New Zealand Police: from drug enforcement to peacekeeping: Hamish McCardle outlines the evolving New Zealand police role in international relations.

• Author: McCardle, Hamish
• Position: Cover story

The evolving role of the New Zealand Police in international relations would not have been a topic for consideration even ten years ago. There may still be some who view the current interest in using 'blue shirts' on the international stage as merely a passing fad. This article does not attempt to dispel or support such a view for the longer term. k is based on what I observed as the Police Liaison Officer in Jakarta, covering the period between the first Bali bombings in 2002 and the more recent Bali bombings in 2005. In that light, the views expressed in this article are shaped by the particular experiences I have had in this area.

The tide of this article is not intended to convey a shift of emphasis away from international drugs enforcement to peacekeeping roles for the New Zealand Police. Rather, it describes a spectrum of international activities in which the New Zealand Police are now working. Also worthy of mention in that spectrum are the emergency response and capacity-building roles. These four different policing activities will be referred to below.

Before discussing the main topic of the New Zealand Police and international relations, I shall first put into context changes that have occurred in the role of the New Zealand Police in the domestic environment. The New Zealand Police today are working in a highly networked way with organisations from the public, private and not-for-profit sectors. Gone are the days of 'police the pubs to manage the towns' as the singular approach to crime control. Today, multi-disciplinary and multi-agency teams problem-solve underlying issues to try and stabilise situations, prevent offenders committing crimes and victims suffering repeated harm.

There is an evolving police doctrine which indicates that there are a number of elements in community safety that can be integrated and co-ordinated to produce better outcomes for social well being. These include:

* a policing approach that is community-oriented;

* the application of problem-solving meth-odologies to crime and vehicle crashes;

* a timely and effective response to calls for service;

* high quality investigations; and

* effective prosecutions and resolutions.

These activities represent a broader and deeper role for policing in New Zealand than the approaches used only 20 years ago. These changes have direct relevance to the evolving police role in international relations.

Also, it is surely no coincidence that the New Zealand Police's growing role in international relations is occurring alongside a similar increase in the role of police forces from other countries that are engaged in international policing activity (for example Australia, United Kingdom, Canada and France).

For this article two relevant questions are:

* What is driving demand for international policing services both in traditional crime investigation roles and in new roles such as peacekeeping and emergency response?

* Why are policing responses increasingly seen as part of the solution to international problems?

Changing world

People today seem to be increasingly interested in rational choices. They understand that international conflicts and crises are complex, and they appreciate it when governments calibrate their responses accordingly. Many are also interested in responses that protect human rights. The notion that 'war' should be rejected as an option or solution to international crises has gathered momentum over the latter half of the 20th century. The impetus for these new expectations has come from, among other things, some significant events in recent history: the end of the Cold War, most notably the slackening pace of the nuclear arms race and the receding threat of mutually assured destruction; the break-up of the Soviet Union; and the increasing military and economic strength of regional powers such as China and India.

We live in an increasingly confident world where world war (rightly or wrongly) is seen as a very distant threat. The increasing demand for civil society has given rise to a more measured approach in the management of difficult issues in the international arena. Civil society expectations of the way states relate to one another form part of the 'post-modernist' view of the international system. These expectations of a just, cooperative and peaceful world are similar to what may be generally called the 'New Zealand way'.

Changes in how societies in the developed world view problems and how modern governments respond to such problems are leading to an increasing desire for more proportionate and bespoke civil society responses. This places greater demands on governments to provide a comprehensive range of constructive and practical solutions in international relations. Policing is one such solution that is occurring in both the internal and international domains.

New problems

Along with changed expectations, changes have also occurred in the nature of the security problems we now face. These new(ish) types of security problems can be complex and variable. Of course, it is debatable whether today's problems are more complex than the security issues of former decades. However, prior to the two world wars the thinking that underpinned the resolution of problems in international relations was such that it led to the consideration of war as a means of projecting power over one's neighbours.

Today, due to changes in the international system from a bipolar world to a unipolar world (where one state remains pre-eminent in its ability to project its power around the globe) and the emergence of stronger regional powers, we seem to be confronted by a multitude of smaller, but nevertheless vexing, international security problems. Often these states are associated with local and regional conflicts or emergencies. Whatever the reasons, the main focus of international security in the current context of the international system is no longer the prevention of large-scale...