April 2013 Vol 38, No 2

New Zealand International eview R March/April 2013 Vol 38, No 2 SOLOMON ISLANDS Q8VERW4EGM½GTEVXRIVWLMT Q Foreign policy NEW ZEALAND INSTITUT...
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New Zealand

International

eview R March/April 2013

Vol 38, No 2

SOLOMON ISLANDS Q8VERW4EGM½GTEVXRIVWLMT Q Foreign policy

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New Zealand

International

eview R

March/April 2013 Vol 38, No 2

2 Preventing state failure

Phil Goff examines New Zealand’s decision to intervene in the Solomon Islands.

  -PPMFIVEPXVEHIMRXIVIWXWXLI8VERW4EGM½G4EVXRIVWLMT Binoy Kampmark casts a critical eye over intellectual property aspects of the proposed TPP.

10 The legacies of super power Terence O’Brien looks at influences that henceforth will shape international events and considers their impact on New Zealand.

15 Making a difference: another perspective Gerald McGhie reflects on New Zealand’s place in the world in light of recent comments by the Labour Party’s foreign affairs spokesperson.

19 Training Papua New Guinea diplomats Peter Nichols and Peter Kennedy report on the NZIIA’s involvement in the second foreign service training course in Port Moresby in November 2012.

20 When truth is twisted and facts are ignored Mordechai Kedar challenges the views about Palestine advanced by Lois and Martin Griffiths in a recent article.

23 CONFERENCE REPORT China–New Zealand: an endless work in progress Brian Lynch reports on the second China–New Zealand symposium, held in Beijing last December to commemorate the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

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BOOKS David Hackett Fischer: Fairness and Freedom: A History of Two Open Societies: New Zealand and the United States (Jon Johansson). Lindsey Hilsum: Sandstorm: Libya in the Time of Revolution (Anthony Smith). Gregory Johnsen: The Last Refuge: Yemen, Al-Qaeda, and America’s War in Arabia (Anthony Smith). George Morgan and Scott Poynting (eds): Global Islamophobia: Muslims and Moral Panic in the West (Michael Appleton). David Tucker: Illuminating the Dark Arts of War: Terrorism, Sabotage and Subversion in Homeland Security and the New Conflict (Beth Greener).

32 CORRESPONDENCE 33 INSTITUTE NOTES Managing Editor: IAN McGIBBON Corresponding Editors: STEPHEN CHAN (United Kingdom), STEPHEN HOADLEY (Auckland) Book Review Editor: ANTHONY SMITH Editorial Committee: ANDREW WEIRZBICKI (Chair), ROB AYSON, BROOK BARRINGTON, PAUL BELLAMY, BOB BUNCH, GERALD McGHIE, MALCOLM McKINNON, JOSH MITCHELL, ROB RABEL, SHLINKA SMITH, JOHN SUBRITZKY, ANN TROTTER, JOCELYN WOODLEY Publisher: NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Typesetting/Layout: LOVETT GRAPHICS Printing: THAMES PUBLICATIONS LTD New Zealand International Review is the bi-monthly publication of the New Zealand Institute of Affairs. (ISBN0110-0262) Address: Room 507, Railway West Wing, Pipitea Campus, Bunny Street, Wellington 6011 Postal: New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, C/- Victoria University of Wellington, PO Box 600, Wellington 6140 Telephone: (04) 463 5356 Website: www.vuw.ad.nz/nziia. E-mail: [email protected] Subscriptions: New Zealand $50.00 (incl GST/postage). Overseas $85.00 (Cheques or money orders to be made payable to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs) The views expressed in New Zealand International ReviewEVIIRXMVIP]XLSWISJXLIEYXLSVWERHHSRSXVI¾IGXXLSWISJXLI2I[>IEPERH-RWXMXYXISJ-RXIVREXMSREP%JJEMVW[LMGLMWE non-partisan body concerned only to increase understanding and informal discussion of international affairs, and especially New Zealand’s involvement in them. By permission of the authors the copyright of all articles appearing in New Zealand International Review is held by the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs

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Preventing state failure Phil Goff examines New Zealand’s decision to intervene in the Solomon Islands.

tervene with military or police. We argued that as outsiders we could not impose solutions on domestic problems and that Solomon Islanders themselves needed to accept responsibility and act to resolve them. In response to the prime minister’s request, we did however agree to provide a neutral venue for parties to the violence to discuss their differences. This had proven a useful form of assistance ear- Bart UIufa’alu lier in the conflict on Bougainville, resulting in the parties moving forward to resolve a war where 10,000 had died. With a repeat of the Burnham Camp style peace talks, we hoped to head off full scale conflict.

Three simultaneous crises in the Pacific that confronted New Zealand in the first year of the fifth Labour government took up much of my time as foreign minister. East Timor, Fiji and the Solomon Islands all presented us with different problems requiring different responses. In East Timor, New Zealand and Australia intervened with military forces on a large scale to prevent further slaughter and destruction. That was followed by a United Nations led effort through military, police and civil support to help rebuild East Timor and create a new nation. In Fiji, yet another coup overthrew an elected government. Military intervention was never considered, but we embarked alongside Australia and the Pacific Forum in prolonged diplomatic efforts to restore legitimate government. In the Solomon Islands, as that country faced increasing violence, New Zealand and Australia initially resisted calls from the government of the Solomon Islands to send personnel to restore order. But as the country descended further into chaos, Australia and New Zealand, with the support of the Pacific Forum, made decisions which culminated in the creation of the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands, to respond to state failure. How and why was the decision made to intervene? What processes did we follow in doing so, including achieving regional support to assist the Solomon Islands? How effective has the intervention been in achieving its objectives, and what were the constraints and limitations on doing so?

Violent confrontations By June, however, events took their own course with Prime Minister Ulufa’alu taken hostage by the MEF and violent confrontations escalating around Honiara. In response, I went to Honiara with an RNZAF plane to evacuate New Zealanders, and to participate as a member of the Commonwealth Ministers’ Action Group visit. The Commonwealth had earlier sent Sitiveni Rabuka as an envoy to seek resolution of the issues through dialogue, but that was not successful. The conflict worsened and the economy and provision of government services ground to a halt. Australia worked with both sides to broker a ceasefire agreement. The militia groups were brought together by Australia and New Zealand in Queensland and persuaded to sign the Townsville Peace Agreement. Under the agreement, Australian and New Zealand unarmed peacekeepers — the International Peace Monitoring Team (IPMT) — were deployed to supervise the handover of arms and rebuild confidence in the rule of law. New Zealand contributed fourteen of the 47 members. The IPMT would not itself impose law and order but rather would receive and hold weapons and monitor adherence to the peace process. An indigenous Peace Monitoring Council was set up to keep ownership and resolution of the problem in the hands of local people. In my paper to Cabinet I said that taking no action would be a recipe for sharp deterioration in the situation. I added that ‘an international presence will increase the odds that the peace process will hold, but cannot guarantee it’.

First visit I first visited the Solomon Islands in March 2000. I reported to Cabinet that it was a country where ‘fear and tension were palpable’ and that ‘the situation of violence and lawlessness could worsen with little warning’. In the preceding two years violence had broken out as a result of long-standing resentment by the people of Guadalcanal against settlers from neighbouring Malaita who had married local women and taken control of land. This resulted in Gwale militia groups embarking on ethnic cleansing of over 20,000 Malaitans. The Malaitans in response formed their own militia, the Malaitan Eagle Force (MEF), which quickly seized control of Honiara. Fighting erupted in which dozens were killed. Law and order collapsed, with the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force corrupt and dysfunctional at senior and middle levels. The prime minister, Bart Ulufa’alu, sought assistance from Australia and New Zealand, but both countries declined to inHon Phil Goff MP is the Labour Party’s spokesperson on foreign affairs.This article MWXLIIHMXIHXI\XSJEREHHVIWWLIKEZIXSXLI(IQSGVEG]MRXLI4EGM½G'SRJIVIRGIEXXLI9RMZIVWMX]SJ'ERXIVFYV]SR3GXSFIV

9RVIWXMRXLI7SPSQSR-WPERHW[EWSRISJXLIQENSVMRXIVREXMSREPTVSFPIQWGSRJVSRXMRKXLI½JXL Labour government (along with East Timor and Fiji). As the violence escalated, New Zealand initially resisted calls for intervention, believing that outsiders imposing solutions on domestic problems was inappropriate. But after the situation deteriorated in mid-2003 New Zealand EKVIIHXSNSMR%YWXVEPMEERHSXLIV7SYXL4EGM½GGSYRXVMIWMRVIWXSVMRKSVHIV8LI6IKMSREP%WWMWXERGI1MWWMSRXSXLI7SPSQSR-WPERHW 6%17- HITPS]IHMR.YP]8LIIJJSVX[LMGLGSRXMRYIH JSVRMRI]IEVWMRZSPZIHELYKI½RERGMEPGSQQMXQIRXF]2I[>IEPERH%PXLSYKL6%17-TVSZMHIH WLSVXXIVQWIGYVMX]EHHVIWWMRKXLIYRHIVP]MRKGEYWIWSJXLIZMSPIRGITVSZIHQSVIHMJ½GYPX New Zealand International Review

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The International Peace Monitoring Team had some success. A substantial number of weapons were surrendered but many remained in the hands of the militias and criminal elements. I said in a paper to Cabinet at that time that ‘the commitment of the militias to the peace process was uncertain and that without effective law enforcement, the law of the gun would continue to hold sway’. Sadly that proved true. There needed to be political commitment within the Solomons to solving the problems and this was at best patchy. Both Australia and New Zealand increased contributions to strengthening policing but this proved inadequate in the face of intransigence from the militias.

In the meantime, in response to the crises in both Fiji and the Solomons, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and I sought to engage countries in the region to help find solutions. In August 2000 we convened the first Pacific Forum foreign ministers’ meeting in Apia, chaired by Tuiliepa. We achieved a significant advance in having Forum members agree to collectively address Alexander Downer underlying causes of conflict in the region and engage in situations which had region-wide implications and impacts. The Apia Outcomes Statement read that: ‘Ministers recognised the need for regional action to be taken on the basis of all members of the Forum being part of the Pacific Islands extended family.’ We drew up recommendations which would be referred to leaders in the Pacific Islands Forum in October in Kiribati, which formed the basis of the Bikitawa Declaration. The Apia statement set out fundamental principles such as freedom under the law, equal rights for all citizens and the right of every person to participate by means of a free and democratic political process in making decisions about their society. It talked about upholding democratic processes and institutions — the peaceful transfer of power, the rule of law, independence of the judiciary, and just and honest government. It called for equitable economic, social and cultural development. The statement also outlined mechanisms by which the forum would respond to the breach of these principles, which ranged from a declaratory statement, a fact finding mission, mediation and the imposition of sanctions. Prime Minister Helen Clark, following the subsequent adoption of the Bikitawa Declaration, reported to Cabinet that The Forum moved from its hitherto passive stance. For the first time it agreed to institutionalise procedures for responding collectively to political and security crises in the region. Some have criticised the concepts in the Bikitawa Declaration as being Western values and principles. When the underlying cause of the crises in the Pacific often had their origins in colonialism, they asked how these Western concepts would be seen as relevant in the indigenous context.

2I[VIUYIWX In June 2003, a new prime minister, Allan Kemakeza, again asked for military assistance from Australia and New Zealand after militias burned villages and killed people on the Weathercoast, and took captive over a thousand villagers. I had personally come to the conclusion after six visits to the Solomons that intervention of this nature was necessary to prevent social, economic and political collapse. I had to work hard to persuade my Cabinet colleagues and leader of this. They had justifiable concerns about the efficacy of intervention, the difficulties of then finding an exit strategy and the risks to the lives of the people we would deploy. Australia was more easily persuaded that the time had come to adopt a new strategy. The world had changed since they had last declined the invitation to intervene. The events of the terrorist attack of 9/11 and the Bali bombing in 2002 had increased concerns about failing states providing a potential haven for terrorists. The doctrine of the responsibility to protect was Allan Kemakeza also being debated in the United Nations. The spectre of innocent people dying in the Solomons while we sat back and watched was as unacceptable as it had been in East Timor. The decision was made on both sides of the Tasman that we had little option, but we needed to do it in the right way. There needed to be a formal invitation from all sides in the Solomons. The intervention needed to involve more than simply the large, wealthy white countries in the south of the Pacific in supporting the action.

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I do not disagree that the colonial legacy underlies subsequent state failure. In the case of the Solomons the colonial power, Britain, had brought together ethnically diverse peoples into an artificial state without creating any sense of national identity. It had also ill-prepared the new nation, with only seventeen graduates in the Solomon Islands at independence. Britain had established a Westminster system of government which bore no resemblance and had little relevance to traditional custom and authority. I do not, however, accept that the principles of the Bikitawa Declaration are invalid. I see them as universal values relevant to the well-being of people in any country. Yet that does not answer the question of how those values can be inculcated into the thinking of the leaders and elites in countries like the Solomons.

Downer convened a further meeting of the Pacific Forum foreign ministers in Sydney, and he and I set out the case for action. We secured unanimous support for an intervention involving armed forces. Commonwealth support and UN concurrence was attained. The intervention would be a comprehensive one in order to maximise the prospect of its success. The armed component would stabilise the short-term situation but there needed to be thorough on-going reform of the police, the justice system and financial management for long-term results. Australia was prepared to commit big dollars and New Zealand to lift its level of development support. However, a precondition of contributions

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derlying problems remain. There has now been a sufficiently long period of calm and stability in the Solomons for the military component of RAMSI, already down to a small number, to be withdrawn, though assistance to policing and through development aid will continue. RAMSI has involved an enormous financial investment by New Zealand of over $400 million dollars and more than three times that amount by Australia. Yet the assessment by many is that once RAMSI is withdrawn, what has been achieved will be at risk. In cables released in the Wikileaks, US officials approvingly quoted the assessment of diplomatic contacts in Honiara that if RAMSI left it would take about a week for trouble to break out since none of the underlying issues which caused widespread ethnic violence have been addressed. ‘Over the 28 years since independence modern government has failed to take root’, it was reported.

Members of the RAMSI mission

from both countries was not to allow that investment to be wasted through incompetency and corruption. On 24 July 2003 the first RAMSI personnel were deployed, with most of the 1800 troops Australian but backed by a strong New Zealand contingent and also regional forces from Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Tonga. The mission received an overwhelming welcome by the Solomon Islands people on the ground. It succeeded in collecting in 3000 firearms and 300,000 rounds of ammunition. Militants like Harold Keke who had terrorised people and murdered opponents were arrested. Over 300 RAMSI police officers assisted in restoring law and order. Comprehensive reform of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF) began. Financial management systems which had collapsed were restored. Government services including justice, health and education that had ceased to operate were resumed. The mission was effective in restoring normality to the Solomons and security to its people.

Continuing fragility The Independent Experts Team which does annual evaluations reported in 2010 that ‘corruption and misuse of political power continue to be a major concern’. The RSIPF remains ‘fragile and is unlikely to be self-sustaining by 2013’. There remains a shortage of qualified local personnel across the board. New financial management systems and the economy were doing well but ‘would easily be rolled back without explicit and ongoing political support’. ‘While Ramsi has succeeded in suppressing the violent manifestation of conflict, the issues underlying the tensions have largely not been resolved and will continue to be potential triggers for violence’, it stated. In summary, the RAMSI achievements in pulling the Solomon Islands back from the brink of economic, social and political collapse are real and deserve credit. There are, however, critical underlying issues that outsiders have not and perhaps cannot address. As Canterbury University political scientist John Henderson has concluded on governance and constitutional issues: ‘To be lasting and effective the political systems that emerge in the Solomon Islands and elsewhere in Oceania will need to be home grown. This will take time’. The winding up of the Regional Assistance Mission is accepted on both sides as being necessary. The lasting impact of the intervention will be put to test as RAMSI withdraws.

