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New Zealand International Review 31

InternationalNew Zealand

September/October 2012 Vol 37, No 5eviewR

ISRAEL/PALESTINE Security Council Tonga’s security

NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS

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eviewNew Zealand

September/October 2012 Vol 37, No 5

Managing Editor: IAN McGIBBONCorresponding Editors: STEPHEN CHAN (United Kingdom), STEPHEN HOADLEY (Auckland)Book Review Editor: ANTHONY SMITHEditorial Committee: ANDREW WIERZBICKI (Chair), ROB AYSON, BROOK BARRINGTON, BOB BUNCH, GERALD McGHIE, MALCOLM McKINNON, JOSH MITCHELL, ROB RABEL, SHILINKA SMITH, JOHN SUBRITZKY, ANN TROTTER, JOCELYN WOODLEYPublisher: NEW ZEALAND INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRSTypesetting/Layout: LOVETT GRAPHICSPrinting: THAMES PUBLICATIONS LTDNew Zealand International Review is the bi-monthly publication of the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs. (ISBN0110-0262) Address: Room 507, Railway West Wing, Pipitea Campus, Bunny Street, Wellington 6011 Postal: New Zealand Institute of lnternational Affairs, c/- Victoria University of Wellington PO Box 600, Wellington 6140 Telephone: (04) 463-5356. Fax (04) 463-5437Website: www.vuw.ac.nz/nziia. E-mail: [email protected]: New Zealand $47.00 (incl GST/postage). Overseas $84.00 (Cheques or money orders to be made payable to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs)

The view expressed in New Zealand International Reviewbody 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 Internaional Affairs.

RInternational

2 The Israeli–Palestine dispute: time for compromise Phil Goff argues that the chance for peace in Palestine should be grasped.

4 The Palestine story: to exist is to resist Lois and Martin Griffiths make a plea for the end of the oppression of the Palestine people.

10 Finding a way in a changing worldJohn Key reviews his government’s links with a number of states and regions and approach to some big global issues.

14 Seeking a Security Council voice Murray McCully provides an update on New Zealand’s campaign to secure a seat on the UN Security

Council and discusses reform of the council.

17 Protecting Tonga’s maritime securityYoichiro Sato comments on the mismatch between Tonga’s resources and responsibilities and its abilityto prevent illegal action.

22 COMMENTEconomic and foreign policy issues facing New Zealand: some

Gerald McGhie responds to the report of a recent NZIIA conference.

26 BOOKS Duncan McCargo: Mapping National Anxieties: Thailand’s Southern Conflict (Anthony Smith). Gerhard Hoffstaedter: Modern Muslim Identities: Negotiating Religion and Ethnicity in Malaysia

(Anthony Smith). Jay Bahadu: Deadly Waters: The Hidden World of Somalia’s Pirates (Robert Patman). Stewart Firth: Australia in International Politics: An Introduction to Australian Foreign Policy (3rd

edition) (Andrew Butcher). Claire Magone, Michaël Neuman and Fabrice Weissman (eds): Humanitarian Negotiations

Revealed: The MSF Experience (Roderic Alley). Andrew Francis: ‘To Be Truly British We Must Be Anti-German’, New Zealand, Enemy Aliens and the

Great War Experience (Ian McGibbon).

31 INSTITUTE NOTES

33 CORRESPONDENCE


On Monday 14 May 2012 we were in Jerusalem as it marked the 64th commemoration of the day Israel declared its independence in 1948. For Israelis, that day was the fulfilment of the dream of a Zionist state. After centuries of persecution of Jews in the diaspora, culminating in the Nazi murder of six million Jews during the Second World War, their desire for a state of their own was understandable.

But for Palestinian Arabs it is the day they commemorate as Nakba, a day of catastrophe. It marks the flight or forcible expulsion of up to 750,000 Palestinians, with today around five million people who are refugees or their descendants. As a ban-ner in Ramallah proclaimed, ‘Their independence is our Nakba’.

Israel has opened its doors to Jewish people from around the world, with a surge of over a million migrating to Israel from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s. Nearly six million Jews and 1.5 million Arabs are now Israeli citizens.

The Israelis say their claim to settle the land stems from the forced exodus from their traditional homeland 2000 years ago. Yet there was no sense of irony when a passionate member of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) told us that the Palestinians were not refugees, merely the children and grandchildren of refugees.

When Israel launched the Six Day War in 1967, it did so in the belief that its existence was threatened by universally hos-tile neighbours whose aim was to destroy the state of Israel. Its victory, however, made it the occupier of lands and the control-ler of lives of millions of non-Jewish people, which continues in Gaza and the West Bank. Israel today exercises effective power over 2.75 million Palestinian Arabs who live on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem and 1.6 million Arabs in the Gaza Strip. A further three million live as refugees in Jordan, Egypt, Syria and the Lebanon.

If Israel annexed the West Bank, the Arab population in the wider Israel would soon approach that of the Jewish popu-lation with the Palestinian population growing faster. The very essence of Israel is that it is a Jewish state. It could not remain so if it absorbed the Arab population, according them equal rights. Expelling non-Jews or creating an apartheid state where some citizens had lesser rights would be utterly unacceptable.

The Israeli–Palestine dispute: time for compromisePhil Goff argues that the chance for peace in Palestine should be grasped.

Hon Phil Goff MP is the Labour spokesperson on foreign affairs and trade. He has just returned from a parliamentary trip to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan.

Two-state solutionA unified and secular state might in principle be a proper solution to this problem but Israel will not allow that to happen. The other alternative is a two-state solution, which Israel has finally accepted and which has been embraced by the world. The continuing failure to reach agreement on implementing this solution is damaging both to Palestinian people and to Israel. Palestinian Prime Minister Dr Salem Fayyad told us that ‘continued Israeli occupation of our land is both oppressive to us and corrosive to them’.

As I went through Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust mu-seum, I shed a tear for the brutal inhumanity towards and suf-fering of the Jewish people. Yet Israel’s control over Palestin-ian people in the occupied territories today casts them in the role of oppressor. Palestinians are being forcibly evicted from their homes and land. They are being denied the right of self-determination. They are attacked by ultra-nationalist settlers and suffer daily the humiliation of checkpoints, road blocks and searches.

Israeli justification of their harsh treatment of Palestinians and disproportionate reaction to Hamas missile strikes from the Gaza Strip is that Palestinian militants pose a threat to the security of their people. Any form of terrorist action against civilians such as suicide bombers and rocket attacks deserves condemnation. There is no justification for the taking of inno-cent lives. Hamas must change its position and Iran must stop its support for violence by Hamas and the Hizbollah. Israel is right to condemn terrorism. But it does not entirely have the moral high ground. Jewish militants themselves used terrorist

For Palestinian Arabs 14 May 2012 is a day of catastrophe. It marks the 64th anniversary of

the violence that has characterised Israeli–Palestinian relations ever since 1948. The peace


tactics such as the bombing of the King David Hotel in their war of independence. Each side has at some time called its ter-rorists freedom fighters.

Best approachThe best approach to ending the use of violence is to address and remedy the causes of that violence. If genuine grievances by Palestinian people are not addressed and if a moderate and non-violent approach by the Palestinian leadership is seen to be unable to deliver fair outcomes, there will be a third intifada with huge costs to Israelis and Palestinians alike.

Palestinian leaders with whom we met, including the prime minister, foreign minister and members of the Palestinian Leg-islative Council, all renounced the use of violence. Non-violent resistance and passive disobedience today has a greater chance of success in achieving Palestinian objectives. The success of the recent hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners, many held without charge or trial, demonstrates that. If the threat of vio-lence against Jewish people is removed, Israel has little justifi-cation to continue its hard line against the Palestinians. Israel and the West must grasp the opportunity currently on offer to negotiate and achieve a settlement with Palestinian leaders committed to a peaceful outcome.

With the Arab Spring, the region is also changing. Coun-tries like Egypt and Jordan are striving to become democra-cies. There is also a rise in political Islam. These two changes mean that new governments will be more responsive to senti-ments in their electorates, including intolerance of accepting the on-going plight of Palestinian Arabs. The chair of Jordan’s parliamentary foreign affairs committee told us that Israel’s neighbours will be focused on resolving the Palestinian prob-lem. The Arab Spring will put new pressure on Israel to find a sustainable solution.

Numerous initiativesThe parameters of the solution have already been set out in the numerous initiatives taken over the last twenty years, including the Oslo Accords, the Arab Initiative and the renewal of the peace process at Annapolis in 2007. In return for a guarantee of peace and secure borders for Israel, the Palestinians must have a state which is economically and politically viable. That must involve a return to the 1967 borders perhaps with negotiated

land swaps and guarantees around religious sites.Israel has illegally settled more than 500,000 Israelis in

East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. That violates Ar-ticle 49 of the fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits the transfer of the occupying power’s civilian population into oc-cupied territory. Such actions have no moral or legal justifica-tion. On-going settlement represents bad faith in negotiating a peaceful outcome. Settlement must stop immediately and existing settlements will need to be disbanded as part of any negotiated solution.

Forced displacement of Arab families must also stop imme-diately. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, in 2011 alone nearly 1100 Palestinians, over half of them children, were displaced due to demolitions by Israeli forces of homes families have lived in for generations. The separation wall has cut off families from farms that they rely on for their livelihood.

The blockade of Gaza must be ended and trade into and out of the region allowed. The blockade has caused massive unemployment and forced a high proportion of Palestinians living in Gaza into poverty. There are more effective and hu-mane ways to prevent weapons smuggling into the area.

The final status issues such as the status of East Jerusalem, right of return for refugees and water will not be easy to resolve. But it is not a solution to say it is all too hard and to do nothing. Serious negotiation around those issues needs to resume.

Peace will not be achieved without third-party involve-ment, a fact stressed by the Palestinian prime minister and foreign minister. That may be the Quartet (United States, Eu-ropean Union, Russia and the United Nations) but the United States will undoubtedly be a key player able to exercise critical influence over the two sides. That country is currently preoc-cupied with November’s presidential election, and Europe is consumed with its economic problems. They will need to re-energise their efforts to find a path forward.

No one pretends that the process will be easy or without pain. Compromise is essential from both sides and strong lead-ership from each is critical. For the Palestinians, this requires reconciling the positions of Fatah and Hamas. In Israel, the new coalition containing centrist Kadima presents new oppor-

tunities to Prime Minister Netanyahu to make compromises not possible when he relied on sup-port from more extremist parties.

The benefits of a sustainable peace for Jews and Arabs and the international community will be immense. Enormous resources being di-verted to defence can be refocused on improving lives and living standards. Co-operation rather than conflict will increase regional stability and wealth. The sense of injustice which has pro-moted popular sympathy for terrorist causes can be removed. People-to-people relationships be-tween Arabs and Jews, which at present scarcely exist, can be built up as foundations for long- term and sustainable peace and good relations.

Palestinians and Israelis should seize the op-portunity to bring to an end 64 years of conflict and the costs this has inflicted on both sides.

A Palestinian home being demolished


‘The blockade of Gaza has brought death, destruction, pain and suffering to the people there. The international community must not ignore their cries for help.’ Jimmy Carter made this statement before the infamous attacks of December 2008. He is referring to the siege imposed to punish the Gazans for voting for Hamas. Israeli Uri Avnery of Gush Shalom describes the siege as ‘genocide in slow motion’. Some say that Palestinians voted not so much for Hamas as against the Palestinian Authority, which was seen as corrupt and doing Israel’s dirty work in stifling dissent.

Israeli journalist Amira Hass, who lived and reported from Gaza in the 1990s, wrote that closure of Gaza began long be-fore the Hamas election, as early as 1991. Significantly, the first Qassam rocket was not fired until 2002. Hass is the daugh-ter of two Holocaust survivors. Her mother told her of being marched to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, as villagers looked the other way. Hass swore that she would never look the other way. She is the only Jewish Israeli journalist who has lived full-time among the Palestinians, in Gaza in the 1990s and now in Ramallah from 1997.

Ever since Operation Cast Lead in December 2008, we have become more and more focused on the situation in Israel and the occupied territories. And so has much of the world. Gideon Levy, who writes in Haaretz, said in an interview with the Independent: I am amazed again and again at how little Israelis know of

what’s going on fifteen minutes away from their homes....The brainwashing machinery is so efficient that trying [to undo it is] almost like trying to turn an omelette back to an egg. It makes people so full of ignorance and cruelty.

He gives an example. During Operation Cast Lead, ‘a dog — an Israeli dog — was killed by a Qassam rocket and it was on the front page of the most popular newspaper in Israel. On the very same day, there were tens of Palestinians killed, they were on page 16, in two lines.’

And those who do not believe war crimes were commit-ted should refer to Norwegian Dr Mads Gilbert. He said he

The Palestine story: to exist is to resist

The issue of Israel and the occupied territories is not religion. Some of the most articulate and passionate opponents of Israeli policy are Jews, not just in the wider world but in Israel itself. The issue is colonialism; it is the Zionist agenda of ‘maximum geography with minimum demography’. It is ownership and control of land and water. The issue is humanitarian laws, Geneva Conventions, the International Rights of the Child, and International Court of Justice

through certain Superannuation Fund investments.

had never seen anything like it; he cited the use of white phos-phorus and experimental weapons, such as DIME (dense inert metal explosive). ‘There’s a very strong suspicion I think that Gaza is now being used as a test laboratory for new weapons,’ Gilbert told reporters when he returned to Oslo.

Gazan doctor Mona El Farra reports that children suffer all the symtoms of post-traumatic stress discorder: bed wetting, fear of planes, even loss of the will to live. He adds that the people of Gaza say that the hardest thing for them to endure is the feeling that the world has forgotten them. Any contact with people, not just goods, from the outside world means so much. That is why attempts to break the siege and reach the people are so important. Robert Fisk has said that civil society is doing what governments should but will not do.

Relief convoyIn 2010, Viva Palestina organised a relief convoy, overland from London, that was able, after a long delay in Syria, to reach Gaza. Six New Zealanders, calling themselves Kia Ora Gaza, took part. One of them, Roger Fowler, maintains that ‘Until there is justice for Palestine, there can be no peace in the Middle East. And until there is peace in the Middle East, there can be no peace in the world.’ Another was a woman, Julie Webb-Pullman, who is now back in Gaza, providing reports that appear in Scoop. Another Kia Ora Gaza team is there now, joined by people from eighteen countries.

Last July, a Freedom Flotilla 2011 tried to get to Gaza but was stopped by the Greeks under pressure from the West. Pas-sengers on the American boat Audacity of Hope included Hedy Epstein, a Holocaust survivor, and Alice Walker, the author of The Color Purple. The latter said that the flotilla reminded her of the Freedom Riders in America in the 1960s. The Audacity of Hope’s cargo was letters from Americans to Gazans, from American children to Gazan children — in the words of Alice Walker, letters of love. These two women represent what is best in America.

Defenders of the Israeli regime complain that Israel is ‘sin-gled out’. In past years, you could say that Northern Ireland was singled out, South Africa was singled out, Nicaragua was singled out, and indeed Vietnam was singled out. Actually, Is-rael is singled out. No other country would get away with what it does.

Consider the attack on the Mavi Marmara, the largest boat in the 2010 Freedom Flotilla, in the early morning of 31 May 2010. This was carried out by Israeli commandos in international waters. Eight Turks and one Turkish-Amer-


ican were killed. The Guardian reported that 19-year-old Turkish-American Farak Dogan was ‘shot 5 times from less than 45 cm, in the face, in the back of the head, shot twice in the leg and once in the back’. A New Zealander, Nicci Enchmarch from Canterbury, was not killed but was near one of the very first to be killed, a Turkish cameraman who was shot in the forehead.

Young victimsAmerican Rachel Corrie and Englishman Tom Hurndall were both killed in Gaza in 2003. They were both aged 23. Corrie was killed by a soldier driving a Caterpillar bulldozer-tank while trying to prevent a house demolition. Tom was killed by a sniper while trying to rescue some children. Why should anyone care about something happening in a far away country? We hear the word globalisation a lot. We are in an age of globalisation of concern, for humanity and the planet.

How do the Israelis get away with it? A DVD called Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land (2004) produced by the Media Education Foundation tells how Israelis officials thought the 1982 massacre at Sabra and Shatila was a disaster for Israel, not because of the deaths but because of what it did to Israel’s image. So in 1983, Israel created its ‘Hasbara Project’, to promote itself, especially in the United States and in Ameri-can media. In the film, the University of Texas-Austin’s Robert Jensen, a journalism professor, states that Israel has succeeded in ‘ideologically occupying the American media’. The film describes an organisation called CAMERA that harasses any

publication that dares to criticise Israel. Robert Fisk says that his American colleagues in the TV and print media have ‘Let their fear reign supreme over their duty as journalists. They will not confront reality. Once you acquire fear, it’s very hard to give it up.’

