Give the peace unit a chance
New Zealanders were enormously proud when they saw Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern address the United Nations General Assembly in September but how many could give any sort of account of what was said? We remember the powerful images of Ardern at the podium and her partner and baby in the audience but apart from a vague sense that the speech was somehow ‘‘anti-Trump’’, the content bypassed most of us.
This is not to say the speech was in any way a meaningless moment but rather that foreign policy is a low priority in our day-to-day lives. As foreign policy specialist Nina Hall suggests, politics is mostly about issues like taxes and petrol prices, leadership contests and likeability. Bigpicture thinking about a global paradigm seems abstract. This is despite our selfimage as moral leaders and our national mythology about the nuclear-free movement’s impact on the wider world, and despite the very real problems we all face.
In the Pacific, Ardern said, climate change is not an academic issue but a direct challenge. She introduced the concept of kaitiakitanga, meaning guardianship. This expresses ‘‘the idea that we have been entrusted with our environment, and have a duty of care’’. This allowed Ardern to present New Zealand values as synonymous with environmental values.
She also spoke of kindness as a dominant political value: ‘‘In the face of isolationism, protectionism, racism – the simple concept of looking outwardly and beyond ourselves, of kindness and collectivism, might just be as good a starting point as any.’’
But what would that look like in concrete terms? A new policy development and advocacy group, the New Zealand Alternative, which includes Hall, argues for a truly independent foreign policy and suggests that New Zealand create a conflict prevention unit focusing on peace mediation. It would be independent of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, with staff also coming from Defence, Police and private sector organisations. It could have six staff and would require an annual budget of $1.1 million.
The New Zealand Alternative looks back on a rich peace tradition, including ‘‘the Parihaka movement, experiences from the Waitangi Tribunal, our nuclear-free movement and the Bougainville peace talks that New Zealand hosted and facilitated in the 1990s’’.
The idea of developing New Zealand into a world leader in conflict resolution and mediation has obvious merit. It is also timely, as the group has clearly taken both Ardern and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters at their word. While Ardern stressed the importance of multilateralism, Peters openly told the Otago Foreign Policy School in June that the Government needs to hear from ‘‘a sophisticated media and academia’’.
Is the more activism-focused work of the New Zealand Alternative the kind of thing he had in mind? Perhaps not but it does fit with the broader outline of his speech, when he said, ‘‘New Zealand’s leverage internationally must rest on the quality of our ideas and the principles we promote, including our reputation as an honest broker’’.
He called on academics and other experts to be bold and take risks, warning that small thinking leads to small outcomes. Perhaps we should give the peace unit a chance.
‘‘The idea of developing New Zealand into a world leader in conflict resolution and mediation has obvious merit.’’