Underlying causes What was and is harder to change are the underlying causes of the conflict and the endemic corruption in the Solomons’ political system. In April 2006 conflict re-erupted with the burning down of Chinatown in response to the election of Snyder Rini as prime minister. The riots, not foreseen by RAMSI, were highly orchestrated. Among those arrested were politicians who had just been appointed as Cabinet ministers. Order was again restored. However support for the mission among the political leadership waned, as some politicians saw RAMSI as blocking their ability to benefit from the perks of power. Members of Parliament I met in the aftermath of the riots questioned whether the mission had broadened its mandate beyond the original intentions. I reported to Cabinet that they wanted RAMSI ‘to provide more order and economic development but less law and govManasseh Sogavare ernance’. Under the subsequent prime ministership of Manasseh Sogavare tensions between RAMSI and the Solomon Islands government rose, peaking with the expulsion of Australian High Commissioner Patrick Cole in 2007. Under subsequent prime ministers, tensions eased, but the un-

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Illiberal trade interests: XLI8VERW4EGM½G4EVXRIVWLMT Binoy Kampmark casts a critical eye over intellectual property aspects of the proposed TPP.

countries, is playing the cardinal role in creating what has come to be called the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. Touted as a ‘free trade’ agreement, it is currently being negotiated by the United States, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. With the military ‘pivot’ comes that of finance, and the Obama administration has made it clear that as 60 per cent of US export goods finds its way to the Asia–Pacific region, along with 75 per cent of its agricultural produce, it is the vital region of interest for the United States. The shift of focus may well in time become one of the cornerstones of the Obama administration’s second term, should the TPP combine with Washington’s strategic ‘pivot’ to the Asia–Pacific region. Others are less than impressed. The TPP has been described as ‘NAFTA on steroids’.3 Billionaire and former US presidential candidate Ross Perot suggested that if such an agreement were to be implemented, a ‘giant sucking sound’ would be heard as millions of jobs left the country.4 What exactly lies at the heart of the TPP? The United States first entered into negotiations in March 2008. There have been up to fourteen rounds of negotiations, all highly secretive. The degree of secrecy, for one, is striking. Only large corporate figures, as opposed to public interest advocates, have been allowed to cast an

‘You know, many of you who know me know that I go on and on and on and on and then some talking about [the] TPP and why it’s, you know, the greatest thing in the entire world.’ (Ambassador Demetrios Marantis, 8 August 2012)1 As the Obama administration’s first term came to a close, a considerable strategic dimension started to become clear. The focus on the Asia–Pacific region would start to take precedence over European, Middle Eastern and Latin American issues. Washington, it was announced, was going to ‘pivot’ towards the Asia–Pacific region in a new realignment of interests. This would entail the redeployment of naval forces to the Pacific, a ‘rebalancing’ that would place 60 per cent of US naval assets in the region.2 In all of this, there has been another dimension that has lacked serious attention. Analysis, certainly from official circles, has been conspicuously absent. The United States, along with a group of Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: [email protected]

8LI 3FEQE EHQMRMWXVEXMSR´W ½VWX XIVQ [EW GLEVEGXIVMWIH F] HIGPEVEXMSRW SJ E QMPMXEV] ³TMZSX´ XS XLI %WME¯4EGM½G VIKMSR 8LI IGSRSQMG HMQIRWMSR LEW EPWS JSPPS[IH WYMX [MXL XLI 97 XVEHI VITVIWIRXEXMZIWOIIRXS½RHEKVIIQIRX[MXLWIZIVEPGSYRXVMIWSRXLIWYFNIGXSJE8VERW4EGM½G 4EVXRIVWLMT8LIEKVIIQIRX[LMPIHVEJXIHMRXLIWTMVMXSJXVEHIPMFIVEPMWEXMSRWYKKIWXWUYMXIXLI STTSWMXI8LIMQTPMGEXMSRWSJXLIEVVERKIQIRXJSVWMKREXSV]GSYRXVMIWMREVIEWWYGLEWMRXIPPIG XYEPTVSTIVX]EVITSXIRXMEPP]ZEWXMRXLEXMXQMVVSVW97HSQIWXMGPE[&YXXLIJYPPTMGXYVI[MPPRSX FIORS[RXMPPXLIXIVQWSJXLI844EVITYFPMWLIHMRJYPPWSQIXLMRKXLITEVXMGMTEXMRKGSYRXVMIW LEZIXMPPXLMWTSMRXVIJYWIHXSHS New Zealand International Review

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eye over the provisions. This has not stopped the US State Department from telling media representatives that ‘stakeholders’ far and wide are being mined for their wisdom. The only official document we have to go on in this regard is a leaked US draft proposal from February 2011 detailing matters touching on copyright.5 Other bits of the puzzle have only come about because of other leaks, totalling five, and press briefings that offer little by the way of substantive information. The lack of official debate on the subject has not prevented a very active discussion from taking place among observers of internet regulation, notably on the chapter covering intellectual property. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, to take one, has not been impressed. Two problems are identified by the organisation — IP restrictions and a lack of transparency. In terms of the first, ‘the IP chapter would have extensive negative ramifications for users’ freedom of speech, right to privacy and due process, and [would] hinder peoples’ abilities to innovate’. The second was characterised by a grand ‘shut out’ of ‘multi-stakeholder participation’.6

cess is a regional means of replacing the World Trade Organisation (WTO) agreements that failed after the Uruguay Round (1986–94). The WTO’s efforts to complete the Doha Development Round, launched in 2001, remain fractious and potentially unresolvable. The document that would be produced at the end of the negotiations would be ‘a take-it-or-leave-it document’ that would essentially be approved by the Cabinet then given a formal ‘rubber stamp’ in Parliament. 8

3J½GMEPPMRI New Zealand’s minister for trade, Tim Groser, articulates the official TPP line. The government’s premise is that the TPP will improve New Zealand’s export performance through the removal of trade impediments. A familiar rhetorical tactic is used: quote trade percentages and then link them to the direct outcome of free trade. Nearly 50 per cent of New Zealand exports are now covered by free trade agreements. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is the centrepiece in our current efforts to push forward the process of trade liberalisation.7 The premise then is that the TPP improves competition (though Groser does not say how), a wise policy as opposed to the ‘dumb’ policy of protectionism. To remain competitive in such areas as world manufacturing ‘and be part of the global value chain, you must ensure your manufacturers can access world-class inputs at competitive prices’. Having showered the protectionist philosophy with its due share of abuse, Groser yields nothing in terms of how a TPP might, given the range of variable economies and strengths involved in the negotiations, actually contribute to ‘competition’ and the allowance of access of New Zealand companies to the TPP market. It is merely sufficient that the regime is liberal, and that it be open. The mechanics of how this will be implemented is rarely touched upon. The same oblique story can be found across the Tasman. According to an Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade stakeholder briefing on 14 November 2012, the TPP pro-

Comprehensive overview In a talk at the Wilson Centre in Washington in August 2012, US Ambassador Demetrios Marantis, deputy US trade representative, provided a somewhat more comprehensive overview of the TPP’s implications. The TPP had to be comprehensive and singular in that it had to cover both goods and services, current and future. It had to allow the United States to conduct its engageTim Groser

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ment in regional supply chains in the Asian region from home soil, in distinction to the NAFTA model that saw the off-shoring of jobs. The agreement had to remove non-tariff barriers — in other words, the removal of those behind the scenes ‘regulations’ that become inadvertent ‘tariffs’. (Marantis gives the example of sanitary and phytosanitary measures.) The clincher lies in the overall framework of regulation as it relates to non-US partners in the negotiations. The US delegation was ‘trying to ensure that TPP partners follow good regulatory practices like we do in the U.S.’ 9 The statement is unblemished in its parochialism, but it states the position clearly: other negotiating teams will have to mirror American practices. The level playing field, in short, is uneven before it even starts, skewed towards Washington’s vision of ‘best practice’. It is not surprising that this sentiment is echoed in Congress, where US senators are pressuring the administration to privilege American interests when it comes to intellectual property rights. Liberalisation can seem somewhat illiberal depending on how it is employed. In a letter to the White House, 28 senators expressed the view that ‘A TPP agreement with strong protections for intellectual property promises to be an important means of ensuring that US companies can continue to innovate and grow in this global economy.’ The emphasis here is on keeping jobs in the United States, not allowing an advantage for other economies to capitalise under the regime. This position was much lauded by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America.10 The short of it is, keep competition American. There are smidgens of what a TPP would not do, anecdotal suggestions coming from, to take one example, Carol Guthrie, assistant US trade representative for public and media affairs. At a phone briefing in July last year, Guthrie, in response to a question covering AFL–CIO concerns on the possible undermining of labour regulations (overtime payment and maternity leave), suggested there was nothing to be concerned about. There were ‘misconceptions’ floating about as to how the TPP and other trade agreements dealt with such matters as the arbitration of investor disputes. Nothing being negotiated, assured Guthrie, would prevent any of the participating governments ‘from regulating in the public interest … — whether it’s in the financial sector, in the public health sector with regard to safety or the environment or other regulatory areas’.11 Again, her statements proved thin on detail.

Carol Guthrie

providers to remove material after an owner of copyright submits a notice alleging that the material is of an infringing nature.13 That said, the DMCA in its current form retains rules on safe harbour — web hosting services may rely on safety from copyright liability provided they satisfy various provisions: lacking knowledge of the infringement, not financially benefiting from the infringement, and taking down allegedly infringing material after receiving a notice from a copyright owner.14 Given all that, it is worth noting that the DMCA is a creature of 1998. With the accelerated transformations in online technologies — the emergence of YouTube, the continued domination of Google — these rules may well be adjusted. Article 16.3(a) of the TPP proposal requires signatory countries to create ‘legal incentives for service providers to cooperate with copyright owners in deterring the unauthorized storage and transmission of copyrighted materials’. This shift of the burden to online platforms has the effect of pecking away at such exonerating provisions as safety harbours.

Another model Another model here is the American SOPA or the Stop Online Piracy Act, which also turns such internet entities as Facebook, Google and anyone with a website ‘into a copyright cop’.15 As a creature on its own, it was derailed in Congress, but has found

Intellectual property The advocacy organisation Public Knowledge has set up a site with details on the TPP. The organisation is most concerned by intellectual property implications, which it sees as excessive, having an adverse effect on ‘the ability of creators to create content, the ability of technology companies to make innovative products, and that ability of users to use content in new ways’.12 Negotiators of the TPP seem to be pushing the agreement in the direction of the flawed US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Provisions, commentators have noted, seem to mirror the US statute, with the intention that other countries will adopt them. That would mean that a range of innovative copyright regimes already in place will have to be adjusted, which is exactly what US trade representatives want. Of significance are the provisions in the DMCA that govern the liability of online service providers for their users’ infringements. Significant in this regard are the ‘notice-and-takedown’ provisions that mandate online service

American protestors rally against the TPP

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shape in the provisions of the TPP. Key industries may benefit from this — the entertainment and pharmaceutical industries, for example. The latter is particularly keen on enforcing monopolies on data exclusivity with patent protection, stifling the threat posed by generic competitors. In this sense, a free trade agreement patterned on such premises becomes not so much free as a matter of keeping it free for some corporate interests over others. An analysis conducted by several advocacy groups on the leaked US paper on patents goes into further detail. Australian law, as it stands, provides the grounds of pre-grant and post-grant challenges to patents. Even after the publication of a patent application that has been accepted, a person can oppose that application within three months under the Patent Act 1990. Such procedures are present to prevent the abuse of the patent process, but Article 8.7 of the leaked US TPP proposal suggests the removal of this entire procedure.16 Furthermore Article 8.6 stresses the need to avoid ‘unreasonable or unnecessary delays’ affecting the patent process. Advocacy groups have attacked a few specific features. The TPP targets ‘incidental copies’, or those creations made by computers in the moving of data. Temporary reproductions in such cases do occur, and deeming this an infringement in the absence of the copyright holder’s permission has been previously frowned upon. This was certainly the case at the inter-governmental diplomatic conference that created two international copyright treaties in 1996 — the WIP Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performances and Phonograms Treaty.17 Such buffer copy protection will mean a more onerous licensing regime at the behest of the copyright owner. According to Public Knowledge, there should be no criminalising of small infringements — the downloading of music, to take an example. Nor should users be ‘kicked’ off the internet for alleged infringements.18 The latter is deemed particularly worrying, introducing what will amount to a ‘three strikes’ policy — the user could be barred from their internet connection after three accusations of infringement. In this case, the agreement will leave the role of policing to the ISPs.

A protest against the TPP in Nelson in December 2012

Aucklanders protest against the partnership in February 2013

moting ‘the conclusion of EPAs with the United States, China and the EU... through the frameworks of the TPP, ASEAN+6, and Japan–EU EIA’.20 The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has been less sure, encouraging the use of free trade agreements as a means of boosting Japanese economic recovery while stating that it ‘might be desirable’ for Japan to join the TPP.

Purpose defeated There is nothing unreasonable about Washington promoting its own interests in the global economy, ensuring that US companies have first bite of the cherry in such areas as innovation and development. But the use of such agreements as the TPP, ostensibly designed to create a free trade zone that is not so much free as selectively liberal in favour of Washington’s own laws, defeats the purpose. The project, if anything, is designed to arrest the innovative challenges posed by the emerging powers, of which China is the primary target, and more broadly speaking companies in the developing world. We must take the arguments from the smaller delegations (Australia, New Zealand, Peru, to name but a few) as not merely ill-informed factually but ideologically misplaced and unreliable. It is true that until the agreement is published in full, with its provisions stated and discussed in a broader forum, some of these assertions will have to be qualified. The public record, thin as it is, is not encouraging. Press briefings, coupled with the various leaks, do nothing to rebut the suggestion that the TPP remains, at its core, an exercise in threatened US power in search of allies to protect its interests. Free trade remains a dogma that cannot learn new tricks, which is not surprising, given that it barely exists to begin with.

Potential isolation The TPP is also a mechanism of potential isolation. The BRIC powers are not included in the discussions, and an argument has been made suggesting that one of the key targets of the arrangement is China and its disposition to flouting international copyright arrangements. This is not something that Chinese authorities will necessarily want to let on. Discussion on the matter, when available, has often been subtle and diplomatic. A publication by Professor Cai Penghong, director of the APEC Research Centre at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, sees the various trade options in the Asia–Pacific region as ‘complementary’ rather than a ‘zero game relationship’. ‘Our understanding is that TPP like others such as ASEAN +3, ASEAN +6 is a critical tool to the APEC destination in Asia Pacific.’19 Other countries in the Asia–Pacific region have only shown qualified support for the TPP, suggesting that such an agreement has to take place within a broader framework of treaties. Japan’s position is a good example of this. The Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) has, through its ‘Proposals for Japan’s Trade Strategy’, argued for a ‘proactive and strategic trade policy’ that would involve concluding the WTO Doha Round and pro-

NOTES 1. Demetrios Marantis, deputy US trade representative, ‘The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Future of International

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Trade’, Wilson Centre, Washington, 8 Aug 2012, Washington Newsmaker Transcript Database, 18 Jan 2013. 2. See Congressional Research Service, ‘Pivot to the Pacific? The Obama Administration’s “Rebalancing” Toward Asia’, 28 Mar 2012 (www.fas.org/sgp/ crs/natsec/R42448.pdf). 3. The Nation, 27 Jul 2012. 4. Noted in Matt Mitchell and Bill Davis, ‘The Take-it-or-leave-it Trans-Pacific Partnership’, Independent Australia, 21 Nov 2012 (www.independentaustralia. net/2012/business/the-take-it-or-leaveit-trans-pacific-partnership/). 5. The leaked text on the intellectual A large banner at a protest rally in San Diego in July 2012 property chapter is available at keion16. Burcu Kiliç and Peter Maybarduk, ‘Comparative Analysis of line.org/node/1091. the United States’ TPPA Intellectual Property Proposal and 6. Electronic Frontier Foundation, ‘Trans Pacific Agreement’, Australian Law’, Public Citizen, Aug 2011 (www.citizen.org/ nd (www.eff.org/issues/tpp). access). 7. Tim Groser, ‘Stoking the engine of growth’, NZ International 17. Electronic Frontier Foundation, ‘Trans Pacific Agreement’. Review, vol 37, no 6 (2012), pp.12–16. 18. Public Knowledge, ‘Trans-Pacific Partnership’. 8. Mitchell and Davis, op cit. 19. Cai Penghong, ‘The Trans-Pacific Partnership: A Chinese 9. Marantis, op cit. Perspective’, Presentation, nd, noted at www.pecc.org. Pres10. US Senate, Letter to the President, 17 May 2011, available entation available at www.pecc.org/resources/doc_view/1752at www.phrma.org/sites/default/files/1245/2011.05.17_fithe-trans-pacific-partnership-a-chinese-perspective-ppt. nal_hatch_cantwell.letter.pdf; ‘PhRMA Applauds Bipartisan Senate Support for Strong Intellectual Property Protec- 20. Aurelia G. Mulgan, ‘Industry versus agriculture in Japan’s TPP debate’, East Asia Forum, 27 Jul 2011 (www.eastasiations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement’, Statement forum.org/2011/07/27/industry-versus-agriculture-in-jaon 19 May 2011 (www.phrma.org/media/releases/phrma-appan-s-tpp-debate/). plauds-bipartisa-senate-support-strong-intellectual-property-protections-tra). 11. Telephone Briefing by Carol Guthrie, Subject: Closing of Round 13 of Trans-Pacific Partnership Talks, San Diego, CORRIGENDUM California, 2.14 pm, Tuesday, 10 Jul 2012, Washington In the article ‘Taiwan update: domestic reform and soft Newsmaker Transcript Database, 13 Jul 2012. power diplomacy’ by Stephen Hoadley in the last issue (vol 12. Public Knowledge, ‘The Trans-Pacific Partnership’ (tppinfo. 38, no 1), it was stated that Taiwan’s Pacific aid is concenorg, acc 17 Jan 2013). trated in its ‘five islands diplomatic partners — Solomon 13. Jodie Griffin, ‘Failing to Understand the Needs of the 21st Islands, Nauru, Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, and Palau — but Century: The TPP and the Notice-and-Takedown System’, projects are also directed to Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Public Knowledge, 14 Sep 2012 (tppinfo.org/2012/09/14/ Kiribati even though they are diplomatic partners of Beifailing-to-understand-the-needs-of-the-21st-century-the-tppjing’. In fact Kiribati and the Taiwan have been in diploand-the-notice-and-takedown-system/). matic relations since 7 November 2003 and Kiribati is one 14. Ibid. of the Taiwan’s six diplomatic partners in Oceania.  15. Dean Baker, ‘The Pacific Free Trade Deal that’s anything but Free’, The Guardian, 27 Aug 2012. Protestors in Japan in April 2012