The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee is a very powerful, very wealthy lobby group. Personally I find it embar-rassing the way top American politicians, including the presi-dent, go to their meetings and grovel. Another powerful force in American politics are the Christian Zionists. They have no empathy for Palestinian Christians. In other words, there is a very strong Zionist hold on American politics.

But this hold is not new. In a speech at a Methodist church in Seattle on 8 June 2012, the 45th anniversay of the Israeli attack on the American espionage ship USS Liberty, Professor Richard Falk described the ‘disturbing relationship between our government and the government of Israel, because this at-tack on the USS Liberty was a deliberate attack by the Israeli government’. He noted that the ship ‘was well marked and in international waters, but what is more revealing and more dis-turbing is that the American government would suppress the reality of what happened and engage in a coverup all these years, that was originally ordered by Lyndon Johnson, the pres-ident at the time’. Falk added that the relationship between the Israeli and American governments is unprecedented, whereby the smaller and weaker country can dictate the foreign policy of the larger. Falk fears that the United States may succumb to Israeli influence and bomb Iran, claiming publicly that Iran is producing nuclear weapons when all the American intelligence services report that Iran gave up trying to make nuclear weap-ons years ago.

Ottoman dominationBefore the First World War, Palestinians and other Arab peoples were part of the 400-year-old Ottoman Empire. The Allies promised the Arabs independence if they rose against the Ottomans, which they did. But secretly, Britain and France planned to divide up Arab countries between them. British Foreign Secretary Balfour’s famous letter to Lord Rothschild was in November 1917. Britain took over Palestine, as a mandate and began, in the words of journalist Jonathan Cook, the still on-going process of de-developing Palestine, by bringing in a massive influx of Zionists from Eastern Europe who had no intention of integrating into Palestinian society. The British mandate forces were very brutal to Palestinians while helping train the Haganagh (Zionist militia), who later turned against them.

Maps reveal what could be called ‘Disappearing Palestine’. Negotiations have been taking place for decades. Negotiations suit Israel because while the two sides negotiate it is creating ‘facts on the ground’. So-called negotiations between a very powerful force backed by the world’s super-power and a very weak side are nothing more than surrender terms.

The agenda has always been to either expell all Palestinians or shove them into tiny bantustans, tightly controlled and iso-lated from each other. According to Dr Ilan Pappé, in his book Out of the Frame, ‘We have to try to explain both to the world and to Israelis themselves that Zionism is an ideology that en-dorses ethnic cleansing, occupation and massacres.’

In his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Pappé ex-

Israeli warships attack the Marvi Marmara

The Sabra and Shatila refugee camp massacre took place between 15 and 18 September 1982


plained Plan Dalet, how the dispossession and expulsion of the native population of 750,000 Arabs from over 500 villages was pre-meditated. What Israelis call Independence Day, the Pal-estinians call the Nakba. Pappé adds that unless Israelis at least acknowledge the truth of what happened, there will not be a true just peace among the peoples.

Wider rangeWe have met some of the Palestinians who reject Abbas’s go-it-alone approach and say that decision-making must go to a wider range of the Palestinian people. For example, the refugees in the camps and the diaspora of well-educated Palestinians, fluent in European languages, have so far been excluded. The Palestinian-American writer Susan Abulhawa has said: The main path that the Palestinian leadership has taken

us has been negotiations. This is and always was a funda-mentally flawed and morally unsound approach, because it is based on a very denigrating assumption, that our basic rights as human beings, our rights as the indigenous peo-ple of the Holy Land, and our freedom, are things to be negotiated for; as if our rights, enshrined in all tenets of international law, and our freedom are mere bargaining chips. And yet, the PA has continued along in what every one of us knows is a sham. The Peace Process was always a ruse to buy Israel more time to take more and more and more and ultimately wipe us off the map.

The Palestinian-American academic and author Dr Mazin Qumsiyeh, professor at Bethlehem and Birzeit universities, also pleads for the democratisation of Palestinian leadership: My recommendation is for the Palestinian leadership to

come back to the people and get new blood periodically. Internally, the Palestinian house needs to put itself in or-der by implementing existing agreements to create a rep-resentative Palestinian National Council (of the PLO).

Actually Abbas’s term should have ended in January 2009, but he refused to have new elections.

The American Jewish writer and activist Anna Baltzer was in New Zealand about eighteen months ago, promoting her book Witness in Palestine. She has outlined how Israel con-tinues to flout the 1948 UN Resolution 194, which said that all Palestinian refugees had the right to return. In 1950 Israel passed what it calls a law of return, which says Jews from any-where in the world have the right to ‘return’ to a place they have never been to but Palestinians have no right to return. There was a huge influx of Russians in the 1990s.

Property lawAlso in 1950 Israel passed what is called the absent property law, which provides that any Palestinian who had left his property for as short a time as one day during the 1948 war was classified as ‘present absentee’ and had his homes, lands and bank accounts seized.

Baltzer, like many other Jews, strongly refutes those who try to scare people away from criticising Israel’s actions by claiming that that is anti-semitism. She calls for that argument to be turned around. She says it is anti-semitic to claim that Jews do not believe in justice for all people.

Aida refugee camp is one of several in Bethlehem. More than two-thirds of the Palestinian people are refugees. They yearn to go home. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 13, states that ‘Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.’

We hear about Gaza and the West Bank, but not everyone outside Israel realises that in Israel itself there is an Arab minor-ity population of about 20 per cent. They were under military law until 1966. Pappé, in his book The Forgotten Palestinians, has written about them. There are separate but very under-funded schools for Arabs. Shin Bet vets the curriculum. Even the poetry of Palestine’s most distinguished poet, Mahmoud Darwish, is not taught. The Israelis do not want Palestinian-Israelis, whom they refer to as Israeli-Arabs, to feel a historic connection to the land or to the people of Gaza or the West Bank. There are even separate marriage laws for Palestinian-Is-raelis. When these were brought into effect, families suddenly found they were living together illegally and either had to split up or go into hiding.

Dr Pappé has introduced the word ‘memoricide’. Edward Said had similar thoughts. ‘Part of the main plan of imperial-ism...’, he claims, ‘is that we will give you your history, we will write it for you, we will re-order the past.... What’s more truly frightening is the defacement, the mutilation, and ultimately the eradication of history’.

Memoricide examplesAn ancient Muslim cemetery, Mamilla Cemetery, is being demolished to provide the site for a ‘Museum of Tolerance’. This sounds Orwellian. We have been shown some other examples of ‘memoricide’. Some friends took us to Ein Hod, near Haifa, in Israel itself, which in pre-Nakba times, our lifetime, was an Arab village. It is now a Jewish artists’ village. A restaurant, which serves alcohol, was a mosque.

Another friend, on another day, took us for a long walk in Begin Park, near Jerusalem. Begin Park is named after Mena-chem Begin, the leader of the terrorist Irgun gang that blew up the King David Hotel in 1946. He later became prime minis-ter of Israel. Our friend was actually a New Zealander working for the United Nations. He was able to point out signs that this park was build over demolished Palestinian villages. Jews around the world for decades have been asked to donate money to plant trees in Israel. But people are not told that the trees they help pay for are planted to cover up evidence of destroyed villages. The tendency is to plant quick growing pine trees that are acidic and not good for the soil.

Our tours were organised by the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). Co-founder Jeff Halper was nominated by International Friends for the Nobel Peace Prize


in 2006, and three years later was awarded the Kant World Citizen Prize 2009 for his work ‘to liberate both the Palestin-ian and the Israeli people from the yoke of structural violence’. Since 1967 Israel has demolished more than 25,000 Palestin-ian homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as deliberate policy.

ICAHD give educational tours to visitors, explaining the plans of the Israeli regime to, in the regime’s words, judaise Jerusalem, and the Jordan Valley, and the Negev Desert. In the Jordan Valley, as well as houses, the Israel Defence Force de-molishes animal pens and cisterns. Israel tells the outside world that the demolition is legal; the Palestinians break the law by building without permits. Palestinians are not given permits. Palestinian neighbourhoods are not allowed to expand. Laws are designed to discriminate against the indigenous popula-tion.

We have visited the Jerusalem suburb of Silwan, which is very near that part of the Old City called the Haram Ash Sharif by Palestinians, the Temple Mount by Israelis. The Je-rusalem municipality intends to demolish an entire neighbour-hood of 88 houses using the pretext of creating an archaeo-logical theme park. Miko Peled, son of a famous IDF general, describes using archeology as a weapon: So that Israel can build a park to glorify a conquest that-

took place 3000 years ago, never mind that not a shred of scientific evidence exists that such a king [David] ever lived, any more than there is evidence the world was cre-ated in six days. The past trumps the present in Israel — a state that wants to eliminate the existence of people who live.

Oppressive wallThe wall is not for security; it is for oppression. It is separating Palestinians from Palestinians. We were in a hotel two years ago watching the commemoration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, listening to Hillary Clinton saying how the West stands for freedom. No mention was made of Israel’s wall, which in 2004 was declared illegal by the International Court of Justice and which is expanding to this day, sealing off villagers from their farmlands and water sources. Villagers protest non-violently and are always met with extreme violence: tear gas, tear gas canisters, rubber-coated bullets, water cannons and something vile that the Israelis call skunk water.

We were taken by van for a little drive around Ma’ale Ad-umim, one of many settlements in the occupied West Bank. Settlements are for Jews only. They receive subsidised housing, water, electricity, rubbish collection, and security. Settlements are illegal under international law. Under the fourth Geneva Convention, an occupying power cannot transfer its popula-tion into occupied territory.

We saw one of the settlement’s four swimming pools. This is desert country, east of Jerusalem. Settlers are allowed plenti-ful amounts of water, which comes from mountain aquifers. By international law, mountain aquifer water should be a Pal-estinian resource, but Israel controls all water resources. Pal-estinians are forced to try to survive with less than minimum WHO requirements. Someone has coined the phrase hydro-logical apartheid.

One of the places we visited was Bethlehem University. It is a Catholic university, though 70 per cent of the students are

Muslim. The vice chancellor is a New Zealander, Brother Peter Bray. While we were on the campus two years ago a shock-ing incident happened. A young woman, Berlanty Azzam, about to graduate, was taking the bus back from Ramallah to Bethlehem when she and others were stopped by the IDF and asked to show their IDs. Every Palestinian has to carry an ID card, which shows where they come from. Berlanty was from Gaza; she had obtained permission from the military to travel to Bethlehem for her studies. But the IDF handcuffed her, blindfolded her and took her to Gaza. Brother Peter and a bishop went to Gaza and gave her her diploma there.

No entryBut now the Israelis have forbidden young people from Gaza to attend universities in the West Bank. Dr Mustafa Barghouti was born in Jerusalem. He worked as medical doctor, as a cardiologist, in a very important hospital in Jerusalem for fifteen years. Part of the Palestine National Initiative Party, which he and Edward Said helped form, he is an elected member of the Palestinian Parliament. Like 98 per cent of Palestinians, he is prevented from entering Jerusalem. During an interview at Brown University in 2010, Dr Barghouti said, ‘If I am caught in Jerusalem, I could be sentenced to seven years in jail.’

The New Zealand government has quietly entered into an agreement with Israel that makes it easy for young Israelis to come here. Are any of the several hundred young Israelis who come here Palestinians? Why do not we at least make this agreement subject to Gazan youths being allowed to go to the West Bank for studies? And subject to people born in Jerusa-lem being allowed to go there?

We have visited the headquarters of Defence of Children


International in Ramallah. We learned from international law-yers how, in the West Bank, there is a dual legal system for Palestinian children and settler children. Palestinian children are subject to military law, and tried by military courts. Settler children are under Israeli civil law. At any one time there are about 300 Palestinian children in prison. Some 700 children are prosecuted every year. They are most often arrested in the middle of the night, interrogated without lawyer or parent pre-sent, and (illegally under the Geneva Convention) imprisoned in Israel, where the parents cannot travel unless they are able to obtain a permit, which can take months. The most common accusation is of throwing rocks. The children sign confessions in Hebrew that they cannot read. In so many ways, Israel de-fies the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Last year, the Britain–Palestine All Party Parliamentary Group visited Defence of Children International, and even a military court at Ofer. Says one of the politicians, Holocaust survivor Lord Dub, In the court we visited we saw a 14 year-old and a 15-year-

old, one of them in tears, both looking absolutely bewil-dered. What shocked me as much as anything was to see that these young persons — children — had chains or shackles around their ankles while sitting in court. I do not believe that this process of humiliation represents jus-tice.

Hunger strikeOn 17 April 2012, Palestine Prisoners Day, more than 1000 Palestinian prisoners began an open-ended hunger strike to protest against unjust arrest procedures, arbitrary detention and bad prison conditions. Reported Richard Falk, ‘I am appalled by the continuing human rights violations in Israeli prisons and I urge the Government of Israel to respect its international human rights obligations towards all Palestinian prisoners.’

Twenty-five-year-old footballer Mahmoud Sarsak was ar-rested on 22 July 2009, while traveling from Gaza to the West Bank for a Palestinian national team match. He was accused of being an ‘illegal combatant’, which means any evidence against him remains secret. His family was not allowed to visit him; he was not allowed to phone them. Mahmoud went on a hunger strike; his weight dropped from 65 kilograms to 40 kilograms. Thanks to intense pressure from the outside world, including from football hero Eric Cantona, Mahmoud was taken to a hospital, began to eat and was expected to be returned to Gaza in July.

Since the 1967 war, an estimated 40 per cent of the Pales-tinian male population in the occupied territory has been in detention in Israeli jails. Israel makes widespread use of arbi-trary detention; no charges, no trials. Some prisoners are held this way for years, just by renewing the arbitrary detention. Twenty-seven Palestinian parliamentarians and two ministers are being held. Human rights activists, taking part in non-violent protests against the wall as it is expanded, are targeted. Political prisoners are held in Israel jails, against the Geneva Convention. Dostoevsky said you should judge a country by examining its prisons.

Abdullah Abu Rahman of Bil’in and Basem Tamimi of Nabi Saleh are both community organisers of non-violent pro-tests against the expansion of the illegal wall into their villages,

separating residents from their farmlands, orchards and water supplies. Both have been arrested, and both declared prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International. Rahman is a school-teacher from Bil’in. Since 2005 he has been the co-ordinator of the grassroots, non-violent resistance movement in his vil-lage. He was released after sixteen months. Tamimi has been arrested eleven times and has spent three years in administra-tive detention. His most recent arrest was on testimony of a 14-year-old arrested in the night at gunpoint. Tamimi was been released without charge. We mention these two men be-cause we hear people say ‘Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?’ Actually there are many.

Revealing placeWe visited Hebron, in the West Bank south of Bethlehem. Gideon Levy has said, ‘If you want to know what callousness is, if you want to know what racism is, if you want to know what evil is, if you want to know what injustice is and if you want to know what malice looks like, Hebron is the best place on earth to find out.’ The settlers in and around Hebron are notorious for their violence. Many come from Brooklyn. They are followers of Rabbi Meir Kahane, a US-born extremist. The settlers and their children are openly violent in their efforts to drive Palestinians away. The settlers are guarded by many IDF troops, who take no steps to stop settler violence.

We also visited the Ibrahimi Mosque, the fourth most holy mosque in Islam. This is where, in 1994, American-born Ba-ruch Goldstein massacred 29 Muslims at prayer. He is consid-ered a hero by the local settlers. Because of this massacre, the Palestinians were punished. Half of the mosque was turned into a synagogue and a main street was made off-limits for Palestinians. We witnessed something that we both found very disturbing. Out of respect we removed our shoes. Women were given cloaks. We were free to walk around. But we saw an Is-raeli soldier inside the mosque wearing boots and carrying a large weapon. I thought that was disgusting. I have since seen a YouTube of several soldiers parading through the mosque, letting the natives know that they, the soldiers, despised them and their religion.

Settlers who covet his house constantly harass our guide in Hebron, Hashem al Azzah. He and his wife do not dare leave their house at the same time. It is his house and he wants

Hashem al Azzah’s children


to stay. A Quaker from Dunedin, Christina Gibb, has spent some time in Hebron, as a member of the Christian Peacemak-erTeam. One of the things they do is escort children to and from school, hoping that, by their presence, the children will not be attacked by settlers.

