Nostalgia is not a Strategy
Plus Terence O'Brien on Good Global Citizenship (part 7 of 9) (2016)
Diplosphere is back after the Summer Break! The breathless pace of international events manifests unabated. A brazen U.S. attack on Venezuela. Ructions in Iran and talk of intervention. A Greenland grab. Cracks, fissures and ruptures in the international order multiply. PM Carney of Canada sounded the clarion call at Davos recently with a memorable speech.
Nostalgia is not a strategy
Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney at World Economic Forum in Davos, Jan 2026
New Zealand policymakers should take heed. Nostalgia is not a strategy. Conservative minds in the N.Z. national security establishment have been “living within a lie” for years, wanting to turn back the clock to a lost era of a “seamless web of western security” (term from the 1980s). For New Zealand to retain it’s status as a good global citizen, it should call out the transgressions evenhandedly, not just call out one “side”.
Havel called this “living within a lie”.
The system’s power comes not from its truth, but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true, and its fragility comes from the same source.
Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney at World Economic Forum in Davos, Jan 2026
Why is New Zealand so slow to adjust course? How have institutions been captured principals who are caught up in threat mentality (threat being China) national security mindset? For Australia & New Zealand, a serious revisit of the costs and benefits of AUKUS, ANZUS, and Five Eyes membership must be at hand.
It means acting consistently, applying the same standards to allies and rivals. When middle powers criticize economic intimidation from one direction, but stay silent when it comes from another, we are keeping the sign in the window.
Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney at World Economic Forum in Davos, Jan 2026
Good Global Citizenship (2016)
This is Part Seven of an unpublished series by Terence O’Brien from 2016 posted here posthumously nominally titled: Independent Foreign Policy? See Parts One (Intro), Two (Some basics) Three (Outlook), Four (Trade & Flag), Five (Contributing to Peace). Terence was a prominent New Zealand diplomat until 1993 and then an academic at Victoria University of Wellington as founding director of the Centre for Strategic Studies (CSS:NZ) for eight years. Terence was then an analyst of international relations for over fifteen years. Some points from the piece -
The international system has been good for NZ (thanks US for driving force setting it up) (ed - now tearing it down…)
But system is no longer fit for purpose, it is clear, emerging countries must play a larger role.
Indeed, it is not smaller countries at source of dysfunction, but established countries’ resistance to change
Tacit acceptance of US exceptionalism to rules it feels infringes its sovereignty could lead to others following suit like China. Exceptionalism to rules by the powerful is against NZ’s national interest as a matter of principal
Our “loyal opposition” nicely nicely approach - qualified independent foreign policy - is being tested
Our reputation is based upon being a “good global citizen” is slipping: on climate change, aid/contributions, peacekeeping (ex - now on Palestine)
The moon appears just before midnight in Wellington on Dec 31, 2025
GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP
Terence O’Brien (2016) - Part 7 / 9
Implications of US-China rivalry at the regional level reflect, even magnify, the tests posed too at the global level for independent NZ foreign policy that arise from the vital need now to accommodate the reality of China’s emergence on to the international stage - alongside other large newly emerging economies (the so-called BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa).Collectively this group account for more than half of the world’s Gross National Product (GNP), they hold 70% of the world’s foreign exchange reserves, they consume over half of the world’s energy and their growth rates exceed that of developed western countries. Their economies are integrated into the global system of production and its accelerating trade and capital flows. Setbacks may confront the newly emergent economies because progress is rarely a simple continuous straight line. But the trajectory points in the direction of growing accomplishment and global influence.
The nature of this transformation poses immediate questions for the future of the international rules based system originally conceived and implemented by US energy and foresight in concert with a bevy of major western powers. It is a system that continues to provide expedient opportunity particularly for smaller countries. It allows coalitions amongst like minded to promote collective interests, or for small
nations to resist inconsiderate pressures from the powerful. Because of the very scope responsibilities (from outer space to food safety) it allows linkages between issues to be drawn between rights and obligations, and more directly between economic development and political stability, and many other relationships that are intrinsic to an interconnected world. Successive NZ governments have committed to ‘good global citizenship’ as a mark of the country’s conviction and commitment to rules based international order. In an era now when the international pecking order is itself being transformed the need to include major newly industrialising countries in the management of that order is fundamental to its effectiveness. Failure will perpetuate a ‘democratic deficit’ in global management.
It is wrong not to acknowledge that the UN system experiences a crisis of relevance. Inefficiencies, lack of coordination, overlapping mandates, diminished member state allegiances combine to undermine its standing. It is in dire need of reform. This requires readiness by member states to endow it afresh with responsibilities, mandates and resources, and for them to display greater willingness to pool sovereignties in support of a relevant and effective system. That comprises the essential 21st century challenge. To try to reinvent a new system is a fool’s errand.