NOTE FOR CONTRIBUTORS We welcome unsolicited articles, with or without illustrative material photographs, cartoons, etc. Text should be typed double spaced on one side of the sheet only. Text or %7'--½PIWSRHMWGSVIQEMPIHEVIQSWX[IPcome. Facsimiles are not acceptable. Copy length should not be more than 3000 words though longer pieces will be considered. Footnotes should be kept to a minimum, and only in exceptional circumstances will we print more than 15 with an article. New Zealand International Review

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The legacies of super power 8IVIRGI 3´&VMIR PSSOW EX MR¾YIRGIW XLEX LIRGIJSVXL [MPP WLETI MRXIVREXMSREP IZIRXW ERHGSRWMHIVWXLIMVMQTEGXSR2I[>IEPERH The very idea of super power is an invention of the 20th century. It is the product of that era of two immensely destructive world wars and a 40-year long Cold War that imposed an ideological straitjacket on our world, which still, some 20 years after its end, influences mindsets of some policy-makers in powerful capitals. According to the dictionary, the term ‘super-power’ was first employed by an American historian, W.T. Fox, in 1944 to describe the situation created by the end of the Second World War where, he concluded, that ‘great power plus great mobility of power defined a superpower’.1 Fox identified the United States, Soviet Union and Britain as possessing the required attributes, but, of course, events transpired in such a way that Britain, exhausted by war and confronted by an empire restless for independence, slipped irresistibly from pole position — leaving the United States and the Soviet Union as sole contenders. The Soviet Union claimed communism as the ideology of true progress and social justice for the world, while the United States, which had organised itself impressively for both war and victory as well as escaping the scourge of conflict on home soil, promoted democracy, rules-based international behaviour and free competition of ideas and interests as the basis for human improvement. Each super-power assembled around it a group of like-minded states and East/West competition was born. New Zealand dutifully took its place amongst the West. The great majority of states comprising the international community, new and old, however remained uncommitted to either camp — in the non-aligned movement. With the benefit of hindsight it is clear now that the Soviet Union, in terms of wealth and welfare when compared to the United States, was never really a super-power. Indeed, the Cold War witnessed sustained advance by the United States to a position of supremacy. When the Cold War ended in 1989–90 with the break up of the Soviet Union, there was a deep American sense of accomplishment that amounted to triumphalism. It heralded, according to one American mandarin, ‘the end of history’. The United States was now the super-power. This, however, created paradoxically the need to define afresh the United States’ national interest in a world that it now dominated. It is proving in practice quite difficult to define US true interests other than that the maintenance of America’s supreme standing requires, at least in

the minds of many policy-makers, that it permanently out-performs all other nations in every direction. This led one European leader to re-brand the United States as ‘the hyper power’. Legacies are, in one sense, bequests passed on to others when the originator departs the scene. That is not the sense intended by this contribution, which conceives super-power legacies as influences that henceforth shape international events, including the positioning of smaller countries like New Zealand that delve well beneath the stratospheric dimensions of super-power existence. There are in this sense three inter-connected parts to America’s super-power legacy and, as suggested below, all three variously influence New Zealand’s situation.

Manifest destiny

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First, there is America’s traditional sense of its manifest destiny to change the world and its values into an image of America itself. This constitutes a profound influence upon international relations. According to this script, Providence has selected the United States as ‘the indispensable nation’ to lead an unregenerate world to a better future. Yet experience shows that leadership in international affairs politically, economically or militarily is either bestowed or it is asserted. This is especially true in the globalising economy that increasingly shapes political, economic and cultural life on this planet. Leadership that is bestowed enjoys essential legitimacy, while leadership that is asserted in coercive ways does not.2 The energy and imagination displayed by the United States when creating the institutions and rules of international affairs (for example, the United Nations, WTO, IMF) revealed Washington’s acute realisation that legitimacy as a super-power would be enhanced by mediating leadership through international institutions that command wide support. Indeed, institutions help

8LIGSRGITXSJWYTIVTS[IVIQIVKIHXS[EVHWXLIIRHSJXLI7IGSRH;SVPH;EVEWEVI¾IGXMSR of the burgeoning capacity of the United States, Soviet Union and Britain. By the end of the century the United States had been left supreme as the other super-powers fell behind. The rest of the world has been left to contend with the legacies, both positive and negative, of the United States’ rise to pre-eminence. These include the elevation of human rights in an unprecedented fashion, the militarisation of modern international relations and the vast increase in the power of persuasion.

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create habits of co-operation amongst nations that are in the end as important as the rules of co-operation.3 But the era of decolonisation and the emergence of a whole host of new nations during the course of the Cold War inexorably altered the balance of membership and of interest inside the international institutions. Thus the United States grew hesitant and disillusioned with its own handiwork. The ‘indispensable nation’ was no longer able to direct or supervise the institutions in ways that privileged its own interests. A preference for working with, or alongside, smaller coalitions of like-minded countries increasingly influences actual US international behaviour whether on peace and security issues with NATO, a notable legacy of super power now being extended with a global role to rival or supplant the United Nations, or in economics and trade, with the United States preferring to work with a handful of governments like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, in which Washington’s interests can be the more assertively and successfully secured.

of stress and difficulty, but the present tribulations will not easily or readily be surmounted.

Militarised approach A second and related consequence of super-power legacy is the way that 40 years of Cold War, involving intense US and Soviet nuclear confrontation plus large sophisticated conventional forces opposing one another, militarised the conduct of modern international relations. When the Cold War ended there was enormous relief everywhere, New Zealand included, that the threat of nuclear doomsday had receded. But practically speaking there is little change in the way militarisation continues to shape international affairs. Strategic security policy-makers, especially in the United States, forecast an uncertain post-Cold War world, warning that it is dangerous to lower America’s guard, and vital to retain and enhance clear military supremacy. Nuclear weapons, therefore, for example, remain on hair-trigger alert. At the same time real danger has emerged that nuclear weapons might spread into less desirable hands. The issue of non-proliferation has, therefore, become the major post-Cold War security preoccupation, with counter-proliferation measures being defined in the United States and the United Kingdom to include first strike attack against would-be proliferators. Mere suspicion of ownership is judged sufficient cause to launch war, as the 2003 assault on Iraq demonstrated and threats against Iran confirm. Pre-emption like this grounded in suspicion of weapons possession alone is unprecedented in the annals of warfare. It is paralleled by determination on the part of the traditional nuclear weapon owning countries to resist all calls themselves for effective nuclear disarmament, thereby reinforcing their own monopoly and perpetuating a destabilising international double standard. But it is the way that the United States chose to respond to the hideous 9/11 terrorist attacks on the American mainland that guarantees the enduring militarisation of international affairs. The assaults were criminal actions of stark horror, but the US government elected to interpret them as acts of war where the only response could be war itself — an open-ended global war on terror. Washington sought to enlist international support with a cryptic message of ‘either you are with us, or with the terrorists’. Two wars of choice have ensued in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the very nature of the conflict means it is impossible to define victory in either case. The overall result is severe destabilisation throughout neighbouring regions. It is an open question, moreover, whether

Foremost legacy A foremost super-power legacy of the 20th century is the way in which the United States succeeded in elevating, for the first time in history, the basic values, interests and aspirations of the human individual into a universal charter for human rights. This was memorable, although in our world of widely differing culture, tradition and religion, the secular elevation of values driven international relations in this way is a sensitive, even provocative business, and so it has often proven to be. Toleration of diversity, after all, is a real value also in and of itself. The spread of human rights and democracy by coercion, moreover, creates resistance in places where realities or aspirations are different; and especially if persuasion is perceived, rightly or wrongly, as moralistic cover for pursuit of other US material or security interests. Yet America’s capacity to maintain, and expand, super-power influence depends on preserving its image as the focus of a shared system of values even more than superior military or even economic performance.4 However, in the more than twenty years since the end of Cold War, where the United States has found itself in a state of almost constant war fighting, the blithe assertion of common values has been complicated by American resort to torture, rendition, imprisonment without trial, pre-emptive military strikes and other tendentious action. Likewise in the economic realm, whilst the United States remains the largest economy, its insolvency and its economic model of debt funded growth, its practice of printing new money, lowering taxes and inadequate financial regulation, coupled with a paralysis of governance gripped by partisan politics and wealthy special interests, are now creating real problems in the global economy for everyone and tarnishes US credentials for responsible leadership. At this poignant moment New Zealand finds itself negotiating complex economic integration with the United States through the Trans-Pacific Partnership. There are no bankable assurances yet on offer, but the implications for New Zealand sovereign economic policy making are real. This negotiation breaks new ground for New Zealand as the first ever such bargaining over economic integration with a super-power but one whose priorities are its own recuperation from massive insolvency. The veil of secrecy that inevitably governs such negotiation is creating, in the absence of any clear indication or public debate about the New Zealand bottom line, some domestic controversy. In the past America’s adaptability, resourcefulness and innovation have carried it through periods

Afghan men listen to speeches, as Afghan and US soldiers stand guard in the background, in Washer district, Helmand province, south of Kabul, Afghanistan, in August 2012

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sophisticated high precision long distance weaponry and extensive outsourcing of military and security responsibilities to largely unaccountable American private contractors in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere,6 provide the foundations for pervasive militarisation of overall US foreign policy. Yet in practice indisputable US military prowess has not proven decisive in those wars of insurgency and of separatism that have dominated the international security landscape since the Cold War. The status of sole super-power does not confer omnipotence upon the United States, as numerous Americans themselves acknowledge. The United States cannot act alone as world policeman.7 In particular the question of just how far can a massively insolvent US economy bear the heavy debt of its chosen role as unrivalled global leader is one that severely exercises the present generation of American policy-makers. In some quarters the very extent of US insolvency becomes, however, an argument for sustaining a colossal military industrial complex in order to generate productive capacity and spin off to meet the demands of an overstretched economy. American armament exports are by far the largest in the world and it was, after all, so the reasoning runs, the supreme military effort of the Second World War and its aftermath that lifted the US economy out of the last great global economic depression of the 1930s.

the global war on terrorism actually provides a galvanising instrument for sustaining or extending US global leadership. For the great majority of governments in the world, terrorism is not their number one priority. The delicate question is whether America’s virtual continuous waging of costly war is principally to secure peace, or to secure primacy?

Diversionary effect The global war on terror serves as well to divert serious attention away from identifying actual causes of internationalised terrorism. Conclusions reached in Washington, London and some other places that 9/11 and similar outrage elsewhere represents gravely irrational response by radical Islam to Western success, driven by deep envy and shame at Islam’s own failures and a product of dismal economic performance in the Arab world, are at best partial and, at worst, misleading. No other region on the planet has suffered more than the Middle East over a period of more than a century and a half from persistent interference, manipulation or invasion from the Euro-Atlantic world and others. While it is true that Islam in common with Christianity is presently embroiled in struggle between conservative and liberal forces within its faith, it is dangerous self denial not to acknowledge that Western political, economic and military intrusion designed to privilege external interests constitutes a key provocation, creating turmoil that has produced al-Qaeda and brutal indiscriminate terrorism.5 This is not a justification for infamous barbaric behaviour but is reasonable explanation for events without which any genuine effort to understand and resolve basic causes is unavailing. US policies in the Middle East to protect Israel even while it provocatively sustains and expands illegal new Jewish settlements on Palestine territory, to contain Iran, to supervise the sources of Middle Eastern oil, to destabilise and unseat uncongenial regional regimes and to expand formidable forward military presence are the ingredients of militarisation in the region. At the wider international level America’s determination to reinvigorate global leadership is reflected in sumptuous defence spending, even in times of economic stringency, of $700 billion annually plus the costs of stewardship of the US nuclear deterrent, which brings the figure nearer to $1 trillion. No other country even remotely matches such an effort. A network of more than 600 military bases or installations throughout the world, together with the most

Persuasion power The third super-power legacy is what can be termed the power of persuasion. Forty years of Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union was a period of bluff and counter-bluff as the two amazons sought to unsettle or mislead one another, and/ or rally support domestically and internationally for their respective strategic policy choices. Exaggeration of threat became stockin-trade in Moscow and Washington to justify increases in the numbers and lethality of enormous military arsenals. A multitude of strategic security think tanks, especially in Washington, London and other places, dutifully fuelled the fervour with dire predictions of uncertainty. That legacy survives the end of the Cold War stoked by the grim experience of 9/11 and the US quest for an impracticable goal of total security for itself that drives the ceaseless and costly pursuit of full spectrum military supremacy, including in space; as well as a massive programme of homeland security involving unprecedented executive power that allows encroachment upon individual civil rights and, even, due legal process. Persuasion is exerted upon America’s friends and allies to replicate such measures and precautions for America’s protection. Exaggeration of threat, of course, produces excessive fear,8 and the striking paradox is that the most powerful military nation ever in world history, with its dazzling leadership in such things as innovation, technology, science, medicine and space, professes a sense of continuous threat to its physical existence and well-being. A messianic quality is, moreover, injected into this legend when presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush insist that the world is imbued with ‘evil’ states whose overthrow is America’s duty — through regime change, pre-emptive war or clandestine suppression.

No surprise In an age dominated by the technologies of communication, it is no surprise that the practise of ‘spinning’ information influences many governments, New Zealand’s included, in the conduct

The last vehicles in a convoy of the US Army’s 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division cross the border from Iraq into Kuwait on 18 December 2011

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of their external interests. The desire to present their actions and motives in the best possible light is perfectly understandable. On top of this, a time-honoured feature of international relations is that governments share intelligence with one another with a view to persuading others to accept the interpretations, as well as the consequential actions, of the provider. There is a veritable mass of government intelligence in this global information age, so much that it becomes practically indigestible at any one time. One perverse legacy of the super-power era is the deliberate misrepresentation even fabrication of intelligence to justify courses of action — the 2003 attack on Iraq by a US coalition of the willing is a recent example, but similar misrepresentation at the start of the Vietnam War, during the Iran Contra scandal and at other times has been used to justify armed actions. Having said all of that, it is undeniable that among the powers of persuasion, American soft power remains a vital part of US potential. The attraction which American accomplishments hold for others — inventiveness, resourcefulness and self belief — are compelling. American ideas, taste, fashion and culture have worldwide impact. Indeed US ability to persuade others to accept US preferences does not, or cannot, rest simply on military strength, although that remains very important. Soft power co-opts rather than coerces other countries to support America’s preferred outcomes. At its best it is something more than image, public relations or ephemeral publicity. In international relations it does depend, nonetheless, upon the perceived legitimacy and credibility of US policy. The nature of the US response to terrorism in the post-9/11 world has at times severely tested that legitimacy and credibility, and US soft power suffered as a consequence.9

Senior US and Soviet commanders General John R Galvin (left) and General Moiseyev meet in 1990

because of its nuclear policy, as asserted by domestic and other opponents who dismiss the policy as disreputable and misguided.

Restored relationship New Zealand has now restored a relationship with the United States through the recent Washington Declaration, and earlier 2010 Wellington Declaration. This is a positive development made the more interesting because the initiatives for improvement came as much from the United States as they did from New Zealand. The abrasive years of the George W. Bush administration had prompted Washington to undertake a task of diplomatic fence mending abroad,10 and it decided to include New Zealand. The restoration does, however, place the question of super-power legacy back squarely before New Zealand. How far will it, in Washington and Wellington, be a case of turning back the clock and the relationship to previous times, ignoring in the process the substantial transformation that has occurred in the world and indeed in New Zealand’s own circumstances and interests? In the background to New Zealand–US relations it is not clear yet just how far the United States can or will adjust to the realities of a more pluralist world. America’s 20th century international experience involved large sequences of adversarialism — the pitting of the United States against important competitors or aggressors. This had the effect, indeed, of bringing out the best in America. If the United States cannot now, however, accept a vital need to accommodate and conciliate the interests of large newly emerging countries, and in particular China, then international relations, and New Zealand’s positioning therein, are in for difficult times. In East Asia, although it does not challenge the United States globally, China clearly anticipates respect and regional primacy, given its achievements and potential as the dynamo for East Asian economic success. The leading Australian strategic thinker Hugh White argues that the United States has in effect little option but to allow China a larger role.11 China confronts a real challenge, nonetheless, to provide on-going reassurances to regional neighbours about its peaceable intentions. At the same time, the US administration is re-asserting US leadership in the region on the back of enhanced military superiority. Asian governments want the United States to be engaged, but it is not clear that they are as amenable to Washington’s leadership, let alone any notion of containment of China. In the super-power mentality there are, of course, no differences between engagement and leadership.