Unrecognised villageWe visited al Araqib, an ‘unrecognised’ Bedouin village in the Negev Desert. An ‘unrecognised village’ means the Israeli government provides no water, no electricity, no roads, no schools and no clinics, despite the fact that the inhabitants are Israeli citizens. The government wants to evict Bedouins from their lands, and force them into jobless, crowded townships. But the Bedouin are refusing to leave. They practice non-violent resistance by rebuilding over and over again, an example of sumud, which means steadfastness. Al Araqib has been demolished many times.

The British philosopher Bertrand Russell was so perturbed by the way that the public was being kept uninformed about the Vietnam War that he created the Russell Tribunal on Viet-nam, stating, ‘May this tribunal prevent the crime of silence.’ Now a new tribunal, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine, whose members are distinguished writers, artists, lawyers from sever-al countries, has been formed. The session held in London has direct bearing on New Zealand because it examined the role of corporations, concluding that, ‘Corporations play a very de-cisive role in enabling Israel to commit war crimes and crimes

against humanity.’ This means that establishments, including national pension funds, should examine their portfolios and divest from any corporation profiteering from Israel’s breaking international law.

If New Zealand does nothing else, if we, unlike Amira Hass, choose to look the other way, call it realpolitik, our coun-try should at least not become profiteers in Israel’s flouting of international law. Specifically, at least, the New Zealand Su-perannuation Fund should be divested from Elbit, the Israel firm that makes drone planes. The Norwegian pension fund has divested from Elbit. Our fund should be divested from Caterpillar, which makes specially designed bulldozer/tanks for demolishing houses. The Church of England divested from Caterpillar ages ago. American Quakers have recently done the same. The Superannuation Fund should be divested from G4S, which provides electronic security systems to prisons in which Palestinian political prisoners are held, and from three Israeli banks (Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi and Israel Dis-count Bank) that help finance the illegal settlements.

Claudette Habesch, the secretary-general of Caritas Jerusa-lem, was in New Zealand earlier this year. ‘Whatever the Israe-lis do to us, we will keep our dignity’, she maintained. She also said that ‘Israelis talk about security. Yes, Israelis should have security, so should Palestinians. Without justice, there is no peace. Without peace, there is no security.’ Finally she insisted that ‘Palestine is my home. I will stay.’ That is another way of saying, ‘To exist is to resist’.

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Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and John Key meet Lyn Avery, Glen Taylor School’s principal, in Auckland on 15 February 2011

Christopher Hill

Finding a way in a changing worldJohn Key reviews his government’s links with a number of states and regions and approach to some big global issues.

Rt Hon John Key is the prime minster of New Zealand. This article is the edited text of an address he gave to the NZIIA’s annual dinner on 9 May 2012.

The Christchurch earthquake in February 2011 has been significant for all New Zealanders. I want to put that event in some perspective. The quake will be the fourth largest insurance claim arising from earthquakes in the world since 1973. Only the Californian earthquake that year, the Kobe earthquake in 1995 and the most recent Japanese earthquake and tsunami gave rise to bigger claims. That gives an indication of the size of the damage to Christchurch. We are currently estimating that it is going to cost about $20 billion to rebuild. But everything in Christchurch takes longer and costs more. My sense is that the total expense will be considerably more than the present estimate. It was a very major event for the city and the country.

There has been a lot going on since my last speech at an NZIIA dinner, in 2009. I was a pretty new prime minister then. I had less grey hair then and a better relationship with the media. But while we can look at a lot that has changed, in another sense much has stayed the same. Looking abroad, the basic principles of New Zealand’s foreign policy have not altered. We are staunch advocates of an independent foreign policy. New Zealand has been and always will be a very strong voice on matters of global importance. The government’s fo-cus, outside of building better relationships internationally, is economic growth. Unashamedly that is an essential part of what we are doing. I want to first address our links with a number of countries and regions; then get onto some of the big global issues.

In the network of New Zealand’s relationships, the start-ing point always has to be Australia. In truth, the connection we have with Australia is asymmetrical. New Zealand needs Australia; Australia actually does not need New Zealand. That is a statement of the reality. Australia is our largest source of tourists, our largest source of foreign investment, and our larg-est market for goods and services. From our viewpoint, Aus-tralia is the largest on pretty much everything. We are, for the record, the holders of the Rugby World Cup, but in most other fields they are very competitive, with us and with others.

When Julia Gillard came here in 2011 she made a feature of one very important point: that for Australia, only New Zealand represents ‘family’. I think that really sums up the ties between us. It is a complex, many layered, and incredibly

integrated relationship. I had the privilege of speaking in the Australian Parliament in 2011. Recently there were five prime ministerial visits across the Tasman in one year, which is quite remarkable. We have had everything from joint Cabinet meet-ings through to continuing progress towards a single economic market.

We both now deploy ‘smartgate’ technology at the borders. When I first became minister of tourism, I wanted to move quickly and get the new technology into place. The Austral-ians had it, and were satisfied with it. But our officials said to me: ‘No, you’ve got to scope it out and draw your own conclu-sions’. I said ‘Why on earth would I want to do that, when the Australians have got it, it works perfectly for them, and we’re trying to integrate with Australia; why don’t we just buy theirs?’ To cut a long story short, eventually after three months of banging heads together we eventually did, of course, buy the Australian technology. And as I expected, New Zealand-ers have been swift to adopt this technology, and many of us are now crossing the border using smartgate. Next year we are going to celebrate 30 years of CER; it is astonishing how comprehensive and world best-practice that trading and investment regime has become.

With the United States, we have a relationship that has gone from strength to strength. Speaking in

The National-led government adheres strongly to the basic principles of New Zealand foreign policy. It is a staunch advocate of an independent approach and offers a strong voice on mat-ters of global importance. Apart from building better relationships internationally, it has as its main focus the promotion of economic growth. New Zealand can only get wealthy selling things to the rest of the world. It must aim to deliver high quality in what it does and achieve high levels of intellectual property and innovation. This is not a straightforward process anddemands a concerted effort, which is currently not made easier by the need to deal with the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake.


Janet Napolitano and Maurice Williamson

Auckland at a conference on the Trans-Pacific Partnership in early May, I recalled what Christopher Hill had said when his State Department role covered this region. He thought it odd, when he looked at this part of the world, that there were only three countries the Americans did not get on with or had sanc-tions and had some problems with, and they were Burma, North Korea and New Zealand. Well, fortunately, we and Washington have managed to get past the rock in the road. The relationship is on a positive footing and doing incredibly well. We have had a large number of high level visits, not least Janet Napolitano of Homeland Security in May and Secretary of State Clinton before that, in late 2010. I visited the White House last year. We are looking forward to grasping many bilateral openings in the years ahead.

Fascinating factsThe same is true for the United Kingdom. Earlier this year I gave a speech in Indonesia that had some quite fascinating facts. Back in 1965 we sold twice as much to the United Kingdom as we sold to all of Asia. Today we sell twice as much to Indonesia alone as we sell to the United Kingdom. That gives a sense of how New Zealand’s trading patterns have changed since Britain went into the European Community. But it remains from our perspective a very special relationship, historical, of course, and on many other fronts. The British prime minister, David Cameron, and I get on well together. For the British, the Olympics have been a memorable occasion. That is not to downplay their current financial and economic problems, which are well known and substantial.

Then there is Canada. I always think of the Canadian re-John Key with David Cameron

lationship with the United States as being very like the New Zealand relationship with Australia. The Canadians are great friends of New Zealand and they are wonderful people.

Turning to Europe, it is important to note that the Euro-pean Union is still a major trading partner of New Zealand. It is interesting to observe what is happening there, the process

Stephen Harper

of 27 countries coming together. Of course, everyone is aware of the chal-lenges that Europe faces and they are not easy. We know what has hap-pened in France in recent times, and in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. The issues are well documented, on a daily basis.

All the same, it would be foolish to ignore the strength and the power of Europe. It is an amazing collection of countries with a great history and with huge intellectual property. Look at a country such as Germany. It is truly remarkable what the Germans are achieving. Germany is a manufacturing powerhouse that can compete with China, and not many countries can do that. What motivates them is their belief in the quality of what they produce and the value of its intellectual property. From our government’s point of view, since 2009 our aim has been to put in place a comprehensive partnership with Europe. That is still our objective. We want to do more with Europe. And while it is true we are consolidating some of our presence in Europe, it is not because we do not see enormous potential in the things that we can do there and the value of the historic relationship.

Seismic shiftWhen we come to Asia, I am quite fascinated by what is going on there. We are witnessing one of the great global seismic shifts that occur once in a generation. It does not matter whether you are talking about China or India or Indonesia or Malaysia or Singapore or Hong Kong or South Korea. They are all forging ahead in their own right. It is an incredible story. For a country like New Zealand, which has a strong agricultural base at the core of its economy, the prospects are extraordinary. Take a country like Indonesia where I was in March: 250 million people adding the equivalent population of New Zealand every year. Currently they drink two drops of milk per capita, per day. If that was four drops of milk a day or if they were to lift consumption to half a glass a day, that is more than all of what Fonterra can produce. And I am referring only to Indonesia.

If we shift the focus to China and India, the numbers are astonishing and the growth story is going to be phenomenal. Any country that did not have an eye on what is going on in those parts of the world would do so at their peril, because there is going to be a massive wealth surge in Asia over the next twenty years. New Zealand needs to maximise that opportu-nity, not least because we see ourselves as part of Asia.

In that context it is interesting to consider China and the Crafar Farms issue, which made headlines for a variety of dif-ferent reasons earlier this year. The first time the government signed off on the Crafar deal, there was much vocal criticism and an on-line poll that claimed 97 per cent of people were op-


Lakeview — one of the Crafar farms

posed and a mere 3 per cent were in favour. But the second time we signed off, the agreement did not make the front page of the NZ Herald, and there was no outburst of concern. Why was that? I think because people took a second look and thought about what China could mean to New Zealand. China is our second largest market; the two-way trade flow is about $13 billion. It was $10 billion in 2010. That year, when I met with Premier Wen, I said to him ‘Why don’t we have a stated goal of doubling our bilateral trade to $20 billion by 2015?’ He agreed. We are on track to achieve that target. So when I look at Asia I see great opportunities there for New Zealand, which we have to exploit to benefit our economy and our people.

Undercooked areaI would say about Latin America that it is undercooked from New Zealand’s point of view. We can do a lot better there as Latin investors are well aware. The continent is home to some big economies. It is curious that New Zealanders do not think twice about going straight to America and onwards to Europe or straight through to Asia. But they ignore the ability to go through Latin America and to discover the huge promise there. A country like Brazil, for example, which has the sixth largest economy in the world, is vast in its own right. All those accelerating growth statistics that we talked about in Asia are absolutely true of Latin America. It is a part of the world where New Zealand needs to lift its game and where we can build much stronger relationships. It is certainly going to be a focus of my attention as we plan for a visit there next year.

The Pacific has a very special ‘family’ association with New Zealand. Auckland is the largest Pacific city in the world. We have long and historical relationships in the Pacific. As regards Fiji, my government still wants to see progress being made. In our view elections have to take place in 2014. We are pleased that the Fiji authorities received the Ministerial Contact Group in early May. Our foreign minister has been working hard to make progress. In the end what Fiji needs is a democratic and stable government that is the result of proper engagement and dialogue with partners on the ground. If they do not get that, there will be further coups and the risk of that contagion spreading to other Pacific nations. From New Zealand’s perspective that would be a disastrous thing to happen. Fortunately, we have good relationships with pretty much everybody in the region. Our Pacific near neighbours are all different and all of them have different aspects that give them strengths. They are all important to us and as New Zealand prime minister that puts me in a privileged position. From a foreign policy point of view, advancing free trade agreements is a huge priority for us. The Trans-Pacific Partner-ship is top of the list. One of the reasons for this is that the TPP is a way of delivering on core objectives in APEC. Progressing down the path from P2 to P4 and on towards the TPP is proof that highlevel events such as APEC are not merely talk fests. They are more than just an occasion for people to get together and have face time with each other. They can produce practi-cal results.

High-class dealI believe the TPP will be concluded, and successfully. As I noted early in May, in the end it is about getting a comprehensive, high-class deal, one that is really meaningful.

I hope the negotiations are completed sooner rather than later, but I would rather have a better deal even if it takes a bit longer. Of course, there are lots of challenges to overcome. Every country brings some different aspirations to the table and negotiators have to try to reconcile them.

But if the final TPP package on the table is not a compre-hensive and transparent deal, New Zealand cannot sign it. To do so would undermine every other free trade agreement that we have. Frankly I think that cautious approach holds for all the other partners as well. In the case of the United States, they are trying to protect their intellectual property. Considering how much intellectual property is developed in the United States, they have got a fair point. In the end countries are not going to develop intellectual property un-less they can protect it, and in the world we live in that has to be so. I am confident we will succeed with the TPP.

We are also working aggressively on the Korea free trade agreement. Again in that context these things take time, but I believe we will get there, and with Russia as well, which is a new frontier for us in the free trade agreement field. There is a lot of work still to be done here, but we are making progress. We have completed quite a few trade agreements in the time we have been in office, from the ASEAN–Aus-tralia–New Zealand free trade agreement through to Hong Kong and Malaysia, and we are still building on the China agreement.

John Key meets President Hu Jintao at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing


Council bidAs regards the UN Security Council, we are running for the council in 2015–16, and that vote will take place in 2014. We were last on the council in 1993. I am convinced New Zealand brings real value when it fills that role. We are not the richest country in the world with largesse to spread around, but we have the independent voice of a country that has very high standards in many areas. We are conscious we face two strong competitors in Turkey and Spain. At this point it is a long way from being a done deal that we will win the vote, but I believe we can do it and we are actively pushing our case.

In terms of the restructuring of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, let me just say that MFAT needs to re-structure. There have been numerous commentaries, some of which are right and some of which are well off the mark. Like everything that appears in the papers, there are always many versions of every story. But the reality is that any for-eign service needs to move with the times and the rest of the state sector in New Zealand is doing that. The one depart-ment that probably has not changed as much as others is MFAT. It does need to evolve. It has to modernise its op-erations, and provide a pathway of opportunity for young people who are coming through and doing well.

It is a fact that very bright people out of the tertiary sec-tor are attracted to Treasury or MFAT. The ministry is well known for the quality of its people and that will continue. The challenges of restructuring are never easy to address,

especially when the outcome may have a direct impact on people’s remuneration and the like. There is always going to be a degree of push-back and that is what we saw, but we are working our way through the process. In the end this might affect the overseas footprint New Zealand has and the things that we do offshore. But I do not think the effects will be dramatic; they will occur in the margins.

The pressure is on every ministry, not just MFAT — and my own department is included — to save money and perform in a better way. That is the consequence of trying to spend no extra money, as we have in every budget in recent times, and get back to surplus. The reality is we simply do not have the funds on hand to take any other course, and the public sector has to deliver cost savings and greater efficiencies.

Uncertain environmentRegarding the budget and where we see things headed, we face a very uncertain global environment out there. Take Europe, which might be able to get through relatively easily but is facing real challenges. In some countries we are seeing strong resistance to austerity measures. When you live in a democracy and you are obliged to cut people’s pay and pensions and intrude on people’s rights, you are always going to get the sort of reaction that is taking place in Greece, and not only Greece. New Zealand went through the experience in the mid-1980s and it was not pleasant.

The United States numbers are a little bit better than they were, but still mixed. China is a massive powerhouse in terms of economic output, but it is also being affected by the slowdown in Europe and the fall in commodity prices. Here in New Zealand we believe we have seen the worst. The economy is starting to pick up and some of our numbers are looking more positive and encouraging. But recovery is not going to be easy. There has been a decade of enormous debt consumption in New Zealand, which has been true around the world. Now we have a situation in which economies and people are struggling to come to terms with that legacy, and it is driving some unusual behavioural responses.

Exactly that situation exists in Australia. There you have an economy which has got a colossal mining sector that is enormously powerful. Yet even in Australia, housing prices are down 10 per cent, manufacturing is weak and the tour-ism sector is in trouble under a high exchange rate. They have borrowed $190 billion in the last four years. Australia is a country that is incredibly prosperous and blessed with its resources, yet look at what it is having to go through, even off a base of no debt in recent times. Imagine how difficult it is for some other economies, not so well endowed.

From New Zealand’s perspective, point one is that we are a country of four and a half million people. We are not going to get wealthy selling things to each other; we have to sell them to the rest of the world. We will not succeed un-less we deliver high quality in what we do and we achieve high levels of intellectual property and innovation. We are trying to reshape the New Zealand economy, get back to surplus, and deal with the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquake. All of this has to be done at the same time, and none of it is straightforward. The New Zealand public are not stupid. They are smart enough to understand where we are going and how we are going to get there.