The system supplies an important forum where the inveterate problems like environmental protections, arms control and disarmament, and peaceable management of space can and should be pursued, even if progress is glacial and disappointments legion. Its method of permanent conference diplomacy, actually ‘socialises’ member governments to dealing with one another and to deeper understanding of prevailing challenges to peace, prosperity and stability. Realists dismiss those attributes. The system amounts for them to a mere pointless ‘talk shop’. But in an era when cultural and religious antagonisms are, and will remain, a source of severe global disorder , it would be foolhardy indeed to dispense with the ‘socialisation’ potential of the UN system; and let slip the vast network of rules, code and principles devised under its auspices over the years that touch upon almost every dimension of the international community’s existence - economic and social improvement in member states, assisting countries to self determination and nationhood, bolstering protections for refugees and other disadvantaged communities, linking major international challenges like climate and environment with security and prosperity, and pinpointing the fateful consequences of absolute poverty for stability and well being.
The criticism from powerful capitals that the international system, with over 190 sovereign countries is now simply too big and unwieldy for effective and timely responses to international need or crisis, needs to be taken by NZ with several grains of salt. This criticism is another way of suggesting that smaller countries represent the impediment to an effective system. NZ should not buy that. The record of the system’s non-performance actually suggests that major powers are themselves as much of an impediment when they are unwilling to accept outcomes from principled negotiations, or even engage in negotiations, that do not privilege their interests. On top of that the sorry record of disagreement amongst the five most powerful member states that paralyse the UN Security Council, about which NZ is suitably critical, proves the responsibility for UN shortcomings is a shared responsibility.
The creation in 2008 of the G20, comprising the top twenty world economies, recognises that adjustment to the management and hierarchy of international economic order is indeed required. For NZ the viability of a 21st century rules based system depends vitally upon the full allegiance and commitment of BRIC governments. Certain policy trends in trade and economic integration however (like TPP or TTIP as discussed earlier) spurn BRIC countries. On the face of it this is contrary to the letter and spirit of G20 with its focus on concerting macro- economic strategy amongst top table members to sustain equilibrium in the global economy through open trade and finance, balance between austerity and stimulus, and exchange rates policy and quantitative easing. G20 is not itself concerned with micro-management of existing institutions (IMF, World Bank, WTO, UN.) but reinvigorating them through change to management control and working method.
An enhanced role for BRIC governments involves sharing of responsibilities inside existing institutions by major western governments, NZ’s traditional mainstays. Space needs to be created and it is in NZ’s independent foreign policy interests that this occurs. This necessitates broadening membership in agencies covering areas like aid coordination (ODA), or energy cooperation that are by purpose confined to western governments alone. Such change will not be accomplished easily including in agencies like IMF where as indicated earlier, anomalies persist and reform proceeds at snail’s pace. Some BRICS governments, impatient at delay, have already moved to announce creation their own development finance instruments. This in its turn fuels American misgivings that the BRICS are indeed bent upon transforming the global economic system. There is a looming chicken and egg dilemma here but the first move rests with those governments that enjoy monopoly.
Equivalence of responsibilities and of obligations inside a revitalised international system is a principle that NZ as a small, conscientious, constructive participant, must endorse staunchly in the name of independent foreign policy. Like others NZ owes an important debt to American energy and foresight that laid the original foundations for the liberal international system that serves our interests constructively. The supreme task of revitalising that system in the 21st century to ensure China and other BRIC governments become full stakeholders requires that the US modify however its sense of ‘exceptionalism’ according to which America absolves itself from international rules that are deemed unsatisfactory or to infringe US sovereignty, or that do not privilege American interests. This deep sense of entitlement is not calculated to persuade China and others that they should not also assert similar entitlement. While China has to date adjusted to the requirements of the international system as part of its re-emergence (e.g. its entry into WTO), it too possesses in history decided conceptions about its own ‘exceptionalism’.
It is wrong to underestimate however just how difficult it will be in the US to change deeply ingrained habits. American policy makers need to be convinced that the important US legacy to the world of a liberal international order needs to be to be protected in and by an effective system that reflects modern reality - if it is to survive as a lynchpin for global peace and prosperity. For the US this means acceptance of revitalised global institutions in which power with others and not power over others is the supreme requirement. Devising solutions for destabilising challenges that accompany modern interdependence requires, at the bottom line, ‘buy in’ from the entire international community of states, irrespective of size or power. After all one polluter, one group of greedy speculators, one gang of terrorists, or one weapons proliferator can readily and fatally undermine interdependent collaboration. Governments, heavyweights and featherweights alike, must accept and apply solutions inclusively.
