Getting around the security council table: Terence O'Brien reflects on the challenges that face New Zealand following its election to the world security body.

• Author: O'Brian, Terence
• Position: Essay

New Zealand's success in securing a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for 2015-16 is a significant foreign policy accomplishment. It is a tribute to all those who campaigned. For only the fourth time in the 70 years of the United Nations' existence, New Zealand will assume a seat at the council. (1) We take our place at a precarious moment internationally. A combination of deep-seated political tensions in the Middle East coincides with brutal divisions inside Islam. Our campaign for membership emphasised a New Zealand record for conscientious international involvement and capacity for independent judgment. Those qualities will now be tested.

A well resourced, media savvy organisation employing harsh inhumane methods, the Islamic State (ISIS) has emerged committed to redrawing the map of the Middle East through cold blooded creation of a new country--a caliphate--which involves cruel persecution of fellow Muslims and of non-Muslim faiths. Christian leaders, including in New Zealand, voice dismay, while Muslim communities, including in New Zealand, denounce ISIS methods, which defy basic Islamic teaching about justifiable war. It is crystal clear that this issue and the character of the response by the international community, will cast a shadow over the New Zealand tenure on the Security Council. That is not to say, of course, that other crises will not intrude, like that surrounding Ukraine, where complex judgments are involved in the sense that none of the principal parties has a monopoly on virtue.

The immediate origins for this present Middle Eastern turmoil lie in the tragic 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq (which New Zealand wisely opted not to join), involving doctored intelligence and disastrous post-conflict decisions on the part of the victors that helped divide Shia from Sunni Muslims and dismantled much of Iraq's administrative system and its armed forces. Subsequent disintegration has been fuelled, too, from Syria, where political, regional, tribal and religious antagonisms that splinter that country in ways that almost defy outside understanding spilled across the border in the form of ISIS.

Key decision

The international community once more agonises over how or whether to intervene in this latest chapter in Middle Eastern perdition. Confronted by the prospect of an open-ended conflict and hard on the heels of an unprecedented prolonged commitment in Afghanistan, New Zealand rightly has taken time to formulate a response in keeping with our means. A final decision one way or another should not be taken before New Zealand assumes its Security Council seat and absorbs the full magnitude of the council workload. We must remain clear in our own minds that a decision to commit SAS troops, no matter how much embroidered by claims to a training or protection role, is a decision to enter combat. Special forces are now contingents of choice favoured by major powers and have been deployed by coalition governments in both Afghanistan and Iraq. There was ultimately no win in either place. Special forces on their own or even in combination with aerial strikes are not proving sufficient for victory. A final New Zealand decision should not be founded in expediency but conditioned by just how wise it is to participate militarily.

Diplomatically New Zealand must, of course, continue to condemn vigorously ISIS methods, show readiness to assist with diplomatic intercession and generosity with inevitable post-conflict humanitarian rehabilitation. Notwithstanding the shockingly inhumane ISIS cruelty on display, our...