John Key with board members of the Latin American New Zealand Business Council in April 2012

New Zealand Winegrowers’ March 2012 export statistics show a 53 per cent growth in New Zealand wine exports to mainland China in the last year


In this article I will put on record the ground rules under which we are contesting a UN Security Council seat —because in some respects we appear to be testing what seems to have become conventional wisdom about such campaigns, and I want to make it clear that we are doing so with our eyes open. And I want to set out the government’s thinking on the question of Security Council reform — on which matter I took a paper to the Cabinet during 2011.

But, of course, it is impossible to address any of these mat-ters meaningfully without first answering two underlying questions: does the Security Council matter? And does New Zealand’s membership of that body matter?

A quick glance at the newspaper headlines any day in re-cent months should have been sufficient to convince most New Zealanders of the importance of the role of the UN Security Council. The appalling tragedy that is Syria continues to un-fold before our eyes.

Sadly, such a glance at the media is also sufficient to remind us that the council often falls very far short of meeting our rea-sonable expectations as UN members and good international citizens, not just in Syria, but in other zones of actual or poten-tial conflict. However, I want to present a slightly blunter and less emotional response to this question.

For many decades New Zealand ministers and diplomats have affirmed our support for the United Nations and its as-sociated bodies. They have generally pointed out that as a small nation, New Zealand is more dependent than most upon strong multilateral institutions and respected bodies of rules to regulate international behaviour. And I want to strongly en-dorse that view.

Serious challengesOver half of the UN members are smaller countries like New Zealand. And we all look to the United Nations to provide a strong and effective institutional framework in order to confront the world’s serious challenges. It follows from that statement that we must also have a significant investment in the effectiveness of the UN Security Council. The council

Seeking a Security Council voiceMurray McCully provides an update on New Zealand’s campaign to secure a seat on the UN Security Council and discusses reform of the council.

Hon Murray McCully is the minister of foreign affairs and trade. This article is the edited text of an address he gave to the NZIIA at Victoria University of Wellington on 12 June 2012.

administers a budget that is four times larger than that of the whole of the rest of the United Nations. The peacekeeping operations of the Security Council alone cost over $8 billion a year — with over 100,000 peacekeepers deployed around the world. Only the Pentagon manages more troops in theatre.

The Security Council is the body that now meets virtually daily to contend with the serious challenges to regional and international stability and security. It is where the rubber meets the road. A commitment to a strong, effective United Nations must, therefore, entail a commitment to a strong, effective UN Security Council. If we really do believe that multilateral insti-tutions play a part in dealing with the challenges we confront, then it follows that we would want to play our full part in those institutions.

The decision that New Zealand would campaign for a seat on the UN Security Council for the 2015–16 term was made by the Clark-led government in 2004. The Key-led government confirmed that decision in 2009. That confirmation occurred in an environment when there were two countries, New Zea-land and Spain, seeking election to the two seats available to the Western Europe and others group for that period. When, Turkey, barely off the council at the end of 2010, decided to contest a seat for the 2015–16 term, we again confirmed New Zealand’s candidacy.

I know that there is a view held by some that New Zealand does not hold a strong chance against two much larger and very formidable candidates. But I do not share that view. If we were to follow that logic we would never stand for anything. And if that view were to be correct, smaller countries would never get elected to anything. In the context of the United Nations that would be a serious problem, because, as I shall explain later, it is the influence of smaller countries like New Zealand that is urgently needed.

Clear conditionsI have said that the Key government reconfirmed New Zealand’s candidacy for the UN Security Council, but we did not do so without conditions. Both the prime minister and I laid down two very clear conditions: we would not attempt to buy a seat on the Security Council, either by spending New Zealand taxpayers’ dollars or by changing New Zealand policy positions.

It is very important that these conditions should be under-stood. Because they defy what some commentators and ana-lysts believe to be the accepted wisdom associated with modern Security Council campaigns. That view holds that contested council seats will always fall to the highest bidder of aid dollars,

greatly from strong multilateral institutions and respected bodies of rules to regulate inter-national behaviour. It is prepared to play its part in making the UN system work. Since 2004 New Zealand has been campaigning to secure a seat on the Security Council for the 2015–16 term. It is competing with two other strong contenders, Turkey and Spain, for one of the two

realistic proposals to this end.


or to the holder of the most flex-ible positions on the controversial foreign policy issues of the day.

Let me very clear: if the propo-nents of that view are correct then we will lose our bid for a Security Council seat for 2015–16. We will lose because we, as a small coun-try, do not have the aid resources to be able to campaign effectively on that basis. And even if we did, I, for one, would decline to do so.

We have accepted that as a smaller donor, we need to focus our efforts on our own region, where, as a niche player, we can be truly effective. We are not going to change a realistic and effective development strategy, focused on our own region, in order to chase Security Council votes around the globe. We cannot throw bil-lions of dollars at climate change

ship is the opportunity to press that case.

Basic principlesLast year I asked our Cabinet to confirm some basic principles about Security Council reform so that we could be very clear about our position before joining the council. A range of proposals has been put forward. At one end, the G4 (Brazil, India, Germany, Japan) have advanced a simple proposal for expansion of the council through their addition as permanent members. Other significant regional players have proposed their own candidacies as alternatives to each of the G4 members. The fact is that the G4 proposal is not going to succeed, and nor will some of the regionally based proposals for reform that have been floated.

What has become clear from the debate is that there is a need for expansion of the council, to make it more representa-tive. And there does need to be scope for countries that are not going to become permanent members to be able to spend longer terms on the council. So the pragmatic and realistic view agreed by the New Zealand government is for an expan-sion of the Security Council to include a so-called intermediate category of member.

The intermediate solution is not a New Zealand invention, but we have decided to support one adaptation of this concept as, in our view, a reasonable way of meeting everyone’s inter-ests. Under this approach the council would be expanded to include up to six non-permanent seats with a term of up to five years. These would be open to contest by a self-selected group of larger countries wanting to serve longer than a two-year term and wanting also to be eligible for immediate re-election. So a nation like India or Japan, both of which would see them-selves as entitled to new permanent seats, would be able to run for these new seats for up to a five-year term, and be able to run again immediately their term was complete. The election would be at large, not regionally based. This is important.

If we are to lift the performance of the Security Coun-cil, we need to provide strong incentives for good individual

funds of dubious effectiveness but we can, for example, take the Tokelau Islands from 100 per cent dependence on fossil fuels for electricity to over 90 per cent renewable solar power in the course of calendar 2012 — which we will do. We can make significant progress towards renewable energy with other Pacific neighbours, because that is what our background and size equips us to do.

Considered positionsWhat I am saying, in essence, is that the Key government has made it very clear that we will not campaign on our chequebook. And nor will our policy positions be for sale. We have, on the truly controversial and divisive questions, like the issues around the Middle East peace process, staked out a long history of positions that are considered, careful and constructive.

For that reason, while either party may disagree with the individual positions we adopt, I am confident that our views will be respected. And I have no intention of seeing an excel-lent reputation, in which we have a great deal invested, put at risk in the pursuit of Security Council votes. The prime min-ister’s approach and my own approach is that we would rather lose with honour than trade overseas development assistance or policy positions for Security Council votes.

Having said all of that, we do not intend to lose, or expect to lose. Our campaign has been running since 2004. Since then we have gathered a large number of commitments of sup-port from all regions of the world. We have shown our ability to win campaigns in the past, based on our strong multilateral reputation and through our respectful and open conduct with all UN members.

This brings me to the question of Security Council reform. This is a matter on which some aspirants might decide that silence is the most effective policy, but that is not the New Zea-land approach. One of the most important issues confronting the United Nations is the question of Security Council reform. And one of the great privileges of Security Council member-

The UN Security Council in session


performances. At the same time as creating new intermediate seats, we would advocate the expansion of the number of ordi-nary non-permanent seats for the purpose of balance.

Veto obstacleNo commentary on Security Council reform would be complete without a reference to the veto. First, we must ensure that any changes to the council create no new rights of veto. On the contrary, we need to see the existing powers of veto, held by the permanent five, meaningfully curbed. The five vetoes were accepted reluctantly in 1945 because it was apparent that major powers would not allow their national security interests to be the subject of collective decision-making. But sadly, over the past two decades, we have seen the veto being used in circumstances that have no bearing on the national security of the member concerned.

No meaningful Security Council reform can take place without some moderation of the power of the veto. At the very least we need the permanent five to make a declaration that they will not use the veto in cases where there is a clear risk of crimes against humanity or genocide.

Now I want to be very clear about one thing here: I am not expecting a spontaneous outburst of support for the proposal I have just broadly outlined. Just about everybody has reason to be equally disappointed about elements of this approach. But it does provide the only pragmatic vehicle for council reform that is going to actually improve the operation of the council, and have some chance of actually being implemented when countries decide to get serious about council reform.

And I believe there are an increasing number that are get-ting serious, and for good reason. A lack of reform momentum has seen the large players that are not permanent members seek election more and more frequently. Turkey contesting against New Zealand having just come off the council is a classic il-lustration. Smaller countries are being increasingly squeezed out of contention by this phenomenon, and increasingly un-derstand the need for the rules to change

Key elementThis brings me to a key element of New Zealand’s campaign: we are a small state and we are strong advocates for the interests of small states. Of 193 UN members, 102 are small states. If the United Nations is going to be a truly effective international body, it must engage these states effectively. In New Zealand’s own region there are twelve Pacific UN member states that have never been on the Security Council and struggle to get the profile they deserve.

Representing the Pacific region is an important motivator behind New Zealand standing for a seat on the council. We are using our role as Pacific Islands Forum chair as an oppor-tunity to raise the profile of the Pacific in the United Nations. A gain at last year’s forum was a commitment by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to meet Pacific leaders annually to dis-cuss regional concerns.

Our Pacific experience resonates with a host of small states beyond our region, in particular small island developing states, and we have been active in getting the forum more connected to regional bodies like CARICOM, the organisation of four-teen Caribbean states. Through the Commonwealth and other groupings such as the Alliance of Small Island States we easily

find common interests.We have become more closely engaged with other bod-

ies as well. In the last twelve months we have established an accreditation to the African Union and Ethiopia. It is crucial that New Zealand understands the issues confronting the 54 states of the African Union if we are to constructively engage in Security Council matters and be a responsible member of the United Nations.

Rwanda genocideWhen we were last on the council, nearly 20 years ago in 1994, we pushed the council to respond to the genocide in Rwanda, at a time when no one wanted to take action. This contribution has not been forgotten by Rwanda, nor by its African neighbours. Many of the problems my African ministerial counterparts talk to me about — the importance of agricultural trade access, energy and food security, importance of the rule of law and the challenges of being ex-colonies — are all themes that affect our region and us.

I attended the Non Aligned Movement Summit in Bali last year, and again recently in Egypt. The government is increas-ing its interaction with groups like the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, the Arab League and the Gulf Cooperation Council. We have appointed a number of special envoys, in-cluding Sir Don McKinnon and former New York Permanent Representative Colin Keating. And my ministerial colleagues and senior officials have become accustomed to being tasked with undertaking Security Council lobbying calls.

We are against much larger and more powerful opponents. But we started early, we have a good brand, and we have a good track record on the council. And at the end of the day, after all the lobbying, vote swap proposals and offers of familiarisa-tion visits to capitals for permanent representatives are over, the question that countries need to ask is this: what sort of people, with what sort of values and with what sort of working style, do we want to see sitting around that table in New York when something difficult comes up in our region? I remain confident that there are many compelling reasons why countries should answer that question in our favour.

NEW NZIIA PUBLICATION

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Tonga’s territory consists of three main island groups (Niua, Vavau, and Tongatapu groups) and the territorial waters around these islands. The vast distance between its northernmost island and southernmost island — more than 600 kilometres, further extended by the country’s exclusive economic zone — requires a sizable maritime patrol and enforcement capability. Although overlapping exclusive economic zone claims with neighbouring countries have not yet been resolved, active disputes are absent, except with Fiji over ownership of the Minerva Reefs.

Tongan waters host tropical tuna fish stocks, but the re-source has largely been under-utilised by Tonga. Seabed min-ing has potential as Tonga’s EEZ covers the world’s second deepest water, known as the Tonga Trench, between the Pa-cific and the Australian tectonic plates; the chain of islands and the two parallel submarine ridges that run along the trench are partly volcanic.1 The tuna resources in Tonga’s under-patrolled EEZ waters are vulnerable to unlicensed fishing by foreign ves-sels.

Tonga’s archipelagic territory is connected by sea commerce via the main island of Tongatapu. Ferry boats shuttle between Tongatapu, Eua, Haapai, and Vavau transporting both cargoes and people. Tourism in Tonga is under-developed. However, as the country explores new sources of tourism revenue, protec-tion of tourists against all forms of maritime threat becomes essential. Illicit trade and human smuggling into Tonga or through Tonga into a third country have been identified as continuing problems. Tonga’s weak law enforcement on and off the outer islands exposes the entire country to such trans-national criminal activities as drug, arms and human smug-gling.

Protecting Tonga’s maritime securityYoichiro Sato comments on the mismatch between Tonga’s resources and responsibilities and its ability to prevent illegal action.

Tonga’s capability to protect its broad maritime security interests is limited. The mismatch between Tonga’s vast potential natural resources and its patrolling capability allows illegal exploitation by foreign entities. The shortfall in maritime safety and disaster response capa-bility exposes both Tongans and foreign visitors alike to risks. Poorly governed maritime and land spaces in Tongan peripheries have been exploited by trans-national criminals. Tonga and the donor countries need to overcome a major mismatch between their priorities in order to meet these security challenges. Tonga also needs to streamline its government bureaucracy to make the best use of its donated assets and training opportunities.

Professor Yoichiro Sato is the director of international strategic studies at

have covered a broad range of topics from domestic and international political

Foundation as a part of its Maritime Security Study Group. The views expressed

through anonymous interviews is not referenced to protect the interviewees’ identities.

Tonga has also been exposed to periodic cyclones and tsu-namis. Disaster relief in Tonga requires large maritime logisti-cal capability, as large aircraft cannot land on short unpaved runways on the country’s outer islands.

Tonga has limited capability to protect its broad maritime security interests in the archipelagic territorial waters. The mis-match between Tonga’s vast potential natural resources and its patrolling capability allows illegal exploitation by foreign entities. The shortfall in maritime safety and disaster response capability exposes both Tongans and foreign visitors alike to risks. Poorly governed maritime and land spaces in the Tongan peripheries have been exploited by trans-national criminals.

Maritime areasThe Royal Proclamation of 24 August 1887 defined the kingdom of Tonga as a square-shaped area (approximately 395,000 square kilometres) between 15° and 23°30´ South and 173° and 177° West that included all islands, reefs, foreshores and waters.2 The Royal Proclamation of 15 June 1972 extended Tonga’s claims by establishing 200-mile (320 kilometres)exclusive economic zones around its island possessions and


the sea floor within the 200-metre deep shelf, as recognised by the UN Law of the Sea Convention. The 1972 proclamation also established Tonga’s claim to ‘the islands of Teleki Tokelau and Teleki Tonga [the Minerva Reefs] and all islands, rocks, reefs, foreshores and water lying within a radius of 12 miles thereof, extending to 179°W .́3 As final settlement of the EEZ boundaries with neighbouring countries is pending, Tonga limits enforcement of its fishery laws to the 1887 proclamation area and the 12-mile zone around the Minerva Reefs.

Tuna species caught in the area include yellowfin, big eye, albacore, and skipjack, as well as several types of swordfish. During the early 2000s, when more than twenty vessels oper-ated in Tongan waters, the main catch was albacore.4 In recent years, however, long-line fishermen have avoided schools of the smaller and cheaper albacore, whereas smaller boats operating within territorial waters catch skipjack to be sold, along with other reef fish, in the local fish market. Some big eye and yel-lowfin tuna and swordfish are airlifted to Japan, and so is the occasional catch of the more expensive bluefin tuna. The rest of the tuna is mostly supplied to upscale local restaurants. Only three Tonga-registered boats catch tuna using long-line gear, mostly within the country’s EEZ.

Some twenty foreign fishing vessels were licensed to operate in the Tongan EEZ until the government placed a moratorium on foreign fishing operations in 2004. Licensing of foreign ves-sels for EEZ fishing resumed in 2011, and one Taiwanese vessel has been licensed since then. During the moratorium period, some violations were confirmed. In 2008, a New Zealand aer-ial patrol identified a Taiwanese vessel illegally fishing inside the Tongan EEZ (though outside the ‘Proclamation’ area), and in 2010 a Tongan patrol boat identified a Korean fishing vessel in a similar non-enforced part of the EEZ. The extent of actual violations during this period is unknown, however, because of a shortage of routine patrol capacity.

