NZ faces new age of Trump
President Obama’s final speech is a reminder that New Zealand’s relationship with the United States is about to become more difficult. Just how difficult, remains to be seen. New Zealand has in recent years enjoyed evercloser links with its American patron, partly due to former prime minister John Key’s genuine friendship with Obama. Diplomacy is always partly personal, and the warmth between the two men was palpable.
Geopolitics also helped. Obama’s tilt towards the Asia-Pacific region was a euphemism for building influence against the rival super-power, China. The tilt, however, included a warming of the relationship with its sometimes-wayward small friend, New Zealand.
Donald Trump might test this new harmony. His new stance towards Israel backs the one-state triumphalism of Benjamin Netanyahu, who warned New Zealand that fighting the settlements was ‘‘an act of war’’.
Foreign Minister Murray McCully’s conspicuously ‘‘independent’’ act over the Security Council resolution was actually an act of alliance with Obama. So how will McCully manage the relationship with the pro-Israel president?
With his usual adroit twisting and turning, no doubt. His successor as foreign minister will need the same flexibility.
It might be harder to find a way through an all-out trade war between the United States and China, New Zealand’s main economic patron.
Till now New Zealand has managed to play both sides of the street. However, there have been alarming signs of Chinese aggression.
China swatted Gerry Brownlee after he made some mild remarks about its dangerous power play in the South China Sea.
China issued a naked threat when New Zealand proposed to investigate claims of Chinese steel dumping in New Zealand. Officials decided, rightly, to go ahead anyway.
Trump’s threats against China are politically important – they are part of his pitch to the American working-class casualties of globalisation – and so he might not be able to quietly forget them. If so, it will be harder for New Zealand to fudge.
On Obama’s TPP agreement, there can be no fudging. New Zealand’s dream of ‘‘free trade’’ with the United States is dead.
The change from Obama to Trump is a switch from predictability to the opposite. Obama was a noticeably decent man whose motives were known and broadly understood.
Trump’s motives are a mystery, his behaviour (to put it mildly) erratic and questionable. Whether the ‘‘Russian dossier’’ about Trump is true is almost beside the point. Trump’s admitted mistreatment of women makes the claims at least plausible. If this is all Vladimir Putin had on Trump, it might be asked, what is the problem?
The world doesn’t know what Trump will do, and perhaps Trump doesn’t either.
For America’s small friend and sort-of ally, New Zealand, the uncertainty is agonising.
New Zealand’s relationship with the US is about to become more difficult.