (and Afghanistan), however, it was decided that only the  U.S. military had the resources required to pursue the intended police training programme. In both countries heavily militarised police forces emerged; forces whose main focus was counter-insurgency. What happened as a result of this almost exclusive focus on counter-insurgency was not only a very high level of risk to those police officers, who were seen as softer targets than military personnel, but also a lack of emphasis on the skills and ethos actually needed to carry out civilian policing tasks. Significant abuses of power resulted and contributed to the conflict that continues on in both countries today.

Author    Robert Ayson

​Donald Trump’s astonishing election victory has provided a surreal context for John Kerry’s current visit to New Zealand. The Key government can promote the need for real Security Council action on Syria all it wants. And Mr Kerry can concur all he likes. But everyone is aware of the bigger picture. The 45th President is not going to be Hillary Clinton, who in 2010 became the first Obama Administration Secretary of State to visit New Zealand. And so Mr Kerry, who has just become the second, cannot offer a golden thread of American foreign policy consistency running from the present to the future. Instead his visit may be one of the last chances for normal conversations before the Trump team charge through the White House gates.
 
Just how many of Trump’s alarming foreign policy sentiments are converted into action will only be clear after January’s inauguration. But it would be foolish to think that his administration’s approach will be so toned down from campaign trail rhetoric that no one will really notice the difference from the Obama era.