In the past, at the time of the UN’s foundation, NZ argued firmly for the accountability of the great powers when it opposed the provision for the UN Security Council veto. It needs in the name of independent foreign policy, to exhibit similar fortitude about the equivalence of responsibilities and obligations for great and small powers alike for the 21st century international system. The idea that in foreign affairs NZ seeks a position of “independence with loyalty” (first suggested in the best book on NZ foreign policy independence[1]) portrays the country as seeking improvements in the international system, but without traditionally challenging the underlying structures or principles – whether it was empire, commonwealth, UN, or great power order. Drawing upon the Westminster political tradition, the book elegantly suggests NZ’s foreign policy independence can best be defined as an exercise of ‘loyal opposition’, rather than an act of sedition against established order. But when NZ now readily asserts its deep continuing attachment to international rules based order what does that actually mean as we look out to the needs of 21st century? Do we concede that certain great powers are a permanent ‘exception’ to the rules, and if so which great powers, and which rules? There is something potentially more substantive involved here for NZ than ‘loyal opposition’.
The international system provides a permanent window for the great majority of other governments to judge the extent of NZ’s independent foreign policy. A day hardly passes when in one or another of the vast global collection of agencies and institutions, a NZ representative is not involved in defending, explaining or bargaining over decisions to commit NZ to collective action – whether in trade, transport, human rights, food safety, transnational crime, terrorism or a host of other areas. Much of this activity is transacted beneath the radar screens of media and beyond public awareness. But it is the occasion when judgements by others about NZ diplomacy are formed – and where reputation is made, or lost.
Reputation is important. NZ has for example, branded itself as ‘clean and green.’ This is partly on grounds of principle, partly as a strategy to improve foreign exchange earnings from trade and tourism. Active involvement at the international level in negotiations over environment and, in particular, climate change is part and parcel of consolidating the reputation. NZ strongly advocates the role of market forces and the central role of an emissions trading scheme in climate change mitigation. But it subsequently qualifies its own attachment to targeted reductions for emissions in a way which, in the diplomatic language of a former lead NZ negotiator, ‘irritated and puzzled’ negotiating partners.[2]
International climate change negotiations no longer provide the same reference point for NZ, particularly when it comes to domestic economic development goals and policies. Yet the connections are real. Ambitious policies directed at enlarging further the contribution of NZ farm exports to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) – from 30% to 40% - impose considerable extra strain upon the NZ ecology and the carrying capacity of its land. Indeed the greater obstacle to sustained NZ prosperity does not lie with access to foreign markets as such, but with NZ’s ability to raise farm export productivity without severely damaging its own environment in order to meet expanding food demand in a globalising world.
As it is, the sense that given the NZ contribution to global emissions and therefore to climate change is miniscule, so NZ’s contribution to collective action to mitigate the dangers should also be miniscule, is not a principle that NZ adopts in other areas essential to its well being. In international trade where NZ’s world share is just 0.36% but where NZ devotes heroic effort - government and non government - to protecting and projecting NZ interests, the contrast is remarkable. The belief that NZ does not require to be a ‘front runner’ internationally on climate change because everything first depends crucially on action by major emitters who favour ‘concerted unilateral mitigation’ as the only way forward, is a perverse conclusion for a country where successive governments lay claim to credentials as a ‘good global citizen’; and where in the equivalent case of major power agricultural trade protectionism, NZ would never countenance supine resignation. Serious headwinds are anticipated for the global economy in the second half of this century, without radically reduced carbon emissions[3].
There are other measurements of NZ’s good ‘global citizenship’. Its performance as an aid (ODA) donor and the connexions between independent foreign policy and aid (ODA) are correlated. Traditionally the management and disbursement of aid by many donor countries, NZ included, was the designated responsibility of foreign ministries. Perceived need for greater specialisation and professionalism, plus greater diversity in ideas, institutions, and policy perspectives across the full spectrum of economic and social development, prompted a shift by many donor governments to dfstablish stand-alone aid agencies. As the new century began NZ followed suit with the establishment of a semi-autonomous body (SAB) that retained an arms length relationship with the MFAT. NZ non-government organisations (NGO) with first hand overseas aid experience, generally prefer complete severance of any such connexion but initial judgements of the change to an SAB were largely positive. The novelty did not however long survive.