Local impact How does the super-power legacy affect New Zealand? This country’s emergence into the world of international affairs, which occurred over the 20th century, was deeply imbued by experience of global war and Cold War. The need for physical protection led New Zealand into alliances with the United Kingdom and with the United States, and the contribution we made to defeat of the common foe helped shape, along with our colonial inheritance, a sense of modern New Zealand national identity. But it is not a static experience. Foreign policy and domestic policy for all countries, great and small, continue to interact one with another and globalisation now reinforces those interactions. Transformation to the centre of economic gravity in the world is occurring as the complexion of New Zealand itself is also changing — the new mix of its population and the widening and deepening external connections. Many things do not, of course, change. New Zealand’s relative size, remote geography and the impalpable impact we make on the world of international affairs mean we exist and operate below the radar screens of the powerful. That strategic invisibility, however, we have learnt, offers advantage and opportunity providing we equip ourselves with knowledge and discernment. For over twenty years we were estranged from the United States (as a friend but not an ally) because of the New Zealand non-nuclear policy. Over that period under successive governments New Zealand proved an effective operator below the radar screens by substantial constructive internal change, broadening external relationships and maturing foreign policy. Unsurprisingly, not all the domestic change was uniformly applauded inside our society, but New Zealand conclusively demonstrated that it had not ‘lost its way’

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China has responded negatively to what it perceives as Cold War instincts behind US declared policy.

what the future would hold. The majority of the UN membership voted for New Zealand, although the majority of Western states did not.

Much effort Under successive governments New Zealand has invested much diplomatic effort in East Asia, and in particular China, to build rewarding relationships. New Zealand is particularly gratified by the fact it remains the only Western economy to enjoy a formal free trade agreement with China, which is proving of immense benefit. Americans who are well connected in Washington, however, openly caricature New Zealand as naïve about China, and one can be pretty certain that such opinions are expressed privately to the New Zealand government — perhaps more readily following signature of the Washington Declaration. This capricious judgment includes, however, a good dose of old Cold War thinking and the super-power legacy, according to which there exists a seamless web of Western security which no member of the network should risk breaching. This was exactly the same message preached at New Zealand by powerful governments in the Cold War at the time of our nuclear free legislation. For New Zealand such a seamless web, if indeed it exists, has surely to encompass both political and economic security, but those powerful governments were, and still are, simultaneously strenuously protecting their markets against New Zealand competition. We need to be ready still to resist seamless web arguments. What is more, given the compulsive preoccupation with nuclear non-proliferation on today’s international security agenda, New Zealand’s non-nuclear policy is proving to be on the right side of history. Today, moreover, as far as China is concerned, New Zealand is surely on the side of Hugh White of Australia. A sense of change to New Zealand’s external profile can be captured by speculating about the manner in which the government presents the New Zealand case for a non-permanent seat on the 2015–16 UN Security Council. The campaign against formidable competition will intensify in 2013. In the successful bid, also against formidable opposition, the last time New Zealand sat on the council in 1993–94, the New Zealand case was built around the fact that it was a friend but not an ally of any of the five permanent members of council (United States, Russia, France, China, United Kingdom), that it was not a member of NATO, or the European Union, that it brought an Asia–Pacific viewpoint to bear on the basis of an independent foreign policy that included non-nuclear policy. There were other arguments but, in the context of super-power legacy, these are relevant because they differentiated New Zealand from the competition. The Cold War had just ended and there was much expectation about

Different script For the 2015–16 campaign the script will obviously be different — New Zealand is a now a de facto ally of the United States, has a close and valued defence relationship with NATO, its Asia–Pacific relations are conditioned heavily by trade and the goal of economic integration with the United States. The non-nuclear policy, while still formally in place, figures very little in the current New Zealand foreign policy narrative. These attributes do not actually much distinguish New Zealand from its competitors, but it is twenty years since New Zealand last sat on the Security Council. A new and different campaign script is inevitable. The issue is just how far the presentation of our Security Council case will actually reflect the changing pluralist world and New Zealand’s own situation; or alternatively reveal attachment to the conventional loyalties of a timeworn ‘Cold War’ pecking order. Finally, a last word on how the super-power legacy extends into New Zealand’s South Pacific policy. Our vital national interest rests with helping ensure a neighbourhood that is prosperous, stable and well disposed to New Zealand. Given all the realities of the South Pacific, this provides a stern test for New Zealand. Yet we, and particularly Australia, increasingly frame our Pacific policy in terms of providing dependable stewardship of a challenging region on behalf of the super-power, thereby lightening America’s load. We need to recast this frame of mind so that New Zealand sees itself as a country in and of the Pacific committed to conciliating and assisting its neighbours as a matter first and foremost of our own national interest and responsibility. Other countries like the United States and China are involved in the South Pacific, and New Zealand needs to co-operate where appropriate with them; but not in the sense that we are performing a task devolved upon us from on high by the resident super-power, which then becomes the judge of our performance.

NOTES 1. Graham Evans and Jeffrey Newman (eds), Penguin Dictionary of International Relations (New York, 1998), p.552. 2. David P. Calleo, Follies of Power: America’s Unipolar Fantasy (Cambridge, 2009), p.127. 3. Ralf Dahrendorf, ‘Towards the Twenty-first Century’, in Michael Howard and Wm. Roger Louis (eds), Oxford History of 20th Century (Oxford, 1998), p.341. 4. Michael Howard, The Lessons of History (Oxford, 1991), p.135. 5. Michael Howard, ‘The New “Great Power” Politics’, in Robert Harvey (ed), The World Crisis: The Way Forward After Iraq (London, 2008), pp.183–4. 6. Rachel Maddow, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power (New York, 2012), pp.157–87. 7. Nancy Soderberg, The Superpower Myth, The Use and Misuse of American Might (New York, 2005), p.328f. 8. Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘Uniting Our Enemies and Dividing Our Friends’, in Harvey, p.50. 9. Joseph S. Nye Jr, Soft Power, The Means to Success in World Politics, Public Affairs (New York, 2004), pp.127–47. 10. Calleo, p.40. 11. Hugh White, The China Choice, Why America Should Share Power (Collingwood 2012), p.5f.

The Chinese aircraft-carrier Liaoning, earlier a partly built carrier constructed in Russia named the Varayag and purchased clandestinely by China, undergoing sea trials in 2012

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Making a difference: another perspective +IVEPH1G+LMIVI¾IGXWSR2I[>IEPERH´WTPEGI MRXLI[SVPHMRPMKLXSJVIGIRXGSQQIRXWF]XLI 0EFSYV4EVX]´WJSVIMKREJJEMVWWTSOIWTIVWSR The last issue of the NZIR (vol 37, no 1) contains the text of a talk given to the NZIIA’s Wellington branch by Phil Goff, the former minister of foreign affairs and, later, of defence. Now Opposition spokesman for foreign affairs, he drew on his lengthy experience in both portfolios to discuss New Zealand’s place in the world. As Goff explained, the fundamentals are clear — New Zealand, small and isolated is deeply dependent on overseas markets. Even so, we have played an almost disproportionate role as an international citizen, particularly in overseas wars. The First and Second World Wars1 gave us the credentials for an early seat at the major international organisations, particularly the League of Nations and the United Nations, where we have played an active part in discussions on major international issues including the work of the specialised agencies. Goff expressed opposition to the United Nations Security Council permanent members’ veto and was critical of the ‘lack of will and commitment’ among member states to reach agreement on solutions and implement them. The Opposition spokesman wants to see Wellington making its own decisions on what alliances and international commitments New Zealand enters into. In deciding on the key issues, a Labour government would be guided by the values and principles that underpin New Zealand society. Those principles fit us well to become involved in international conciliation and mediation issues. It is not possible to cover in detail the comprehensive range Phil Goff of issues discussed by Goff, which included climate change, Doha, disarmament, non-proliferation and conflict prevention. He also referred to his wish to rebuild the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.2 There is a comment that four economists will express five dif-

Troops from Nelson who fought in the South African War of 1899–1902

ferent viewpoints on a given issue. Perhaps foreign policy commentators have a similar disposition. Be that as it may, I offer the following as a supplement to Goff’s views. Walter Lippmann3 considered that to establish a balanced foreign policy a nation must maintain its objectives and its power in equilibrium; its purpose within its means; its means equal to its purposes; its commitments relative to its resources; its resources adequate to its commitments. Without these factors in line it would not be possible to undertake an effective foreign policy. Lippmann’s comments provide a valuable foreign policy perspective — for both small countries (New Zealand) and large (the United States, now the world’s largest debtor nation).

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The global financial crisis, the rise of militant Islam (not Islam as such) and the growing international presence of China are significant factors for change in the current international scene. Many countries are having to rethink both domestic and international policies as a result of mounting debt levels. The end result may not mean radical shifts in foreign policy, but, as the United States has shown in relation to the Pacific, a certain on-going process of re-emphasis and de-emphasis is required to adjust to the new realities. Given Hillary Clinton’s attendance at the most recent Pacific Forum and the statements she has been making, it is surprising then that Goff made only the briefest reference to the South Pacific — our Near North. In March 2011 Clinton made her position quite clear. ‘Let’s... talk straight Realpolitik’, she told the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee. ‘We are in competition with China. We have a lot of support in the region which embraces our values.’4

-REVIGIRXEVXMGPI4LMP+SJJHMWGYWWIHEVERKISJMWWYIWVIPIZERXXS2I[>IEPERH´WTPEGIMRXLI [SVPH8LIWIJSPPS[PEVKIP]XVEHMXMSREPPMRIW&YXTEVXMGYPEVP]JSVXLI;IWXXLIKPSFEP½RERGMEP GVMWMWLEWFVSYKLXEWYFWXERXMEPQIEWYVISJYRGIVXEMRX]XSXLIMRXIVREXMSREPIRZMVSRQIRX%HHMRKXSXLIQM\EVI'LMRE´WHMJJIVIRXIQTLEWIWXLIVMWISJQMPMXERX-WPEQERHJSV2I[>IEPERH E4EGM½GXLEXMWVIEWWIWWMRKMXWTVMSVMXMIWTEVXMGYPEVP]MRGYVVIRXXVEHIRIKSXMEXMSRWXLEXGSYPH TVSJSYRHP]EJJIGXSYV[E]SJHSMRKFYWMRIWWMRXLIJYXYVI8LIOI]XSEHHVIWWMRKXLIWIGLEPPIRKIW PMIW[MXLXLIUYEPMX]SJEREP]WMWERHEHZMGIJVSQ[MXLMR2I[>IEPERH´WS[RVIWSYVGIW New Zealand International Review

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In a statement at the 2012 Forum, she modified her position to say that the Pacific was big enough for both China and the United States to work together in, but an early indication of the continued competitive context is the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations, the terms of which we do not yet know but which promise to have a profound effect on our trading relationships and internal regulatory processes. China is not a party to the TPP and is Walter Lippman watching developments closely, particularly as New Zealand’s military/defence relationship with Washington firms up. US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell wants to see New Zealand undertake ‘strong dialogue’ with China,5 but it will require refined diplomatic choreography for New Zealand to maintain an appropriate balance in relations with the two major powers and Australia. The situation is rendered even more complex by the Hillary Clinton ready embrace of our closest ally, Australia, not with New Zealand but with the United States.

Suva

with the Pacific, we might also adopt some fa’a pasifika attitudes. Dealing with the Bainimarama government is no easy task. Suva is unhappy with the language and attitudes displayed by Canberra and Wellington since the 2006 coup and remains confused by a sanctions policy which most recently denied a visa to the CEO of the National Provident Fund to hold a series of meetings in Australia with investment advisers. If sanctions are designed to target only those involved in the coup, this particular visa refusal would appear to go further and affect every Fijian worker. Perhaps the narrow interpretation given to sanctions by Canberra is more indicative of internal trade union politics in Australia than the overall requirements of relations with an important Pacific partner.

Elections calls For their part Australia and New Zealand continue to stress the need for elections in Fiji. Surely elections are only part of what a functioning democracy is all about. Governance, the rule of relevant law and working governmental structures are also vital. There have been ten elections in Fiji since 1972 and five coups. That represents a coup every two elections or every eight years. Elections as such seem not to hold the answer to Fiji’s deeply complex socio-political problems. In relation to the latest problems concerning constitutional reform, Murray McCully, New Zealand’s current foreign minister, said that ‘these things are often more complex than they appear on the surface’.8 That indeed is the beginning of wisdom. It might also be said that in the Pacific states generally the basic requirements of democracy are not noticeably in evidence. Corruption is endemic. As other powers become more involved in the Pacific, it is time to recognise that Fiji’s isolation has worked to exclude the dominant South Pacific state from a leading role in a number of key issues currently exercising Murray McCully all the Forum states, particularly those framing adjustments to regional policies on trade agreements being negotiated with Australia and New Zealand and the European Union. Pacific states’ unease about these negotiations has been expressed by their seeking an independent adviser on the regional trade negotiations — Pacer Plus — as well as for the Economic Partnership Agreement with the European

Understandable comments Goff welcomes New Zealand’s bilateral co-operation with these countries, but he does not wish to surrender decision-making to the judgment of officials or statesman in Washington and Canberra. Given New Zealand’s long-term desire for an ‘independent’ foreign policy, Goff’s comments are understandable. The difficulties, however, lie in the detail. China is deeply involved with Fiji, a contact Suva welcomes. Moreover, at their celebration of 50 years of independence in 2012 the Samoan prime minister welcomed Chinese aid to his country, noting that Beijing could provide development assistance that neither Australia nor New Zealand could. So far, China has made aid commitments of about US$600 million for infrastructure, technology and agriculture in the Pacific. According to a report by the ANZ Bank, trade between China and the Pacific Islands has risen from US$180 million in 2001 to US$1.5 billion in 2010.6 Some commentators consider Chinese aid to be ‘non-transparent’ and debt-generating. As Steven Ratuva says, however, ‘the Pacific Island states realise they need to move on as mature global citizens and look for alternative alliances outside their immediate postcolonial circle controlled by Australia and New Zealand’.7 There is a further dimension. In spite of some rapprochement the relationship between New Zealand and Fiji remains strained. Let me state again, I do not condone coups. But if we are talking about realism in foreign policy (as Hillary Clinton says she is) and we continue to see ourselves as having a special relationship

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Union. Fiji may not at present be a full member of the Forum. It is, however, a fully accepted and respected member of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, which contains the wealth and power of the Pacific. In 2013 Fiji takes over as chair of the NonAligned plus China group. The Pacific Forum and other countries have produced the Cairns Compact, an agreement Peter O’Neill designed to co-ordinate aid to the Pacific. China has rejected an invitation to join the compact. Clearly Beijing wants to run its own development assistance programmes. Pacific countries are well aware of China’s position. 6IFIP½KLXIVWMR7]VME

Aid realignment

open door. In 1973 Norman Kirk, then prime minister and minister of foreign affairs, said: To base our foreign policy on moral principles is the most enlightened form of self-interest. What is morally right is likely to be politically right. What appears in the short term to be a part of expediency is all too likely to lead into a blind alley.’10 Like Goff, Norman Kirk saw New Zealand pursuing a more independent foreign policy. He wanted frankness and openness in the government’s public discussions of foreign policy and a more magnanimous approach to the distribution of development assistance. It is 40 years since Kirk’s comments, but President Obama has underlined the problems in our new world of an over-emphasis on morality in foreign policy.

Perhaps the developing situation in the Pacific was reflected in the remarks made recently in Sydney by PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill, where he called for Australia’s aid strategy in Papua New Guinea to be geared towards his government’s development priorities and programmes. He emphasised economic infrastructure, education and public service and stated that what he wanted was a ‘total realignment’ of the Australian aid programme.9 O’Neill’s unease will have a sympathetic resonance among Papua New Guinea’s Pacific partners. It would have been useful to have Goff’s analysis on how he sees a Labour government dealing with these complex and developing issues in the area in which, internationally, New Zealand is regarded as having some pre-emBarack Obama inence. Goff mentions human rights as an issue with which, during his time as foreign minister, he was closely identified. His position reflected New Zealand’s long and well-documented involvement in human rights issues, but when deciding current priorities it is pertinent to recall President Obama’s salutary remarks on accepting the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize: the promotion of human rights cannot be about ex- Norman Kirk hortation alone. At times, it must be coupled with painstaking diplomacy. I know that engagement with repressive regimes lacks the satisfying purity of indignation. But I also know that sanctions without outreach — and condemnation without discussion — can carry forward a crippling status quo. No repressive regime can move down a new path unless it has the choice of an

Veto criticism Phil Goff is critical of the Security Council veto to block a collective response to assist opponents of the Assad regime in Syria. Perhaps New Zealand can best support multilateralism through promoting what Goff describes as a ‘values and evidence-based approach’ to the problems the world confronts. This may be so, and if New Zealand is elected to the Security Council next year we could usefully work for reform at the United Nations, including the veto. There is no denying the terrible crimes committed by the Assad regime (and other similarly disposed authorities elsewhere). The question is, if New Zealand, through the United Nations, intervenes in Syria then what? Collective will and a sense of purpose are not sufficient. Nor should we imagine that the global rule of law is an inevitability. The real question is whether powerful states will live up to their responsibilities. On the evidence to date the reply would seem to be not really. Goff refers to the problems of countries ‘acting in their self-interest and not the interests of the wider international community’. Has it ever been different? Thucydides records an early example of ruthless self-interest in the Athenian dialogue with the hapless Melians during the Peloponnesian War.11 This may be an extreme example of so-called realism in foreign policy, but international relations cannot be divorced from the realities and complexities — even perversities — of human nature. Syria may be a headline issue which, with some justice, produces a sense of outrage within the international community. But a well-founded foreign policy assumes a strong domestic policy.