Primary responsibilitiesTwo governmental agencies assume primary responsibilities in fishery management. The Fishery Ministry is responsible for the licensing of foreign vessels and monitoring of all fishing vessels more than six metres in length inside the Tongan EEZ. Monitoring of these fishing vessels relies on the vessel monitoring system (VMS), which is centralised through the Pacific Islands Forum Fishery Agency. The Tongan Defence

Services (TDS) is mandated to conduct actual fishery patrols at sea and to enforce fishery laws. Since there is no catch quota on tuna and swordfish in the Tongan EEZ, enforcement mainly targets unlicensed vessels. Other related agencies include the Customs Office, which certifies export contents (including fish), the Police Ministry, which supports enforcement of the Fishery Act, and the Transportation Ministry, which registers marine vessels.

Budgetary shortfalls in general limit Tonga’s fishery man-agement capability, and the problem of its dependence on ex-ternal partners has no easy solution. The mismatch between the under-utilisation of the potentially large resource pool and the need to patrol the large EEZ adds to Tonga’s difficulty.

The TDS has received three patrol boats from Australia, known as the Pacific Patrol Boats. When the boats are used for EEZ fishery patrol or search and rescue operations, Australia pays for the cost of fuel. Tonga may use the boats for other operations, for which it meets the fuel cost, but its domestic laws confine the TDS primarily to fishery enforcement and external defence. Overall, Australia pays approximately half the fuel cost. To encourage usage of the boats, it also applies an A$1000 subsidy toward the cost of ‘slipping’ (preventive main-tenance of the boats at a dry dock) for every day a boat is at sea. Australia has provided life-extension repairs for the three boats, which most recently cost A$15 million. The TDS can perform first-level maintenance, but not repairs to the hull un-der the waterline because there is no dry dock facility anywhere in Tonga. Such repairs must be performed overseas. The TDS’s boat maintenance capability relies on the comprehensive train-ing course its engineering officers receive at the Australian Maritime College in Tasmania.

Engineering trainingThe Tongan Maritime School also enrols some TDS officers for more basic engineering training. The Australian Navy provides mechanical and technical officers to assist the TDS with boat maintenance. The boats will reach the end of their lifespan approximately within the next ten years, and the future of the Pacific Patrol Boats programme remains undetermined. The change in the lead agency in Australia for co-ordinating assistance to Pacific Islands countries from the Navy to the Customs Office may result in a change of emphasis.


Maximising the efficiency of the surface patrol boats de-pends on air surveillance. No Tongan government agency owns any patrol aircraft, however, so Tonga at present relies on infrequent air patrols by New Zealand and France and occa-sional flyovers by the United States and Australia. An Austral-ian return to air patrol is one possibility, and so is a regional approach to replace the current bilateral air patrol agreements.

The vessel monitoring system that locates fishing vessels in the EEZs of Tonga and other Pacific Islands Forum member countries, using a signal emitted from the onboard unit on each vessel, is a powerful surveillance tool to monitor compli-ance of VMS-equipped vessels. When combined with other surveillance data, such as from air and surface patrols, it makes possible the identification of vessels illegally operating without a mandatory VMS unit on board (or without turning it on). As the region shifts to a newer VMS, current onboard VMS units on Tongan vessels have been in a state of disrepair. Because only three Tongan boats do offshore long-line tuna fishing, the installation of VMS on all twenty Tongan boats may not be absolutely necessary. Nevertheless, its potential utility for search and rescue and other purposes (such as anti-trafficking enforcement) needs to be taken into account.

Additional obstaclesThe Fishery Ministry and TDS work together to combat illegal fishing using the VMS data feeds. The former has to overcome two additional obstacles in order fully to benefit from the VMS. First, powerful real-time data feeds from the VMS are not fully utilised because the ministry’s slow internet connection often clogs the data flow. Second, there is a need for the ministry’s staff to be more thoroughly trained in analysing and utilising historical VMS data.

The US Coast Guard has also signed a ‘rider’s agreement’ with Tonga to allow Tongan law enforcement officers on board its patrol boats visiting the area, and the US Navy is consider-ing a similar arrangement.

As a nation of numerous islands, Tonga’s maritime se-curity is especially focused on maritime transport and com-merce. Maritime safety encompasses both preventive aspects and post-incident responses. Inter-island ferryboats serve as the primary means of domestic transportation for most local Ton-gans. Some ferry operators are operating without certified load lines on their vessels, and as a result have been ordered by the Transportation Ministry to cut down the permissible number of passengers by 50 per cent as a provisional precaution. The ministry set a deadline of the end of September 2011 for load line certification. The caution is well warranted, given the sink-ing of an inter-island ferryboat, Ashika, on 5 August 2009.

Lead agencyThe Police Ministry currently is the lead agency in maritime search and rescue, but has little tangible capability. It lacks working high frequency radio communication to cover its vast jurisdiction. It has no rescue boat at all, and it was the TDS that responded to the Ashika incident with its patrol boats. As TDS patrol boats are often at the berth on Tongatapu, the regular stationing of rescue boats on outer islands for search and rescue and other law enforcement tasks is essential.

The Police have no memorandum of understanding with the TDS, and it is expected that responsibility for search and

rescue will be transferred to the TDS this year. Even combin-ing all available patrol boats of different agencies and civilians on the major islands, Tonga has barely a minimal capacity quickly to respond to small-scale maritime accidents.

Tonga’s small-scale tourism, with just a few small hotels and bed-and-breakfast accommodations and a handful of nat-ural and historical attractions that host no more than twenty people at any given time, is not exposed to the threat of large-scale terrorism to the extent that other more developed resort islands, including Fiji, are. However, Tonga does host visiting international cruise ships carrying hundreds of passengers. Politically, Tonga’s pro-US security stance, reflected in its dis-patch of a small number of troops to coalition operations first in Iraq (2004–08) and then in Afghanistan (since 2011), may make the country a potential target of trans-national terrorists.

New wharfTonga is developing a new wharf on Tongatapu to attract revenue-bringing cruise ships. International cruise ships already visit the island of Vavau. Out of the three international ports of Tonga — Tongatapu, Vavau, and Haapai — Haapai’s international certification has been suspended because of its non-compliance with the International Shipping and Port Security (ISPS) code, including inadequate fencing of the port boundary and damage to the wharf. As a result, cruise ships are only visiting Vavau at present.

As discussed in relation to search and rescue operations, the availability of the TDS patrol boats for Police operations is ad hoc and limited. The TDS does offer co-riding by other agency officials on its limited patrols according to its own schedule, yet conflicts with regular work shifts of the civilian agencies hinder inter-agency co-operation with the 24/7-minded TDS. The country desperately needs to upgrade its maritime coun-ter-terrorism capability on outer islands.

Tonga’s infrequently patrolled archipelagic territory is vulnerable to various trans-national crimes. Most notably, il-licit trade of weapons and drugs as well as human smuggling through Tongan space are ‘known unknowns’. These problems are known to exist by the Police, Customs, Port Authority, and other ministries, but their real extents are unknown. Although the Police have received numerous leads regarding weapons and drug trafficking through remote islands such as Vavau and Niua on board small private yachts, they simply lack the means to investigate further.

Access to wharfs like this is little controlled


Control issuesJurisdictional boundaries cut across border control issues in Tonga. The Foreign Ministry has handled immigration since 2004, during which Tonga has had scandalous sales of Tongan passports to Chinese. Entry data on suspected individuals is not shared with the Police in real time, and obtaining such data for investigation is not easy, in the Police view. The bulk of ‘illegal’ immigration cases in Tonga involve overseas ethnic Tongans who return to Tonga and overstay without a Tongan passport. Hence Foreign Ministry efforts are focused on border control at the airport. Four incidents of human smuggling have been reported since 2004, but none in 2009 and 2010. Meanwhile, illegal entry by Chinese and other immigrants for transit purposes has shifted from international container ports to smaller wharfs and beaches via fishing boats. Tonga’s lack of holding facilities for illegal immigrants also leads to reluctance strictly to enforce the law.

Customs has authority to inspect containers that enter the three international ports. However, facilities at these ports are minimal — a roofed space to unload the container contents and staff who inspect them with eyes and hands. No X-ray machines are available at any of the Tongan seaports. Further-more, limited international entries are permitted to the ports on Eua and Niua, where Customs has no representation.

Most of the illicit cargoes are believed to be heading for Australia, New Zealand and other Pacific Islands countries. Secondhand weapons of various national origins have been dis-covered both in Tonga and on board vessels transiting through Tonga. In 2011, investigation of a drug trafficking incident even implicated the Tongan speaker of the Parliament for re-ceiving a bribe from a Colombian drug trafficker to furnish his entry permit.5 Many Tongan seafarers work on Australia-bound ships, and some of them, it is speculated, smuggle drugs picked up at a Tongan port into Australia and New Zealand.

When small weapons are found on board small private yachts on a short visit to Tonga, Customs simply keeps them until departure time, as they are not considered banned im-ports.

Disaster reliefTonga lies on the pathway of tropical cyclones. The country is also vulnerable to strong earthquakes that occur near the plate boundary and tsunamis from these and other earthquakes

around the Pacific Rim, like the one in September 2009 that killed more than a hundred people across the South Pacific, including at least six Tongans.6 Tonga’s patrol boats offer only limited capacity to evacuate or resupply smaller islands, and the country has no barge to enable movement of massive relief supplies in a timely manner.

International co-operation is most effective where com-monality of interests exists among participating member states. Maritime security co-operation with Tonga has, there-fore, reflected the interests of the assisting countries, such as Australia and New Zealand, and will be reshaped by the in-terests of newly interested partners, such as the United States, Japan and China.

The South Pacific is endowed with one of the world’s healthier tuna fishery resources. The launch of the Western and Central Pacific Tuna Fishery Commission in 2004 with a strong nucleus of Pacific Islands Forum members has set the ground rule of co-operative resource management of highly migratory tuna species by both EEZ states and long-distance fishing nations. As blatant violations of foreign EEZs have proliferated, major hosts of such illegal fishing activities have gradually agreed to tougher domestic regulations to control such activities of their flag vessels and joined co-operative in-ternational frameworks. The remaining resistance on the part of some long distance fishing states against infringements on flag-state authority on the high seas is less relevant in the South Pacific, where most fishing grounds fall within EEZs, than in the more open North Pacific. Australia and New Zealand, which have very little in the way of tuna fishing operations in foreign EEZs or on the high seas, have assisted Pacific Islands states with patrolling. The United States and Japan, which have both high seas and foreign EEZ fishing operators, have also started contributing to the capacity-building of the Pacific Islands states.

Heightened threatA heightened sense of threat from terrorism in the aftermath of the simultaneous terror attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001 and the Bali bombings in 2002 and 2003 brought every corner of the world to the attention of developed countries. The ‘ungoverned spaces’ exploited by trans-national terrorist groups and the states willing to host such organisations were considered to be threats to international security and subjected to interventions. In 2002, the discovery by an Israeli patrol of a Tonga-flagged vessel used by al-Qaeda to smuggle weapons in the Middle East embarrassed the Tongan government, which was only interested in securing easy revenue from its international ship registry. The government’s current consideration of the possibility of reopening the registry would be viewed with scepticism by the developed countries, given that Tonga has made little progress in enhancing its ability to enforce laws on ships it registers.

The intended destinations of most smuggling operations in the South Pacific region are the developed countries of Aus-tralia and New Zealand. Islands states like Tonga in close proximity of these countries serve as transit points. The dura-tion of the transit stays vary from a few days or less for drugs and weapons to several months or even years for human smug-gling. Australia and New Zealand are concerned about abuses of their guest workers programmes for Tongans and protection

An older inter-island ferryboat donated by Japan


programmes for asylum seekers, who are primarily ‘economic’ migrants from Asia. Because their domestic laws make it time consuming and costly to repatriate these migrants, both Aus-tralia and New Zealand prefer that the transit countries hold these migrants.

Chinese presenceChina’s presence in the South Pacific region attracts particular attention for several reasons. First, it is relatively new, especially in military assistance in the region. The United States and Australia were dominant in this region during the Cold War. Second, China is not among America’s allies and friends. Therefore, increasing Chinese influence in the region tends to be viewed in a zero-sum perspective. Third, China does not punish non-democratic governments through aid sanctions. China’s assistance sabotages the ‘democracy promotion’ of the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. While Tonga sees China as yet another source of aid to diversify its external dependence, other donors to Tonga see China as an external party with whom policy co-ordination is more difficult. The United States, Australia, New Zealand and Japan see China’s assistance to Tonga as potentially conflicting with their interests.

Tonga’s official shifting of diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 2007 has rewarded the country with in-creased economic aid. Tonga also now receives approximately US$20 million of military aid from China. The appointment of a TDS commander as Tonga’s ambassador to Beijing has enhanced military ties with China. Tongan expectations of obtaining small planes and boats from China for maritime pa-trolling were high, yet even Tongan officials admit that such donated Chinese military assets will not last long because of both the poor quality of the original products and Tonga’s limited maintenance capability. As China is a major source of some of the region’s trans-national problems, such as human smuggling and illegal fishing, Tonga’s over-dependence on China might reduce its ability to deal with these issues. While exaggerating this concern would strengthen the Tongan gov-ernment’s hand to ‘divide and conquer’ with a view to receiv-ing more aid, balancing China’s aid with aid from the United States or its allies must be carefully implemented with close attention to the unique task requirements of specific domestic security sectors.

Divergent prioritiesTonga’s diverse maritime security interests encompass domestic maritime safety, EEZ protection, transit immigration and import/export control, but not in the same order of priorities as those of its external security partners (United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan). The donor countries’ emphasis on enhancing Tonga’s governance capability has tended to narrowly focus on controlling transit immigration through Tonga and illicit outbound smuggling from Tonga. The donors need to broaden their focus and seek to develop overlapping capabilities that address both Tongan and the donors’ concerns. Tonga also needs to help the donors make their aid efficient by streamlining its government bureaucracy and maximising inter-agency co-operation to make the best use of its donated assets and training opportunities.

Ideally, China’s heavily bilateral aid approach to the South

Pacific countries needs to be absorbed into the evolving quadri-lateral co-ordination approach of the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Short of that, China’s aid needs to be carefully balanced by co-ordinated aid by the ‘quad’ grouping. At the same time, China’s contribution to the regional multi-lateral efforts, such as the FFA, should be encouraged. In doing so, the region needs to transform China from an unregulated exploiter of the maritime resources and an unwelcome export-er of its internal social problems into a responsible and due-paying member of the Pacific community.

NOTES1. Edward R. Lovell and Asipeli Palaki, ‘National Coral

Reef Status Report Tonga’, in Coral Reefs in the Pacific: Status and Monitoring, Resources and Management, p.317. Prepared jointly by the International Ocean Institute South Pacific and the Kiribati Fisheries Division for the International Coral Reef Initiative and the South Pacific Regional Environmental Programme, www.sprep.org/att/IRC/eCOPIES/Countries/Tonga/5.pdf [acc 15 Sep 2011].

2. B. Campbell and M. Lodge (eds), Regional Compendium of Fisheries Legislation (Western Pacific Region), Report to the Governments of the South Pacific Forum Fisheries Agen-cy, vol III. Fisheries Management and Law Advisory Pro-gramme. Forum Fisheries Agency/UN Food and Agricul-ture Organisation, Rome, 1993.

3. Lovell and Palaki, op cit, p.317.4. ‘GEF II Project: National Projects Preparation Report

Tonga’, p.1. Downloaded at: iwlearn.net/iw-projects/2131/reports/ofm-assessments-reports/Tonga.pdf/at_down-load/file [acc 17 Jun 2012].

5. ‘Tongan speaker helped drug team, say police’, Syd-ney Morning Herald, 17 Dec 2011, www.smh.com.au/national/tongan-speaker-helped-drug-team-say-police-20111216-1oyrg.html [acc 17 Jun 2012].

6. ‘Deadly tsunami strikes in Pacific’, BBC News, 30 Sep 2009, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8281616.stm [acc 17 June 2012].

Entry control to Nuku’alofa international port is poor


The conference report, ‘The Major Economic and Foreign Policy Issues Facing New Zealand, 2012–2017’, in the May–June 2012 issue (vol 37, no 3) provides a valuable oversight of major economic and foreign policy issues facing New Zealand over the next five years. In the same issue Terence O’Brien’s discussion of the complexities of international relations and New Zealand’s responses to them is also relevant. The following comments provide some additional markers.