A new NZ government reversed the change and reintegrated ODA directly with the foreign ministry. This was a signal of NZ priority for private sector involvement in aid delivery – for an ODA programme in other words which is beneficial to both recipient and donor alike – and reflects a firm priority attaching to NZ trade and investment opportunities throughout its external relations. The philosophy was directed to remedying poverty of opportunity as much as, or more than, than poverty (or inequality)of income amongst recipients, although NZ had signed up to the latter priority at the UN with its 2000 Millenium Development Goals (MDG). A tug-of-war between altruism through assisting meet real needs in the underdeveloped world, and realism involving concern for economic advantage for donor interests, is part of the modern development assistance landscape. The arrival of new donors like China on the international aid stage has indeed witnessed greater emphasis upon programmes of mutual benefit with the notion of donor/recipient relationships being replaced by ‘international cooperation partnerships.’
Contention surrounding the precise place of the NZ aid administration inside the domestic scheme of government management, means there is danger that ODA becomes a NZ political football kicked backwards and forwards whenever governments change. Absence of political bipartisanship about NZ ODA and its rightful place, constitutes a disservice to the country and its reputation, including for independent foreign policy. Amongst traditional aid donors NZ does not rank prominently. In terms of sum total of donated aid, NZ ranks 21 out of 23 designated donors (only Greece and Luxembourg rank lower) and in terms of aid expressed as a percentage of gross national income (GNI) where there is an internationally agreed target for donors of 0.7%, NZ ranks 16 out of 23 traditional donors, appreciably below countries with whom NZ likes to compare itself – Ireland, Sweden, Denmark etc. In the 1970s NZ achieved its best aid effort raising its percentage to 0.55% which then slipped back so that by the end of that decade it stood at 0.36%, where it has remained, more or less, ever since. As of this writing the actual lump sum of NZ aid stands at around $600 million per year.
For the majority of aid donors throughout the world the recipients of their aid are geographically distant. There is therefore some sense of detachment and objectivity about overseas development assistance. By contrast NZ directs the bulk of its aid, some 70%, into its near neighbourhood, the South Pacific. Australia is similar with Papua New Guinea by far its largest recipient. This proximity and the presence of a significant Pasifica diaspora within NZ society , adds profile together with a ‘political’ dimension, to its aid efforts uncommon to many other donors. Relationships with the Pacific and the neighbourhood are treated in section 8.
International reputation is elusive especially for smaller countries. NZ’s profile is intermittently illuminated internationally by success in securing a non-permanent two-year seat on the UN Security Council. It is a comparatively rare experience – three full terms in seventy years. In the modern UN a successful candidature for a seat requires prolonged dedicated campaigning. Governments in Wellington understandably interpret success as a favourable mark for the country’s international standing.
NZ reputation is shaped not by what NZ actually does while a UNSC member. It is influenced rather more by the policies and positions NZ adopts in the more transparent day-to-day business of the international system like aid policy, peace keeping, generosity with refugee resettlement, environmental protection and the like. A sense amongst other governments that NZ is slipping off the pace with any such activities subtracts from a reputation for ‘good global citizenship’. As things stand it is hard anyway to judge externally the effectiveness of NZ contributions to UN Security Council dealings behind closed doors, as the Council grapples with constant crisis. As a non-permanent member NZ has only two years to make its mark. But it is the impact that the Council has on NZ and its independent foreign policy during and particularly after its Council tenure, which is the greater legacy. Greater confidence and maturity in foreign policy thinking and making represents a consequential and valuable windfall.
A reputation for independent foreign policy is the object of far wider scrutiny than just the concern of other governments. The revolution in communications technology has as suggested earlier, transformed the conduct of international affairs so that the influence of media including social media, of big business, of professional peer groups, ethnic and religious denominations, and large transnational single issue organizations like Green Peace, Amnesty International etc. all project influence upon governments and their standing. International bargaining whether about economic integration, trade liberalisation, financial cooperation, climate change and much else, is now regularly the target of concerted non-government pressures even action in the streets around the margins of international negotiation.
The practice of leaking confidential information about the bargaining process assumes epidemic proportions in a globalizing information age. This makes the negotiators’ task infinitely more difficult. Diplomats are now no longer fully in charge of process. They do not enjoy monopoly of understanding about issues and their complexity. Neither do specialists in discrete areas of wide ranging negotiation. But the diplomats’ role in joining the dots, in judging broader objectives and intentions of other negotiators and in assessing the political and other consequences of outcomes remain important to government leaders for their pursuit of NZ interests. In an era of instant communication and much impatience the need for professional diplomacy to supply composure under pressure is important.
[1] McKinnon M. Independence & Foreign Policy; NZ in the World since 1935. Auckland Univ. Press1993. p 150 etc.
[2]Macey A. Climate Change: Towards Policy Coherence. Policy Quarterly Vol.10 Issue 2. May 2014. Pp.49-56
[3] Garnaut R. Global Development in the 21st Century. Policy Quarterly. Vol.11 Issue 2. May 2015 pp.3-19