Author     Malcolm Cook

Negotiating mega-regional trade deals is hard going but there are few other attractive trade diplomacy options now that the WTO is in a negotiating coma. This is particularly true for small, open, trade-dependent economies like New Zealand. Too small to lead negotiations, too open to have many horses to trade during negotiations, demanding of high standards, and able to be jettisoned without too much effect.
 
The long and winding road that has led us to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (the tongue twisting CPTPP) is testament to this reality. However, if the CPTPP does come into force, it will be the first preferential trade agreement reached by New Zealand that includes Japan (New Zealand’s 5th largest trading partner) and Canada (14th largest trade partner). CPTPP would also be an upgrade on existing trade agreements that include Singapore (6th largest), Malaysia (10th largest) and Vietnam (16th largest).
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Author     David Capie

​Defence Minister Ron Mark had a front row seat from which to view Asia’s increasingly fractious geopolitics as he attended the 2018 Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore last weekend. The Dialogue, billed as ‘Asia’s Premier Security Conference’ brought together 40 defence ministers, and hundreds of senior military officers and defence officials for two days of intensive discussions. As well as the keynote speeches, panels and thematic sessions, national delegations used the sidelines of the conference to engage in diplomatic speed-dating with counterparts from around the region. Mr Mark’s dance card included bilateral meetings with Australian, Canadian, Chinese, Singaporean, Malaysian and British counterparts (among others), as well as a breakfast with US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.
 
This year’s Shangri La Dialogue was in some ways ‘the summit before the summit’, coming just days before President Trump is due to meet North Korea’s Kim Jong Un just down the road in Sentosa. Perhaps because of that, North Korea featured less prominently than might otherwise have been expected. Instead, much of the attention was on increasingly sharp ties between Washington and Beijing, and on efforts to promote new ways of thinking about the region’s contested strategic geography.

Author     Simon Murdoch

New Zealand’s thinking about its maritime interests and defence priorities has favoured a customary hierarchy. Local and South Pacific regional concerns come first and then we span out eventually to global commitments. But recent developments in the East Asian littoral and the Northern Pacific  suggest this approach may run New Zealand into a hole. We may be at a strategic turning point in terms of risks to our interests and  in need of a paradigm shift where policy settings can be adapted to the changes occurring in this wider maritime periphery.
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The idea that New Zealand even has a contested maritime periphery is not automatic in our thinking which emphasises our quest for well-governed seas much closer to home. Thanks to advances in international law and the multilateral system since the 1970s, New Zealand today claims sovereign rights over an extensive sea and seabed estate that runs well into the West Tasman sea and deep into the Southern Ocean, abutting the waters protected by the Antarctic Treaty system. 

Author        Robert Ayson

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 UK and France. New Zealand and the United States have both endorsed the evolving dialogue between South and North Korea. And while Trump and Kim Jong-Un may not be able to make the region great again, Wellington will have taken some comfort that preparations for their meeting has delayed the chance of violence on the peninsular.
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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 United States 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. 

Authors         Tess Newton Cain and Anna Powles

At the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) held in London last week, Britain's Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson announced the UK would expand its diplomatic network with the opening of nine new diplomatic posts in Commonwealth countries, including three in the Pacific: Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu. The reasons given were threefold: boosting prosperity, addressing security issues, and environmental protection.

The UK’s post-Brexit reorientation to the Pacific is raising a number of questions about the nature of Britain’s re-engagement with the region. Here we examine three critical areas for consideration: security, the quality of political and diplomatic engagement and regionalism.

Author      Robert Ayson

Speaking in Paris, the first stop on her European visit, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern connected the dots between two of her government’s central foreign policy priorities: the South Pacific and climate change. “New Zealand does not simply sit in the Pacific”, she told the Paris Institute of Political Studies, “We are the Pacific too, and we are doing our best to stand with our family as they face these threats.”
 
