Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Independent foreign policy questioned
TALKING POLITICS
OPINION: Amid the recent furore over Dr Guarav Sharma, it was easy to miss the selfcongratulatory press release from Defence Minister Peeni Henare and Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta about the ‘‘next phase’’ of our $39 million contribution to the coalition against Islamic State in Iraq.
We’re doing great, apparently.
‘‘Aotearoa New Zealand has been a proud member of the 84-nation coalition,’’ the ministers jointly trumpeted ‘‘which has been successful in degrading the military capability of ISIS . . .’’ We’re now putting another $4 million into helping to rebuild the country.
Great. Yet, unfortunately, Islamic State is also ‘‘rebuilding’’ itself almost everywhere except the Middle East. In Afghanistan, the Western withdrawal has left ordinary Afghans to the mercies of the Taliban, who are reportedly hunting down and killing friends – and family members – who helped Western countries in the past. To all intents, our repatriation efforts for those Afghans ended a year ago, with the last flight out of Kabul.
In the wake of the Western exit, Islamic State now poses the main military threat to Taliban rule. Nine affiliates of Islamic State are also said to be on the rise in Africa, the new Ground Zero for the group’s next caliphate. In short, the ministerial celebrations over yesteryear’s victories over IS seem premature.
Declaring phantom victories has almost become par for the diplomatic course, though. In the Pacific, the China menace appears to have been something of a mirage all along. The Solomons government had indeed asked Beijing for security help to reassure its own Chinese community, which had borne the brunt of the burning and looting of Honiara in November last year.
Under Western pressure, the Solomons government has repeated its original assurance that this assistance had nothing to do with offering China a military base now, or in the future.
This re-statement by Solomons Prime Minister
Manasseh Sogovare – no military base for China! – has been treated as a victory for Australian and New Zealand diplomacy in the Pacific. The China threat has been met, and rebuffed. In the wake of this ‘‘victory’’, there has been excited talk of New Zealand being invited to join the new Aukus defence pact between the UK, the US and Australia. This pact has China as its main target. In its name, the US has offered to equip the Australians with a fleet of nuclear submarines.
That sounds rather familiar. A nuclear propelled and nuclear armed pact in the South Pacific that includes the US, Australia and New Zealand? Didn’t a previous Labour prime minister have something to say about that sort of thing, during a debate held at Oxford University in the 1980s?
Under the current Government, New Zealand has taken up an invitation to have observer status at some meetings of the Quad, a security and diplomacy pact between the US, Japan, Australia and India. Again, combating China seems to be the Quad’s main justification for its existence.
Certainly, China is not a benign force. Superpowers rarely are. Even so, the current enthusiasm for New Zealand to be seen as a team player on global security issues puts a question mark over our claims to have an entirely independent foreign policy.