To Russia, with a little love
Outrage is a valuable diplomatic commodity, and that may be why governments use it sparingly. Nuance, tone and emphasis do the heavy lifting on the diplomatic cocktail circuit, most of the time.
Yet given the scale of the angry global response to the recent Russian chemical weapons attack on British soil, it is easy to see why our government’s inaction made headlines, both here and overseas. Some 20 countries in all – with 18 of them being in the European Union with whom we’re dead keen to clinch a trade deal – have found common cause in expelling squads of Russian diplomats and/or spies, as payback for the events in Salisbury. New Zealand, conspicuously, did not add any Russians at all to the expulsion queue.
The justification for this inaction all but begged for ridicule. ‘‘While other countries have announced they are expelling undeclared Russian intelligence agents,’’ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern explained, ‘‘officials have advised there are no individuals here in New Zealand who fit this profile.’’ Unfortunately, this looked more like a failure of detection on our part, than a case of disinterest on Russia’s part. As others noted, what on earth are the security services doing with the funding boosts they get in every Budget round?
Why would Russian spies be interested in us? Because we belong to the Five Eyes security alliance, and have prior form as being a weak link in the West’s chain of security. After all, it was through investigative journalism initiated in New Zealand during the mid 1990s, that the world first learned about the existence of the Echelon system of global surveillance.
Basically, we are always of interest to the major powers, if only because we have powerful friends who share interesting things with us. Too bad we can’t detect the spies in our midst.
In this case, the inaction appeared to double down upon the Russia-friendly noises made recently by Foreign Minister Winston Peters – who had cautioned against a rush to judgement on Russia’s role in the Malaysian MH17 airliner disaster, and in the United States elections. Moreover, Peters has lobbied for a trade deal between New Zealand and Russia.
Belatedly, the Ardern government backed up its verbal condemnations of Russia over the Salisbury attack by announcing travel sanctions against a range of Russian individuals – including all of the diplomats expelled by our Five Eyes partners. Reportedly, New Zealand would still be reliant upon our allies telling us the names of the Russian nationals that we should be sanctioning in this fashion.
Once again, Peters refused to lay blame, unequivocally, on Russia. As he did with the missile that shot down flight MH17, he conceded that the missile/nerve agent was Russian-made and came from that country – but added that the British investigation had yet to say who was responsible.
This might have passed muster in an earlier, kinder time. Last week, however, outrage was in the air. It was being directed at Russia’s use of chemical weapons to silence its enemies, and at Aussie cricketers tampering with the ball to defeat their opponents.
Fairly or otherwise, what the Ardern government thinks is foreign policy even-handedness is looking a lot more like dithering.