Standing up for values? Robert Ayson discusses why New Zealand commits to conflict.

• Author: Ayson, Robert
• Position: Essay

In February New Zealand committed troops to a training role in Iraq. In announcing that decision Prime Minister John Key intimated that New Zealand stands up for its values and what is right. Values are the guiding aims we think will make for a good society, a life worth living, and can often be connected to what we regard as moral or ethical conduct. It is unlikely, however, that the claim that we are standing up for our values provides a fulsome explanation of why New Zealand decided to send forces overseas. Most such decisions have multiple factors behind them.

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'Mr Speaker, New Zealand is a country that stands up for its values. We stand up for what's right.' So said Prime Minister John Key in announcing New Zealand's deployment to Iraq on 24 February.

But what are we to make of such a claim? Is this really the reason for New Zealand to commit its forces overseas? What does it mean to invoke values in this way? How do these relate to other motivations? Is there a clash or a condominium between New Zealand's values and interests here? And do values lead New Zealand into hazardous territory? Or are they a shallow and cheap attempt to justify decision-making that occurs for other purposes? And whose values are we talking about? These are the types of questions that I hope to explore in this article.

Exploring values

To do at least some of this, the first task is to offer an explanation of what we mean by values. This is not easy. No watertight definition is available. Toby Estall, a masters student who worked with me as a Victoria University summer scholar, came up with one reference to a German publication, which suggested no less than 1400 variations on what is meant by values. So rather than seeking to offer a definition, let me make some sweeping generalisations.

To me values belong in the general category purposes: things that we think it is worth striving for. And they are some of the deeper purposes that we can have. They may be, or perhaps they ought to be, our fundamental motivations. Values are the guiding aims we think will make for a good society, a life worth living. They can often be connected to what we regard as moral or ethical conduct. They are closely related to the standards that we want our society to embody in its behaviour. That is not to deny the existence of what we now see as bad values or very harmful value systems, including, for example, a world organised around racist or social Darwinist beliefs. But when we invoke values in foreign policy decision-making, or more specifically when our governments do this, we expect those values to be good ones, especially if it means putting our armed forces in harm's way.

In this connection, one often finds that a distinction is made between values and interests. This distinction is often drawn too starkly. At the very least there is significant overlap between these two categories of purposes. But sharp distinctions can often be helpful analytically even if they are too stark for practical purposes. While I was on research leave two years ago at the Australian National University, I came across a book from the mid-1960s by a sociologist Sister Augusta Marie Neal, who argued as follows:

Values refer to widely shared conceptions of the good; societal values refer to conceptions of the good society. Interests refer to desires for special advantages for the self or for groups with which one is identified. The idea that interests involve special advantages seems to resonate when we talk of self-interests or when we think about interest groups that focus on a single issue of great interest to them, or when we believe that claims about the national interest are in fact claims about benefits that accrue to the particular country concerned. Why might New Zealand act a certain way? It does so because it is in the national interest of New Zealand to do so--not, by the way, the national interest of Australia or the United States. I think this is what the Key government now means when it invokes the old notion of New Zealand having an independent foreign policy. We may decide to join with others in a certain action, including action against ISIS. And we may be joining traditional partners as we do that. But this, argues the Key government, is not a denial of our independent foreign policy, because we have made up our own mind that this decision works for us. It is in keeping with our interests. Hence, according to this logic, you can work as an increasingly close security partner with the Americans and still be independent.

Important interests

In comparison to values, interests are often depicted in more material and concrete terms. To cite the most obvious example, there may be economic interests at stake--that is, measurable material benefits. A lot of New Zealanders, rightly or wrongly, believe that our foreign policy decision-making has a lot do with these economic interests. But we can also think of security interests, and all or at least most governments have national security interests that they feel it is their primary duty to promote. And these can involve material, concrete considerations--the security of national borders, our sovereign interests, the...