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free trade agreements are used by other countries as vehicles for their own agendas. It is well to remember, however, that aspects of the TPP do not sit easily with the view expressed in some quarters that it is a ‘model free-trade agreement’.13 International trade agreements are not just to do with trade. They may influence, shape, limit and even on occasion pre-empt domestic social policy. For this reason, the proposed TPP should be open and subject to challenge.

With debt levels at an historic high and some of our traditional markets showing signs of weakness, New Zealand needs to be cautious about spreading itself too widely internationally. Many Western governments struggle to present an appearance of business as usual, but, after four years of the Great Recession, there is little realistic prospect of a return to the ‘old normal’. As Colin James says in ‘Making Big Decisions for the Future’ (3 December 2012) after the global financial crisis, which he characterises as a disjunctive event, ‘the social, economic and political landscape, the context for fiscal decisions, will be qualitatively different’. James looks to fiscal policy to be resilient. As with fiscal policy so with foreign policy.

Important contributions In the previous article mentioned above, I have referred to the contribution made by David Skilling to the foreign policy debate. The current secretary to the Treasury, Gabriel Mahklouf, has also outlined some issues relevant to New Zealand’s foreign policy — New Zealand’s dependence on foreign capital and the need for foreign direct investment as providing a direct line to international expertise, technology and ideas. The government’s former science adviser, the late Sir Paul Callaghan, emphasised the need for technical and entrepreneurial innovation if our society is to meet our expectations in a changing world of the 21st century. There is no question that these aspects are important as we consider inputs to foreign policy. This all adds up to the need for a coherent national debate on foreign policy settings. A new government could greatly assist by establishing the structure and key issues for that national debate. Globalisation has deeply affected New Zealand as a country, the way in which we approach international issues and particularly our way of life. People now expect to become more involved in decision-making processes at all levels of society as, increasingly, foreign policy decisions are included. Foreign policy is an area where not only the Opposition but also the government could now demonstrate a willingness to undertake collaborative governance in relation to issues such as those commented on above, particularly by providing full disclosure of terms of any proposed agreements (the TPP for instance) well before any commitment is made.

Varied problems New Zealand’s problems are varied and solutions will inevitably need to be eclectic. This in no way ignores the need for a wide-ranging, hard-headed and realistic assessment of the options, but it does mean introducing not only a great deal more pragmatism (until recently a strength in New Zealand) but also an understanding of the processes of human motivation, psychology, anthropology (particularly in the South Pacific) and organisational behaviour. The economist John Kay emphasises the need for meticulous observation of what people, businesses and governments actually do. We cannot foresee the full range of outcomes or the options available but, as noted in a previous article,12 leadership must ensure that policies reflect the basic principles that nurtured our own economy and society. But no policy or society remains static. With some 30.7 per cent of New Zealand’s population now categorised as non-European, New Zealand’s traditional values may be subject to a rather different emphasis in the 21st century. In projecting New Zealand’s values and interests overseas, a new government could greatly assist in rethinking, if not the traditional values of our society, then at least the shift of emphases emerging from our increasingly multicultural society. New Zealand must take Gabriel Mahklouf into account the implications for our foreign policy not only of multiculturalism but also of the adjustments to our internal structures that have occurred in the light of the on-going financial crisis and the emergence of new markets. The implications of the Trans-Pacific Partnership could well play a central role in such a debate. Free trade agreements as such have been used by New Zealand for opening up markets for years (the Australian apple market, for example), so we should not be surprised if Sir Paul Callaghan

NOTES 1. Our first overseas intervention was, of course, the South African War of 1899–1902, where New Zealand was quick to offer troops to support the British cause. 2. The process of ‘restructuring’ MFAT may by now have advanced to the point where a ‘rebuild’ would amount to a total reconstruction. 3. Walter Lippmann (1899–1974), journalist, media critic, philosopher. 4. Financial Times, 4 Mar 2011. 5. Kurt Campbell, Dominion Post, 17 Dec 2013. 6. Quoted in Steven Ratuva, New Zealand Listener, 7 May 2011. 7. Ibid. 8. Hon Murray McCully, interview, Radio New Zealand, 3 Jan 2013. 9. Post-Courier (Papua New Guinea), 29 Nov 2012. 10. Norman Kirk, Introduction to the Annual Report of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the year ended March 1973. 11. Thucydides 431 BC, The Peloponnesian War, Ch. XVII: ‘The Fate of Melos’. 12. Gerald McGhie, NZ International Review, vol 37, no 5 (2012). 13. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, vol 35, no 6 (2011).

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Foreign Minister Murray McCully calls on the PNG Diplomat Training Course conducted by the NZIIA. He is pictured with Peter Kennedy, Lance Beath, Peter Nichols, Lucy Bogari (the acting secretary of the PNG Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade), members of the minister’s delegation and trainee PNG diplomats

Training Papua New Guinea diplomats Peter Nichols and Peter Kennedy report on the NZIIA’s involvement in the second foreign service training course in Port Moresby in November 2012.

With regards to leadership, he suggested that in the space of half a day, a minister could quickly get an understanding about how well a post is operated. He suggested most posts he visited had motivated staff who were well led, knowledgeable about all aspects of the region they were serving in and well connected. Asked about women diplomats, McCully said that both women and men are promoted based on their individual merit. To further questions, he responded that New Zealand very much values its relationship with a growing China, but New Zealand also has very strong relations and interests in the South Pacific and especially with Australia. The Papua New Guinea diplomats very much appreciated the opportunity to hear McCully’s remarks, which were both timely and apt for this second training session for PNG foreign service officers.

In November 2012 a team from the NZIIA went to Port Moresby at the invitation of the Papua New Guinea Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to provide diplomatic training to 30 new foreign service officers. This followed an earlier course in March, which was reported on in the July/August 2012 issue of the NZIR (vol 37, no 4). Those invoved were the NZIIA director, Peter Kennedy, Lance Beath, a senior lecturer in Victoria University of Wellington’s School of Government, and Peter Nichols, the NZIIA Wellington branch chair. The second training course was fortunate in that the New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Hon Murray McCully, was in Papua New Guinea and took time out from his busy schedule to address the course and to give the participants the benefit of his perspective on what he expects from diplomats. McCully emphasised that ministers are very busy and managing time is challenging. Accordingly, policy advice from advisers needs to be concise, coherent and well argued. Lengthy papers that repeat points can be frustrating and waste time. Additionally, he said, the real foreign minister is the prime minister, and he, or she, will undoubtedly be even busier. The quality of foreign policy advice must be sound and if there are errors, then the prime minister will have a poor image of his minister and the department. In response to a question about the qualities and characteristics that define a good diplomat, McCully reiterated that a diplomat’s advice needs to be concise and coherent. But the qualities of a good diplomat are more than that. He stated that diplomats need to be enthusiastic about their profession and committed.

The course in session

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When truth is twisted and facts are ignored Mordechai Kedar challenges the views about 4EPIWXMRIEHZERGIHF]0SMWERH1EVXMR+VMJ½XLW in a recent article. With much concern I read what Lois and Martin Griffiths wrote under the title ‘The Palestinian story: to exist is to resist’ in the NZIR (vol 37, no 5 (2012), pp.4–9). Unfortunately the Griffiths’s article shows a clear lack of background knowledge about the issues brought to our attention.   The authors do not differentiate between Palestinians who live inside Israel and therefore are citizens of Israel, and those who are not, and the reader who does not know where places mentioned in the article are has no idea whether a story is about people who are citizens of Israel or those who are living under the authority of the Israel Defence Forces in the West Bank. These are two different populations. The Griffiths omit to mention that every Palestinian, a citizen of Israel or not, has the full right of appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court. Indeed, Palestinians often win their cases — for example, Supreme Court decisions have made the government change the siting of the security barrier in a way that balances Israel’s need for security with the Palestinians’ need to reach their fields. I would expect that the Griffiths would mention that the security barrier that Israel built was the result of the dreadful Palestinian terrorist attacks in which more than 1000 Israelis were killed in buses, restaurants, malls and hotels; and the rate of these attacks dropped sharply because of this defensive barrier, which killed nobody. Israelis who were killed cannot return to life; the fence and the wall, on the other hand, can be removed after peace is achieved. For Israelis, the credibility of what the Griffiths write is not enhanced by their quotations of Dr Ilan Pappe and Gideon Levy. Pappe (now teaching in the United Kingdom) was discredited as an academic at Haifa University, was a former Communist Party candidate for the Knesset (the Israeli Parliament) and supportDr Ilan Pappe

ed an MA thesis which was found in court to be a forgery and libel. Gideon Levy of the Israeli left-wing tabloid Ha’aretz does not speak or read Arabic and thus relies on translators who are uniformly hostile to Israel. The Griffiths relate to all the Palestinians as indigenous people of this country. This shows an ignorance of our history. Many ‘Palestinians’ still carry names which testify that they are not originally from Palestine, such as al-Iraqi, al-Masri (the Egyptian), al-Hourani and al-Halabi (Syrians), al-Sourani, al-Tarabulsi (Lebanese), al-Zarqawi, al-Karaki (Jordanian) and many similar names. Most of them immigrated to this country during the first half of the 20th century, mainly to work in the villages and towns which Jews built after the establishment of the British Mandate. It is particularly strange to read in the Griffiths article that Israel is responsible for the situation of Christians in Bethlehem. Christian emigration from Bethlehem has accelerated since the transfer of power to the Palestinian Authority in 1995; the decline came about because the Muslims confiscated their assets, desecrated their churches and intimidated them. And, in fact, Israel is the only state in the Middle East where the Christian population is stable; Christians are leaving all Arab countries.

Untenable claim The Griffiths claim that ‘the issue of Israel and the occupied territories is not religion’. If they only bothered to read the Hamas charter they would see how deeply Palestinians are committed to holy jihad against the Jews, not because they are Israelis or Zionists, but because they are Jews, to wit: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews and kill them; until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him! This will not apply to the Gharqad, which is a Jewish tree (cited by Bukhari and Muslim). The entire state of Israel — according to Hamas — should be wiped off the map. And, to remind the Griffiths, Hamas won the majority of the seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council in 2006. A UN investigation, headed by New Zealander Sir Geoffrey Palmer, concluded that Israel has the full right under international law to blockade the streaming of arms and ammunition to Gaza by sea. It is pathetic to read that the Griffiths still think that the Mavi Marmara, which carried dozens of terrorists and unidentified cargo to Gaza, had the right to do so. Seemingly, the Griffiths think that once the Israeli–Palestinian struggle is solved, all the problems of the Middle East will be solved as well and peace will reign all over the region. Apparently they think that Israel — 64 years old — is responsible for the Sunni–Shi’ite struggle which started 1350 years ago; for the million killed in the 1980–88 bloody war between Iran and Iraq; for the fact that the Alawi regime of Assad in Syria has butchered so far some 37,000 Syrian citizens; for the agonies of the Christian Copts in Egypt; for the fact that half a million Algerians were slaughtered by their brethren between 1992 and 1998; and for the tribal fights in Libya.

Gideon Levy

Mordechai Kedar is a member of the Department of Arabic at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

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and the state of Israel was established three years after their defeat.

Partition vote After the UN partition vote in November 1947, the Jewish population in Israel accepted the UN decision while the Palestinians together with five Arab states declared war on Israel. They did not succeed in destroying Israel, and the Arab-allotted territories instead were occupied by Egypt [Gaza] and Jordan [the West Bank]. For nineteen years they could have established a Palestinian state, but the Palestinians and the Arab states did not. The Jewish people of Israel dried up swamps and erected communities, while the Palestinians were kept in refugee camps in the Arab states. In Israel the immigrant transit camps disappeared during the 1950s and Jewish immigrants created a new, optimistic Israeli society; the Arabs (and their descendants) were forced to remain as refugees to this day, ‘branded’ by their host countries so that they do not integrate into their populations. Israel built a new society, which has, over the years, increasingly bridged the cultural gaps among the various Jewish groups who have returned to their homeland from the four corners of the earth. The desire to achieve economic independence powered the wheels of Israel’s economy and brought it to the forefront of the developed world. Israeli industry expanded into all types of products; Israeli agriculture and technology are world-renowned; the shekel is one of the world’s strong currencies. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have made a vocation of their refugee status, developed beggary into an art and transformed their misery into a tool used to weigh on the conscience of the world. From its inception, Israel broke up all the Jewish armed groups that had been operating prior to the establishment of the state: the Haganah, the Irgun (Etzel) and the Lehi were disbanded and their arms were confiscated. Events came to a head in June 1948, when the Altalena, a ship carrying Etzel weapons needed for the battle over Jerusalem, was sunk. Ben Gurion, acting out of a sense of state primacy, would not even sanction this arms shipment. Without debating whether or not he acted justifiably, it is undeniable that Israel survived its first few years, which were immeasurably more difficult than any in its history, because the nation acted ‘as one person’, if not always ‘with one heart’. State primacy triumphed over factionalism, and the state gained ascendancy over all the groups under its wing, including those imposed by force.

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Great catastrophe Palestinians and others relate to the Israeli–Arab struggle as a ‘nakba’. The word in Arabic means an enormous, gigantic tragedy, a catastrophe. This is the word used in the Arab–Islamic discourse to denote the start of the ‘Palestine’ calamity, in which Islam’s Holy Land of Palestine fell captive in what Arabs consider as a modern-day crusade by Zionism, the emissary of European imperialism. When Israel’s 1948 War of Independence ended, 600,000 Arabs, formerly of Palestine/Eretz Israel, remained in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Judea and Samaria (under Jordanian occupation), the Gaza Strip (under Egyptian occupation), Egypt and Libya. The catastrophe was indeed great and its dimensions stemmed not only from the physical disaster that befell the Arabs but also — and perhaps primarily — from the psychological tragedy that has accompanied the physical for 64 years: Israel survived the War of Independence and the later wars it was forced into. It succeeded, developed, expanded and flourished while the Palestinians were left with only a shattered dream. The state of Israel is the mirror in which the Arabs perceive their failure; while the Jewish people celebrates its 64 years of renewed independence, after about 1900 years of exile, the Arabs mark 64 years of continuous shortcomings. To an extent, the years of struggle against Zionism served to unite the Arabs in Palestine/Land of Israel under the leadership of Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Hu+VERH1YJXM,EN%QMREP,YWIMRM seini, who was wanted by the British during the Second World War for his pro-Nazi activities and resided in Berlin during the war. He recruited thousands of Balkan Muslims for the SS. Many, including some of us Israelis, are unaware of this point: the leader of Palestine’s Arabs was part of the machinery of destruction used to murder European Jewry. Nevertheless, Huseini and his Nazi patrons failed

Splintered opposition The Palestinians, by comparison, became progressively more splintered; one after another, there arose armed groups such as -WVEIPMW[EXGLXLIWMROMRKSJXLIAltalena

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the Lebanese Christian Maronites freedom of action); in August 1990, the Iraqi Army invaded Kuwait and destroyed the country, with Arafat supporting Saddam Hussein wholeheartedly. When Kuwait was liberated in March 1991, the Kuwaitis expelled an estimated 300,000 Palestinians who had been working in Kuwait for many years, in revenge for the latter’s support of Hussein; Libya banished thousands of Palestinians from its territory after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993; in April 2003, immediately after Saddam Hussein was toppled, hundreds of knife-wielding Iraqis burst into Baghdadi Palestinian homes in order to exact revenge for years of Palestinian support of Saddam Hussein, and four new Palestinian refugee camps were created as a result.