A strong Pacific emphasis has also featured in Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ early contributions to the coalition government’s approach to the world. His signature moment to date is his address in Sydney where he said it was “critical for New Zealand to embark on a new, re-energized Pacific strategy.”

 Authors     Benedict Xu-Holland and Harry Berger

​When Trade Minister David Parker signed the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in Chile on 8 March it came just a few weeks after the Labour-led coalition government released a National Impact Assessment of the deal. In a series of interviews Parker argued that Labour was signing TPP-11 for pragmatic reasons (he gave the agreement a ‘7 out of 10’). Walking away from the deal, he said, would mean New Zealand would suffer a net-loss from a decline in investment and trade opportunities. The evidence Parker cited was largely based on the country's prior preferential trade agreements (PTAs). For example, he said the 2008 New Zealand–China Free Trade Agreement (NZCFTA) was the reason for the huge increase in trade and investment between the two countries in the last decade. ​

​But how persuasive are Mr. Parker’s claims? Without detailed post-hoc modelling it is near impossible to credibly infer causality between New Zealand's PTAs and aggregate trade growth. A host of variables may be responsible, from changing migration patterns to a shift to consumption-based growth. Australia, which only signed a PTA with China in late 2015, saw its own trade quadruple during the previous decade. In light of this, can New Zealand credibly attribute our success to the NZCFTA? And what does this mean for claims made about the CPTPP?

Author      Joanna Spratt 

Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters’ recent ‘Shifting the Dial’ speech brought some welcome clarity to the new government’s foreign policy, complementing Prime Minister Ardern’s first foreign policy speech of a few days earlier. Delivered in Sydney, Peters’ speech focused on New Zealand’s neighbourhood: Australia and Pacific Island Countries. What did the speech signal for New Zealand’s development cooperation efforts under the Ardern government?
 
The most interesting part of the Minster’s speech was the ‘shift of the dial’ in working with the Pacific. New principles now underpin New Zealand’s “shared destiny” with Pacific Island Countries: understanding, friendship, mutual benefit, collective ambition, and sustainable results. Underpinning these principles is the assertion that New Zealand has a common identity with the Pacific, and therefore similar interests. This is the analysis that led to the integration, about a year ago, of MFAT’s Pacific Division and the Pacific Aid Programme. The Minister’s speech is a clear articulation of what this integration can mean in diplomatic terms.
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Author    Jon Fraenkel

During a whistle-stop tour of Samoa, Tonga, Niue and the Cook Islands, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has promised a ‘reset’ of Pacific policy. She says her government can and will do better in the region. Speaking at the Lowy Institute in Australia on March 1st, Foreign Minister Winston Peters stressed the need to ‘shift the dial’ on New Zealand’s Pacific policy. But beyond a few new projects to build roads, provide cyclone relief, and assist small businesses, and a sensible revision to rules about portability of pensions, what is really likely to change as regards New Zealand’s Pacific policy?
 
Much of Mr Peters’ Lowy Institute speech offered the familiar warm words about New Zealand’s distinctive Pacific identity, but he also indicated considerable ‘anxiety’ about China’s presence in the region. Bearing hallmarks of continuity rather than change, Mr Peters echoed the focus of his predecessor on ‘sustainable economic development’. That prioritization has been contested by some critics of former Minister of Foreign Affairs Murray McCully’s aid policy, who prefer instead a focus on poverty alleviation and social welfare.   

Author     David Capie

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gave us the clearest sense yet of the direction New Zealand’s coalition government will take in foreign policy in a speech to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs in Wellington this week. 
 
Any Prime Minister’s first big foreign policy speech attracts interest, but given Ardern sits at the head of an ideologically diverse three-party government, her address drew closer scrutiny than most. The Prime Minister faced the dual challenge of laying out a fresh new foreign policy vision while juggling the diverse interests of her New Zealand First and Green Party partners.
 
In this, the speech was largely successful.