Facing harsh truths and finding a way: Terence O'Brien comments on the complexity of international affairs and how New Zealand responds.

• Author: O'Brien, Terence
• Position: Report

New Zealand's approach to world affairs has always been influenced by its circumstances, which include absence of critical mass, remote location, lack of strategic raw materials and limited productive capacity. Its experience, especially in two world wars, helped shape a particular psychology of dependency in international affairs. Our strategic pathway was, therefore, straightforward if not always easy. But in today's world New Zealand must deal with a far more complex situation, though changes to the psychology of dependence still appear tentative. In an increasingly diverse international political landscape, New Zealand has a vital strategic interest in rules-based order. It must advocate for a more inclusive system that reflects the realities of the emerging international order.

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Thinking about how New Zealand responds to the complexities of world affairs should begin modestly by reflecting upon the realities of New Zealand's own circumstances--absence of critical mass, remote location, lack of strategic raw materials, and a productive capacity centred chiefly around the products of the land and of the sea. The hand of fate was sometimes blamed previously for realities that diminished New Zealand's potential. In more recent times as we have leveraged modern technology and as communications and travel have collapsed time and space, the realities of New Zealand's geographical existence are viewed more positively because they provide some protections against manifest risks that accompany modern globalisation--illicit trades, people smuggling, crime, pollution, piracy, health pandemics, internationalised terrorism as well as direct military attack.

Experience, of course, shapes attitudes about most things, including foreign relations. New Zealand's own emergence on to the world stage throughout the course of the 20th century coincided with an age of warfare and great power rivalry--in the form of two savage world wars (the first such in human history) and a prolonged Cold War that pitted the so-called West against the communist Soviet Union for 40 years, and was based upon the grim foundation of potential for mutual destruction by nuclear weapons. In the prevailing circumstances it was eminently logical that a small country actively cultivate the protection of the powerful--first Britain and then the United States. In return New Zealand contributed militarily to the two world wars (in quite heroic proportions given our relative size) even though the theatres of actual operations were far distant from our shores, and the causes of conflict lay with abysmal miscalculation on the part of the powerful.

This experience helped shape a particular New Zealand psychology of dependency in international affairs influenced originally, of course, by our colonial inheritance. Those powerful nations whose protection we sought, particularly Britain, also provided the principal markets and investment sources upon which New Zealand relied for its prosperity. Indeed New Zealand's grasslands farm economy was in large degree originally conceived and developed as a source of high quality but reasonably priced food for Britain, in times of war and of peace. There existed, as a result, a basic symmetry between our security and prosperity in this psychology of New Zealand dependence in international affairs. We relied upon the same powerful countries to provide both.

Harsh truth

Our strategic pathway was, therefore, straightforward if not always easy, especially after Britain decided in the last 30 years of the old century to link its fortunes to Europe and accept common policies that were directly inimical to New Zealand interests. We realised quickly a harsh truth that endures to this day, even as we look out to enticing opportunities in Asia, that too many eggs in one trade basket can actually constitute a source of vulnerability. Most industrialised markets of the northern hemisphere are, as it is, distorted by strong agricultural protectionism, and this spurred an incessant New Zealand quest for alternative outlets to ensure prosperity. This was the catalyst for New Zealand becoming, over a relatively short compass of time, a genuine world trader. The search for diversification significantly broadened, too,

New Zealand foreign policy horizons. In most countries food security remains an issue of government policy, and food trade becomes inevitably the subject for government-to-government diplomacy and negotiation. The basic point here though was that this surge in diversification meant that the psychological symmetry connecting New Zealand prosperity and security interests began to weaken.

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At the same time New Zealand interests were reshaped by technologies of communication referred to earlier and, over the past 30 years or more, by consequential shifts in the centre of world economic gravity caused by the emergence of a number of economically successful countries from the ranks of the so-called developing world--China, India, Indonesia, Korea, Vietnam, as well as Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, South Africa and others. Their very success imposed additional pressure on the world's resources and its ecology, which were, in any event, becoming central issues in international diplomacy because of the unsustainable pressures already exerted by the established industrialised economies. From a New Zealand standpoint, however, resultant demand for high quality protein food in the newly emergent economies, their ability to pay remunerative prices and their potential as sources of valuable investment to spur diversification began reshaping New Zealand's strategic interests, politically and economically. China has swiftly become New Zealand's second largest market--and will soon become number one. Six of our top ten markets are in Asia; and 40 per cent of export earnings come from eleven Asian markets.

New complexity

As this millennium began, new complexity emerged in many parts of the developed world, in particular the United States and Europe, where a debt funded model for economic growth, coupled with lax regulation in the financial sector and growing domination of the democratic politics by wealthy special interests, triggered a global crisis. This, in tandem with the success of major newly emergent economies, is transforming the balance of the entire global economy. Contradictions inside globalisation itself between great progress, on the one hand, and deepening poverty both within and between nations, on the other, also explains why social unrest is on the increase in several places. In the...