A summary comment of conference concerns must neces-sarily be limited in scope. But there is little doubt that for New Zealand ‘global commons’, trading partnerships, technology, overshoot, paradigm conflict, climate change and illegal fish-ing are issues that will remain high on the agenda. The role of economic diplomacy and strategic partnering will also remain preoccupations while increasing concerns over security issues and the environment will continue to exercise policy-makers.

That the world is a complicated place and getting more so is a given. Adapting to the changing situation, as New Zea-land must, will remain a constant as we now learn to live with uncertainty — both within New Zealand and without. Policy-making will continue to involve ministers and officials, but, as foreign policy becomes increasingly intertwined with domestic issues, a wide range of effective community based networks will demand to be not only heard but also listened to and pro-vided for.

My point of departure relates to the future of globalisation and how it relates to the future of the liberal democratic tra-dition. Globalisation is now an accepted part of international trade and finance. But rising inter-dependence, the growing mobility of labour, environmental degradation, unemploy-ment (as major production resources move off-shore), and the substantial increase in inequality of income and wealth, par-ticularly in the United States but also elsewhere in the Western world, are being met with a potentially explosive mix of resig-nation and growing resistance.

Past crises suggest that liberal democratic states, and the post-Second World War international order they promoted, are well equipped to grapple with economic and social prob-lems. But Azar Gat asks whether the broadly liberal order is as secure as we assume. Until now a strong school of thought has seen liberal values as an inevitable, universal product of indus-trialisation and greater affluence. But Gat asks whether this

Economic and foreign policy issues facing New Zealand: some

COMMENT

Gerald McGhie responds to the report of a recent NZIIA conference.

Gerald McGhie is a retired diplomat and former NZIIA director.

particular set of values has been decisively shaped not so much by an inevitable process as by the overwhelming political, eco-nomic and cultural liberal hegemony of the United States and Europe.1

Testing developmentsTwo major developments test this view: the current serious malaise in international financial institutions, and China’s emergence as an important international player. We can also add the rise of militant Islam.

For a number of states, non-democratic capitalist China’s package is attractive. Beijing offers not only a policy of ‘non-in-terference’ in the affairs of other states but also support for state sovereignty, group values and ideological pluralism within the international system.

There is resentment in non-Western societies at being lectured to by the West on the need to justify themselves ac-cording to the standards of a liberal morality. These standards essentially advocate individualism to societies that value com-munity as a greater good. Nevertheless, compared to historical

China’s industialisation shows signs of slowing through 2012

Islam rejects Western values


precedent, the global liberal order is in many ways benign and seeks as wide a membership as possible to produce wealthier nations.

The tensions have generated a lively debate. Two impor-tant commentators, Daniel Deudney and John Ikenberry, sug-gest that China’s admission to the institutions of the liberal international order, established after the Second World War and during the Cold War, will oblige Beijing to transform and conform to that order.2 Azar Gat is not so sure. He sees large players as unlikely to accept the existing order as it is, and their entrance into the system is as likely to change it as to change them.3

New Zealand will not and cannot be a major participant in this debate, but, to adapt a comment of Lee Kwan Yew, when elephants scrap a great deal of grass gets flattened. Shifts in the international tectonic plates will have an important effect on New Zealand’s trade and foreign policy relations. In our im-mediate area the United States remains wary of Beijing’s longer term strategic aspirations in the South China Sea and also its role as a foreign policy rival. Australia sees the United States as its primary ally and is sensitive to Beijing’s increasing mari-time reach. Beijing’s different perspective on relations with South-west Pacific states is a matter of concern to Canberra, to Washington and, in a more complex way, to Wellington. Negotiations between our trading partners and their relations with China will require continuing careful analysis and co-ordination — and calibration.

Financial advantagesDoubtless there will be financial advantages from the Trans-Pacific Partnership currently under negotiation. David Skilling, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade strategy adviser, considers that New Zealand must align all major policy areas to form ‘a coherent response to globalisation’ developing an economic strategy on how the country should compete internationally. He refers to our national risk exposures such as an aging population, education and labour market policies and how the country positions itself in the world.4 There is, of course, more to it than that, but the Skilling comments represent a start. To me the one clear need is for the government — the representative of the people — to foster a genuinely broad based national debate on the key issues (domestic and foreign) facing New Zealand over the next five years.

The most immediate issue is that the global financial crisis shows little sign of resolution. Detailed discussion is beyond the scope of this article. Nevertheless, while the crisis contin-ues, financial shortfalls in government budgets will seriously affect a range of foreign policy issues — aid allocations, the numbers of staff (the stock-in-trade of any foreign ministry), numbers, representation (ministerial and official) overseas, de-fence and security expenditure. That is, what will be at risk is New Zealand’s profile in those areas seen as important to our future well-being as a nation.

In terms of the reference above to a national debate, the most serious concern is the lack of consensus on viable solu-tions to solve the crisis. In spite of colossal losses many financial institutions have received substantial taxpayer funded bailouts while Wall Street seems to have successfully lobbied against serious attempts at legislative reform.5

Foreign policy formulation cannot ignore the alienation

caused by job losses as industry moves offshore. Disaffection has not yet achieved a coherent level of protest and it may take some time for politically effective solutions to emerge, but the current unrest in Europe and the Occupy Wall Street move-ment in the United States6 point to a generalised and deepen-ing mood of frustration. Marcus Miller and Robert Skidelsky’s view is that ‘no Government pledged to unalloyed austerity in response to its debt obligations can face its voters with confi-dence’.7

Coherent strategyFor a small country like New Zealand a coherent and broad-based strategy is imperative if international negotiations are to be effectively undertaken. Traditionally New Zealand works within the post-Second World War liberal international tradition, but, as a consequence of the global financial crisis, policy, to be effective, must now be tailored to fit a wider and more inclusive audience. Among the issues that must be addressed are the social and environmental implications of economic change and the situation where a financial system relying on the ‘free market’ sees itself as ‘too big to fail’ and, during frequent bouts of economic turbulence, seeks immediate government (taxpayer) financial support. Perhaps a start could be made by not necessarily applying today’s favourite measure of quality — how much do we gain in money terms? — to every aspect of government policy.

Skilling is broadly correct when he says that we must de-velop a coherent strategy to deal with current international developments. The key lies in our approach. Environmental issues are central. The market is as ever valuable as a guide but slowing down let alone reversing current trends will require serious governmental intervention.

The more collegial approach is endorsed in an excellent study contained in the influential Signals and Signposts: Shell Energy Scenarios to 2050: An era of volatile transitions. Pe-ter Voser, CEO of the Shell Group, sees heightened col-laboration between civil society and the public and private sectors as vital ‘if we want to address economic, energy and environmental challenges’.8

Throughout the report Shell recognises that the pace of globalisation has not yet been matched by a change in the institutions of global governance. At the same time, the authority and legitimacy of established powers and multilateral institutions charged with managing the global economy have been damaged by the financial crisis. This ‘volatile transitions’ scenario may be seen through the prism of energy consumption and its influence on the environment. Jeremy Bentham, Shell’s vice president, global business envi-ronment, says that the increasing rate of energy consumption will impact on political decision-making, the economy and the choices people make on the way they live. He also emphasises the need for collaboration between society, politicians and business. Collaboration here means a genuine attempt on the

Peter Voser


part of government to not only ‘consult’ widely but to listen to what they are hearing.

Two possibilitiesLooking hard at the future, Shell Scenarios presents two possibilities: ‘Scramble’ or ‘Blueprints’. Blueprints acknowledges that the United States may well remain the world’s pre-eminent political power, but it will face a serious loss of structural influence and will not be able to act unilaterally. The economic imbalances at the heart of the financial system contributed significantly to the political imbalances that underpinned US geo-political dominance. Redressing these economic imbalances will require the United States to accept a lesser role in a more plural world. It will have to share power with old allies, as well as new ones like China and India. The crisis has changed the way the emerging powers view the West. Although it does not challenge globalisation itself, Blueprints could see more of an Asian growth driver emerge with the burgeoning of an Asian regional economy.

Given Canberra’s embrace of Washington and our own tendency to take on an increasingly Australian perspective (particularly in the Pacific), New Zealand will need particu-larly skilful diplomacy to negotiate the forthcoming shoals and crosswinds as the realities of global power rebalance. An even greater emphasis will need to be placed on our ‘Asian-ness’ as rather like the Russian eagle we look east and west. But there is a darker scenario.

The Shell Scramble sequence of events brings more dra-matic political implications. Here every state will look to pro-tect its own interests. Willingness to co-operate for the greater good and long term interests will diminish. This will increas-ingly call into question the tenets of the Anglo-US liberal co-operative global framework that has hitherto underpinned the international system.

Scramble in the West could also result in increasing anti-globalisation, more protectionism and political radicalism. Shell views China as having emerged in US domestic politics as a popular scapegoat to account for its economic problems. As global order fragments, governments in developed coun-tries will be pressured to protect the living standards of their populations. In the extreme case, Shell says, the United States could retreat to become more isolationist and protectionist.

Inter-dependent worldWhatever the scenario, the world, according to Shell, will become a more inter-dependent and more competitive place. Globalisation will continue to generate winners and losers, especially among workers. As mentioned above, inequality is

likely to increase despite an overall increase in wealth.Shell’s endorsement of a more plural context posits a great-

er degree of co-operation between the political leadership and society. New Zealand may not be able to influence the big external quantum shifts but if, in its policy settings, it fails to carry the bulk of the population with it the consequences could be serious indeed. The United States is a close friend but cannot provide a blueprint for New Zealand. There are clear distinctions in outlook. As the noted the American historian David Hackett Fischer said in a recent Listener article,9 Ameri-cans value freedom and liberty above all; New Zealand, on the other hand, is organised around the principles of fairness and social justice.

Neither of these foundation principles (and indeed most of the variables that make up society’s core values) can be plugged

The stranding and subsequent break up of the Rena caused massive environmental concern

into a computer or mediated through spreadsheet tech-nology. Gillian Tett, edi-tor of the Financial Times, says, for instance, computer models can no longer calcu-late meaningful probabili-ties about what will hap-pen in the Euro zone. The crucial variable, according to Tett, is whether voters have trust in their govern-ments and central banks.10 In other words, will citizens be willing to trust each other and co-operate when pain is imposed. Tett could well have looked wider. What really matters are not quantitative issues but qual-itative questions such as political values, social cohesion and civic identity.

Basic principlesIf New Zealand is to face the future with confidence, governments — the leadership — must ensure that its policies reflect the basic principles that nurtured our own society through the crucible of our own history, culture and experience. Foreign policy advisers would do well to recall that one of New Zealanders’ most durable traits has been a disposition to adopt a pragmatic response to the problems facing them. Francis Fukuyama and Nancy Birdsall bring an important perspective. They comment that ‘if the global financial crisis put any development model on trial it was the free-market or neoliberal model, which emphasises a small state, deregulation, private ownership, and low taxes’.11 They say that most emerging-market countries have reduced their exposure to foreign financial markets by accumulating large foreign currency reserves and maintaining regulatory control of their banking systems. Of importance to New Zealand, Fukuyama and Birdsall note that in the next decade emerging- market and low income countries are likely to modify their approach to economic policy further, trading the flexibility and efficiency associated with the free market model for domestic policies less focused on the free flow of capital, more concerned with minimising social disruption through social safety net programmes and more active in supporting domestic industries. They will be even less inclined to defer to the ‘supposed expertise’ of the more developed countries, believing

David Hackett Fischer


NZIIA PUBLICATIONS1989 Mark Pearson, Paper Tiger, New Zealand’s Part in SEATO

1954–1977, 135pp 1991 Sir Alister McIntosh et al, New Zealand in World Affairs,

Volume I, 1945–57, 204pp (reprinted) 1991 Malcolm McKinnon (cd), New Zealand in World Affairs,

Volume II, 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, 86pp1999 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 andAmerica —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 speech, 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 andAustralia — Where are we

Going? 102pp2002 Peter Cozens (ed), The Asia–Pacific Region: Policy 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

2002 Gerald McGhie and Bruce Brown (eds), New Zealand and the Pacific: Diplomacy, Defence, Development, 128pp

2004 A.C. Wilson, New Zealand and the Soviet Union 1950–1991, A Brittle Relationship, 248pp

2005 Anthony L. Smith (ed), Southeast Asia and New Zealand: A History of Regional and Bilateral Relations, 392pp

2005 Stephen Hoadley, New Zealand and France: Politics, Diplomacy and Dispute Management, 197pp

2005 Brian Lynch (ed), Celebrating New Zealand’s Emergence: A Tribute to Sir George Laking and Frank Corner, 206pp

2006 Brian Lynch (ed), New Zealand and the World: The Major Foreign Policy Issues, 2005–2010, 200pp

2006 Malcolm Templeton, Standing Upright Here, New Zealand in the Nuclear Age 1945–1990, 400pp

2007 W David McIntyre, Dominion of New Zealand: Statesmen and Status 1907–1945, 208pp

2008 Brian Lynch (ed), Energy Security: The Foreign Policy Implications, 92pp

2008 Brian Lynch (ed), Border Management in an Uncertain World, 74pp

2008 Warwick E. Murray and Roberto Rabel (eds), Latin America Today Challenges, Opportunities and Trans-Pacific Perspectives, 112pp

2009 Terence O’Brien, Presence of Mind: New Zealand in the World, 197pp

2010 Brian Lynch (ed), Celebrating 75 Years, 2 vols, 239, 293pp2011 Brian Lynch (ed), Africa, A Continent on the Move, 173pp2011 Brian Lynch and Graeme Hassall (eds), Resilience in the Pacific,

203pp2012 Brian Lynch (ed), The Arab Spring, Its Origins, Implications and

Outlook, 143pp2012 Brian Lynch (ed), The Major Economic and Foreign Policy Issues

Facing New Zealand 2012–2017, 218pp

Available from NZIIA National Office, PO Box 600, Wellington 6140. For other publications go to www.vuw.ac.nz/nziia/RecentPublications hrm

— ‘correctly’ — that not only economic but also intellectual power are becoming increasingly more evenly distributed.12

There is a rather quaint idea that it is important to employ high-priced ‘spin’ merchants to ‘sell’ policies to the public. I take a contrary view. It is only through facing the ‘inconven-ient truths’ of policies which ultimately affect the lives of whole populations that the general volatility and uncertainties char-acteristic of the current international political and economic world can be faced with any sort of durable sure-footedness. The public knows when they are being listened to. They un-derstand when their legitimate concerns are being subsumed within policy. Only then can they be encouraged to accept dif-ficult times ahead. Governments might also find that people are remarkably ready to make sacrifices and re-think their ex-pectations if they feel that society is basically fair and that pain is being shared.

Governments will then be able to speak in the international context with a greater degree of confidence that the policies they are agreeing to will be broadly accepted at home.

NOTES1. Azar Gat, ‘The Return of the Authoritarian Great Powers’,

Foreign Affairs, vol 86, no 4 (2007), p.48.2. Daniel Deudney and G. John Ikenberry, ‘The Myth of the

Autocratic Revival’, ibid., vol 88, no 1 (2009), p.3.3. Gat, op cit., p.2.4. David Skilling, quoted in NZ Herald, 21 May 2012.5. But see Luigi Zingales in Financial Times, 11 Jun 2012.

Zingales, professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and author of A Capitalism for the People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity, says ‘over the last couple of years... I have revised my views and have become convinced of the case for the mandatory separation [between investment banking and commercial banking along the lines of the Glass-Steagall Act in the United States]’.

6. See Jeffrey Sachs, ‘The New Progressive Movement’, New York Times, 12 Nov 2011.

7. Marcus Miller and Robert Skidelsky, ‘How Keynes Would Solve The Euro Crisis’, Financial Times, 15 May 2012.

8. Signals and Signposts, Shell Energy Scenarios to 2050: An era of volatile transitions (Shell International BV, 2011), p.6.

9. NZ Listener, 19 May 2012, p.28.10. Financial Times, 4 Jun 2012.11. ‘The Rise of the Modern Order’, Foreign Affairs, vol 91, no

1 (2012), p.29.12. Ibid.


BOOKS

Notes on reviewersDr Anthony Smith is a fellow of the Centre for Strategic

Studies, Victoria University of Wellington.Dr Robert G. Patman is professor of international

relations at the University of Otago, and the author of Strategic Shortfall: The Somalia Syndrome and the March to 9/11 (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010).