Equal rights The citizens of Israel — both Jewish and Arab — enjoy equal rights under the law, while the Palestinian refugees in Lebanon have not been awarded citizenship to this day. Moreover, the Lebanese constitution expressly specifies that Palestinian refugees will never gain citizenship, even though some of them emigrated from Lebanon to Israel prior to the War of Independence (1948), primarily in order to work in then-developing Haifa and in various Jewish communities established in northern Israel, such as Rosh Pina, Ilaniya, Zichron Yaacov and others. For more than 60 years, Lebanese law has barred Palestinian refugees from employment in close to 70 different professions. This discriminatory list of forbidden professions has recently been shortened to about twenty different occupations; no one on earth has uttered a single word about this blatant discrimination. By contrast, an Arab in Israel can study and work in any profession he or she wishes to engage in. No wonder then that Arabs make every effort to live in Israel, be it via fictitious ‘visa marriages’ to Israeli Arab women or by infiltrating the borders, primarily in the south. I am far from claiming that Israel is a heaven on earth, but the Griffiths forgot to mention that thousands of Palestinians who live in Jerusalem applied to become Israeli citizens, and the same is happening with the Druze on the Golan Heights, which were occupied from Syria in 1967. Apparently these people prefer to be citizens of Israel rather than of any Arab or even Palestinian state. Palestinians — both Israeli and not Israeli citizens — watch with great concern what is happening all over the Arab world since December 2010: the atrocities in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and especially Syria are heart-breaking to any human being, and many Palestinians draw the inevitable conclusion — with all the problems, it is much better to live under Israeli rule of law than to suffer under the corrupt rule of the Palestinian Authority or Hamas, which is internationally defined as a terror organisation. Things are not ideal in the Middle East, no doubt, and a democratic state like Israel has to find the balance between its security and livelihood of people who are hostile to it, especially if terror attacks come from their places. Unlike other people who immigrated to places in new parts of the world, we — Jews — returned to our forefathers’ land from which we were expelled 1942 years ago and renewed our independence. We do not seek wars with our Arab neighbours and wish to find a way to live in peace with them. Unfortunately, peace in the Middle East is given only to the invincible, and as long as they still dream of getting rid of us we will not enjoy real peace. When our neighbours accept Israel as a legitimate state of the Jewish people, peace will be achieved.

Palestinian children killed by the Syrian Army

al-Qawmiyun al-Arab, al-Feda’iyun, al-Sa’iqa, al-’Asifa, Fatah, the Popular Front, the Democratic Front, the Arab Liberation Front, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and many others. Not only did these groups not co-operate; they often fought one another and spilled each other’s blood. The last round of violence occurred in June 2007 when Hamas’ militias took over the Gaza Strip, mercilessly shooting Palestinian Authority security personnel and hurling to the street those who had fled to the upper floors of multistory buildings. Immediately after its establishment, the state of Israel was awarded international recognition and later joined the United Nations as a member state. Israel has never been involved in war against a non-Arab or non-Islamic country, and there have even been talks about its joining NATO. The Palestinians, by contrast, have become embroiled in strife with everyone around them, and their Arab ‘brethren’ have killed far more of them than have been casualties of their conflict with Israel: in September 1970, the Jordanian Army killed approximately 20,000 Palestinians because they managed to dominate large areas in the north of the country; in August 1976, the Syrian Army butchered thousands of Palestinians at Tel al-Za’tar; in September 1982, the Lebanese Christian militias killed hundreds of Palestinians in Beirut’s Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps (these killings are attributed by the Griffiths to Israel because IDF forces were in the vicinity and allowed Iraqi soldiers enter Kuwait in 1990

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CONFERENCE REPORT

China–New Zealand: an endless work in progress Brian Lynch reports on the second China– New Zealand symposium, held in Beijing last December to commemorate the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

as disaster relief, the environment, finance, food safety and food security. At the people-to-people level, understanding was being encouraged by the growth in two-way tourism and student numbers and by the fact that 29 cities and provinces in China were now ‘twinned’ with New Zealand counterparts. The boom in trade since the free trade agreement was signed in 2008 came in for special mention, as did New Zealand’s continuing unique position of being the only developed country to have established formal trade accords with both China and the Hong Kong special administrative region. Following the CASS secretary-general, the VUW deputy vice-chancellor, Professor Neil Quigley, also spoke of the importance of the economic interaction, including investment that was a model for others, and valuable educational co-operation, of which a good example was the staff exchange scheme between VUW and CASS. He noted that the free trade agreement had helped cushion New Zealand against the most severe impacts of the global financial crisis and identified development assistance in the South Pacific as an emerging area of worthy bilateral co-operation.

The second in a two-part series of symposia to celebrate the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations between China and New Zealand was held in Beijing on 4 December 2012. It was hosted by the highly respected Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), in partnership with the New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington(VUW) and the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. The next generation tasked with carrying these important bilateral ties forward was well represented in the audience by CASS scholars and notably by a group of nearly 30 VUW students on a study tour to China. Unsurprisingly there were some similarities in the two programmes, but they were not mirror images. The one offered in Wellington on 5 September 2012 had a more distinct reflective aspect to it, which was appropriate for the first in the series. That provided in Beijing was more obviously focused on ‘where to from here?’ As the first symposium had done (see the report on it in the NZIR, vol 37, no 6) but this time to a largely Chinese audience, the Beijing programme, too, had a strong emphasis on the development of the bilateral relationship and its current trends, and on opportunities to broaden and deepen the two-way engagement. In his welcoming address the secretary-general of CASS, Huang Haotao, set a positive tone in observing that distance had been no barrier to the growth of strong and comprehensive links underpinning a mature, mutually beneficial and respectful relationship. He referred to ‘multifaceted ties’ in fields as diverse

Huge importance The first session of the symposium, chaired by the current president of the NZIIA, Sir Douglas Kidd, featured two former ambassadors from each country and the present New Zealand ambassador. In his introductory remarks, Sir Douglas recalled the acceptance by New Zealand in 1972 that the country could not afford to continue to ignore ‘one quarter of humanity’. He described today’s relationship as ‘hugely’ important to New Zealand and a dominant factor in encouraging recognition by New Zealanders of their country’s Asian destiny. Chen Ming Ming had been China’s popular ambassador to New Zealand from 2001 to 2005. He gave some intriguing insights into the initial discussion about exploring a free trade agreement, where he had been instrumental, and the eventual bilateral decision to press ahead that by normal standards had been reached remarkably quickly. He saw significant promise for future collaboration in dairy farming, the film industry and food safety, tourism and education, and co-operation in regional forums where New Zealand was able to help China understand and ‘navigate’ the complex emerging architecture. Chris Elder, New Zealand’s ambassador to China 1993–98 and a long-time practitioner in the relationship, will author the volume that will provide a permanent record of the two symposia. In Beijing he revisited with a light touch some of the trials and tribulations New Zealand had encountered in establishing its early presence in China. Overviewing the state of the relationship, his memorable concluding comment was that ‘history interests us but the future compels us’. His very recent personal contribution to the China–New Zealand story has just been published by Victoria University Press under the title of New Zealand’s China

Delegates to the symposium

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excludes the United States. Zhang Yunling (CASS) expected countries in the region to concentrate more on stimulating domestic consumption, reducing the role of exports in their growth strategies, and finding new markets. He asked where the scope lay to inject new dynamism into regional growth and believed this would require big changes to fiscal and monetary policies including on the part of but not only the United States. Of interest to New Zealand, which is an active participant in both the TPP and the RCEP, Professor Zhang thought work on the planned China–Japan–South Korea free trade agreement could move faster than either of the more broad-based schemes. Clare Fearnley is director of the Asia Regional Division in the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. She noted that countries of the Asia–Pacific region had not had a history of shared regional identity. The regional architecture was still at a comparatively early stage of development. The evolving constellation of regional groupings and processes was inevitably messy at this stage with identifiable gaps and overlaps. However, this was not a major concern for New Zealand and there was no obvious ‘big bang’ architectural solution. There was a high degree of complementarity possible between the TPP and RCEP. Ministers had made clear that New Zealand saw the TPP as an inclusive piece of regional architecture that was open to China and other regional players. There was still a definite place for APEC in bringing major economies together and in fostering the Free Trade Agreement Asia Pacific. On security issues Fearnley said New Zealand emphasised the importance of promoting the habit of regional co-operation on difficult issues. It was slow going but the direction of evolution was positive. Han Feng (CASS) said China’s priority was to advance domestic reform; its approach to its close neighbourhood was one of ‘diluting regional contradictions’. Marc Lanteigne (VUW) noted the contrast in the region between ‘anarchic regimes’, where the emphasis is on consensus-building, and ‘hierarchic regimes’ that are alliance-based. Despite that difference he noted there had been good progress in addressing common issues arising from traditional and non-traditional security threats. He acknowledged the US ‘rebalancing’ in Asia was a significant new factor, as was the emergence of the East Asia Summit as an influential new economic entity. Neither he saw as potentially destabilising developments. In his view the return of ‘balance of power’ behaviour familiar from an earlier era was unlikely. There were two discussants in this session: Shi Yongming (China Institute of International Studies) and Professor Xiaoming Huang, the director of the China Research Centre at VUW. They both referred to the need for big power interests to be reconciled in the South Pacific as well as in the context of emerging regional architecture.

Brian Lynch and Sir Douglas Kidd

Experience: Its Genesis, Triumphs and Occasional Moments of Less Than Complete Success and contains many compelling examples of cross-cultural encounters. Zhang Yuanyuan was China’s senior representative in New Zealand from 2006 to 2008. He said the relationship showed how, despite different social and political systems, two partners could still build trust and co-operate productively. Examples he gave of where New Zealand experience was of interest to China were environmental protection, the rule of law and racial interaction. Tony Browne had been ambassador in Beijing in the very formative years of 2004–09 and like Chen Ming Ming had played an influential role. He emphasised that both countries had real if different interests at stake at the time, and had seized the short-term window of opportunity to lock into place the much acclaimed ‘four firsts’: recognition by New Zealand of China as a market economy, conclusion of the negotiations on China’s access to the WTO, and to have started and successfully completed the free trade agreement deal. The current New Zealand ambassador to China, Carl Worker, described the free trade agreement as the ‘practical, bed-rock base’ of the relationship and noted that bilateral trade was approaching the balance point. His focus was firmly on likely measures to realise gains in areas highlighted in the government’s ambitious ‘China Strategy’, and drew special attention to research and development co-operation and exciting potential he saw in the services trade, including direct investment.

Wider region The second session shifted the symposium’s agenda to the wider Asia–Pacific region and to where the two countries’ interests might converge on issues around security and regional integration. In the latter context a topic of interest was the risk of competition rather than complementarity between the Trans-Pacific Partnership, to which China does not currently belong, and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which

Soft power The third session took the conference away from the realm of high policy with its focus on risks, options and scenarios into the field

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of ‘soft power’, where some would argue ‘things actually get done’. Wen Powles is international strategy adviser at Te Papa, Museum of New Zealand. She spoke of the contribution of ‘cultural diplomacy’, which as a factor in New Zealand’s links with China can be traced back to an exhibition of Chinese arts and artefacts as early as 1937 that had a significant impact in New Zealand. In the 40th anniversary year Te Papa partnered with major Chinese museums to host three exhibitions that offer Chinese audiences a direct experience of New Zealand culture and heritage. Professor Liu Shusen, the director of the New Zealand Centre at Peking University, outlined the programme of courses, studies and staff exchanges that underpin the robust health of China–New Zealand educational links. There was growing bilateral momentum in areas of study where New Zealand had particular expertise and China had identified special needs, such as pastoral irrigation and sheep breeding. The largest non-China producer of documentaries on China is a company called Natural History New Zealand, which has been based in China for the past seventeen years. Its work is carried in 180 countries, and has been led throughout by Michael Stedman. His credentials were impeccable for this occasion. He stressed that one could not visit China and be indifferent, and noted that the ‘China experience’ was a journey without end. He had learned that the path to building constructive relationships required patience and persistence, a genuine interest in Chinese culture, and a willingness to step outside what most Kiwi expatriates might normally regard as their comfort zone. Paul Clark, Auckland University, and Guo Chunmei, China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, provided additional commentary for this session. Professor Clark perceived a dearth of knowledge about each other in both countries; for its part New Zealand had to make greater efforts ‘to open up more to China’. He and Guo Chunmei agreed that cultural activities including those of the Confucius institutes were a critical component of the bilateral relationship.

The venue for the symposium

analysis of optimistic, baseline and pessimistic scenarios over the periods of China’s next three five-year plans. He forecast that the economy would grow between 6.4 per cent and 7.4 per cent, with steady improvement in per capita income and personal consumption levels. China’s development priorities, in his view, were increased investment in education and research, financial reforms, faster urban growth and the reform of monopolised industries. Jason Young (China Centre, VUW) pursued an interest in the impacts that higher investment could have on economic growth. Despite publicity given to recent Chinese investment in New Zealand, especially in agriculture, total Chinese involvement in the investment sector was still below 1 per cent overall and well out of proportion to the high ranking China now held as New Zealand’s second largest trading partner. Rodney Jones, Wigram Capital Advisors, was the first of three discussants in the final session. He also observed that while trade was approaching parity China’s investment profile in New Zealand was still very low. It was important for New Zealand interests in China or those with aspirations to establish a presence there to be constantly aware of the need to maintain relevance; in GDP terms the New Zealand economy would rank 22nd among the 31 Chinese provinces. Ma Tao (CASS) and Ding Dou (Peking University) both focused on the benefits to be realised from the free trade agreement, the latter cautioning that New Zealand exporters should look for profitable niche opportunities and not expect to be able to compete across the breadth of the Chinese econo- Xi Jinping my.

Economic aspects An overview of economic and trade aspects of the relationship in the fourth session ended the symposium. The New Zealand trade commissioner, Alan Young, drew on his long experience to make some sobering points. There were pleasing trends showing up in the trade balance and New Zealand was sending lower volumes of unfinished or partly finished products. The services trade was becoming more prominent, driven by higher student and tourist numbers and most notably by the substantial increase in two-way direct investment; he noted that Fonterra was aiming to establish a new dairy farm in China every two to three months. However, there were still downsides to be addressed. The free trade agreement had unleashed a surge in trade, but New Zealand companies had yet to take full advantage of its potential. They needed to better equip themselves for operating in China’s complex and challenging regulatory environment, and to recognise the possibilities available in the exponential growth occurring in China’s corporate capability. Professor Pei Changhong (CASS) also highlighted the free trade agreement’s early success and believed the commodity trade could reach NZ$15 billion by 2015 with New Zealand being in surplus. His view, too, was that there was substantial upside to the services trade yet untapped. Li Xuesong (CASS) is a specialist in quantitative economics. He applied those skills to a detailed

Leadership changes The timeliness of the symposium was reinforced by its taking place immediately after the major political leadership transition in China announced a few days earlier at the 18th Party Congress. This was not a subject for the agreed agenda. However, there were some interesting informal assessments and asides which gave a glimpse of the expectations at least some Chinese participants had of the new

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would be more open to the world and find ways of co-operating with its neighbours and globally to resolve major issues.

administration led by Xi Jinping, who is scheduled to become president in March 2013. These comments were generally along the lines that the new leadership would continue the emphasis on peaceful internal development, reinvigorate the process of economic and financial reform, persist with measures to enhance domestic consumption, be tougher in combating corruption, and continue to promote urbanisation as the primary ‘growth engine source’ but give a higher profile to actions to improve living standards in the rural hinterlands. The symposium was told the priority for China offshore would be to consolidate its standing as a responsible member of the international community. One participant said ‘in the recent past the world changed China, now we are told China is changing the world and we’re not sure how to manage that expectation if it is true’. It was also said: ‘in the past rising powers have been the source of conflict; that is not to be expected of China’. There would be no room for ‘adventures abroad’, for China had to direct all its available resources to the pursuit of peaceful domestic reform. Despite continuing tensions in the South China Sea, there was a ‘relatively optimistic’ view expressed by Chinese speakers that serious incidents that might lead to conflict could be avoided. Speeches at the 18th Congress and subsequent public remarks suggested, it was said, that the Xi Jinping administration

Final observations As there had been at the 5 September 2012 event in Wellington, again in Beijing there was a significant degree of satisfaction at what the two countries had together achieved to date in building areas of useful interaction from the modest beginnings in the early 1970s. Admittedly, from the New Zealand perspective and notably since the free trade agreement fell into place, it has been the commercial features of the relationship that have attracted most attention and provided the prism through which many New Zealanders now view China. The Beijing programme offered encouraging evidence that other worthwhile activities are going on besides the business connections, in the creative, cultural, educational and research fields, and in day to day people contacts. What did not emerge in Beijing was any pervasive sense of complacency from speakers on either side that ‘we’ve got it right’. A theme prominent at the first symposium was replayed in Beijing: this particular relationship, certainly for New Zealand, will never be one to take for granted but always be ‘a work in progress’; never merely transactional and technocratic but constantly in need of creative input and fresh energy and to be strategically driven.

