As Jacinda Ardern heads to Europe, analysts ask whether New Zealand is being dragged into Nato – New Zealand Herald

Nato Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at a joint press conference. Photo / Mark Mitchell

This is not the first time Jacinda Ardern has travelled to Europe against the backdrop of disruption and tragedy.

Her first visit as Prime Minister, in 2018, sought to stake out a post-Brexit relationship with the United Kingdom and Europe, and to bolster relationships with like-minded leaders concerned by the chaos unleashed by United States President Donald Trump.

In 2019, she visited Paris to unveil the Christchurch Call in response to the March 15 terror attack, with French President Emmanuel Macron, one of her closes allies in Europe.

This Sunday, Ardern will leave for a tour of Spain, Belgium and the United Kingdom. She will find a continent emerging from a pandemic, and grappling with inflation and war.

The questions that hung over her first visit have been answered, to a certain extent. New Zealand has a good trade deal with the United Kingdom, a trade deal of some kind with the European Union is imminent (although ministers are keen to manage expectations about its quality), and Trumpian chaos has gone on hiatus, at least until the next presidential election.

But new and more troubling questions hang over this trip; Russia's invasion of Ukraine has dragged New Zealand into the orbit of the Nato security alliance, which risks compromising its traditional independent foreign policy, and upsetting major trading partner, China.

The tension between security and trade will colour the first two stops of the trip, first Madrid, where Ardern will be a guest at the Nato leaders summit, and Brussels, where she will attempt to advance trade talks with the European Union.

New Zealand and Nato have been "partners" since 2012, and have worked in "dialogue and cooperation" since 2001, but this is the first Nato leaders summit in memory that a New Zealand prime minister has attended. Other Asia-Pacific leaders from South Korea, Japan, and Australia were also invited, leading some to suggest this meeting will cement an informal expansion of Nato away from the Atlantic and into the Asia-Pacific.

New Zealand Initiative executive director Oliver Hartwich said he saw a revival of the Anzac relationship in the fact that Ardern and new Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese would appear at the summit together.

"There seems to be a revival in the Anzac relationship when it comes to the defence relationship," Hartwich said.

Hartwich said Ardern could score some points at Nato by mending the Australia-France relationship that had fractured when Australia nixed a multi-billion dollar French submarine when it signed up to the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal with the US and UK.

Ardern and Macron are known to get on well, bonding over their shared wonkishness. Ardern did not attack France when EU trade talks were paused for the French Presidential election, likely aiding free trader Macron against protectionist candidates to his right and left.

The challenge for Ardern at Nato is that the alliance is in the process of working out where it stands in response to global, rather than regional security challenges. New Zealand has to work out where it stands in relation to an enlarged Nato with an outlook that stretches well beyond the "North Atlantic" of the organisation's name, and into New Zealand's region.

Hartwich said this expansion is logical.

"By its name it's a regional alliance, but by its preamble - if you read the Nato Treaty the Washington treaty is very much a values alliance. The preamble makes clear that this is an alliance of democracies fighting to maintain the rule of law."

This "values" reading of Nato could see the alliance logically expand its vision to Asia and the Pacific.

The Madrid Summit is expected to agree a new "Strategic Concept", a document updated roughly every decade, which outlines the broad security picture as Nato sees it. This Strategic Concept is expected to have firm words on the threat posed by China, which could put New Zealand in an awkward position, given its strong trade ties to China.

Hartwich thinks the expansion of Nato into the Pacific is logical, if you look at Nato as a values alliance as well as a regional security pact.

"It is a defensive alliance of values, not so much a regional thing," he said.

"That would make us natural allies.

"We would want to have them here. America has a presence [in the Indo-Pacific], but even the British presence in the Indo-Pacific is increasing so it is only natural they are talking to us."

Geoffrey Miller, a geopolitical analyst at the Democracy Project, said he struggled to see what New Zealand got out of attending the summit.

"They [Nato] get New Zealand as another name on the list and they get solidarity. What does New Zealand get out of attending a Nato summit?

"We lack a long-term strategy and a long-term plan."

Miller said the fast-changing international security picture highlighted the need for the Government to set out a long-term vision of its foreign policy and security.

"We need a post-Ukraine foreign policy blueprint in my view. The world has changed in my view now."

He said New Zealand had enjoyed the "very clear guiding light" of its independent foreign policy for the past 40 years, but the challenging global security picture post-Ukraine, and New Zealand's trade dependence on China had complicated things.

He said a long-term vision was needed because Nato countries were continually making demands of New Zealand and New Zealand needed a long-term blueprint of how it should respond to them.

"We keep being asked to do stuff and we respond - we acquiesce and we say 'yes'," Miller said.

He said New Zealand should be cautious about being unwittingly dragged into an expanded Nato.

"I wonder whether this is the beginning of Nato Plus, whether Nato is expanding from a geographical alliance to a broader Western alliance."

One thing New Zealand could be asked to do is to lift spending to the Nato goal of 2 per cent of GDP (a level of spending many Nato countries struggle to meet).

Millar noted that the military demands of Nato were not backed up with trade benefits from the likes of the US and the EU.

There was an unwillingness of both blocs to contemplate that a closer security alignment with the US and EU could damage New Zealand's trading relationship with China. The EU did not seem willing to offer trade concessions in the looming FTA in return for New Zealand's security assistance over Ukraine.

Miller said that any changes to New Zealand's foreign policy that compromised its independence had to consider what it would do to New Zealand's trading relationships.

He said there were other paths New Zealand could take on Ukraine, Nato member Turkey and US-ally Israel have both sought to broker peace, without launching themselves into the middle of the US-led sanctions push.

Former defence minister and former foreign minister Gerry Brownlee cautioned against reading too much into the novelty of a prime minister attending the leaders meeting.

He said that while a prime minister attending that meeting was new, defence ministers had regularly attended Nato meetings as "dialogue partners", and that New Zealand had served under the command of the US, a Nato member, during the Iraq training mission.

"We have had various compacts at various times."

He said questions over the independent foreign policy often forgot the fact that New Zealand, more often than not, aligned itself with its traditional partners in most conflicts since World War II.

He said questions over the independent foreign policy were ones of definition, and over how it was expressed.

"You've got to think about how independent foreign policy is defined," he said.

"I've taken objection to New Zealand signing up to communiques on Five Eyes," Brownlee said, noting that Five Eyes was an intelligence-sharing pact and how he was cautious about expanding its remit into something broader.

He said New Zealand should avoid unnecessarily antagonising China.

"I'm not in favour of making an enemy when one doesn't exist.

"New Zealand is now substantially dependent on what happens in the Chinese economy. Today, millions of New Zealanders went to work in jobs that are dependent on our trading economy with China."

The trade outlook with the EU is disappointing. The EU is New Zealand's fourth largest trading partner, but exports by value to the EU have been in decline.

New Zealand imported $12.9 billion worth of goods and services, and exported $4.58b. Exports to the EU have been declining since 2018, when they were worth $6.1b.

By contrast, exports to China continue to boom.

Trade Minister Damien O'Connor warned the trade agreement with the European Union was complicated by the fact New Zealand was effectively negotiating with 27 countries.

He said concessions on issues like dairy and meat were difficult for the EU.

"We have to acknowledge the sensitivities around those products in the EU, that's why it's hard work."

O'Connor suggested that the agreement would have wins in areas other than meat and dairy.

"All those commodities and products are important to us, but we've got a lot of other products as well."

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As Jacinda Ardern heads to Europe, analysts ask whether New Zealand is being dragged into Nato - New Zealand Herald