Dr Andrew Butcher is director, research and policy at the Asia New Zealand Foundation, and in 2011 was a visiting fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore.

Dr Roderic Alley is a senior fellow at the Centre for Strategic Studies, Victoria University of Wellington.

Dr Ian McGibbon is the NZIR’s managing editor.

MAPPING NATIONAL ANXIETIES:

Author: Duncan McCargoPublished by: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen, 2012, 213pp, £50(hb), £16.99(pb).

MODERN MUSLIM IDENTITIES: Negotiating Religion and

Author: Gerhard HoffstaedterPublished by: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen, 2011, 304pp, £50(hb), £18.99(pb).

The Nordic Institute of Asian Studies has published two volumes that deal with identity politics in the Malay-speaking world: namely the relationship between the Thai authorities and ethnic Malays in the ‘Patani’ region (the three Muslim majority provinces of Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala in southern Thailand); and how Malays in modern Malaysia navigate the religious identity question.

Southern Thailand, as McCargo explains, appeared to reach the zenith of its crisis in 2004. That year there was a series of violent incidents when largely unarmed youths con-fronted security posts and a massacre occurred in the Kru-Ze Mosque in April, and 78 demonstrators died (mostly from suffocation in security vehicles) at Tak Bai in October. But McCargo notes signs of violence in the region from the early 2000s — essentially the re-emergence of separatist pressures from several decades earlier — which the Thai authorities had chosen to dismiss as being based on criminality rather than politically-motivated. Since 2004 more than 4600 deaths have resulted from this conflict.

McCargo locates the southern Thailand conflict in the context of an assertion of Patani Malay desire for cultural

and political autonomy, even if these demands are diffuse and the identity of perpetrators of violence more often than not opaque, rather than the rise of extremist Islam (as some ear-lier commentators have suggested). McCargo notes that any discussion of autonomy in Thailand is a major challenge to that country’s narrative of a homogenous country under the benevolent rule of a monarchy that saved Thailand from colo-nisation, and is immediately conflated in the Thai language with separatism (rendered in Thai as ‘tearing apart the land’; also the title of McCargo’s 2008 book published by Cornell University, which is a highly recommended companion text to the one under review).

Mapping National Anxieties challenges a number of popu-lar impressions of Thailand. McCargo overturns the idea that Thailand is in practice a ‘constitutional monarchy’, instead noting the powerful political and military forces that consti-tute ‘network monarchy’, which has been locked in a desperate struggle with the political movement of former Prime Min-ister Thaksin Shinawatra (whose sister, Yingluck, is currently in power). McCargo notes the irony that while Thaksin is a detested figure in the south, able to generate some popular sup-port in Thailand for a harsh security approach, in large meas-ure on the basis of distorted or sub-standard media representa-tions, the 2006 coup government (in which Thai Muslim chief of army and junta leader General Sonthi played a role) made attempts to understand the conflict’s underlying conditions. McCargo also challenges the stereotyping of Buddhism as a wholly ‘peaceful’ faith (probably in contrast to views of Islam) in the Thai context, noting the mobilisation of ‘Buddhist chau-vinism’ — this has extended to the use of Buddhist temples as military bases and detention/torture facilities, militarising the south’s Thai-speaking community, and some alarming sabre rattling by the Thai queen. McCargo notes the work of the Na-tional Reconciliation Commission in investigating the causes of unrest in the south, which although it had many flaws can at least be credited with challenging the taboo on discussions of multiculturalism in Thailand. McCargo’s extensive fieldwork in southern Thailand, and his astute reading of broader Thai politics, makes him required reading on this subject.

Hoffstaedter’s volume on Malaysia grapples with the role that religion is playing in Malay identity. Hoffstaedter sees the political authorities as putting pressure on dissenting and het-erodox understandings of Islam (in an interesting parallel to the way religious communities are marshalled in Thailand). This volume offers a number of fascinating vignettes and per-


sonal anecdotes (including the non-Muslim author being vari-ously invited into and thrown out of mosques) in highlight-ing the path of religious discourse in modern Malaysia. The author is probably more interested in using the narrative to sustain a wider theoretical structure and discussion; there is, for example, a lot more to say about the 2008 touchstone is-sue of a Catholic newspaper using the term ‘Allah’, when some Islamic groups mounted a political and legal challenge to the use of this as a name for God by historic Christian commu-nities. (This volume essentially covers the period until Prime Minister Najib assumed office in 2009, and does not deal with important developments since that time, particularly Najib’s open discussion of configuring notions of Malay economic privilege.) Although Hoffstaedter notes his weariness at the cynicism within surveys of Malaysian politics, he reaches a particularly dour conclusion himself. He employs the concept of ‘politicide’ to describe modern Malaysia, a term borrowed from a reading of the Palestinian situation which holds that an entire people are dispossessed. But for this author ‘politicide’ does not apply to non-Malay ethnic groups, but to Malays themselves, who have no real agency, in Hoffstaedter’s view, to opt out of an increasingly narrowing interpretation of Islam as the central feature of Malay identity — maintained by a (largely secular) elite that accumulates the bulk of government conferred indigenous privilege. Even though Hoffstaedter carefully notes that there is not a direct comparison to the lev-els of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its application to Malaysia is hyperbolic.

ANTHONY SMITH

DEADLY WATERS: The Hidden World of Somalia’s Pirates

Author: Jay BahadurPublished by: Scribe, Melbourne, 2011, 300pp, A$29.95.

This book is an impressive demystification of the shady and sometimes murderous business of piracy. During the second half of the last decade, Somalia grabbed the headlines for the first time since the ill-fated US–UN humanitarian intervention of 1992–93. A spate of audacious marine hijackings and hostage-takings threatened all forms of shipping, ranging from super tankers to small yachts, and led to the establishment of an international counter-piracy operation, involving the navies of NATO, the European Union, the United States and a host of countries, at an estimated annual cost of more than US$1 billion.

Deadly Waters seeks to explain how and why piracy in So-malia has emerged so dramatically in recent years. With con-siderable courage and resourcefulness, Bahadur ventures to one of the most dangerous countries in the world and spends six weeks conducting fieldwork in Puntland, an autonomous region in north-eastern Somalia where many pirate gangs are based. The author sits down and talks with some pirates and even chews khat (the local drug of choice) with them. As an

upshot, Bahadur is able to shed light on the lives of these pi-rates. He finds out how they spend their money, what they think, and why they are pre-pared to risk their lives in near suicidal missions. In addition, Bahadur talks to security per-sonnel charged with combat-ing piracy, and former pirate hostages who lived on ships in captivity for months while awaiting news of a ransom.

This research effort enables the author to advance some key arguments. Bahadur indicates that there is a certain amount of collusion between the pirates and the revenue-starved govern-ment in Puntland; that despite rumours and much specula-tion, there seems to be little or no connection between pirates and Islamic terrorist groups like Al-Shabaab; and that pirates are in this for the money and tend to prefer, whenever possible, to hijack unarmed boats.

Deadly Waters has a number of real strengths. First, it gives us a clear and detailed insight into the origins of Somali pi-racy. Bahadur persuasively argues that the problem of piracy lies on the land rather than the sea. More specifically, it is inex-tricably linked to the national and international circumstances surrounding the collapse of Siad Barre’s government in 1991. Clan factionalism had helped to tear the country apart and still remains a major obstacle to the re-establishment of central governance in Somalia. At the same time, the clan system has ensured a degree of order and social cohesion in many areas since 1991, including Puntland and Somaliland. In a desper-ately poor society that has no real infrastructure and where much-coveted public service roles are awarded on a largely clan basis, it is hardly surprising that piracy is seen as an opportu-nity for social advancement.

Second, Bahadur demonstrates that he is prepared to chal-lenge conventional wisdom, particularly with respect to the income of pirates. Publications like The Economist claimed that in 2010 the estimated income of Somali pirates was $238 mil-lion. Drawing on his fieldwork in Puntland, Bahadur ques-tions many of the assumptions underpinning this calculation, and arrives at a figure somewhere between $65 million and $85 million. He also shows in a detailed study of the payroll of the Victoria pirate gang in chapter 14 that the clear winner is the individual at the top of the organisation, a character called ‘Computer’. He evidently gained about 50 per cent of the ran-som money that was eventually paid to the Victoria gang, and earned a lot more than the individuals hired to actually con-duct the pirate operation in question. According to Bahadur, this distribution of income is pretty typical for most maritime hijackings and debunks the widely held view that piracy turns the average Somali teenager into an overnight millionaire.

Third, Deadly Waters highlights the inability of the inter-national community to ameliorate the poverty and violence of stateless Somalia in the post-Cold War era. Diplomatic efforts have largely focused on top-down nation-building ef-forts that have missed the mark. For more than a decade, the United Nations has recognised and supported the role of the


bloated Transitional Federal Government, which has little or no standing in the country and is totally dependent on for-eign support for its survival. In addition, and not unrelated, Bahadur illuminates the presence of foreign security contrac-tors who have worked as a kind of ad hoc coastguard trying to police Puntland’s coast since the demise of the Barre regime. Although it seems to have completely escaped the attention of the international media, Canadian, US and Saudi firms have been hired at different times to hold illegal foreign fishing and Somali piracy in check. Not only have they failed, but also, according to Bahadur, these companies have generally left an even more difficult situation in their wake.

However, this book has a few limitations. It contains at least one statement that is factually inaccurate — ‘In the late 1990s, Somalia erupted into civil war’ — and also shows signs of logic chopping when the author warns the international communi-ty about a heavy handed response to piracy despite previously conceding that Somali pirates can be deterred by ships that are well equipped to defend themselves. Finally, while the au-thor correctly stresses that the clan system had played a part in the dissolution of Somalia, he might also acknowledge, in the prescriptive part of his book, that the clans could play a more positive role if the international community only recognised this reality and worked harder to facilitate bottom-up dialogue between elders and elected representatives of the major clans.

Nevertheless, Deadly Waters is an insightful and compel-ling account of a major international problem, and constitutes a welcome addition to the relatively sparse literature on Soma-lia and piracy.

ROBERT PATMAN

AUSTRALIA IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS: An Introduction to Australian Foreign Policy (3rd edition)

Author: Stewart FirthPublished by: Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2011, 356pp, A$55.

Stewart Firth, visiting fellow in the Melanesia programme at the Australian National University, has written a third edition of his book Australia in International Politics. The book is sweeping in its coverage. It is divided into four parts: the evolution of Australian foreign policy, security, economy and issues in foreign policy. The book charts Australian foreign policy from 1901 onwards, giving particular attention to foreign policy under prime ministers Hawke, Keating and Howard.

The preoccupations of these three prime ministers are then used to frame discussion on Australia’s role in and attitude to-ward the United Nations, regional security, nuclear challenges, intervention and state building, globalisation and the global financial crisis, international trade, and the environment, for-eign aid and human rights. Published in 2011, the book in-cludes material relevant to Julia Gillard’s early period as prime minister, though only in passing and, in turn, Kevin Rudd’s

period as foreign minister. The book is clearly designed

as a textbook, presumably for undergraduate students, with bullet point discussion ques-tions beginning each chapter and ‘assessments’ and recom-mended reading, in the form of an annotated bibliography, ending each chapter. Pitching well to his undergraduate read-ers, Firth explains terms as he uses them, and provides a use-ful glossary at the end of the book as well.

The book is strongest when Firth writes about the South Pacific (which given his background is no surprise), particu-larly in the section on ‘intervention and state building’, where he focuses on Australian intervention in East Timor, Bougain-ville, Fiji, Solomon Islands and Tonga. But Firth is ambivalent on Australia’s intervention in the Pacific because Australian state builders are political actors themselves,

empowering some people at the expense of others, and in-fluencing political outcomes. That is why the whole idea of state building, however humanitarian in motive, remains contested, and why Australia’s policy of regional interven-tion may not endure.

Indeed, Firth’s assessments, whether the reader agrees with them or not, provide a valuable addition to what would otherwise be a straight re-telling of the history of Australian foreign policy.

However, the book is without any footnotes (except for direct quotes) or in-text references, which may convey to the naive student/reader that Firth is offering his authoritative ac-count, which perhaps he is. But the bigger problem is that the reader is not always sure how it is that Firth comes to the con-clusions that he does, short of personal bias.

On bias, Firth is clear he is a supporter of Rudd. His ren-dering of the reaction to (then Prime Minister) Rudd’s ‘Asia Pa-cific Community’ idea in South-east Asian capitals as ‘mostly not in favour’ is an art in understatement and glosses over the actual reactions. Indeed, Firth ends his book by noting that: Rudd’s experience and personal contacts in foreign capi-

tals were unrivalled among his colleagues in the govern-ment . . . . In Washington he was welcomed . . . as an old friend . There seemed little doubt, whatever his deficiencies as prime minister might have been, Rudd would prove to be an effective Australian foreign minister.

Inevitably anyone’s conclusions of the present can be overtaken by events, but Firth may have passed judgment on the effectiveness (or indeed ministerial longevity) of Rudd too soon.

Writing history without allowing for the passage of time is fraught with difficulties, and doing so without footnotes may convey that this history is not as contested as it is, or should be. But, as an introduction to Australian foreign policy (which is, to be fair, what it claims to be), this book is more than suf-ficient and as a resource for undergraduate students it is well pitched.

ANDREW BUTCHER


HUMANITARIAN NEGOTIATIONS REVEALED: The MSF Experience

Edited by: Claire Magone, Michaël Neuman and Fabrice WeissmanPublished by: MSF and C. Hurst & Co, London, 2011, 287pp, $50.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) or Doctors Without Borders is a secular, privately funded non-governmental organisation, well known for its medical assistance activities in war-torn and disaster relief locations. Formed in 1971 by French doctors and journalists in the wake of Nigeria’s Biafran conflict, it has consistently propounded the right to medical assistance as a humanitarian value transcending claimed sovereign, territorial or cultural affiliations. For its provision of medical care in acute crises, and raising international awareness of potential humanitarian disasters, it won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999.

This book, written by MSF members, follows the Popula-tion in Danger series initiated by MSF in 1992 and generated by the organisation’s vigorous in-house debates about the phi-losophy and modalities of its operations. It is a valuable study, remarkable for its frank and unflinching self-examination of some highly uncomfortable dilemmas that MSF has had to confront in its operations. Contentious indeed has been the narrow line dividing humanitarian principles of independence, neutrality and impartiality from complicity by silence about gross violations.

When does assistance for victims become support for tor-menters? When is it prudent to stay silent over witnessed hu-manitarian violations and when to speak out — even at the risk of expulsion? These predicaments are fully tested through a dozen case studies followed by some wider thematic treat-ments about how the MSF philosophy has evolved after four decades of involvement in wars, disasters and medical emer-gencies.

For the case studies, Fabrice Weissman leads off with Sri Lanka (in April this year he was the lead speaker for the New Zealand launch of this book in Parliament under NZIIA aus-

pices). During that appalling conflict, Weissman describes how MSF was caught be-tween the rock of Tamil Tiger human shield victimisation strategies and the hard place of a government actively sub-jugating humanitarian aid or-ganisations to its political and military objectives.

The quandary of reprehen-sible circumstances forcing unpalatable accommodations persists for the remaining case studies. Terry’s chapter on Myanmar confirms that MSF–France’s decision to leave the country in 2006 was done with great bitterness, key functions having been reduced to that of technical service provider to a regime dictating the humanitarian political agenda.

Xavier Crombé’s chapter on Afghanistan shows how twenty years of MSF engagement proved insufficient to gain adequate access during the more recent stages of that con-flict. Its presence was considered at odds with the agenda of the main political, military and aid players. A return in 2009 was facilitated by the decision to work within existing hospital institutions through a form of sub-contracting, loss of visible status considered the lesser compromise. Later that year, MSF built what contacts it could with conflicting parties, including groupings known to harbour border criminals and smugglers such as the Afghan/Pakistani Haqqani network. Not surpris-ingly the return of MSF to Afghanistan in 2010 to restart a war wounded programme in Kunduz was considered by one local official as both a good and a bad sign on grounds that humani-tarian action is a symptom of war but not its cure.

In Pakistan, Jonathan Whittal’s chapter claims, the ability of MSF to increase its area of safe operation had, in the eyes of the armed opposition, less to do with any understanding of its working principles than how its record of independence was perceived. Caroline Abu-Sada’s chapter on Gaza admits that neutrality requirements were pushed to the limit, the MSF president admitting to his board in 2002 that ‘the military oc-cupation is accompanied by such violence against the inhabit-ants of the Territories, the balance of power so unequal, that there is a certain indulgence of the weakest, even when they commit crimes’.