NZIIA PUBLICATIONS 2002 Gerald McGhie and Bruce Brown (eds), New Zealand ERHXLI4EGM½G(MTPSQEG](IJIRGI(IZIPSTQIRX128pp 2004 A.C. Wilson, New Zealand and the Soviet Union 1950–1991, A Brittle Relationship, 248pp 2005 Anthony L. Smith (ed)7SYXLIEWX%WMEERH2I[>IEPERH A History of Regional and Bilateral Relations, 392pp 2005 Stephen Hoadley,2I[>IEPERHERH*VERGI4SPMXMGW Diplomacy and Dispute Management, 197pp 2005 Brian Lynch (ed)'IPIFVEXMRK2I[>IEPERH´W)QIVKIRGI A Tribute to Sir George Laking and Frank Corner, 206pp 2006 Brian Lynch (ed)2I[>IEPERHERHXLI;SVPH8LI1ENSV Foreign Policy Issues, 2005–2010, 200pp 2006 Malcolm Templeton, Standing Upright Here, New Zealand in the Nuclear Age 1945–1990, 400pp 2007 W David Mclntyre(SQMRMSRSJ2I[>IEPERH Statesmen and Status 1907–1945, 208pp 2008 Brian Lynch (ed))RIVK]7IGYVMX]8LI*SVIMKR4SPMG] Implications, 92pp 2008 Brian Lynch (ed), Border Management in an Uncertain World, 74pp 2008 Warwick E. Murray and Roberto Rabel (eds), Latin %QIVMGE8SHE]'LEPPIRKIW3TTSVXYRMXMIWERH8VERW4EGM½G Perspectives, 112pp 2009 Terence O’Brien4VIWIRGISJ1MRH2I[>IEPERHMRXLI World,197pp 2010 Brian Lynch (ed), Celebrating 75 Years, 2 vols, 239, 293pp 2011 Brian Lynch (ed), Africa, A Continent on the Move, 173pp 2011 Brian Lynch and Graeme Hassall (eds), Resilience in the 4EGM½G203pp 2012 Brian Lynch (ed), The Arab Spring, Its Origins, Implications and Outlook, l43pp 2012 Brian Lynch (ed), 8LI1ENSV)GSRSQMGERH*SVIMKR4SPMG] Issues Facing New Zealand 2012–2017,218pp %ZEMPEFPIJVSQ2>--%2EXMSREP3J½GI43&S\ Wellington 6140. For other publications go to www.vuw.ac.nz/nziia/ Publications/list.html

1989 Mark Pearson, Paper Tiger, New Zealand’s Part in SEATO 1954–1977, 135pp 1991 Sir Alister Mclntosh et al, New Zealand in World Affairs,Volume I, 1945–57, 204pp (reprinted) 1991 Malcolm McKinnon (ed), New Zealand in World Affairs, Volume 2, 1957–72, 261pp 1991 Roberto G. Rabel (ed), Europe without Walls, 176pp 1992 Roberto G. Rabel (ed), Latin America in a Changing World Order, 180pp 1995 Steve Hoadley, New Zealand and Australia, Negotiating Closer Economic Relations, 134pp 1998 Seminar Paper, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 35pp 1999 Gary Hawke (ed), Free Trade in the New Millennium, 86pp 1999 Stuart McMillan, Bala Ramswamy, Sir Frank Holmes, APEC in Focus, 76pp 1999 Seminar Paper, Climate Change — Implementing the Kyoto Protocol 1999 Peter Harris and Bryce Harland, China and America — The Worst of Friends, 48pp 1999 Bruce Brown (ed), New Zealand in World Affairs, Volume 3,1972–1990, 336pp 2000 Malcolm Templeton, A Wise Adventure, 328pp 2000 Stephen Hoadley, New Zealand United States Relations, Friends No Longer Allies, 225pp 2000 Discussion Paper, Defence Policy after East Timor 2001 Amb Hisachi Owada, The Future of East Asia — The Role of Japan, 21pp 2001 Wgton Branch Study Group, Solomon Islands — Report of a Study Group 2001 Bruce Brown (ed), New Zealand and Australia — Where are we Going?’, 102pp 2002 Peter Cozens (ed)8LI%WME¯4EGM½G6IKMSR4SPMG] Challenges for the Next Decade, 78pp 2002 Stephen Hoadley, Negotiating Free Trade, The New Zealand–Singapore CEP Agreement, 107pp 2002 Malcolm Templeton, Protecting Antarctica, 68pp

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BOOKS

enment mental worlds that foreshadowed them. This explained for Fischer the different attitudes and treatment of respective settler populations to developing nascent political structures, their interactions and policies towards indigenous populations, their patterns of settlement, and approaches to domestic and foreign policy challenges through the centuries. This claim is largely self-evident but Fischer does dismiss rather glibly long-standing explanations about the forging of a uniquely Kiwi culture. He rejects the impact of our physical isolation too easily for this reviewer’s taste. Size matters and so do resources (both physical and human). Perhaps it depends upon which end of the telescope one looks through, but the insightful Frenchman Andre Siegfried understood our ‘chronic smallness’ in a vein identical to New Zealand’s great historian J.C. Beaglehole, who described our islands as a ‘geological exile,’ adding, ‘The springs of its more irritating failings, as of its more characteristic virtues, rise, like its lakes and torrents, in its own heart.’3 A curiously schizophrenic form of insularity is one result. On one hand, New Zealanders travel in a fashion incomprehensible to the average American. Located at the periphery of civilisation, New Zealanders seek it out in larger local, regional or global centres. In America, an epicentre of civilisation of its own making, people feel this need less. They are more content within their physical surrounds, and are thus more unaware of differences. On the other hand, and despite our greater worldliness, New Zealanders are suspicious of high rhetoric or grand visions, purposes or challenges. A bold Declaration of Independence or even a French-styled republic could find no fertile soil here — indeed André Siegfried could not find one republican in the colony during his stay — while America is at its most brilliant when looking outward; to the west initially, then to other nations, and ultimately to space once a continent’s riches, both physical and human, had been mastered and put to the most expansive purposes imaginable. Fischer is at his eloquent best when describing the parallel tracks of New Zealand and American development. His research is voluminous and his enthusiasm evident as he brings an outsider’s sense of discovery to his depictions of New Zealand’s historical progression from colonial outpost to global citizen and beacon of equalitarianism. There is little to fault in his descriptive analysis, although his post-1984 interpretation of New Zealand is weaker than earlier sections. Rogernomics introduced a new (neo-liberal) language, to be sure, but it barely made an effort to piggyback the old. Rather, an imported language was introduced by stealth and was less about fairness than, according to its architects, the absence of any alternative. Also, perhaps our Bill of Rights has not attained the elevated status of that of our Americans cousins because it has the same status as a rabbit control act, and we do not remember the specifics of them either. Fairness and Freedom does possess many annoying errors. As notoriously reluctant as New Zealand’s political elites were to acquire sovereignty over their law making, through the adoption of

FAIRNESS AND FREEDOM: A History of Two Open Societies: New Zealand and the United States Author: David Hackett Fischer Published by: Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012, 656pp, US$34.95. In The Politics of Equality Leslie Lipson, when discussing the perennial tension between the values of freedom and equality, made the telling point that the trick was to keep them in some sort of balance. Too much freedom could breed inequalities by the ruthless and strong. Too much equality could result in crushing uniformity as well as stifle freedom and innovation. Lipson also contrasted the pre-eminence of American liberty, symbolised by the Statue of Liberty guarding New York Harbor, against New Zealand’s historic preference for equality: ‘if any sculptured allegory were to be placed at the approaches of Auckland or Wellington harbor, it would assuredly be a statue of equality.’1 With this backdrop or, more aptly, bedrock in mind, David Hackett Fischer’s comparative study of two open societies, America and New Zealand, is a valuable new contribution for any who may seek to understand the central organising principles that drive each liberal democracy. In the United States the dominant cultural theme of liberalism vacillates around competing conceptions of economic and democratic individualism.2 This is self-evidently not so in New Zealand, where the lack of organising principles has seen a more diffuse tension between liberty and equality emerge, with equality the dominant value through most of our history. Fischer believes earlier critiques of New Zealand culture erroneously attribute the influence of ‘Mother Country’, geographical isolation, and the resulting insecurity as shaping the nation’s cultural preference for egalitarianism. He rejects these by arguing that differences between American and New Zealand values is centred more on timing; essentially the difference between the first and second British Empires and the pre- and post-enlight-

Notes on reviewers Dr Jon Johansson is a senior lecturer of comparativepolitics at the School of History, Philosophy, Political Science and International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington. Dr Anthony Smith is a fellow of the Centre for Strategic Studies, Victoria University of Wellington. Michael Appleton, a diplomat, wrote his master’s thesis in 2004 at the University of Cambridge on the political attitudes of young British Muslims in the United Kingdom. Dr Beth Greener is a senior lecturer in the Politics Programme at Massey University.

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SANDSTORM: Libya in the Time of Revolution

the Statute of Westminster Act 1931, we did manage it a full decade earlier than Fischer claims. Second, the epiphany that struck him on a Banks Peninsula road (the central rhetorical trope which frames the book’s central theme from its introduction in his preface to its unveiling to begin his conclusion) will be lost on all of those (mostly American) readers who fail to realise that the road to Akaroa is the same as the road to ‘Alcaroa’. Thirdly, Fischer felt that the prominence of fairness in American public life faded after Truman’s consolidation of Roosevelt’s New Deal. Yet Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and the civil rights breakthroughs of the 1960s were a triumph for fairness, or perhaps its last hurrah, but fairness nonetheless. Obamacare represents another late blooming, which is precisely why it was so despised by America’s right, seeing as it grants at least 30 million of Fischer’s fellow citizens equal protection from health-related financial ruin. Obama’s re-election in 2012 highlights Lipson’s tension between liberty and fairness well. Republican challenger Mitt Romney’s contempt towards 47 per cent of his fellow citizens embodies one aspect of it. Obama’s coalition of Blacks, Hispanics, women and the young on both coasts represents another, with a majority of voters from the rust-belt states helping to decide the election in Obama’s favour on the back of his bailout of the auto industry, part of a massive government response to the global financial crisis. Romney’s promised freedoms lost out to Obama’s defence of, and call for, greater fairness. In New Zealand, now into its 28th year of a post-Rogernomics cycle of politics, policy-makers are meanwhile awkwardly fine-tuning the consolidation of greater freedoms into the nation’s cultural DNA. Reaction and counter-reaction are a weak force as the now old language of the neo-liberals has all but stalled, and with the direction we are headed not easily glimpsed no compelling or strong new language has emerged. Perhaps then a more salient question for any comparative study of the United States and New Zealand is less about the origins and manifestations of cultural values that forged each country’s identity, its politics and wider society, than how each nation, however existential its journey has been, adapts to change and the extent to which respective political systems can effect change responses. Managing the tension between fairness and freedom is one aspect of this but only one — the role of leadership, the extent to which constitutional/institutional architectures create system inertia or dynamism, and the quality of policy responses are three of many other variables — so Fischer’s study is a valuable if not definitive contribution to New Zealanders and Americans learning how to learn from each other, from different ends of the telescope.

Author: Lindsey Hilsum Published by: Faber and Faber, London, 2012, 288pp, £17.99.

THE LAST REFUGE: Yemen, al-Qaeda, and America’s War in Arabia Author: Gregory Johnsen Published by: Scribe, Melbourne, 2012, 352pp, A$32.99. Two of the countries most impacted by the Arab Spring uprisings, Libya and Yemen, are the subject of recent volumes. British journalist Lindsey Hilsum writes an excellent volume on the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. Hilsum notes that to the outside world Gaddafi was often seen as ‘a clown’ or ‘an oddball’, but to the Libyan people he was a terrifying figure. Gaddafi’s 42-year reign over Libya would end when the leader was found in a ditch, and angry rebels beat, tortured and executed him. Hilsum is able to outline the nature of Gaddafi’s despotic rule and his support for revolutionary movements worldwide, his (partial) alignment with the West during the last decade of his rule, and the popular uprising that ultimately deposed him. Sandstorm offers some interesting insights into the deal that Gaddafi struck with Western countries after 9/11. There has been an interpretation that Gaddafi decided to give up his weapons of mass destruction programme after the demonstration effect of the war in Iraq. Hilsum offers more texture here. It is clear that Gaddafi, to some extent less interested in exporting revolution in his later years, was looking for a means to come in from the cold anyway, and 9/11 offered him the opportunity to do so. In the ‘war on terrorism’, some may have considered the Libya regime a useful ally. Hilsum, writing from the British angle, is quick to point out some of the effusive statements that Tony Blair made about Gaddafi, and how many, probably as the result of a Westernised façade, misjudged Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam, who would subsequently prove to share the despotic instincts of his father. Despite Blair’s analysis, Libya was in fact a major source of jihadists and suicide bombers in Iraq, many coming specifically from the Cyrenaica region, which included the city of Benghazi. Benghazi was notable for two social/political movements — religious conservatism and hatred for the Gaddafi regime. Hilsum quotes the late US Ambassador Chris Stevens (tragically killed in Benghazi by extremists in 2012) as saying that elements radicalised by the Gaddafi regime were willing to strike at the regime’s perceived backer, that is, the United States. Once again it becomes obvious in hindsight that Middle Eastern dictatorships provided fertile ground for al-Qaeda to recruit in, and this was notably so in

JON JOHANSSON

NOTES 1. Leslie Lipson, The Politics of Equality: New Zealand’s Adventures in Democracy (2nd ed), Introduced by Jon Johansson (Wellington, 2011), p.7. 2. See Erwin Hargrove, The President as Leader: Appealing to the Better Angels of Our Nature (Kansas, 1998), pp.52–7; and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr, The Cycles of American History (New York, 1986), pp.1–48. 3. Andre Siegfried, Democracy in New Zealand (2nd ed), Introduction by David Hamer (Wellington, 1982); J.C. Beaglehole, New Zealand: A Short History (London, 1936), p.158.

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Libya. The NATO intervention to prevent Gaddafi’s military machine massacring its opponents changed that equation in the eyes of many Libyans. Still, some awkwardness remained. As Hilsum notes, the Islamist leader who led militia forces from Libya’s west to ‘liberate’ Tripoli and finally topple the Gaddafi family was one Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who claimed to have once been the subject of an ‘extraordinary rendition’ by the United States on the grounds that he might have been an al-Qaeda suspect. Gregory Johnsen, formerly a journalist and currently at Princeton University, writes an important account of al-Qaeda in Yemen. The Last Refuge outlines the emergence of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), or at least the most recent version of it, from the remnants of former inmates of Guantanamo Bay and Yemen’s own prison system. According to this account, AQAP has become perhaps the most serious of the al-Qaeda spin-off groups to threaten the outside world, as a number of attempted external attacks in recent years would indicate. This has given rise to drone strikes in response, some of which have targeted those with US citizenship, most famously Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American cleric dubbed the ‘bin Laden of the internet’. In fact, as Johnsen notes, jihadist groups have operated in Yemen for quite some time, including the Yemen-based al-Qaeda cadre that made the pre-9/11 attack on the USS Cole. The Last Refuge is able to situate the emergence of AQAP within the wider political context of Yemen’s politics and general turmoil. We also learn the role that former long-term president (and former soldier) Abdullah Ali Salih played in co-opting Islamist political forces and militias, including to help him subdue southern Yemen in the 1990s, and then subsequently maintaining some (including the ‘Afghan Arabs’, that is, Yemeni veterans of the anti-Soviet war) on retainers. Still, Yemen has always been a notoriously difficult country to draw together, as demonstrated by events since early 2011, to include Salih’s departure after Arab Spring opposition in the streets and the centrifugal tendencies of the provinces and regions. One element of Johnsen’s account that needs to be remarked upon is the sourcing of the material. Attempting to outline groups like AQAP, or similar entities in other countries, poses considerable research problems for scholars, which probably defy any kind of access to documentary sources that would constitute the trade of a careful historian. Yet much of Johnsen’s account, which, it must be acknowledged, is a terrific (almost screen-play like) narrative, is presented with a degree of certainty that the ascribed source material cannot fully sustain. We are given words and actions attributed to key figures, to include President Salih, without really being able to pin down where this all comes from. Current AQAP leader and former bin Laden bodyguard Nasir al-Wihayshi is said by the author to have been judged by bin Laden himself as ‘too short to be intimidating and too smart to be wasted’. One wonders about the basis of that judgment, which seems to rest on a lot of assumptions. Johnsen also appears to have derived a lot of material from newspaper accounts of interviews with extremists and former extremists themselves, and seemingly accepted these

accounts at face value despite their likely self-serving nature. In short, Johnsen’s book, while it contains material and judgements that could use greater clarity, remains an important piece of the puzzle in examining the extremism problem. One cannot think of too many available publications that cover Yemen’s corner of the al-Qaeda story in such a comprehensive way. ANTHONY SMITH

GLOBAL ISLAMOPHOBIA: Muslims and Moral Panic in the West Edited by: George Morgan and Scott Poynting Published by: Ashgate, Farnham, Surrey, 2012, 240pp, £55.

