Alone, alone, all, all, alone.

• Author: James, Colin
• Position: Globalization and diplomacy - Essay

Colin James reflects on some international economic and political developments against the background of major changes in global demography, inter-dependency and interconnectedness.

A rather long time ago my French teacher in my modest provincial high school, a school baptised just in time for the baby-boom surge into the secondary system which I slightly predated, used to pronounce that my alleged facility with foreign languages destined me for the diplomatic service. I could never have got to her destination: I lacked a diplomatic manner; I lacked the requisite IQ; and I did not have the connections.

So instead of lying abroad for my country (a phrase with suggestive overtones), I hacked off into the underbrush of journalism, for much lower kudos and lucre. I did get an MA in languages, principally French--including a research paper on the concept of honour in 17th century French tragedy, a concept erased along with my youthful credulity by the French government's cynical chauvinism after the Rainbow Warrior murder--which I broadened over the next two decades into political science, economics, Maori and most of a law degree, all relevant to a dilettantish lifetime of never needing to know very much, still less acquire an expertise--that is, to a lifetime as a journalist.

So my comments come not from an understanding of the mysterious semaphore of international affairs and foreign policy but from my occasional squints at the 'wide, wide sea' of international relations from my cave in Sir Peter Jackson's New Hobbitland and from my musings on how this very small, displaced nation-state--'alone, alone, all, all, alone'--might navigate these endlessly heaving waters. We have done not too badly till now, not least thanks to a foreign service which experts from other countries have repeatedly, until recently, told me has been as good as, and sometimes better than, larger foreign services, including, a number of Australians have told me, Australia's.

On this count I note Stuart McMillan's column of outrage late last year. Many of you will know Stuart as a careful, considered journalist not given to sensation or emotion. That he wrote as he did speaks loudly, to which I will add only that in my 39 years of covering politics, including the public service, I have never experienced anything remotely approaching such upset and anger among the staff of any government agency. The diplomatic deficit in the handling of the reconstruction of the ministry would have dismayed my French teacher. My fear is that the ministry's capacity to do the job an independent foreign policy requires has been damaged--though I have been modestly encouraged by glimmerings of a recovery of morale in the past few months.

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Politicians' distaste for the foreign service is not new. Sir Keith Holyoake could not abide the pointyheads who knew more than he did. Sir Robert Muldoon did not like pointyheads fullstop (though the mercurial Tim Groser got on OK with him, Tim says --but Tim is a consummate actor). Helen Clark out-pointyheaded mere public servants. But the contempt evident in the current Cabinet's treatment of the foreign service has been egregious.

Zero leverage

The point is that small countries, unlike large or even middle-sized countries, have zero leverage and therefore for influence must use other tools, including:

* First, being a co-operative player and honest broker demonstrating through action a genuine interest in promoting peace, goodwill and compromise in a rules-based world, as New Zealand has, for example, through its disproportionate contribution to peacekeeping and peacemaking and through its support of human rights, including the right of reasonable self-determination. Last year's retreat on climate change -the quintessential candidate for global co-operation--risked some of that reputation, whatever the realpolitik of Kyoto 2'S value.

* Second, not taking sides between competing great powers or middling powers but always recognising the legitimate interests of those powers and arguing for balance and reason, as we have mostly done over the past quarter-century since we gave up imperial sycophancy. This government's enthusiasm for the United States has edged us back from independence but not yet divorced us from it. (I use 'independence' here in contrast with alliance, not as an absolute.)

* Third, taking responsibility for the well-being of even smaller states in its region, which New Zealand by and large does, though Oxfam would argue it leaves much to be desired.

* Fourth, investing judiciously in a skilled foreign service, which New Zealand has never really done but got creditable service nevertheless.

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Vangelis Vitalis, now ambassador in Brussels, has suggested we look for clues in Plataea's conduct during the Peloponnesian wars. David Skilling, expatriated to Singapore, has argued that the potential small-economy states have to navigate difficult economic times better than large-economy states but...