Increasingly MSF has had to bite its lip, staying silent over the humanitarian outrages witnessed on site. This was not sur-prising after expulsion from Niger and threats to do likewise in Sri Lanka, Ethiopia and Yemen. There, MSF had its fingers burnt in 2009 after listing Yemen among the top ten current humanitarian crises of the year. Retaliation was instant with immediate suspension of all MSF activities and projects. While making this listing might have made some feel better, it served no useful purpose on the ground, a back down acknowledge-ment of probable bias being conceded. The lesson was clear: taking on governments over humanitarian violations requires specific case identification, backed by immediate first hand tes-timony not general public statements of disapprobation.

By contrast, and as Michaël Neuman’s chapter on South Africa reveals, MSF moved well beyond the confines of health

An MSF worker talks with a boy soldier in Angola in 1999


‘TO BE TRULY BRITISH WE MUST BE ANTI-GERMAN’New Zealand, Enemy Aliens and the Great War Experience

Author: Andrew FrancisPublished by: Peter Lang, Bern, 2012, 299pp, US$65.95.

On 5 August 1914 New Zealand found itself at war with the German Empire, a state with which it had no quarrel. This state of affairs arose from events taking place on battlefields on the other side of the world and from decisions, in London, in which New Zealand had no involvement. Yet the news was greeted with enthusiasm, at least among the thousands who gathered outside Parliament Buildings and among those who later flocked to recruiting stations to join the expeditionary force the government immediately offered. A wave of xenophobia followed, directed at the close to hand manifestations of the enemy — Germans and Austrians who had emigrated to New Zealand or were visiting the country. Anti-Germanism was reflected in calls for immediate action to curtail the activities of enemy aliens within the country even as troops prepared to fight Germans on the battlefield.

Andrew Francis sets out to explain this phenomenon by looking at treatment of enemy aliens and assessing the degree to which ‘pro-imperial sentiment, issues of citizenship and national identity determined the actions of British New Zea-

landers during the conflict’. He does so by looking at both the government responses and those of the population gener-ally, as reflected in Parliament and press. He suggests that a vociferous press campaign lay at the heart of the virulent anti-German feeling that welled up, occasionally spilling over into violent action against German businesses.

Francis examines the gov-ernment’s response to these

NOTE FOR CONTRIBUTORSWe 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 files on disc or emailed files are most welcome. 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.

developments, suggesting that Prime Minister William Mas-sey faced increasing difficulty in placating a patriotic public intent on action against Germans in their midst. He devotes a chapter to the case of George von Zedlitz, professor of mod-ern languages at Victoria University College, who was eventu-ally dismissed from his post after legislation designed to bring about this outcome, the government having finally succumbed to public pressure. Francis also assesses the German trade boy-cott, which offered long-term advantages to imperial trade.

As a comparison Francis looks at the experience in Canada, concluding that at all levels Canadians adopted a more mature approach to the problem of enemy aliens. ‘Canadians expressed a level of maturity with regard to their sense of nationhood that perhaps was absent in New Zealand.’ Canadians, he sug-gests, had greater faith in their government’s handling of such matters than New Zealanders had in their own government, though he concludes also that all the Dominions ‘to varying degrees, responded in a similar fashion’.

Ultimately Francis suggests that New Zealand’s anti-Ger-manism was a reflection of its imperial patriotism. The war ‘proved the zenith of New Zealand’s imperial consciousness’. The war had strengthened imperial ties even as it encouraged a sense of national consciousness. That the anti-German phe-nomenon was a short-lived response to extraordinary condi-tions was reflected in the fact that, as Francis notes, ‘New Zealand’s former alien residents were able to re-establish them-selves throughout the 1920s and beyond’.

This is a useful addition to the literature of an under-ad-dressed topic‚ New Zealand’s home front experience in the First World War. Francis has made good use of both documen-tary and secondary material to produce an interesting study.

IAN McGIBBON

care by openly promoting the migrant rights of Zimbabweans.Can the awkward trade-offs revealed throughout this book

occur without violation to MSF principles of neutrality and independence? The trade-off between speech and action, it is revealed, was hotly debated within MSF, some managers in-sisting the best strategy was to simply keep quiet over known humanitarian violations and deliver care as best as possible.

Rather than working to nebulous concepts of ‘humani-tarian space’, Marie-Pierre Allié notes in the Introduction, it is better to seek ‘space for negotiations’ between relations of force, aid groups and authorities. This need not entail universal markers indicating lines that must not be crossed, but rather judgment calls within the dynamics of individual situations as they arise — a right of abstention or withdrawal never off the table as a last resort. Staying ‘open to negotiation’, as Neuman and Benoît Leduc’s chapter on Somalia puts it, requires con-stant transactions with local and international military forces.

Knowledgeable outsider David Rieff’s Afterword sees the tension between compromise and autonomy as not just central but positive. For him it helps debunk ‘the fantasy’ that hu-manitarian action can ever operate under conditions of com-plete independence, impartiality and neutrality. That is con-testable but this book’s assertion is well sustained, namely that compromises can only be justified through an ethic of action founded on principles of medical effectiveness combined with a refusal to be party to policies of domination.

RODERIC ALLEY


INSTITUTE NOTES

Cook Islands Minister of Finance and Economic Management Hon Mark Stephen Brown spoke at Victoria University of Wellington on ‘New Perspectives on Development Challenges for the Pacific Islands: Great Ocean States?’ on 13 March, and a week later HE Leonora Rueda, ambassador of Mexico, addressed a meeting on ‘Crises, Clashes and Collaboration: The G20 under the Mexican Presidency’.

Another mini-seminar on 21 March focused on ‘East Asia Pacific, Economic Growth, Opportunity and the Roles of the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank’. Dr Pamela Cox, the World Bank regional vice-president for East Asia and the Pacific, and Stephen Groff, the vice-president (operations 2) at the Asia Development Bank, led the discussion. They were accompanied by World Bank Executive Director for Australia and New Zealand John Whitehead (a former New Zealand treasury secretary), Dr Ulrich Zachau (World Bank East Asia Pacific director of strategy and operations), Ferid Belhaj (country director for Papua New Guinea, East Timor and the Pacific Islands), Lester Dally (Dr Cox’s senior adviser), and Robert Wihtol (director-general of the Asia Development Bank’s Pacific Department).

On 28 March Professor Mete Tuncoku of Çanakkale On-sekiz Mart University, Çanakkale, Turkey, spoke on ‘A Gallant Enmity: Turkey, Australia and New Zealand at the Gallipoli Campaign’. Next day Aleksander Kwasniewski, who was presi-dent of Poland from 1995 to 2005, addressed a meeting at Vic-toria University of Wellington on ‘The Europe–United States partnership in the 21st Century: A Polish Perspective’.

On 30 May Vuk Jeremic, Serbia’s foreign minister, outlined the current political situation and outlook of Serbia. Next day Filippo Grandi (commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) addressed a meeting at Victoria University of Wellington on ‘Responsibili-

ties and Relevance: UNRWA’s Role in a Changing Middle East’.On 12 June Hon Murray McCully, minister of foreign af-

fairs, gave an address at Victoria University of Wellington on ‘Modernising the Security Council — the Challenge of Glob-al Security’. (The edited text of the minister’s address is to be found elsewhere in this issue.)

On 22 June a breakfast meeting was held with the Chil-ean minister of defence, Andres Allamand Zavala. Later that day there was a roundtable with Dr Meir Litvak, an associate professor in Middle East history and director of the Centre for Iranian studies at the Dayan Centre, Tel Aviv University.

The civilian director of the New Zealand Provincial Re-construction Team in Bamyan, Afghanistan, Richard Pren-dergast, gave an address under Chatham House rules on ‘Dip-lomatic Despatches from the Hindu Kush’ on 19 July.

AucklandThe following meetings were held:19 Mar Dr Emanuele Ottolenghi (senior fellow, Foundation

for the Defense of Democracies, Washington), ‘From Tehran to Tahrir Square’.

23 Apr John Goodman (former New Zealand high commis-sioner to Kiribati and ambassador to Palau, Federated States of Micronesia and Marshall Islands), ‘States of Mind: Micronesia in the Pacific’.

25 Jul Dana Deree (acting US consul-general in Auckland), ‘An Examination of the US Election 2012’.

On 28 June, in association with Auckland University’s Faculty of Law, the New Zealand Centre for Human Rights Law, Policy and Practice and the New Zealand branch of the International Law Association, the branch organised a seminar at which Professor Tim McCormack spoke on ‘The Tenth Anniversary of the ICC: Achievements and Challenges’.

Chile’s minister of defence, Andres Allamand Zavala (seventh from the left), with Latin American diplomats and NZIIA representatives who met him for breakfast on 22 June


ChristchurchThe following meetings were held:24 Apr Simon Murdoch (former secretary of foreign affairs),

‘Some Reflections on the International Outlook’.16 May Prof Kevin Clements (Otago University), ‘The Pros-

pects for a North-east Asian Nuclear Weapon Free Zone in the 21st Century’.

5 Jun Hon Sir Douglas Kidd (NZIIA president), ‘Whither the China–New Zealand Relationship’.

21 Jun Prof Caroline Saunders (Lincoln University), ‘Market Trends: Increasing Added Value and Protecting our Exports’.

18 Jul Bruce Vaughn (Ian Axford fellow, Victoria University of Wellington), ‘New Zealand–United States Pacific Partnership in the Context of the US Pacific Pivot’.

On 29 May the branch held its AGM. The following officers were elected:

Chair — Alexander McKinnonSecretary — Marcia McIntyreTreasurer — Margaret SweetCommittee — Marie Cattanach, David Elms, Malakai Ko-

lomatangi, David McIntyre, Stuart McMillan, Philippa Mein Smith, Diana Moir, Peter Penlington, Angela Woodward.

Following the AGM Dr John Schischka (Macmillan Brown Centre) addressed the branch on ‘Progress in Meeting Millennium Development Goals in the Pacific Islands and New Zealand’s Part’.

Hawke’s BayOn 21 June Graeme Davidson, theologian, author, foreign correspondent and columnist, addressed the branch about his recent visit to Myanmar and gave his assessment of its current condition and future prospects. Indonesian Ambassador HE Antonius Agus Sriyono spoke on ‘Democracy in Indonesia: Progress and Prospects’ on 24 July.

Palmerston NorthOn 27 June 2012, Ross Cassells spoke at a meeting held at International Pacific College. He talked about the changes in governance within the village of Nukiki in the Solomon Islands since 1991. Authority is traditionally concentrated amongst village chiefs. Today, however, although village elders still retain much of the power, there has been a shift of influence to the church, provincial councils, and the national level government. There have also been demographic changes,

with a doubling of population in some regions. This has led to concerns with land and resource shortages. Logging continues at an unsustainable rate. Villagers tend to be insular and defensive against outside influences, leading to frustrations from more educated stakeholders. This problem is intensified by an ill-preparedness to deal with the modern problems of a globalised world.

Following his presentation, Cassells also talked about the role of RAMSI. Following initial reservations, it appears that RAMSI has brought benefits to the Solomon Islands in terms of security and stability. He also addressed the environmental concerns of logging by multinational companies, the lack of re-forestation, and the impact of introduced pests on regenerated farmland or rovers (such as wild pigs and crocodiles) following RAMSI’s removal of small arms from the islands as part of the peace initiative. The seminar was very well received and enjoyed by all who attended.

WairarapaThe following meetings were held:21 Mar Sir Geoffrey Palmer (former prime minister), ‘Inside

the World of International Disputes’.23 Apr Peter Ireland (Morgan Stanley), ‘International Bank-

ing’.21 May Lt-Col Tim Woodman (defence adviser, British High

Commission), ‘Focus Forward for British Defence’.25 Jun Sir Douglas Kidd, ‘Whither the New Zealand–Chi-

na Relationship’.

WellingtonThe following meetings were held:27 Mar HE David Huebner (US ambassador), ‘Statecraft in

the 21st Century: Levering Innovation to Advance America’s Foreign Policy’.

10 Apr Bekele Geleta (secretary-general, International Feder-ation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies), ‘Early Warning and Disaster Preparedness: the Pacific, New Zealand and Africa’.

17 Apr Rupert Holborow (director, MFAT’s Economic Divi-sion), ‘Perspective on India — a Caged Phoenix or the Emerging ‘Superstar’ — and What This Means for New Zealand’s Interests’.

15 May Dr Brian Easton (independent scholar), ‘The Real Economic Issues New Zealand Faces: the Interna-tional Context’.

21 May Prof Fei-Ling Wei (Georgia Tech), ‘US–China Rela-tions: A Double Game’.

29 May HE Seyed Majid Tafreshi Khameneh (Iran’s ambas-sador), ’Iran’s Foreign Policy after the Islamic Revolu-tion’.

20 Jun Martin and Lois Griffiths (Justice for Paslestine), ‘To Exist is to Resist: The Palestinian Issue’. (The edited text of their address is to be found elsewhere in this issue.)

17 Jul Mark Trainor (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade), ‘New Zealand and Brazil: What Can We Do Better Together Than Each Alone?’

24 Jul Distinguished Professor Cynthia P. Schneider (former US ambassador to the Netherlands), ‘Cultural Diplo-macy for the 21st Century’.

Ross Cassells

JT

New Zealand International Review 33New Zealand International Review

33

CORRESPONDENCESir,The review in the last issue (vol 37, no 40) of our relationship with the United States is important, especially as we have had such a long and at times close relationship with it. We often tend to forget how much our international, and indeed intel-lectual frameworks owe to the leadership of that country. For instance, the formation of the United Nations as well as the Marshall Plan owe much of their success to the imagination and dedication of US leaders, and they have had far reaching beneficial effects globally.

However, in considering this relationship it is important to maintain a balance, and consider the challenges as well as the strengths. In particular we frequently make reference to our shared values with the United States, with little or no men-tion of those values that we might not share, or which may be against our interest. For instance:

Military posture. The US position of global military he-gemony involving well over 700 military bases at enor-mous cost, distorting and at times destabilising inter-national relationships around the world. The use of this power is often highly provocative, such as the insistence of complete freedom on US naval activities within interna-tional waters, and the undertaking of remote combat us-ing drone attacks. Such a posture provides an incentive for military modernisation and expansion to many countries that cannot afford it, and a horrifying precedent to those countries that seek comparable global status. Who would want a China or India to start matching this posture?

Disarmament. The generally disruptive role the United States has played in disarmament and arms control nego-tiations from nuclear to small arms. For instance in the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty negotiations they have been very reluctant to honour their disarmament com-mitments and have resisted control of conventional arms as well. Such spoiling activities have contributed substan-tially to the level of international instability.

Political Alliances. The US support for oppressive dicta-torships and, at times, suppression of democratic move-ments in other countries. For instance the United States provoked the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mo-saddeq in 1953, and later supported Saddam Hussein in his attacks on Iran. The United States continues to support the absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia.

Political Integrity. The US tolerance of extensive influence by commercial and special interest groups on its domestic, military and international policy. Examples include the military industrial complex, the gun lobby and the Israeli lobby, as well as many industrial lobbies. Such influences undermine its reliability as a global partner.

Human Rights. The high imprisonment rate targeting minority groups, continued capital punishment and other oppressive policies.

Multilateralism and the rule of law. The ambivalent, and at times antagonistic approach that the United States main-tains towards the United Nations and other multilateral

institutions has been highly destructive of these institu-tions and of the integrity of international law. Examples have been the rejection of the International Criminal Court, politically motivated de-funding of several institu-tions and failure to ratify the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, a critical basis for New Zealand and South Pa-cific prosperity.

American Exceptionalism. A philosophy that sees the United States as playing an exceptional role in internation-al relations, at times extending to rejection of the rules that they expect other countries to be bound by. An example is the attack on Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Financial Integrity. The US commitment to influencing the global economic system using simplistic principles of economic and financial liberalism, which have had very destructive effects on many developing countries, as well as its own economy. These effects have precipitated wide-spread global recessions, but it appears that vested interests have inhibited adequate corrections to this philosophy.

All of these issues have effects which undermine the national interests of New Zealand, as well as many of our neighbours and commercial partners. Our credibility depends on our demonstration that we are as aware of the defects of our close traditional allies as we are of the defects of other countries.

It is important when identifying such issues to be mindful of one’s own shortcomings, and those of others that we choose to deal with. However, just as we address human rights and other sensitive issues when we deal with some of our newer connections, we need to keep in mind, and on the table, the issues of concern that we might have with close partners such as the United States.

Gray [email protected]

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