Author    David Capie

​Hot on the heels of the Hague Tribunal’s decision about the South China Sea, Foreign Minister McCully is back in Asia. Back-to-back meetings with ASEAN, ASEAN Regional Forum and East Asia Summit foreign ministers this week in Laos will give McCully and his diplomatic team a front row seat to assess the rapidly changing regional security situation.
 
But as well as providing New Zealand with a chance to listen and share our views on pressing regional issues, the sidelines of these meetings also provide important opportunities for one-on-one discussions with regional partners. Among the many ‘bilaterals’ scheduled for Mr McCully in Vientiane was one with special significance. For the first time in more than two years he met his counterpart from Thailand. In doing so, he signalled a major reversal of government policy.

Author   Terence O'Brien

​Although the 2016 Defence White Paper (DWP 2016) does not itemise a sequence of equipment purchases, the commitment to expenditure upon identified capabilities lends predictability for defence planners. It reinforces too the value of a small professional defence force as a national asset in advancing NZ interests. Those interests are now in an era of substantial transformation.
 
DWP 2016 represents the only public NZ document that conveys through the single lens of defence policy, official thinking about the world “big picture”. There is no equivalent political or economic document.  DWP 2016 is also the first official statement  on NZ defence and security following decisions to strengthen the Prime Minister’s Department with extended national security powers (including external intelligence connections)  thus bringing NZ practice into closer line with that in more powerful traditional defence partners although NZ’s own hard power is negligible; and its level of international ambition is different - including from Australia.

Author   W J Fish

Recent developments in international politics have highlighted the uneasy attitude that politicians are beginning to develop towards information, truth, evidence and expert opinion. In the UK, where the Brexit referendum has now concluded, we not only found members of the Leave campaign claiming that the British people “have had enough of experts”, they also made a number of promises – that a post-EU UK would save £350M per week that could be spent on the NHS, and that immigration would be reduced in the event of a leave vote – that were speedily dropped after the votes were counted. The Remain camp were also guilty, however: in the event of a leave vote they threatened both the immediate triggering of Article 50 and a “punishment budget”, neither of which ultimately transpired.

Across the Atlantic, where the presidential election is still to come, we find Donald Trump, who is notorious for making claims that not only contradict one another, but actually turn out to be false, with PolitiFact suggesting that 76% of the 77 Trump statements they checked were false to some degree. It’s even been alleged that he has impersonated his own spokesman. And whilst things haven’t yet reached such dire straits here in New Zealand, journalists have complained that over the past decade or so, access to accurate information has become more difficult, and successive Prime Ministers have shown signs of playing “fast and loose with the truth”.

Author: Robert Ayson

News that Minister Todd McClay will be seeking assurances on New Zealand’s trade position from his EU and UK counterparts following the pro-Brexit referendum vote reinforces a predictable focus. As night precedes day, pre-referendum coverage in New Zealand focused on the economic implications of a leave vote. And as day then turns into night, a continuation of the same pattern is to be expected.
 
But Brexit is going to be a much bigger and wider problem for New Zealand because of what it means for the western commitment to a global order founded on international cooperation. Britain is now set to exit the European Union, which, for all its faults, has been the deepest experiment in voluntary cooperative interstate relations the world has ever seen. In turn an already strained EU has been robbed of one of the five permanent members of the UNSC, and one of its most pragmatic and sensible participants. Despite the efforts of the remaining 27 powers to rally around a flag with one less star, whatever remains of the EU’s aspirations for significant global influence is fast disappearing. Likewise, an already diminished United States has lost its chief EU partner in the promotion of global rules. A major new crack in the trans-Atlantic commitment to sustained international leadership has been opened. And if you think this doesn’t matter, just think for a moment about Syria, Iraq, Iran, Libya, Ukraine, terrorism, nuclear proliferation, human rights, and cyber-security.