In March 2009, a 24-year-old Somali woman named Nadifa was pulled out of her bed in the middle of the night, dragged to the floor of her London apartment, handcuffed, and screamed at. Nadifa’s description of her experience at the hands of police — of shock, embarrassment and shame — is compelling. But it is telling that her story does not appear in this book’s pages until the penultimate of its twelve chapters. For the vast majority of Global Islamophobia, the voices of individual Muslims in the West, and how their lives have been affected by prejudice, are conspicuously absent. Global Islamophobia is a collection of eleven case studies from around the Western world — North America, Western Europe and Australia — which seek, in their sum, to demonstrate that Islamophobia (irrational fear of Muslims or Islam) ‘permeates’ the West, with ‘momentous’ consequences. The case studies are varied and generally interesting and well-drawn — ranging from the ability of the German state education system to deal with racially heterogeneous student bodies in lower socio-economic communities to the use of crude anti-Muslim propaganda in a political campaign in western Sydney. The underlying analytical concept organising the case studies is moral panic. Muslims in the West are described as being the victims of a ‘volatile’, ‘hostile’ and ‘disproportionate’ moral panic, and as being built into ‘folk devils’ who are blamed for many of the underlying social and economic problems of the Western societies in which they live. Evidence to support this thesis is sprinkled throughout the book. Political movements, such as those described in this volume in Sweden and Italy, that present Islam as the primary source of Western moral and social decay and as being fundamentally inconsistent with ‘Western values’ exist throughout Europe. Traditional news media organisations, especially in the wake of psychically challenging events such as terrorist attacks, can tend to exaggerate, engage in demagoguery and simplify, including on matters of religion and race. And some Western governments have taken actions over the past decade that have been experienced by Muslims as confronting, victimising and unfair. But, as a work of media analysis or political sociology, Global Islamophobia feels like a lengthy and repetitive exercise in stating the obvious. It leaves many important questions either completely

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ILLUMINATING THE DARK ARTS OF WAR: Terrorism, Sabotage and Subversion in Homeland Security ERHXLI2I['SR¾MGX

or largely unanswered. For example, the scale, scope and effects of the Islamophobia problem are not convincingly addressed. How widespread is anti-Muslim prejudice in a range of Western countries? Is it more severe and/or more common than that prejudice experienced by other minorities now or in the past? How does it impact on the lives of Muslims living in the West — whether in terms of their ability to access quality education, travel unimpeded, secure affordable and sanitary housing and be given equal consideration in employment situations? Without this sort of sketch of the problem, it is hard to discern whether the authors are arguing that Islamophobia is an epochal crisis pervading every aspect of Western society and threatening to fundamentally undermine its values (that is, that it is analogous, say, to the civil rights crisis facing the United States in the 1960s), or whether what they are describing is something much more limited in its depth and effects. The book, taken as a whole, also does little to address the range of responses by Muslim communities to Islamophobia and more generally to the process of living in majority non-Muslim societies. What strategies have worked and what have not? In terms of government policies, which approaches have generally led to greater cohesion and social harmony; and which have inflamed tensions? It might be difficult to answer these questions in a general way — because the situations in each Western country are surely different. However, by providing an essentially ahistorical and a-contextual account — one which concentrates more on flashpoints and media controversies than on government policies and structural factors — the author has made it difficult to discern any lessons from the book’s accumulated evidence. More generally, the tension at the heart of liberal society — acceptance of difference whilst observing universal norms — is left untouched. One particularly surprising blind spot is the book’s almost complete failure to come to grips with the role of new media technologies in the shaping of how Muslims are perceived, as well as in how they construct their own senses of identity. For a study that leans heavily on media content analysis, there is a strangely 20th century feel to its methodology. In an age when a new generation of followers of Islam is using a range of social media technologies to create their own understandings of being Muslim in the West, Global Islamophobia tends to concentrate instead on an analysis of newspaper clippings. For all that, this collection of essays addresses an important issue that is worthy of further study and debate. More than a decade after 9/11, antipathy towards Muslims continues to bubble up, including in the United States, where the experience of Muslims — in terms of educational and economic outcomes — has in aggregate been far better than that of their European co-religionists. Why such prejudice lingers, and what steps might be attempted to combat it, are weighty matters. Unfortunately, Global Islamophobia does not convincingly address them.

Author: David Tucker Published by: Continuum Press, New York, 2013, 271pp, US$32.95. The first paragraph of Tucker’s book provokes interest. He asks what should we think about a secretive religious minority living in the United States that is radicalised and willing to use violence? In the final sentence he points out that he was discussing Catholics in the 19th century, prompting embarrassment in those, like me, who leapt to the assumption that he was discussing radicalised Islamic sects in contemporary times. The paragraph also, however, prompts some uncertainty about the book and the solidity of some of these claims, as Tucker states that he will explore this case further but fails to do so. The rest of the book continues on in a similarly slightly disconcerting but intriguing way. Tucker’s text is a discussion of different aspects of violence: terrorism, sabotage and subversion. These are for the most part nicely defined, and, again for the most part, he seems to be putting forward a balanced view. For example, in discussing the possible threat of a weapons of mass destruction attack on the United States by a terrorist group, he downplays the hype. He notes that such groups would need to: be willing to attack the United States in an indiscriminate way; be willing to use weapons of mass destruction; and be able to do so. This is an important recognition of the difficulties such groups would meet, given the scaremongering that exists around this particular topic. He also suggests that evangelical Christianity might be just as much of a threat to the United States as radical Islam given how he defines threats to secular statehood — a controversial if interesting claim. However, at times the balance of the view being brought across frays a little. For example Tucker relays a Cold War argument that ‘Nazism and Communism were in principle the same. Nazism denied equality on the basis of race; Marxism on the basis of class’. This is not referenced, and a follow up sentence two pages later sees Tucker himself assert that there was a real threat of subversion from communists within the United States. The weakness here is that there is no real outlining as to why communism was subversive, no tackling of issues such as capitalism and different forms of democratic process. Given the helpful definitions provided elsewhere — for example, he does outline why radical Islamism is seen as subversive as it requires a doing away of the separation of politics and religion — this is an important oversight. This case also highlights another weakness of the book — additional referencing would provide weight of evidence for the claims made. Some literature also seems lacking. For example, Tucker discusses the idea of the ‘new terrorism’ but does not mention Walter Laqueur, nor is Laqueur in the bibliography — and Laqueur wrote The New Terrorism. These issues aside, this is still a very interesting book, not in the least because it demonstrates that political violence has long been a feature of American life. The first substantive chapter sketches a history of lynching, civil war, riots, mob violence,

MICHAEL APPLETON

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has not really made much of a difference. It gives non-state actors new ways of organising but also lends state actors new ways of responding. And some things remain the same — for example, Tucker points out that building trust still requires face-to-face interaction. In considering institutional forms, he suggests that there are also pros but cons to the more horizontal, decentralised and autonomous nature of non-state actor networks. He does not ascribe to the notion that states need to ‘be a network to fight a network’, and argues that states still have supremacy over nonstate actors, particularly in terms of accountability and legitimacy. In making this claim Tucker is willing to admit that US authorities are fallible. For example, he notes how federal counter-terrorism capabilities came late to the fray in the 1970s, and suggests that ‘not having been designed for such a role the federal government did not handle its growing power and authority gracefully’. Overall, this is an intriguing book. It touches on significant themes, such as the power of states in an information age, and provides interesting details, such as Tucker’s description of the effects of Stuxnet (a programme that was designed to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programme). Worth a read, but some points made could be more convincing.

and home-grown terrorism by Black Liberation Army, Puerto Rican separatists, Klu Klux Klan members, the Unabomber and the Weathermen amongst others. (Tucker also helpfully points out that domestic political violence, particularly terrorism, has been on the wane since the 1970s, though international attacks have increased.) In providing this survey of political violence, the book also describes something about the American political psyche. For example, Tucker discusses the role of the Declaration of Independence in trying to understand just what terrorism and subversion might be when the declaration both emphasises rights and justifies the use of might. He sketches debates over ‘clear and present danger’ in outlining the controversial McCarran Act, which strongly discriminated against members of the Communist Party during the Cold War. Most striking about this book, then, is the way in which it manages to directly or inadvertently highlight the strong tensions within the US political system and the various interpretations of rights, freedoms and understandings as to how to avoid a tyranny of the majority when consent is all important. In terms of other themes, Tucker also spends a fair amount of time discussing the implications of technology (Chapter 3) and organisational forms (Chapter 6) in considering the key question of state versus non-state actor power. He argues that technology

BETH GREENER

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CORRESPONDENCE Sir, A variety of recent publications provide valuable complements to the continuing debate on New Zealand’s international position, particularly in regard to China, and how we are to maximise our interests in the future. These publications include the NZIR in its last two issues and the two 2012 CSS discussion papers 11 and 12.1 While most of the discussion understandably focuses on bilateral relations in a regional context, we suggest that such an analysis needs to be broadened to include a greater global perspective, as well as a more rigorous assessment of the role of multilateralism and the United Nations in particular. A global perspective is necessary to properly recognise China’s interests as it increases in economic reach and becomes a global power. While regional relations with its neighbours, and the United States in particular, are vitally important, China’s demand for resources is prompting it to strengthen ties with countries outside the Asia–Pacific region, such as in Africa and Latin America. These relations will be an important influence on the way that China develops its international perspectives and strategies. A much more vital global perspective, however, is an appreciation of overall collective, global benefit. To what extent do nations, and big powers in particular, see the rest of the world as resources to be competitively exploited, or as common assets to be collectively nurtured based on agreed rules and principles? Are nations principally interested in asserting narrow self interest in whatever way they can, or in developing systems to enable collective promotion of mutual interest? In short, what is the role of multilateralism, and the United Nations in particular? New Zealand has always recognised the critical importance of global multilateralism and the rule of law, particularly for smaller nations. It contributed significantly to the formation of the League of Nations and the United Nations. However, the viability of such systems depends vitally on the involvement of the major powers, an issue which has been amply demonstrated by subsequent events in both the League and the United Nations. A vital objective of New Zealand diplomacy would, therefore, include promoting big power commitment to multilateralism. In their CSS paper Chris Elder and Rob Ayson demonstrated the significant impact that China has been having in our multilateral institutions, becoming, in some ways, a de facto leader of the developing world. China is playing a prominent role in the G77 and challenging Western liberal dominance of the major economic institutions. The Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) provides a vital basis in which many nations can address potential disputes and its recognition is particularly relevant to the oceans around China. The key question is, to what extent will China seek collective security by strengthening the United Nations and working through its provisions, or alternatively by manipulation of the international machinery in its own interests and the coercion of individual countries? A critical case is presented by its maritime borders. While it has ratified the UNCLOS, it insists on addressing its various disputes on a bilateral basis. This ‘divide and conquer’ tactic thus undermines the legitimacy of the UNCLOS and has placed enormous strains on ASEAN. China’s behaviour, of course, must be seen in the context of the attitude of other powers towards multilateralism and the ex-

tent that disrespect for the rule of law has been tolerated by other countries such as ourselves. In pursuing New Zealand’s interests with respect to a rising China we must undertake substantial analysis of the roles that the various forms of multilateralism have played, the factors that have strengthened and weakened their influence, and the record of China’s engagement. Above all, we need to promote China’s appreciation of how its long-term interests can be pursued more effectively through a co-operative multilateral framework. Such a strategy will involve not only our direct relations with China but also our relations with many of the other countries that have relations with China and see the value in a co-operative rules-based environment, rather than a competitive power-based one. Tim Groser’s paper ‘Governance and multilateralism in the 21st century’ (NZIR, vol 38, no 1) does provide a global and an historical perspective of the benefits of multilateralism, as well as some interesting insights into the nature of multilateral negotiations. However, he fails to do justice to the breadth and depth of multilateral governance systems by making only the briefest mention of the extensive UN system, and virtually ignoring the complex of other regional and specialist institutions. John Allen, secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, in his presentation in Wellington to mark UN Day last 24 October,2 highlighted the crucial importance of the principles of the United Nations and the great need for a much greater appreciation of its role. He also emphasised the considerable contribution that small states can make in promoting those principles and establishing the framework for the rule of law, in contrast to the rule of war. Further, he argued that New Zealand can make a distinctive contribution due to the special role that respect and partnership plays within it. While the articles that we have seen to date make important contributions to our understanding of our interests, we look forward to a broader analysis that does justice to New Zealand’s longterm interests in a co-operative multilateral, rules-based international order. Is there a risk that a relationship too narrowly focused on bilateral dimensions undermines these broader interests? We hope that New Zealand will re-discover the inspiration and vision that led it into the creation of the United Nations, and motivated its extensive contributions to the development of that system. GRAY SOUTHON Special Officer for UN Renewal United Nations Association of New Zealand

NOTES 1. Chris Elder and Robert Ayson, China’s Rise and New Zealand’s Interests: A Policy Primer for 2030, Discussion Paper No 11 (Wellington, 2012); Zhu Feng, U.S. Rebalancing in the Asia–Pacific: China’s Response and the Future Regional Order, Discussion Paper No 12 (Wellington, 2012). 2. www.unanz.org.nz/Home/tabid/288/EntryId/41/MFATSecretary-John-Allens-address-at-UNANZ-UN-Day-Reception-at-Premier-House.aspx.

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INSTITUTE NOTES 2EXMSREP3J½GIERHFVERGLEGXMZMXMIW From 29 October till 16 November an NZIIA team consisting of Peter Kennedy, Lance Beath and Peter Nichols carried out the second session of the Papua New Guinea Foreign Service Training programme in Port Moresby. Foreign Minister Hon Murray McCully, visiting Papua New Guinea with a business delegation, gave an address on ‘The Requirements of a Foreign Service Officer’ to course members on the second day. (A report on this effort is to be found elsewhere in this issue.) The book New Flags Flying, by Michael Powles and Ian Johnstone, was launched at a reception in Wellington on 27 November, with 75 present. A delegation from the NZIIA led by Sir Douglas Kidd took part in the China–New Zealand Symposium held in Beijing on 4 December.

NZIIA President Sir Douglas Kidd with Murray Denyer, the chair of the new Tauranga branch

Tauranga On 25 October Sir Douglas Kidd formally opened a new NZIIA branch at Tauranga. The ceremony was attended by a diverse group of business people and teachers from the local community. Director Peter Kennedy also participated.  The driving force behind the new branch is Murray Denyer, a former MFAT officer and general counsel for Zespri, who is now a partner in ConneyLeesMorgan. He was elected chair. As a major commercial hub and port it is expected that Tauranga will provide a vibrant environment within which the new branch will grow.

Nelson On 4 December Peter Kennedy, the director of the Institute and former ambassador to the European Union, gave an address entitled ‘Europe: Who’s in Charge’.

Palmerston North

Wairarapa

On 31 October, Ian McKelvie MP addressed the branch about the role of New Zealand in promoting sustainable agriculture for international food security. As a local businessman and politician with a long farming background, he demonstrated his awareness and appreciation of the implications and challenges for New Zealand’s ability to compete effectively in a globalised world. Hindered by a small domestic market, an inability to reach critical mass without going overseas, and a lack of sufficient infrastructure to ‘grow’ industry efficiently, while sufficient talent and expertise is right here in New Zealand, many of our success stories have meant taking a more pro-active approach. McKelvie’s key argument was the need to increase the understanding of the importance of agriculture for New Zealand as its primary industry. He believed that New Zealand’s future is in high quality food production. This is necessary throughout society as a whole. For many, this would involve a change in mindsets in making agriculture and sustainable living more attractive as a career or lifestyle. McKelvie lamented the lack of rural infrastructure and relatively higher costs of this choice as a barrier, and discussed possible solutions by commenting about his own personal role in pushing these topics in government circles, and raising the level of emphasis on rural concern, which in his opinion are not given sufficient attention or priority. The second point was making better use of technologies and efficiencies to remain competitive — perhaps with more research and development for value-added processes in building up New Zealand’s role as a leading producer and exporter of high quality food products. Some goals were to promote a coherent agri-food strategy or precision agricultural techniques. To enhance this aspect of the knowledge economy, the role of education is vital. There has to be a change in thinking amongst industry and society so that sustainable agriculture is accepted and embraced as an attractive option for students.

On 19 November Rob Robinson CNZM, former commissioner of police, addressed the branch on ‘International Police Plan to Combat One of the World’s Biggest Killers’. He is leading a project to establish the new International Road Policing Organisation (RoadPOL) in Singapore. The Singapore government is hosting the World Bank-initiated venture, which aims to improve road safety enforcement in low and middle-income countries.

NEW EXECUTIVE OFFICER In January the NZIIA’s national office gained a new executive officer, replacing Ngaire Flynn, who has retired.  She is Synonne Rajanayagam, who comes to us highly recommended after fourteen years as executive officer at the Centre for Strategic Studies, Victoria University. Synonne, who has diplomas in journalism and child psychology and development, worked previously for the New Zealand office of UNICEF. Prior to this she was employed in the International Recruitment Office of King Faisal Specialist Hospital, Riyadh.  Synonne may be contacted on [email protected] or 04 463 5356.

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