Jacinda Ardern’s leadership significantly enhanced New Zealand’s profile on the global stage. In the first five months of her second term of government, between December 2020 and April 2021, her name appeared 24 times in The Washington Post, 10 in The New York Times, 27 in The Times and 210 in The Guardian.
Correspondingly, in the first five months of Christopher Luxon’s prime ministership (December 2023 to April 2024), he appeared once in The Washington Post, twice in The New York Times, three times in The Times and 23 in The Guardian.
Other than the conclusion that The Guardian is more interested in New Zealand politics than the others (or has more Kiwi readers), it is clear Ardern was more of a headline stealer than Luxon has been to date.
Ardern’s foreign policy over that time had established her as an international leader, something that skews the statistics in her favour.
The conservative Times saluted the rise of the female world leader, and hailed her response to Covid-19. The Guardian trumpeted her "climate change emergency", The New York Times reported Ardern’s response to the US Capitol attack, and The Washington Post compared the United States’ mass shootings with New Zealand’s speedy change to gun laws after the Christchurch mosque terror attacks.
By contrast, Luxon’s headlines have covered repealing the smoking ban, a run-in with the Māori King, sending an NZDF team to counter the Houthis in the Red Sea, and emphasising "closer alignment with traditional allies".
In many ways, the years of Ardern’s global popularity presented an opportunity for New Zealand to influence the world on some of the most pressing, and enduring, global challenges. Was that opportunity squandered? Or does New Zealand still have the political capital to create serious change?
As Luxon took the helm in November 2023, Philip Turner, New Zealand’s former ambassador to South Korea, said the new prime minister could demonstrate his concerns "shared with New Zealand’s democratic neighbours, about the need to strengthen the rules-based order".
Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd has spoken of the need for "middle powers" to enhance the international and regional rules-based order in security, politics, the economy, humanitarian intervention, development and the environment. He added that the alternative was anarchy.
According to the Australian think-tank Lowy Institute’s 2023 Asia Power Index, New Zealand is a middle power in Asia. New Zealand exerts more influence in the region than expected given its available resources, and is a net overachiever in Asia.
In 2020, the University of Otago convened a high-level meeting of policy makers and academics to discuss the challenges and opportunities New Zealand faced during and after the Covid-19 pandemic.
This meeting provided the inspiration for our new book, New Zealand’s Foreign Policy under the Jacinda Ardern Government; Facing the Challenge of a Disrupted World, which explores New Zealand’s role in a world no longer led solely by the great powers, one where middle or even small states can contribute solutions to global challenges such as Covid-19, and help contribute to change.
Today, the international rules-based order, on which New Zealand relies, is threatened by veto-wielding permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Russian expansionism in Ukraine, and a growing array of problems that do not respect borders and cannot be fixed unilaterally by great powers.
These include climate change, global pandemics, transnational terrorism and wealth inequality.
Thus, a quick review of the New Zealand government’s current stance would question the validity of policies that simply "fall into line" with what the great powers want.
In principle, most New Zealanders seem to highly value an independent foreign policy, but in practice often fall back on the idea that a relatively small state can be no more than a cog in a big machine.
This is illustrated, in our view, in an Aukus debate that focuses so much on interoperability, and an assumption that we play our part simply by plugging into the defence arrangements of traditional allies like the US, UK and Australia.
But it is clear New Zealand’s trade relationship with Asia since the 1970s was a coming-of-age for the country’s foreign policy, not an aberration that took us away from the parental embrace of the UK and US.
Moreover, it is striking that when New Zealand was confronted by Covid-19 in 2020 it learned from the experience of states such as Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea rather than looking for guidance from traditional allies such as the UK and the US, both of which struggled with the pandemic.
The foreign policy of Ardern’s government was a step towards rethinking what our international responsibilities are, how we negotiate with the "family" of the West and what we mean by a "mature" relationship with our new, less familiar partners, in an increasingly interconnected but disrupted world. — Newsroom
■ Peter Grace is a teaching fellow at politics at the University of Otago; Robert Patman is a professor of international relations in the politics programme at the University of Otago. New Zealand’s Foreign Policy under the Jacinda Ardern Government; Facing the Challenge of a Disrupted World was launched in Dunedin yesterday.
